I have been following, with great concern and sadness, the damage caused by the storms and floods that have hit Portugal in recent weeks. It makes my heart sink when I see the photos and watch the interviews with displaced people, who had to abandon their homes and all the material goods they earned with the sweat of their work, crops that were lost, businesses closed, animals slaughtered, human lives that were also taken, lack of water and electricity, destroyed roads and landslides.
In the face of all these terrible calamities, the issue of people becoming homeless is something that touches me in a very particular place, due to the experiences I have had with housing in the last nine years in Portugal: I moved house 11 times, which means looking for a house 11 times and hearing from the landlords that the house was already rented even though it wasn’t. Hearing suspicious questions about what I was doing in Portugal, judgmental looks and comments that their house was a “family house” (as if I, being Brazilian, weren’t).
11 times, making moves and having to put all the things I had bought over the years in suitcases and bags, having to leave a lot of things behind, carrying everything from one place to another, sometimes alone on the subway and bus, sometimes with the help of wonderful Brazilian and Portuguese friends. I didn’t have my family home to return to, not even temporarily, and my friends were in similar situations to me. To stay in Portugal and be able to finish my studies, I had to subject myself to xenophobic landlords, very expensive rooms, sharing a house with seven other people, seeing the police being called for attacks between landlords and tenants or between the people who also lived in the houses, and, also, hearing the classic “go back to your land”.
If these experiences hurt me to this day, I can only imagine how painful it must be for a person to see water invading their home (perhaps the only space in which they feel safe) and ruining their things, or watching their house literally falling apart, and being unable to do anything. How can you continue working, studying, eating, taking care of your children, having mental health, while being homeless? It’s a terrible situation for everyone, but I’m thinking especially about women, immigrants and elderly people, due to the additional vulnerabilities that these groups have to face in catastrophe situations like this.
In view of this tragic scenario, I was deeply outraged to know that, on the eve of the presidential elections, “nationalist” Portuguese politicians used the misery of their own people to try to get votes, falsifying the rain in the videos in which they appear helping the affected population. The lies spread by these “nationalists” are not exactly new, as they keep inventing stories and paranoid theories about immigrants as a political strategy, “divide and conquer”, but this time they went further and manipulated the tragedy experienced by the Portuguese themselves to continue deceiving the people.
It’s the old logic used throughout the campaign that, when a problem is invented or magnified, the “savior” of the country also appears to be bigger than he really is: a small, tantrum boy, thirsty for applause, attention and power. And it’s not that Portugal lacks problems, on the contrary. The country’s citizens continue to suffer from the difficulty of paying their house rent, from low wages, from the lack of labor rights, from the lack of doctors and teachers, from the fires and smoke inhalation that have become synonymous with the Portuguese summer, and from the floods.
Women and children continue to suffer from high rates of domestic violence committed by their partners. The elderly continue to receive very low pensions that are not at all sufficient to live with dignity. A large part of the population continues to suffer from racism and xenophobia, suffering from the situation of irregular stay in the country due to AIMA’s incompetence, suffering from the difficulty of obtaining a work contract simply due to the lack of a NISS, in fear of being stopped by the police and deported because of the irresponsibility and irregularity of the Government itself.
A president’s powers are limited, it is true, but he remains a representative of the people and has the power to promulgate laws and decrees, declare a state of siege, ratify international treaties, appoint representatives, and demand that other rulers truly work in favor of the country and everyone who lives in it. When a candidate for president lies, using the misery of his own people to deceive and mock the electorate, sowing division among the population and spreading hatred against people who build the country, and whose only electoral program is to shout and attack minority groups and say that he will do things differently from other candidates, without real proposals, we are not facing someone who cares about the development of the country nor who will govern to improve the lives of the Portuguese people, we are facing an impostor.
How can someone, for example, “fight corruption” in the government, if, even before coming to power, more than half of the things they say are lies? How can anyone “clean” Portugal, if it is already so corrupt that it cannot play fair even in the electoral campaign itself? How can you trust the word of people like that? Someone who lies during the election campaign already shows what they came for: deceiving the people in search of power and their own interests, which should result in their candidacy being revoked.
Finally, mobilizing the population’s anger at the country’s problems to hate another is also a testament to incompetence, smallness and immaturity, the inability to hold oneself and the Portuguese themselves responsible for the country’s real problems, which the Portuguese themselves have not been able to resolve. It is easier to promote hatred against one another, to divide the people into “us” versus “them”, ignore reality and statistics, because otherwise it would involve promoting hatred against their own politicians, landlords, businesspeople, friends who rape, beat and kill women, the so-called “good” Portuguese.
