The article discusses from two distinct textual groups - the work of Jorge Amado and a certain traditional and apologetical literature about the "cultura bahiana" - the crystallization of an specific ideological comprehension of Bahia as an imagined community and the role of this comprehension in the constitution of Pelourinho (Historical Centre of Salvador) as an important site to the Idea of Bahia. The ideological feature of this interpretation appears to solve, in the discursive level, contradictions and racial inequalities which remain unsolved in the concrete level of social relationships.
Pelourinho (Historical Centre of Salvador); Imagined community; Ideology; Bahia; Jorge Amado