| Between 1902 and 1906, the federal government of Brazil and municipal government of Rio de Janeiro carried out extensive reforms to the nation's capital. The so-called "Passos Reforms " dedicated public money to new quays, the construction of new avenues and widening of narrow, colonial streets, and the improvement of public health. The explicit motives of the reforms were to ameliorate conditions for trade and commerce and to sanitize an unhealthy city. An implicit motive, tied into the valorization of territory and decentralization of problems, was to disseminate the poorer population from the centre city to the northern suburbs. Key to the modernization efforts of the federal and municipal government in Rio de Janeiro was an improved transportation service. Inexpensive, rapid, and extensive urban transport would permit a large proportion of the displaced, poor population to travel to the centre city where the majority of the work was located. Without inexpensive transportation, the municipal government would not be able to uproot the population from the centre city to the poorer residential suburbs. In 1905, the municipal council entered into negotiations with a Canadian enterprise--the Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and Power Company (the "Light")--for a contract to unify and electrify the existing streetcar companies and networks. Using archival data collected in Brazil and Canada, the thesis analyses the role of this private enterprise in the provision of streetcar transportation and its relationship with the municipal council and federal prefecture, the governing bodies of urban services. The principal conclusions are that: (i) contrary to dependency theory, the Light as a powerful foreign enterprise does not represent a case of business imperialism in Latin America; (ii) the Light, as a provider of transportation services, both encouraged and hindered the dissemination of the predominantly poor population from the centre city and the subsequent separation of elites and masses; (iii) contrary to the ideas of technological determinism, the introduction of new transportation technology did not encourage alone the growth of the suburbs and that the planning and delivery of streetcar services in Rio de Janeiro was used to meet political purposes. |
