Where time passes everything by:
the 0.2% Roma of the Portuguese population

Cláudia Pereira
Researcher and professor at ISCTE, former Secretary of State for Integration and Migration

 

Astonishment, sentiment, and First Right. These are the words that come to mind as I observe Pauliana’s photographs, displayed on the cloths that dance around me. The images make me uneasy, as if I’ve been punched in the stomach. Were these photographs taken in Portugal in the 21st century or even in the sixties of the previous century? I obviously know the answer and I am moved1.

Pauliana Valente Pimentel brings us a lesser-known perspective of the conditions in which part of the Portuguese population lives. We look at undignified, even inhuman, housing conditions. But Pauliana always delivers us beauty with every shot, even when it seems a near impossible task, a poetic beauty. Poetic because it captures the simple beauty of everyday moments and parties, whether in instants of joy, or in the blend of colors and dancing.

The raw reality of these photographs surpasses the fiction that comes home to us through television series, soap operas, or social media. These are the excluded of the excluded. Families who are unaware of any social structure beyond the borders of their neighborhood. Imagine not knowing someone like Cristiano Ronaldo, an idol recognized even in the most remote villages of India. In other words, they belong to the realm of extreme poverty, where inequalities condense, such as illiteracy or minimal schooling, unemployment, early pregnancy, and dirt-floor housing with no plumbing.

The first of Rights. Yet another thought comes to mind, “it is really difficult to study in shacks, without a bed, table, without permanent electricity or tap water”. Even more so with having a decent job. That is why the Support Program for Housing Access is the “First” “Right”, which is to say, the right to have a home, which makes all other rights possible. Through this Program, mayors and their teams can put an end to this precariousness in housing.

The “natural” that is “unnatural”. This reality, a faraway thing to 99% of the Portuguese, was “naturalized” by society in Portugal. It is not normal to live in undignified conditions in the 21st century. Pauliana shows us through her photographs that this is indeed not “natural”, as the pictures in the exhibition dance on the cloths around us.

Half a percent of the population in Portugal. The photograph of the young woman with a focused gaze near the entrance to the tent, with disassembled plastic and paper boxes covering the floor, folding the duvets, sheets, and remaining clothes, leads me to think of her adolescence. Did she get to live her teen years, or as in some board games, did she get the card that made her advance directly from childhood to adulthood in this game of life? And I don’t think I had even realized what a privilege it is to be able to go through teenagehood. She is probably already “engaged” (the minimum legal age for marriage is 16, with parental consent), has had at least one child, knows how to cook, to wash clothes by hand, to fold clothes impeccably, and to raise a child. She didn’t have the opportunity, like me, to stay in school and socialize with other 14-year-old Portuguese or foreign non-Gypsy children, to take up a hobby like swimming, to go to the movies and to the beach with her friends, or to do schoolwork at her schoolmates’ house or even choose who she wants to love. According to statistical data, the Portuguese Roma population (in Portuguese, “ciganos”, also known as Gypsies, a name considered derogatory) is around 37 thousand, which corresponds to 0.4% of the Portuguese2. Of these, less than half is a part of a “forcibly” nomadic population which eludes censuses and scientific surveys. Concurrently, of these 0.4% less than half still live in shacks, with dirt floors, with no plumbing. Pauliana’s photographs show us the 0.2% of the population living in extreme poverty, who rarely have the right to be photographed.

Gypsy Portuguese music. The photograph of the young woman dancing by the fire, in her striped dress modernly matched with sneakers, makes me smile and reminds me how much I love to see Portuguese Roma women and men dancing, as well as the music itself. I remember a concert by Diego El Gavi, a Portuguese Roma, at Fábrica Braço de Prata, one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen in my life. And it also reminds me of the words of ethnomusicologists Tiago Pereira and Cristina Garcia, from Música Portuguesa a Gostar Dela Própria [Portuguese Music Liking Itself], who — when compiling different types of Portuguese music in the country — realized that no one spoke to them about Portuguese gypsy music. They were born in Portugal, like their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and ancestors over the last 500 years. Gypsy music is also Portuguese; however, their music is still unmentioned amongst the canon of Portuguese music. The social distance between Portuguese and Roma Portuguese is still sizable and this music is rarely included in the repertoire of Portuguese music. We can find already some Escolhas [Choices] Projects, by the High Commissariat for Migrations, which include it as an activity for students who want to learn to play, sing, or dance. This is yet to happen in Alentejo and the Algarve. We have a Portuguese Roma secretary of state, but we lack gypsy dance classes, alongside the offer of hip hop, Bollywood, and folklore dance classes, among others. Meanwhile, Nininho Vaz Maia and Música Portuguesa a Gostar Dela Própria bring us to familiarity with Portuguese music, including Gypsy music.

