“The people well say your greatness”:

representations and constitutions in the municipal anthem of Coqueiros do Sul/RS

Abstract

How do we construct a “Coqueiros do Sul, the land we love” whose “people well say your greatness”? We provoke this speculative question based on the municipal anthem of Coqueiros do Sul/RS, from which we extracted the previous excerpts. What representations of the past do its lyrics seek to endorse? We bring these questions to Clio’s Workshop to interpret the evocations that this official symbol provokes in the citizens, in order to identify how it contributes(d) to the selection of historical and identity aspects of the “imagined community” of coqueirense and to the maintenance of these symbolic-ritualistic aspects. Understanding, therefore, the municipal anthem as a symbol, we methodologically start from semiotics, operating an analysis on the construction of the immediate objects present in its lyrics to refer to the dynamic object, which is, in this case, the construction/stipulation of a coqueirense identity.