The Borussia hill: Landcapes of the North Coast of Rio Grande do Sul/Brasil

Abstract

The essay addresses the area of Morro da Borússia, in Osório/Rio Grande do Sul/Brazil, as a locus of identity and conflicts on the North Coast of the southernmost state in brazil, thinking about starting from the landscape -  category which allows us to approach processes of human construction in space and time from the confluences and tensions between natures and cultures. The landscapes of the hill, located on the escarpment of the Southern Plateau, a transition zone between the coastal plain and the plateau, symbolically divide this territory into high and low: between the flooded coastal plain, the fringe of the coast and its entangled urban centers and another portion of the territory at the top of the plateau, also extremely diverse, divided into smaller units that pass through local territorialities, demarcated by a communitarianism that is based on ties with the place and neighborhood relations. These landscapes date back to the settlement of different ethnic groups that make up their diversity and, more recently, to a diversity of groups that seek out the micro-region for the quality of life it offers. The Osório hill Environmental Protection Area (established in 1994 by the City Council) recently had its Management Plan revised, revealing conflicts, perspectives and projections of imagined futures regarding this territory. Conflicts that are also evident regarding the passage of another high voltage line to flow electricity through the APA territory. The slope, profoundly altered over time, today exuberant as a complex set of landscapes and natural-cultural-environmental heritage, reveals itself as a plural territory of transformations, permanences and conflicts - of uncontrolled occupation, irregular division of land, predatory tourism, as well as preservationist policies, creation of networks of collective action and solidarity, experiences of agroforestry production, among other forms of management sensitive to local ethnobiodiversity.