“Forcibly” nomadic Portuguese Roma. In one of the photographs, we see a painting with a white horse in a stable, behind a leaning mattress, inside a wooden shack. In another photograph we see a light brown horse, strolling near the tents and shacks. A few lines back I used the expression “forcibly nomadic”: it is not mine, it belongs to the sociologist and anthropologist Alexandra Castro. This is the conclusion of her study on the political invisibilization of housing for Roma people, which included those who are in a itinerant situation3. You must be asking yourselves why the choice of the word “forcibly” nomadic, when the prevailing notion is that they like to live like this. About three decades ago, Portuguese nomadic Roma traded horses in different areas of Portugal and on the border with Spain. Over time, the business ceased to be profitable and they began to devote themselves to seasonal agriculture. In winter they move between the borders of Alentejo and Spain, in summer to the west of Portugal and Alentejo and in the remaining months in the regions of Setúbal, Alentejo, and the Algarve. There are few municipalities that let them camp for a few months and they are permanently ejected and forced to look for other places. While I was Secretary of State for Integration and Migrations (SEIM), I met with some of the mayors of these municipalities. They mention the garbage they leave behind and the noise they make, without offering an alternative. They are, therefore, forcibly nomadic because they are forced to be permanently on the move. They are the “unwanted”, and consequently the “excluded of the excluded”. There is social support, such as is the case of the Itinerant School to assure a school education, Professional Training to qualify for a job, the Social Integration Income for a livelihood. However, it is necessary for the responsible institutions, together with the municipalities, to work in a network structure so that professional training is effective and can guarantee employment, as Fernando Moital, from Évora, tried to achieve for two decades4. Fernando Moital acted informally as a mediator, supporting communication between institutions so that children could attend school, go to the hospital, and enjoy the bare minimum conditions, and he was awarded the Person of Merit Award from the Roma Communities Observatory. We find already success cases in some municipalities and institutions, such as the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN), the AMUCIP, the Association of Portuguese Roma Women, and the Águeda municipality with the association of Portuguese gypsy and non-gypsy residents, among others. The reason for their success is that they work closely with mediators towards adaptation in the first year. At the DST company, in Braga, which won the ObCig Integrator Company Award, I remember the words of a Portuguese Roma worker, “DST gave me a work contract, they treat me well and I am happy here.” More companies need to emulate these sound practices.

“The first condition is being a woman”5, before being a Roma — Portuguese Roma actresses. There is a photograph that reminded me of the actress Sophia Loren, the young woman with long eyes, dressed in dark red, with matching drape and pillows behind. It makes me wonder what her dreams might be. At the same time, I remember that when people around me talk about Portuguese Roma women, they first see them as Roma and only then as women. The difference is very subtle, yet it highlights an immense social distance in human terms. I therefore enjoyed reading the words of actress Maria Gil about her participation in the series Braga on RTP16. She is aware of this bias, that, unlike the other women in Portugal, the first way she is regarded is not as a “woman”, with all the features similar to those of other women, but that firstly she is looked at through the lens of difference, of being a Roma; and only then as a woman. The closest thing I felt to this feeling was when I traveled to African countries and felt that I was first seen as “white” and only then as “woman”. However, I’ve only felt this four times in my life. Maria Gil feels it about 365 days a year. I imagine that the young woman in the photograph feels it too, often. Anthropologist and university professor Maria José Casa-Nova, in her doctoral thesis, identifies the differences between these two types, between unequal racism, regarding the biological differences/phenotypes generally attributed to people from African countries or their descendants in Portugal, and “differential racism”, the latter naturalized for Roma people because they are “culturally different”7. This is one of the factors that contributes to making them feel apart and to keep that distance, in the words of Maria José Casa-Nova: “facing this «Other» who makes you feel inferior can involve strategies of avoidance and/or submission or strategies of self-closing and haughtiness and/or arrogance in treatment, which are also ways of hiding the perception of their inferiorization, as is the case with the gypsies I worked with, where the active strategies of maintaining the cultural values inherent to Gypsy Law become significant and fundamental to reverse the logic of domination and the mental categories constructed to think about this domination, providing an illusion of superiority, but which in context allows them to inferiorize the majority «Other»”8. Let’s say that it is always necessary to take into account both perspectives.

