LeYa Award. “I would like this book to be a look at Portugal in the Estado Novo”
He even writes in the book that “the Governor of Lisbon knew everything”, but he also writes “the essential thing was to silence the matter. Make no noise. There is no matter”. But the case did not go unnoticed.
This story, after all, is known to historians. I have the need in the book to have a bibliographic note, because they consult many documents on the subject, so they exist.
What is in fact announced, which is really the work’s history, and has not been known and has no interior of its own. Marcelo Caetano makes reference to this several times in his letters and correspondence with Salazar.
Marcelo warns of the amount of violence and moral misery that is associated with this industry of correspondence with indigenous labor.
Notice, in 1947, just a few years before the Batepá massacre, the subject of servant work is discussed in the Colonies Commission, in the National Assembly. It is the so-called “Henrique Galvão Report”, where it is said that an unsustainable situation is taking place in our colonies, in which only the dead are exempt from the compulsion to work. And that report denounces what is described as a more serious situation than that created by pure slavery.
This was known to the Regime. With the abolition of slavery, it obviously did not end up as labor intensive. The abolition of slavery is a more formal act than many decades, and a long time, until it becomes something effective. Seven decades after the abolition of slavery, we are responding and we are witnessing this unfortunate situation of service work in our colonies.
The lack of water is a real problem. Climate change always brings a new dimension to this usual problem!
José Carlos Barros also writes poetry and uses a typewriter for the verses.
They are very different exercises, writing poetry and writing long texts in prose. For those who, like me, who cannot dedicate themselves full time to writing, I have been with this novel for a long time. In fact, it is a writing that demands discipline and demands a time that is different in the case of poetry.
In poetry it is writing a poem, or a set of poems at a certain time and coming back later. In prose it is different, though the matter is the same, and the craft the same. It is not essential what exists is a set of words that we are going to use in another way.
I would like this poetry workshop to be noted in my prose, because I think that language is what gives importance to stories. Literature lives from this transfiguring power of language, from this ability that exists through language to create universes. from that point of view, I wouldn’t write any other way than that, poetry or writing.
Born in Boticas, his work took him to the Algarve, where he lives today. He was director of the Ria Formosa Natural Park. How is the Algarve in environmental terms today? Is lack of water a concern?
The lack of water is a real problem. Climate change always brings a new dimension to this usual problem! To give an example, where there is more water consumption is in agriculture, so the Algarve has always been based, in addition to vegetable gardens, the traditional rainfed cultures.
They are an example of ecological and environmental adaptation, absolutely fantastic. In a region where there was not little water, it always rained a lot, obviously the way to use the land is largely through fig, carob, the portion and products that have very low irrigation requirements.
After this real problem of climate change, which also worsens this situation, it is necessary to make possible the possibility of alternative methods of water sources, which need more water, but I think that we can never lose the idea that it is not only the saying we need it, but figuring out how it’s more likely to compare with the reality of low probability, of water and terms of water and terms.
plant figs?
I live in the country, and I actually live on a farm where we make carob and figs. We have traditional dryland, carob and fig orchards, which in both cases are crops that are not irrigated. In the medium term there may be problems if the decision undergoes significant changes. But in fact they don’t need irrigation and that’s what we have to be doing in the Algarve.
Is living in the countryside also fertile ground for writing?
I don’t know, I don’t really have much time to write. There is a slightly romantic idea of living outside the cities, but the differences are not big from the point of view of the time we have left for what we want to do!
that my connection to the rural world – I was born and live in the rural world – ends up being reflected in my writing and, in fact, I think that my writing would be completely different if not for that circumstance. I think that in this novel you see that. It is this strong presence of rurality and nature that, I think, is clearly reflected.
Every sentence, every paragraph, every page comes out with a lot of effort
Have you started another novel after the Leya Prize?
Not. I think that no more writing, for winning a prize. I don’t feel this as a huge incentive. I want to write! And I want to write! It is more a matter of having availability of time, and mental. The award was a fantastic thing that I received with great pleasure, but there is a little bit during this opposite effect, at least, at least, that I received with great pleasure.
It’s the “15 minutes of fame”. It’s dispersing – and it’s calling me more into a set of situations that even prevent me from resuming writing. But this is a transitional phase. I hope to write in the short term, because the desire to write stories is what moves me in this writing craft. I have stories to tell, and I hope to get back to writing a new novel soon.
I remember when he won the Leya Prize, he said in an interview with Renascença that to write was to face a wall.
I sometimes have difficulty knowing how to write. Why, in fact, not being a masochist, it’s hard to explain why I dedicate so much time, as much time as I can, to writing. It costs me a lot to write, I think writing is more work than inspiration.
Every sentence, every paragraph, every page comes out with a lot of effort. The prerogative of this, is also a general way that feels like something important, it will not have the importance of a way of consciousness as it is important.
Some friends say, “He’s a very inspired person!”; “You must write easily”… well, inspiration, as Picasso used to say – “I’m a big believer in inspiration, I hope that when it arrives it will find me working!” I maintain this idea that writing is sitting with a white sheet, or with a screen, in front of a wall, alone, with no one to help us in this task.