Bolhão - a true cause

A small story in a big city that makes the city smaller and the story bigger. Bolhão is the name of a fresh produce market built almost one hundred years ago in the center of Oporto, the main city of Northern Portugal.

Recently, it has been involved in great controversy, as the City Authority opened tenders for the building’s rehabilitation and the winning project granted the rights over the building and the market stalls to a private company for a period of fifty years. Furthermore, this company intended to build there apartments and a shopping center. So Bolhão Market became another episode in a long war between traditional commerce and huge shopping centers, which is a lost war for those who don’t have the means and the strength to fight the “big money”.

The decision adopted by Oporto city authorities met fierce opposition and generated a huge protest from Oporto citizens, and from elsewhere throughout the country, who took the initiative to create a document that gathered 50,000 signatures – http://www.petitiononline.com/ptratt/petition.html – against this proposed deal, thus trying to avoid the destruction of one of the city’s symbols.

The fight of the citizens and the market sellers for the market’s rehabilitation is not only aimed at job keeping but also at preserving the symbols and history of a city that should live for its own inhabitants and not for building speculation.

In a society where the fights for true causes are rare, it’s important to support this citizens’ movement, bearing in mind the social, cultural and historical values that underlie this fight.

http://manifestobolhao.blogspot.com/

Text and photos by Manuela Moreira (PLR member)

This gun's for hire

August 2001, I land at the JFK airport for a few days in NYC. After ten hours of flight, my body just needed to renew its nicotine levels. One month before the 9/11 and there I was at the big apple.

From the airport, by bus, I went to the Rockefeller Center and the avenues of Manhattan. I just walked through there and I entered the NY Institute of Photography to see for the first time an exhibition by Sebastião Salgado.

All the life stories in those photographies, and I got emotioned as I looked at our world so perfectly captured in his work. One of the photos, showing an African woman running away with an expression of fear, almost naked and having a crucifix hanging from her neck, kept my attention. I commented to someone next to me: “How can she beleive in God when she is living in hell?” Faith, faith was the answer I got. Looking to Africa and so many places in this world, with this exhibition in front of me, I had to ask myself if we really have to have faith or do something for real.

This takes me to the recent ONG scandal, and once again the word faith came to my mind as a question about whom can we believe.

A few days after my arrival and many jazz clubs visited, I went to an underground club where a group of Armenians were going to play french music from the 60s. Brassan, Brel, Leo Ferré and many others from May 1968.

40 years after this revolution that changed the world, the French Prime Minister said that this is a date to forget, to wipe out from our minds, and once again my mind travels to that word – faith –, the need to beleive that sentences like these won't be repeated.

From Bronx to Brooklyn and to Harlem, travelling by subway to everywhere, I could see that all is written in English and Spanish, that NYC is like the society of nations living in “small towns”, and every time I see the news about the North American Army in foreign countries and the flags at the American homes, I see that many of those who died for a permit are Hispanic and Afro-American boys; like in Bruce Springsteen’s “This gun's for hire”, they wanted to reach the American dream.

One month later I left NYC, the Twin Towers were attacked and, I confess, I was emotioned with the terrible situation. A western symbol was destroyed at the main city of the empire and thousands of lives lost. The Bush dinasty drawn the evil line immediately on the maps and, in order to destroy the enemies, they invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bush dinasty is now moving out from the White House and I may question myself about what they left to the world unless that word of faith – faith that fear, corruption, poverty, hunger among people will be our main concern instead of drawing evil lines on maps.

Text and Photos by Alfredo Muñoz de Oliveira

Voters decide if Russia or EU will be the future of Serbia

Today’s election in Serbia will set the standard for the course of action in the next years and decide what the former center of Yugoslavia will do with its future.

Today, May 11th, we are facing yet another destiny election in Serbia. Since the fall of Slobodan Milošević, eight years ago, the vulnerable democracy of Serbia has been threatened by extreme nationalists.

But after each election until now democratic and western oriented coalitions have managed to get into power. However, after Kosovo declared independence, some months ago, the nationalists are again in a position to reach power. Many are predicting that the radical Tomislav Nikolić and the conservative prime minister, Vojislav Koštunica, will form a coalition after the election that will close the doors to Europe and instead open the gates to Russia.