“I have to marry my ugly rich cousin”. One of the photographs that almost goes unnoticed among the cloths, but which caught my attention, is that of a boy who looks five years old, in a blue t-shirt and black jeans, lingering in front of some wooden boards and a cloth, from which an electrical socket comes out and which suggests an accommodation without windows. I find it difficult calling this space “home”. I immediately remember a case narrated by a teacher, from the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon. A 14-year-old student went to talk to her because his parents wanted to “pair” him with his future wife, which is to say, that the “cousin” would come live with them and that they would soon have a child. To do so, he would have to leave school, which is why he went to talk to the teacher. She tried to come to an understanding with the parents and family members, but — about 20 years ago — she was unable to get the student to stay in school. The suffering of Portuguese Romamen is also made invisible and remains a taboo. In the meantime, intercultural mediation in schools has recently achieved better results, but traversing social and cultural distances remains a challenge. I keep looking at Pauliana’s photo and wishing that this boy, eating a piece of bread, can carry on studying in school until his 12th grade and to choose who to marry.

“Roma neighbors”. One photograph that disturbed me seems perhaps banal, that of rubbish on the ground next to greenhouses, and Pauliana, with her sharpness, removes this reality from the realm of everyday life which has been “naturalized”. It is in this space that the people Pauliana makes dance on the cloth around us live. I looked for studies on Portuguese Roma in Faro and found some master’s theses and articles on the use of the Social Integration Income (RSI) and on education and I was pleased to know that, although the studies are indeed few, this is something that already stimulates the curiosity of some researchers. There are even fewer journalists to take an interest in providing visibility to this 0.5% of the population. Ana Cristina Pereira is one of them and she wrote in the newspaper Público one of the articles with the most views in 2019, “Lawyer and gypsy, a face of the beginning of change”9. Miguel Szymanski is yet another of them and a few days ago he wrote in the regional newspaper of Castelo Branco, Regiões, precisely about the people we see in Pauliana’s photographs: “14 years ago an Austrian magazine asked me to write an article about minorities in Portugal. I described the situation of a group of Roma families, my neighbors on the outskirts of Faro. (…) Nothing seems to have changed. Except more people live there now, in the same deplorable conditions as they did 20 years ago. (…) they were told to go — temporarily — to the abandoned aviary facilities. To this day. (…) On a wall close to the ground there are colorful plastic buckets, side by side, which are used to wash dishes and clothes and for the children to bathe when there is enough water. (…) In the outside space, where the city council does not carry out garbage pickup, there are plastics as far as the eye can see, there is no public transport, no sidewalks, no sewers. The interior of the semi-destroyed warehouse bears a stark contrast. Inside, the floor is impeccably swept and washed. It smells clean and it smells of detergents, despite the unannounced visit”10. And I remember again how difficult it must be for the boy in the blue t-shirt to study in these conditions, where in the 21st century, garbage is not even picked up near his house

Internal diversity. One of the photographs shows us a young man sitting on top of a freezer. It could be that of any other Portuguese house, except for the fact that the freezer is under a tree. The young man has a modern look to him. He might have relatives who live in apartments, others in tents, and others in forced nomadism. Among all family members, there is internal diversity, just as among the various residents of Portugal. This internal diversity is rarely recognized by the rest of the Portuguese. I think that was one of the reasons why a Portuguese Roma, shortly after we had met, came to tell me that she had something to say to me, I noticed fear and became worried. She told me that she was a “Roma” person, as if it were something serious. We became friends. One day I sensed a sadness in her and asked what was going on, she replied that her daughter had come home crying because her best friend at school had invited all her classmates except her. When questioned, she replied that her mother had not let her be invited to the party because she was a Roma person. I hugged her. I thought about intercultural mediation and how important it is to take the children’s mothers to parent-teacher meetings or to work at the school itself, for example, as helpers. Some municipalities have already done this and no longer have these problems, they have narrowed the distances. Perhaps it is worth remembering that in the 1981 census, around 75% of the population in Portugal had a 4th-grade level schooling or less11. Since then, the various governments have invested in the democratization of education and the educational qualification of the Portuguese has progressed quite a lot. The difference is that this educational mobility among Roma people is slower and needs enhancement, which always involves working in a network structure and in close proximity, which is to say as in the RISE project by Maria José Casa-Nova, in a school in Minho, in which, through continued work with the children’s parents, there was no longer school absenteeism and results improved significantly12.

