Several years ago, when I was just a teenager I lived in
Governador Valadares a city of eastern Brazil. During that period my family had
a financial crisis and as a consequence to that, I used to walk for about 40
minutes to go to school every single day. One of my favorite spot was “Praça Serra Lima”; One of the most traditional praças (square) in town,
with a fountain in the center. On Sundays
after church I used to seat in a bench with my friends and watched the Capoeira
group dance and sing with a berimbau (percussion instrument). We had
so much fun hanging there for awhile.
Around the “praça”
was this wrought iron structure mixed
with terracotta bricks of a 12 floors unfinished building. So, every day
throughout several years the people’s town passed by around this giant skeleton.
Evidently, an expression of fragility on the profitable business of the
hospitality industry of a small town; there might have had
other reasons for not having completed the construction of the building.
In middle of the Seventies, with the creation of the trade
association the businesses had heated and the city started to grow again and
eventually they had started the construction again. It was no small challenge
and investment for this audacious project at that period of time.
In 1979, they were willing to change the atmosphere of a
small town to a sparkly hotel as in a metropolis, completing the construction
of the hotel and named it “GPH Hotel” offering an extensive selection of professional
services with an upper class shopping center and a night club that became a
sensation back then. After that was stimulation
for investors to invest in the civil construction resulting a boom in the
financial scale of the city.
The old, unfinished building marked so many people’s life; ones
with hopes of a better life, others enjoying a satiated life; many dreams. The
modern construction brought the evolution, the progress, a new beginning for so
many residents.
Many years had passed and every time I go to Brazil and visit
Governador Valadares, I remember the old times and in those moments, that grotesque
structure always returns to my memory.
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