Hierarchies of Death: Funerary Space, Social Distinction, and Memory in the Consolação Cemetery (São Paulo, 19th Century)

espaço funerário, distinção social e memória no Cemitério da Consolação (São Paulo, século XIX)

Abstract

This article analyzes the transformations of funerary practices and the organization of funerary space in the city of São Paulo during the nineteenth century, focusing on the creation and consolidation of the Consolação Cemetery. The objective is to understand how the establishment of this public cemetery reflected urban, sanitary, and social changes, contributing to the formation of hierarchies within the realm of death. The research is based on the analysis of primary sources, including minutes of the São Paulo City Council, sanitary legislation, contemporary newspapers, and records related to funerary administration, in dialogue with the historiography of death, memory, and urban space. The findings demonstrate that the creation of the Consolação Cemetery, inaugurated in 1858, was part of the urban modernization process driven by hygienist discourses, but also reproduced social inequalities through the spatial differentiation of graves and the selective preservation of memory. It is concluded that the cemetery was not merely a burial site, but a symbolic arena in which relations of power, social distinctions, and mechanisms of construction and exclusion of collective memory were expressed.