Águas do Caju is the result of a collective project entitled "Water infrastructure: urban waters and the city's production in Rio de Janeiro" funded by the Rio de Janeiro State Research Support Foundation (FAPERJ) through calls for support for Thematic Projects, APQ and Cientista do Nosso Estado, by CNPq (PQ scholarship), and by UERJ (Prociência).
Since 2022, the research team has been working intensively with Caju residents, from young to old, who work in the neighborhood's various institutions and are part of daily activities and local initiatives such as art collectives, environmental activism, cultural events, among others. In the links below you can learn more about these initiatives and partners that made this webdoc possible.
We invite you to discover the neighborhood's spaces and stories by navigating with us through Águas do Caju!
Links
Academic works
ALVES, Eliana B. The Caju neighborhood: The construction of an impoverished periphery [dissertation]. Rio de Janeiro: Rio de Janeiro State University, Institute of Geosciences, 2007
AMORAS, Barbara da Costa. “Xepa do Caju”: life strategies, expectations and promises around the cashew recycling and composting plant in Rio de Janeiro. Dissertation (Master in Sociology) – IFCS, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro. 2024.
NEVES, L. S. The occupation of Vila dos Sonhos between memories and forgetfulness (Master's Dissertation, Faculty of Education, State University of Rio de Janeiro). 2023.
OLIVEIRA, Paula Maria de. Hospital de São Sebastião (1889-1905): a place for science and a lazaretto against epidemics. Dissertation (Master's Degree in History of Health Sciences) – Casa de Oswaldo Cruz – FIOCRUZ, 2005.
RAMOS, Felipe Pitaro. Environmental injustice: a case study of the Caju neighborhood, Port Zone of Rio de Janeiro. Dissertation (Professional Master's Degree in Cultural Assets and Social Projects) - FGV - Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, 2014.
The Águas do Caju project is the result of extensive research dedicated to thinking about the relationships between the production of cities and the circulation of different waters over time.
In the format of an interactive documentary, Águas do Caju was conceived as a digital platform capable of housing and making available to a wide audience diverse narratives, based on photographic materials, historical documents and a set of short films, dedicated to the history of the Caju neighborhood, located in the port region of Rio de Janeiro.
The history of Caju and its waters is central to understanding the urbanization of Rio de Janeiro, a coastal city that bears in its name the importance of water for the ways of conceiving space and inhabiting the city.
In the waters of Caju, Emperor Dom João VI took his healing baths when the area, then far from the urban center, was occupied by the elite's farms and frequented by the royal family. Here we find the city's first fishing colonies, the processions with which the people of Rio celebrated their saints, played their carnivals or enjoyed their leisure moments in the regattas.
Infrastructures were built along the waters of the Caju River, allowing the circulation of essential elements for the functioning of the city. Goods and people passed through the port, remains were sent to the cemetery, infected patients were sent to hospitals, and garbage was sent to the first landfills on Retiro do Saudoso beach.
Caju connected the city, providing the infrastructure for canalization and water supply with the Rio D’Ouro railway, allowing mobility with the opening of new roads, the construction of the Rio-Niterói bridge, and the successive landfills that reduced its coastal strip and made its beaches disappear.
It was also in the region that we now call Caju that the capital's industrialization flourished and intensified over time, through a set of factories that, today, drive the economic development of the city of Rio de Janeiro as a whole.
All of this has made Caju both an essential place for life in and around the capital and an area of environmental sacrifice. Analyzing all of these processes over time allows us to take a fresh look at the history of Rio de Janeiro’s urbanization, bringing to the forefront elements that do not usually figure as part of the city’s grand historical narratives: water, waste, infrastructure, and the lives that are built on the margins of major urban projects.
Water is a crucial dimension of human life. It is territorial, a daily necessity, claimed as a right and its value is disputed as a commodity. It is access to it, or lack thereof, that defines urban inequalities. Likewise, conflicts over its use, quality and flow mark the existence of socio-environmental injustices in the collective life of large cities.
Despite all this, the history of the Caju neighborhood is often invisible, unknown to the population of Rio de Janeiro itself, and little explored in academic studies and research.
The Águas do Caju project seeks to restore all the wealth that this neighborhood holds in each of its spaces, its soil, its trees, its buildings, in all its corners. Visitors to this site will be able to experience navigating Caju through time and the transformation of its spaces, in an exercise of imagination both regarding what the neighborhood once was, and what it still is today or could be in the future.
In the films gathered here, we are guided by the lives and stories of the neighborhood's residents, who keep its memory alive, as well as making their daily activities a fight to transform Caju into a better place to live.
