A festa nacional da uva de Caxias do Sul/RS: o discurso para além das palavras

Abstract

The National Grapes Festival is held in Caxias do Sul/RS since 1931, and it is one of the oldest events in the country. It was created to celebrate the harvest and to qualify the local agricultural potential. It has been held over the past seven decades and it has aggregated the commitment to the dissemination of industrial and tourist aspects of the city, which caused less participation from local community. In the 1990s, the organizers showed some concerns in bringing the community into the Festival, and they achieved some kind of success. This research has investigated the social representations within the local community about the feast by compiling and analysing the Opinions Column from the local newspaper called Pioneiro from the past eight editions of the Grapes Festival. The Analysis of Content was used as methodology. The results show two major fields of social representations on how the festival is organized: one with favourable positions, and other with adverse positions. Also indicate that the resistances decreased in recent editions.