Four percent of public housing is for the Portuguese Roma. The photograph of the bride in the white dress, in which we see her from behind running through trees and pieces of wood on the ground, is one of my favorites. Aesthetically, the photograph is beautiful. Anthropologically, I wonder if she wants to escape an early marriage, and quite probably a pregnancy before she turns 16. Sociologically, I remember that only 4% of social housing is for the Portuguese Roma13. I wonder if the young woman in Pauliana’s photograph, and her fiancé, will manage to find decent housing or if they think it is “normal” to live in the conditions that the images show us, which are not normal in the 21st century, since 99% of the population does not live like this. I also know that the 4% of the national population living in public housing, the Portuguese Roma, is equivalent to more than half of the Portuguese Roma population residing in the country. I remember that in previous roles, as SEIM, with responsibility over the Portuguese Roma population in the government, I heard a director of a Roma association who told me that he lived in social housing, that he was finishing his degree, that he had a good salary and that he did not need to live in social housing — however, landlords would refuse to rent him a house as soon as they learned he was a Portuguese gypsy. I heard the same from young adults in other municipalities. And I heard the former mayors of Figueira da Foz, Carlos Monteiro and Diana Rodrigues, showing the sound practice of how they provided renting for the middle class to whom landlords are reluctant to do so. And through bimonthly meetings, which I organized, working in a network with 5 groups from 35 City Halls, they shared this sound practice with other mayors, which some emulated14. I also know that in Portugal there is less public housing than in most European countries, 2%, when the average in Europe per countryis 12%15. I hope that the Access to Decent Housing Program, the 1st Right, required through the municipalities, will include them, with a mix of social groups and intercultural mediation strategies. The municipality of Torres Vedras has also successfully integrated Roma people, and therefore won the international award from the Council of Europe for its integrated housing strategy, with employment, education, and participation of Roma people16. I also hope that the 1st Right program includes this young woman, so we can put an end to extremely undignified housing in the country. We will certainly continue to enjoy the poetic beauty of Pauliana Valente Pimentel’s photographs, but without the undignified conditions in which no human being should live. Thank you Pauliana and to all the teams that enabled us to remember this reality in the 21st century.

 

 

 

  1. Note: I would like to thank Pauliana Valente Pimentel and EGEAC for the opportunity and privilege of participating in the written edition of the exhibition. My thank you also goes out to Alexandre Oliveira, for the revision of the text.
  2. IHRU. (2015). Caracterização das Condições de Habitação das Comunidades Ciganas Residentes em Portugal (C. de T. L. Ferreira (ed.)). Instituto da Habitação e Reabilitação Urbana (IHRU). Available at https://www.portaldahabitacao.pt/documents/20126/58203/caraterizacao_condicoes_habitacao.pdf/43b00c61-59e6-2adf-1d0a-959445ce1068?t=1549879128711. Sousa, C. J. & Moreira, L. (2022) Aprofundamento do Estudo Nacional sobre as Comunidades Ciganas. Análise de Resultados do Inquérito Aplicado aos Municípios – dados de 2015/16. ObCig Fact Sheets, 4. Observatório das Comunidades Ciganas. Available at https://www.obcig.acm.gov.pt/documents/58622/1515680/ObCig+Fact+Sheets+4/161aeb91-ae01-4c07-8c2e-e5f5a8e43374?version=1.2
  3. Castro, A. (2007). «Dos contextos locais à invisibilização política: discussão em torno dos ciclos de exclusão habitacional dos ciganos em Portugal». CIDADES, Comunidades e Territórios, (n.º 15), 63–86. Available at https://revistas.rcaap.pt/cct/article/view/9258/6705
  1. Available at https://www.obcig.acm.gov.pt/-/homenagem-a-fernando-moital
  2. Available at https://www.jn.pt/7993450306/maria-gil-nao-sou-cigana-de-ficcao-sou-cigana-de-adn/
  3. Idem, ibid.
  4. Casa-Nova, M. J. (2009). Etnografia e produção de conhecimento. Reflexões críticas a partir de uma investigação com Ciganos. ACIDI- Alto Comissariado para a Imigração e o Diálogo Intercultural, p. 191.
  1. Idem, ibid, p. 192.
  2. Available at https://www.publico.pt/2019/02/10/sociedade/noticia/advogada-cigana-rosto-principio-mudanca-1861228
  1. Available at https://oregioes.pt/vizinhos-ciganos/
  2. Available at Pordata: https://www.pordata.pt/municipios/populacao+residente+com+15+e+-mais+anos+segundo+os+censos+total+e+por+nivel+de+escolaridade+completo+mais+elevado-69
  1. Available at https://www.comumonline.com/2020/11/uminho-desenvolve-projeto-para-combater-o-insucesso-escolar-na-comunidade-cigana/
  1. IHRU, idem.
  2. Pereira, C., Milagre, C. & A. Ortiz. (2023). «Política integrada e portugueses ciganos: o caso de educação de adultos de 2020 a 2022». In M. J. Casa-Nova, Educação de Adultos e Comunidades Ciganas: Políticas e Processos. Lisboa: Alto-Comissariado para as Migrações, Observatório das Comunidades Ciganas, 47-86. Available at https://www.obcig.acm.gov.pt/documents/58622/201011/Educa%C3%A7%C3%A3o+de+Adultos/d65ac04a-a15a-4191-927f-2e3371468f9d
  1. Available at https://www.compareyourcountry.org/housing/en/3/all/default
  2. Available at https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/municipalities-from-portugal-greece-and-theunited-kingdom-win-the-congress-dosta-prize