Rancharia’s child care center in São Paulo State: a disappeared Oscar Niemeyer’s hillbilly work

Abstract

The demolished building of Rancharia’s Child Care Center, designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer, is an emblematic case of a possible monument of modern architecture built in a distant city in the interior of São Paulo. Its ephemeral existence was the result of the efforts of the municipality, state resources and political articulations of the period, whose orientation of more left ideas were added to the usual populist practices. In addition, a new cycle of vigor in the cotton production of the locality made it evident in the state economic scenario. From the point of view of public health care, the application of resources, the methodical organization of medical practices and the dissemination of childcare centers aimed at reducing the alarming infant mortality rates among the poorest population in the 1950s. All these factors, added to the ncouraged moment of the Brazilian architecture and the timely presence of Niemeyer in São Paulo contributed to the formulation of the plan and the concretization of the building of the then known as Rancharia Child Care Center. However, from our point of view, later on, the phase of authoritarian regime in which the country immersed provided an opportunity to dismantle government programs of the so-called “Democratic Period” (1946 - 1964) – or as it has been evaluated by more recent studies who call it “liberal-democratic experience in Brazil” (FERREIRA, 2013) – disqualifying them on suspicion of corruption, incompetence or demagogy. The civil-military coup that took place after 1964 engendered a series of images and depreciating concepts on the public policies adopted by the immediately preceding governments. They have thus created conditions to demobilize or substantially alter them. These factors enabled actions that sought to overshadow these achievements and their promoters, such as the case in question. However, the low-income population suffered from a lack of attention to the issues of education and health care of newborn and young children.