“Capitality” beyond the Capital City? Brasília and Its Satellite Towns

Abstract

In 1960, Brasília replaced Rio de Janeiro as the capital city of Brazil. Although the planned urban core of Brasília—the so-called Plano Piloto—has been the subject of many in-depth studies, the urban history of the settlements on its outskirts—its satellite towns—remains underexplored to date. The national official discourse tended to either neglect the problematic conditions of satellite towns or picture them as part of the hardships that workers bravely put up with for the sake of lofty ideals. Based on 83 interviews recorded by the Public Archive of Brasília between 1995 and 2005, this article analyzes narratives on social practices and experiences that configured the urban spaces of satellite towns and provided them with new significance. It also investigates how people elaborated their memories and appropriated topics from institutionalized history to make points on their present-day needs and demands. Rather than seeing the “capitality” of Brasília as the product of a top-down political project, this article deems it to be a complex cultural artifact shaped by multiple perspectives and experiences, themselves informed by the discourses and practices of modernization.