Property ownership strategies: black paulista families’ life history between 1920s and 1940s

ABSTRACT In Brazil, there is a cultural belief that property acquisition is the wisest attitude to ensure a safe and stable economy. For generations, the "dream of property ownership" has been cultivated as a horizon to be achieved. Confirming this tendency, since the 1920s, "casa propria" (home ownership) became a notion mobilized in the black press periodicals, circulating as a desirable aspiration and an orientation to the journals public. Between 1924 and 1937, two of the main newspapers of São Paulo black press, O Clarim da Alvorada and A Voz da Raça, carried out a campaign in favor of property ownership, spreading among paulista black families the importance of property acquisition. These campaigns are an important sign for the relevance of buying a property for black families at that time. In this paper, we seek to analyze it as an intergenerational social security strategy, through the presentation of three cases of black families that accomplished this goal between 1920s and 1940s. The black families testimonies reported here indicate precocity, specificities and strategies that represent new challenges for the formulation of property ownership problem, from a racial point of view.

摘要 在巴西，社会普遍存在一种文化观念：购置不动产是保障经济安全与稳定的最优选择。世世代代以来，“拥有不动产的梦想”一直被塑造为值得追寻的人生愿景。这一趋势得到印证：自20世纪20年代起，“自有住房（casa propria）”这一概念开始在黑人报刊中被广泛倡导，作为一种令人向往的志向与读者导向流传开来。1924年至1937年间，圣保罗黑人报业的两大主流报刊《O Clarim da Alvorada》与《A Voz da Raça》发起了支持不动产购置的宣传活动，向圣保罗州黑人家庭普及购置不动产的重要性。此类宣传活动，清晰反映出彼时购置不动产对黑人家庭的重要意义。本研究旨在将其作为代际社会保障策略展开分析，为此我们呈现了3户在20世纪20年代至40年代间实现不动产购置目标的黑人家庭案例。本文呈现的黑人家庭口述史料表明，其购置不动产的行为具有超前性、特殊性与专属策略，从种族视角出发，这为不动产拥有权相关问题的研究框架构建带来了新的挑战。