These “nationalists” do not want to build a better Portugal, they want to destroy all the progress achieved by the people after April 25th. The people who continue to support and vote for these people need to wake up. Don’t fall for that. This is how we almost lost sovereignty and democracy in Brazil.
It’s not the Salazares who save a country, it’s the citizens who live in it. It’s the people. These are the workers who wake up early to open the city and keep the country running. Being “nationalist” is not using taxpayers’ money to create a new immigration police or build prisons for immigrants, it is using it to offer access to quality housing, education and healthcare. It is about creating concrete measures to offer everyone a more equitable income distribution and access to decent work. It means having solidarity with everyone in need, regardless of nationality.
Opposing the “nationalists” are the immigrants, still seen by many as the “enemies” of Portugal. You immigrants in Coimbra who, through Casa do Brasil in Coimbra, raised donations for people affected by the floods. Os immigrants who came together, collected donations and even took elderly people living in the most affected villages. Os immigrants who created collection points in Leiriaalready Covilhã and Fundão and then distribute the collected goods throughout the country.
Os immigrants who have voluntarily rebuilt houses in Pedrógão. The immigrants who helped their Portuguese neighbors who were victims of the floods to get their things out of the house, so they wouldn’t lose everything. Immigrants and black and racialized people who work rebuilding roads: 99% of the workers I saw in this field in the two years I lived in Coimbra, now one of the cities most affected by rain and river flooding. East Timor will donate 4.2 million EUROS to the reconstruction of Portugal.
They are all of these that many still continue to despise and call “enemies” of Portugal. These are the ones that many can only see in an objectified way, that, when they no longer serve them, they discard and scream to “go back to your land”. These are the ones that many still do not see as a legitimate part of the population, who cannot complain about what is wrong, who cannot get sick and have access to public services that they themselves help to support, who are constantly reminded that they are foreigners who are not welcome. Still, the “personas non gratas” are still here, in solidarity with everyone, regardless of whether they are Portuguese or not, building and rebuilding the country. This is being nationalist. This is loving Portugal, and not wanting to destroy it.
Since I was little, my parents taught me that “no one lives alone”, that no one is self-sufficient, that we need to serve our community, and that, one day, no matter how arrogant someone is, they will also need their help. Unfortunately, we cannot control the catastrophes that have hit Portugal in recent weeks, but perhaps we can learn from them. Perhaps we can learn to demand from the candidates we decide to support that they discuss the population’s real agendas and problems, that they present proposals that improve everyone’s lives, and to repudiate them when they attack minority groups.
Maybe many Portuguese (and anti-immigrant immigrants) can learn to value immigrants, who build this country, even after the floods pass and they think we are disposable and don’t need us anymore. Perhaps Portugal can learn to truly integrate immigrants into society, with respect and dignity, as we really are: citizens who also love this country.
Perhaps Portuguese rulers can learn the urgent need to regularize and promote the dignity of the immigrants who live here. Portugal is a country full of potential, but, in order to prosper, it has a great challenge ahead: facing its colonial past and truly combating racism and xenophobia. To build a strong country, the population must be united, and this implies valuing the differences that enrich this country so much in every way.
Immigrants are not a threat, they are part of the solution so that commerce continues to function, to collect taxes, to be able to pay for pensions for the elderly, to the low birth rate, so that the economically active population does not decline, for cultural exchange and development, for greater mobilization of the social struggle. The Spanish government understood this, took the lead and has the example.
It must be said that enough with hate speech and that the population unites to demand concrete measures from those truly responsible. If they want to blame part of the population for the country’s problems, before blaming immigrants, let them blame the Portuguese rulers who cannot have the courage to increase salaries and control house rent prices, the landlords who have made real estate speculation a way of life at the expense of workers, AIMA which is truly responsible for thousands of immigrants being “illegal” in the country, the businessmen who exploit workers to fill their pockets even more with money and go on vacation to the Algarve in the summer, the State’s incompetence in guaranteeing doctors and teachers for the population.
Finally, it is my wish that the storms stop, that the people affected get well and recover, that the Portuguese State fulfills its role and supports all the people affected so that they can rebuild their lives, and that, as I said Bad Bunny no Super BowlGod bless Portugal: Portuguese, Brazilians, Angolans, Cape Verdeans, English, Indians, Italians, Guineans, Nepalese, Chinese, French, São Toméans…
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