The city of Ouro Preto, formerly Vila Rica and until 1897 the state capital of Minas Gerais, experienced dizzying growth in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, due almost exclusively to the discovery of gold in its hinterlands. Its mixed-race populations defied the official orthodoxy of racial hierarchies, giving place to social and class climbing, the case of Xica da Silva most prominent among them, and the rise of mulato starchitects like Aleijadinho, responsible in part for the inimitable Brazilian Baroque movement. This flouting of Portuguese colonial prescriptions (not to mention the wealth amassed by Sao Paulo-based bandeirantes turned gold barons) led to the most widely known attempt at Brazilian independence in the late eighteenth century, known as the Inconfidencia Mineira (1789).

Ethnographer Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos continues the story of Ouro Preto's evolution, this time as a seat of Brazilian patrimony and cultural tourism painted against the backdrop of the city's early twentieth-century decline, the rise of a student population, a growing and increasingly alienated populace unwelcome in the city center, and politically charged public policy forums inattentive to local needs. The first three of the six chapters deal with the reality of multiple constituencies at cross-purposes who call Ouro Preto home. Key themes include an almost insuperable divide between those living on the hills outside of the city center, the students whose repúblicas, or fraternity-like residences, occupy much of the patrimonial zone of the city, and the throng of tourists and festival goers who lend their own presence to a feeling of alienation sensed by many locals who have neither the means nor purpose to make the architectural ensemble of the city a natural extension of their lives.

Although not a history, Aruska de Souza Santos's work provides a strong sense of Ouro Preto's evolution as an urban core, as well as inside access to the challenges posed by a student population, exclusive events targeting outsiders, and the political landscape of decision-making during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From the early discussions of Brazil's preservationists in the 1930s down to decisions regarding road paving in the twenty-first century, this is a politically oriented ethnography of urban power structures, namely the local Council for the Preservation of Cultural and Natural Patrimony (CPCNP). As the author states in the introduction, “My chief object . . . is to address the politics of material memory in urban spaces from top-down and governed perspectives” (13).

The second half of the book looks at recent decisions regarding urban needs in and around Ouro Preto's historical district and the competing agendas of the public at large and within the Council for the Preservation of Cultural and Natural Patrimony. Chapter 5 interrogates the prefecture's unilateral 2013 decision to pave cobblestone roads in close proximity to the Inconfidentes Museum. With little to no input from the CPCNP, political expedience trumped expertise in a bid to address the concerns of Ouro Preto's rank-and-file residents.

In Chapter 6, Aruska de Souza Santos takes readers outside of Ouro Preto proper to examine how local patrimonial councils influenced efforts to preserve a key railroad transit point, the city of Miguel Brunier, now dominated by a modern mining company. Although the mining company offered a number of amenities to a shrinking population, the author's interviews suggest that they would not sustain a viable community in Miguel Brunier, a decision that the local patrimonial board was loathe to challenge due to conflicts of interest, including nepotism and intimidation within the board itself.

This book fills important voids in the current literature of cultural patrimony in Brazil, as well as contributing to an ongoing discussion about the paradigms for historical preservation and urban renewal that best speak to the needs of residents and tourists alike. This is one of the first English-language attempts to consider the unique challenges that Ouro Preto has faced as a cultural tourist destination. Ultimately, it joins a decades-old line of inquiry, beginning in part with Joseph L. Scarpaci's Plaza and Barrios: Heritage Tourism and Globalization in the Latin American Centro Histórico (University of Arizona Press, 2005), which examines power structures of development and belonging in a neoliberal age.