The Águas do Caju project is the result of extensive research dedicated to thinking about the relationships between the production of cities and the circulation of different waters over time.
In the format of an interactive documentary, Águas do Caju was conceived as a digital platform capable of housing and making available to a wide audience diverse narratives, based on photographic materials, historical documents and a set of short films, dedicated to the history of the Caju neighborhood, located in the port region of Rio de Janeiro.
The history of Caju and its waters is central to understanding the urbanization of Rio de Janeiro, a coastal city that bears in its name the importance of water for the ways of conceiving space and inhabiting the city.
In the waters of Caju, Emperor Dom João VI took his healing baths when the area, then far from the urban center, was occupied by the elite's farms and frequented by the royal family. Here we find the city's first fishing colonies, the processions with which the people of Rio celebrated their saints, played their carnivals or enjoyed their leisure moments in the regattas.
Infrastructures were built along the waters of the Caju River, allowing the circulation of essential elements for the functioning of the city. Goods and people passed through the port, remains were sent to the cemetery, infected patients were sent to hospitals, and garbage was sent to the first landfills on Retiro do Saudoso beach.
Caju connected the city, providing the infrastructure for canalization and water supply with the Rio D’Ouro railway, allowing mobility with the opening of new roads, the construction of the Rio-Niterói bridge, and the successive landfills that reduced its coastal strip and made its beaches disappear.
It was also in the region that we now call Caju that the capital's industrialization flourished and intensified over time, through a set of factories that, today, drive the economic development of the city of Rio de Janeiro as a whole.
All of this has made Caju both an essential place for life in and around the capital and an area of environmental sacrifice. Analyzing all of these processes over time allows us to take a fresh look at the history of Rio de Janeiro’s urbanization, bringing to the forefront elements that do not usually figure as part of the city’s grand historical narratives: water, waste, infrastructure, and the lives that are built on the margins of major urban projects.
Water is a crucial dimension of human life. It is territorial, a daily necessity, claimed as a right and its value is disputed as a commodity. It is access to it, or lack thereof, that defines urban inequalities. Likewise, conflicts over its use, quality and flow mark the existence of socio-environmental injustices in the collective life of large cities.
Despite all this, the history of the Caju neighborhood is often invisible, unknown to the population of Rio de Janeiro itself, and little explored in academic studies and research.
The Águas do Caju project seeks to restore all the wealth that this neighborhood holds in each of its spaces, its soil, its trees, its buildings, in all its corners. Visitors to this site will be able to experience navigating Caju through time and the transformation of its spaces, in an exercise of imagination both regarding what the neighborhood once was, and what it still is today or could be in the future.
In the films gathered here, we are guided by the lives and stories of the neighborhood's residents, who keep its memory alive, as well as making their daily activities a fight to transform Caju into a better place to live.
Águas do Caju is the result of a collective project entitled "Water infrastructure: urban waters and the city's production in Rio de Janeiro" funded by the Rio de Janeiro State Research Support Foundation (FAPERJ) through calls for support for Thematic Projects, APQ and Cientista do Nosso Estado, by CNPq (PQ scholarship), and by UERJ (Prociência).
Since 2022, the research team has been working intensively with Caju residents, from young to old, who work in the neighborhood's various institutions and are part of daily activities and local initiatives such as art collectives, environmental activism, cultural events, among others. In the links below you can learn more about these initiatives and partners that made this webdoc possible.
We invite you to discover the neighborhood's spaces and stories by navigating with us through Águas do Caju!
Links
Academic works
ALVES, Eliana B. The Caju neighborhood: The construction of an impoverished periphery [dissertation]. Rio de Janeiro: Rio de Janeiro State University, Institute of Geosciences, 2007.
AMORAS, Barbara da Costa. “Xepa do Caju”: life strategies, expectations and promises around the cashew recycling and composting plant in Rio de Janeiro. Dissertation (Master in Sociology) – IFCS, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro. 2024.
NEVES, L. S. The occupation of Vila dos Sonhos between memories and forgetfulness (Master's Dissertation, Faculty of Education, State University of Rio de Janeiro). 2023.
OLIVEIRA, Paula Maria de. Hospital de São Sebastião (1889-1905): a place for science and a lazaretto against epidemics. Dissertation (Master's Degree in History of Health Sciences) – Casa de Oswaldo Cruz – FIOCRUZ, 2005.
RAMOS, Felipe Pitaro. Environmental injustice: a case study of the Caju neighborhood, Port Zone of Rio de Janeiro. Dissertation (Professional Master's Degree in Cultural Assets and Social Projects) - FGV - Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, 2014.
