25 Abril 2024 14h30 – Marquês de Pombal, Lisboa
We want environmental and social justice in coastal Alentejo!
In 2024 we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the revolution that brought democracy to Portugal, after a dictatorship based on a economic model characterized by colonialism, censorship and oppression of society, and without any ecological awareness.
The Alentejo is intrinsically linked to the time of April 25, 1974, with Grândola still resting on the laurels of the glory of Zeca Afonso's song. The image of our region before 1974 is characterized by inequality and injustice: while the landowners and other powerful classes got richer, the living conditions of small producers, peasants and wage earners remained difficult.
Today, the Alentejo is once again pierced by this image of inequality: a transnational social layer is appropriating the land for extractive purposes and profit maximization. We see this in industrial export agriculture that does not promote employability and forces migrants to live in undignified conditions, ignoring many national labor laws; in the development of an energy model with unprecedented spatial voracity, imposed by the European Union on behalf of large industrial interests; in the development of a luxury tourism model that excludes the local population from common heritage, such as the beach, which is freely accessible according to the law; in the development of various other extractive activities, such as mining, which are super intensive practices in terms of the use, pollution and depletion of resources.
These factors have led to various desertification processes which are reflected in scenarios of water stress and resource depletion with unregulated overexploitation and contamination caused by complete negligence, corruption and degenerative land management practices. This exploitation, blind to environmental protection statutes and with the complicity of local governments, is reminiscent of the socio-political dynamics prior to April 25.
Today we raise our voices to tell you: We are suffocating! The people who live and work here, or who traditionally visit and contribute, are "left behind" and are confronted with the environmental, social, demographic, economic and political externalities resulting from a rural development that only benefits a few, but which brings a dramatic exodus and a general ecocide of the Alentejo region. And yet, 50 years on, memory seems to fail us, and we see the same mistakes being repeated, the so-called "achievements of April" being shattered by legal incongruities, political negligence and private benefit.
We are here today because we want to fight for something better - we will not lower our arms, especially when the extreme right is advancing.
As a collective, we advocate urgent and indispensable changes on the part of those who govern us, to immediately stop the attacks on the territory, on people and on endemic habitats and species, in the name of a false idea of progress. We fight together in the Alentejo coast for an alternative, with justice, equality and democracy, that responds to the climate emergency and the social crisis of those who live and work here. We remember April in order to preserve the popular achievements of the Revolution and continue to raise our voices for Democracy, Social and Ecological Justice. We want decent public services, the right to housing, more public transport, a fossil-free (re)industrialization strategy, decentralized public and/or collective renewable energy production, local and cooperative agriculture, public and rational water management, regulated and low-density tourism accessible to all. Basically, we want respect for the natural heritage, for life - animal and plant - for people and for the territory.
The movements that signed this manifesto demand:
- An immediate halt to the systemic destruction of the Alentejo coastlineo
- Full respect for the will of the people in all decision-making processes
- Accountability for the cumulative effects of these choices
- Regeneration of ecosystems through decentralized management of resources (i.e. water, energy and land) and territory.
Subscribers:
Associação Monte Alegre • Cinema Fulgor • Comunidade de Tamera • Dunas Livres • Empregos para o Clima (grupo de Sines e Litoral Alentejano) • Escola Wild Forest Garden • GAIA- Grupo de Acção e Intervenção Ambiental • Jardim do Mira • Juntos pelo Cercal • Juntos pelo Sudoeste • Minas Não • Movimento Vamos Salvar os Sobreiros • Regenerativa Cooperativa Integral • Roda Inquieta • Transição São Luís
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