Memories of the Casa Grande: symbolic hierarchies and erasures in the tourist and museological narrative of Quissama, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract

This article analyzes how the memory of Quissama, Rio de Janeiro, is selectively constructed through two institutional materials: the permanent exhibition of the Museu Casa Quissama and the tourist map made available by the Municipal Government. Adopting a qualitative approach, the study is guided by an analysis of the elements that compose the permanent exhibition of the Museu Casa Quissama, including photographs, paintings, objects, informational panels, and other exhibition resources, as well as by a visual reading of the tourist map provided by the Municipal Government of Quissama. The central argument is that both the museum and the map recurrently emphasize historic buildings, farms, manor houses, ruins, administrative symbols, and trajectories associated with landowning families and local elites, thereby producing a narrative marked by the centrality of the Casa Grande, architectural heritage, and the aristocratic past. By contrast, Black, Indigenous, and quilombola memories appear in reduced, secondary, indirect, or scarcely identified forms, even in relation to territories such as the traditional quilombola community of Machadinha. The article concludes that the analyzed devices preserve traces of the past while simultaneously producing symbolic hierarchies by defining which people, spaces, and experiences are valued as memory in Quissama.