Hello, my name is Higor Cardoso, I’m a 19 years old architecture student from Belém, state of Pará, Brazil -a city with a lot of history and full of unique features such as the smell of maniva herb during the Círio Festival and the falling of mango fruits in the downtown all year 'round.
For those who don’t know anything about my city, it is located in the middle of the amazon forest, on the mouth of the Amazon river -it means that it rains here 365 days of the year over a scorching bright sun.
Since I was a kid I never liked to get out home, my mother always tells our guests the story of how I used to cry and cry everytime we went out and she puts a step out of home. The point is I was living in a city my whole life and I had no idea of its colors, the fresh fruit’s smell of Ver-o-Peso market or even the feeling of the breeze in march, our rainiest month.
I was living locked in my cage. Comfortable.
But it all changed when I found Google Maps and the Local Guides community. I remember thinking it wasn’t for me: “how you will become a local guide if you don’t go out” I told myself. Then, I forget this topic for a while.
Luckly, another day after a pop up notification showed up on my phone recommending a place called Siren’s Park, a beautiful and small park in our historical distric, with old fashioned black and white portuguese stones in the floor, english steel painted green as the fences marking the space and a charming font in the middle of it, with four little mermaids gracefully splashing water.
“How do I never noticed this beautiful place before?” I asked myself. I had passed so many times in front of it, but never really noticed it. Isn’t it sad? a person who don’t know the bautifult things that exist in its surroudings?
I did not even think twice, I packed my things and went to the place alone, just me, my camera, and the desire of explore new places and meet new people.
As I went home I upload a photo on google maps, and from this day on I found a true passion: the passion o discovering my own city for the first time.
The Google Maps kept sending me new recommendations and I was so amazed, so many things I didn’t had knowledge of, so many places and buildings with fantastic history and reasons to being built and to stay built.
One of the best surprises being a local guide was exploring my city’s churches and cathedrals. I fell in love with them! Belém has a lot of churches with different architectures styles and a lot o history behinds each one of them.
We have our Great Church, built by the the italian architect Antônio Landi in the 1700’s, With its larg bell that pounds every year announcing the beginning of the Círio Festival in honor of Virgin Mary of Nazareth -the Pará state’s Christmas, others say.
Next to it lays the obscure, dark, woody Saint Alexander Chapell -wich the old people say the saints there were made with real human hair, a hoax that make every citizen of Belém get chills.
One of the days I went to the Saint Alexander Chappel looking for a new angle to photoshoot I met an old argentinian lady, Vicky was her name, we talked about a lot of things such as being latin-american, 'bout how she didn’t had a single umbrella despite being in the rainiest city of Brazil and about how our cultures are so simillar yet still different. I was a true guide for her that afternoon.
As we walked in the streets going to the Virgin Mary Sanctuary (the most known church of the city) where the Virgin Mary of Nazareth lays in october and thousands of people from all of Brazil gather to see her image and pray for a grace, I told her about everything we passed by: why we have portugueses stones in the sidewalks due to the colonization period, why in the downtown streets are narrow and unorganized with colorful colonial houses next to each other to make shade and protect us from the scorching sun that is above us everyday; she was amazed with our french fashioned boulevards streets with mango trees planted in the 1900’s and how the mango fruit’s fall and break car’s frontglasses in july -It really happens, indeed.
It was a mild day for me, I was able to aswer her questions about buildings, palaces, street’s names, plazas. Suddenly I realised I just able to do that because Google Maps and the Local Guides Community push me to get out of my comfort zone and explore the city I was born and grew up but never truly met before.
This is something I am very thankful.
In the beginning of this year I made myself a tourist guide again for a friend from São Paulo state, we went to Carmo’s Church, in the old town neighborhood.
As I put a step in the building I felt something I never felt before. I felt belonging and proudness.
It was like the history of the church mixed with my own history, my family’s history, my heritage, my ancestors.
Growing up latino means that a lot of us usually don’t know anything about our ancestors, about where do we came from, and it is something that makes a tremendous difference.
Learning about how the church was made was a profound self-knowledge for me, a reflection about my identity.
“The saints are brown because the native americans wanted to keep their image more close and represented in the new religion”
“The stone blocks were put one by one by slaved africans in the 1700’s” -“possibly one of my ancestors did it”- I told myself.
That day, looking at the heavenly figures painted on the light blue ceiling of the church, contemplating the large transept cornerstone that directs our vision to the majestic ceiling I felt proudness, proud of my history, proud of my city, pround of my identity, proud of being an amazonian.
I felt pround being a mixed of so different cultures that collapsed to form my culture, my people.
Drinking tacacá soup in a hot afternoon reminds me of my indigenous roots, of the people that were here after the colonization and still influencend our habits and food choices; going to the Ver-o-Peso market and smelling the aroma of the colorful potions that promised to bring love or prosperity in a couple of days reminds me of the africans that came to this region, and manage to survive all the suffering that came upon them. And lastly, although I am a non-religius person, going to the church in the sundays with my family fulfills my heart with joy and passion.
Nowadays, when I walk in the streets, under a boulevard of mango trees, steping in the black and white portuguese sidewalk stones and passing by the colorful colonial houses I am reminded tat this is my city, this is the city my ancestors lived and built, the place they put their dreams of a better life for them and for me. This is the place I feel belonging to and therefore I have to manage to keep it beauty and preserved. That is my duty as a future architect, as an amazonian citizen.
I congratulate Google Maps and the Local Guides Community for offering a place where I can show the world the wonders of my city and can learn about other amazing places all over the world.
I thank the community for opening my eyes and teaching me so much about myself and my city. Thanks again Google Maps.
Belem Metropolitan Great Church.
The ceiling of Carmo’s Church.
Stained glass at Saint Alexander’s Chappel -a few light resources of the obscure building.
Inside Carmo’s Church.
Colorful colonial houses behind a statue of Governador José Malcher on the historical district, downtown Belém.
A colorful slum next to Salt’s Market on the old town neighborhood.
Scottish steel painted green serving as a fence in the Meat Market at the Ver-o-Peso complex.