Even if all polls show that the Serbian people are positive about joining EU there is a lot more to be added to the complex political situation. Kosovo became the perfect symbol of the Serbian disappointment and the Serbians’ feeling of always being the victims. After spending a few days last week in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, I soon found out that this election generates a lot more attention than the previous one.
In Belgrade most people are against the nationalist extremists but elsewhere in Serbia Nikolić and his men enjoy a lot of support. If the nationalists win Sunday’s election, many are afraid that there will be mass arrests of EU friendly politicians. Also will a nationalistic victory put trade and co-operations with other nations the Russia way back. A foreign correspondent I talked to put it this way: “If the nationalists win this election, I will pack my things and leave. It will be almost impossible to do a proper job under their regulations, and I fear that Serbia will be thrown again into a conflict that can easily turn bloody.”

Text and Photos by Torgrim Havlari (PLR member & correspondent)

Lebanon: towards a brain drained future

My first visit to Lebanon, almost 25 years ago as a young UN soldier, totally changed my life. Born in Norway, where most people at that time considered all other Middle-Easterners than the Israelis as low life criminals, I carried a lot of prejudice against the locals. That changed in a day or two.
Never have I met such friendly and nice people as the Lebanese. No matter religion, income, or social status, the Lebanese people are the kindest people I have ever met. That's why it's so sad, after all these years, to hear the same words about the future and find out that nothing has changed. Regular people are still taken as hostages by the neighbouring nations and local political tycoons in need for power.
Downtown Beirut is almost empty. Spring is at its peak and the weather is lovely. The last time I was here the streets were filled with locals and tourists enjoying food, drinks and the stunning Middle East atmosphere. That was in the middle of winter, five years ago, when people, after enjoying peace for some years, had built up a certain hope for the future. I have my breakfast as the only customer at a street restaurant where the owner complains about the hopeless situation in his beloved Lebanon.
Some blocks further down towards the sea promenade, I find over 500 toilets nicely placed in perfect rows on an open space. This is the work of Nada Louisiana, a 48-year-old Lebanese artist based in Beirut “whose work, paintings, and installations,” her Web site notes, “deal with issues of war, personal memory, public amnesia, the writing of history, and the construction of identity.”
Several years ago she told Le Monde, the French daily, that her entire life has been marked by the Lebanese civil war, which ended in 1991. “The ritual, during Lebanon's war, involved hiding in the toilet quite a bit when bombings and gun battles got to be a bit much. [...] These days the Lebanese aren't hiding in that literal toilet, quite. But they're still hiding – from compromise, from themselves, from fear that another 1975 is around the bend”, Sehnaoui told the middleeast.about.com some weeks ago.
Beirut is filled with contrasts. Never have I seen so many young girls driving such expensive cars. Some of the richest people in the world are from Lebanon, but there are also a lot of people who are not that lucky. Alongside newly built luxury hotels you will find bombed out buildings, monuments over too many years of painful conflicts. On July 12th 2006 Israel attacked Lebanon once again, and the suffering part was, once again, ordinary women and men, young and old. Lebanon has been in constitutional crisis since last November, when its last president stepped down. Its sophomoric parliament has been unable to pick a successor.
Almost down at the seaside I stop at the newly erected monument of Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister who was assassinated on February 14th 2005, when explosives equivalent to around 1000 kg of TNT were detonated as he drove past the St. George Hotel. The well-guarded monument is positioned in the front of HSBC main office and a bombed out building still not rebuilt after the civil war. This clearly symbolizes the powers regular Lebanese are fighting against.
Money, Politics and War. Inside Hard Rock Café I meet Wedian Al-Ayache, whose job is to sell T-shirts to customers. Her income is around 500$, a small salary in a city where prices are rising all the time. Her boyfriend, an art designer, is about to leave for Qatar, where the income is up to four times better. “We have a lot of good schools and high educated young people in Lebanon, but when hundreds of them are leaving the country, what is it good for? This place is full of selfish middle-aged men who do whatever they can to get into power. As long as these people are thinking only about themselves, there will be no peace in Lebanon”, Wedian explains.During my week in Lebanon I find no one who lives more than a day at a time. And many tell me that Lebanon will soon have another war. Along the shore side a couple of men try out their fishing equipment while a third one is prying. Soon it’s night in what used to be the pearl of the Middle East.

Text and Photos by Torgrim Halvari (PLR member & correspondent)