Editorial
Humberto Martins
A Etnográfica celebra os 50 anos do 25 de Abril de 1974. Não podia deixar de ser. Abril abriu, em Portugal e no Mundo, muitas portas para as Ciências Sociais. Áreas de saber vistas como perigosas e ameaçadoras do statu quo de regimes opressores
[+]Editorial
Sónia Vespeira de Almeida, João Leal e Emília Margarida Marques
Este número da Etnográfica, comemorativo dos 50 anos do 25 de Abril, procura associar a comunidade dos antropólogos – professores, investigadores, profissionais da antropologia, antigos estudantes ou atuais estudantes – à evocação das
[+]Etnografias da revolução em revista
José Cutileiro
Quando na Primavera de 1970 acabei de escrever A Portuguese Rural Society, estava convencido de que a fase de história económica e social do Alentejo iniciada no segundo quartel do século XIX teria ainda longos anos à sua frente e que as
[+]Etnografias da revolução em revista
Sandra McAdam Clark e Brian Juan O’Neill
This paper1 has two main purposes: (a) to present some preliminary results from S. McAdam Clark’s recent research on the agrarian reform and related developments in Southern Portugal, and (b) to set forth a critique of José Cutileiro’s specific
[+]Etnografias da revolução em revista
Caroline B. Brettell
In October of 1973, the newly organized International Conference Group on Modern Portugal, spearheaded by Douglas Wheeler (historian), Joyce Riegelhaupt (anthropologist) and others, held its first meeting on the campus of the University of New
[+]Imagens do país em 1974-1976: ensaio de antropologia visual
Clara Saraiva
A “equipa maravilha” da antropologia portuguesa do século XX formou-se em torno da figura de António Jorge Dias, que completou na Universidade de Munique, em 1944, um doutoramento em Etnologia, com a tese Vilarinho da Furna, Um Povo
[+]Antropologia e revolução: do ISCSPU ao ISCSP (1974-1976)
João Leal
No dia 27 de abril de 1974 – dois dias depois do 25 de Abril – caiu o “U” de ISCSPU (Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Política Ultramarina), renomeado no mesmo dia ISCSP (Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas).
[+]Antropologia e revolução: do ISCSPU ao ISCSP (1974-1976)
Filipe Ramires
O clima repressivo que perpassava pela Academia de Lisboa nos anos anteriores ao 25 de Abril de 1974 também se fazia sentir no então ISCSPU. O controlo político-repressivo efectuado pela direcção da escola, nomeadamente através de certos
[+]Antropologia e revolução: do ISCSPU ao ISCSP (1974-1976)
Luís Souta
Entrei na universidade em 1970, depois de ter realizado, em finais de Outubro, o “exame de admissão”, escrito e oral – Língua e Literatura Portuguesa e Geografia Geral, segundo as “matérias estabelecidas no programa oficial do 7.º ano
[+]Antropologia e revolução: do ISCSPU ao ISCSP (1974-1976)
Dulcinea Gil
Terminado o liceu (ensino secundário) da alínea B, no Liceu Nacional de Faro, fui para Lisboa, a fim de frequentar o curso de Filologia Germânica da Faculdade Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.1 Fiquei desiludida com o curso quando percebi que, ao
[+]Antropologia e revolução: do ISCSPU ao ISCSP (1974-1976)
Maria da Luz Alexandrino
Em Lisboa sentia-se electricidade no ar – estava tudo de nervos em franja. Informações sussurradas nos cafés e nas esquinas sobre movimentos de militares, especialmente de capitães democráticos; sobre a tentativa de golpe de Março nas Caldas
[+]Antropologia e revolução: do ISCSPU ao ISCSP (1974-1976)
José Fialho Feliciano
Em 25 de Abril de 1974 estudava em várias universidades de Paris, modeladas, de formas diferentes, pelos ventos de mudança de Maio de 1968. Em Jussieu (Paris VII – Faculté des Sciences) fizera o bacharelato (DEUG) em Ciências da Sociedade,
[+]Antropologia e revolução: do ISCSPU ao ISCSP (1974-1976)
José Cardim
Foi em 1960 que, estando eu em Angola e interno numa escola no Sul do país, sucedeu no Norte a primeira “insurreição moderna” nas colónias portuguesas. Tinha antes vivido e estudado em Lisboa, em Luanda, Lourenço Marques e… no
[+]Antropologia e revolução: do ISCSPU ao ISCSP (1974-1976)
José Neves
Para aquele lisboeta que descobriu que já não tinha creme de barbear em casa, o dia 25 de abril de 1974 começou mal. Ainda assim, o homem saiu à rua e foi aí e então que se inteirou do que estaria a acontecer na cidade: uma revolução. Os
[+]Etnografias da revolução, hoje
Sónia Vespeira de Almeida
This article interrogates artistic practices during the revolution in the context of the MFA’s Cultural Dynamisation and Civic Action Campaigns (1974-1975). It begins by revisiting a corpus of ethnographic data collected as part of a research
[+]Etnografias da revolução em revista
Elsa Peralta e Bruno Góis
With the end of the colonial empire, following the Revolution of April 25th, 1974, the borders and identity of the Portuguese nation were redefined. In this context, around half a million citizens from the former colonies were repatriated to
[+]Etnografias da revolução, hoje
Inês Ponte
Ao lidar com as convulsões políticas do passado de Angola, a obra literária mais tardia do antropólogo Ruy Duarte de Carvalho (1941-2010), angolano de origem portuguesa, proporciona refletir sobre a revolução dos cravos em Portugal. Não é
[+]Etnografias da revolução, hoje
Pedro Gabriel Silva
Following the April 25th 1974 revolution, a village in the municipality of Belmonte (Portugal) became the scene of a six-year conflict between a group of small-holder landowners joined by part of the community and a mining company. This article,
[+]Etnografias da revolução, hoje
Cristina Pratas Cruzeiro, Ricardo Campos e Cláudia Madeira
In this article, we aim to revisit one of the privileged places for citizens’ expression – the street and urban public space – based on the legacy of graffiti and murals created during the Portuguese revolutionary period of April 25th, 1974.
[+]O que gostarias de ter estudado em 1974?
Nuno Domingos
O presente é uma condição inevitável da produção de uma investigação que responda ao desafio da Etnográfica: escrever um ensaio acerca do que gostaria de pesquisar se tivesse tido a oportunidade de acompanhar in loco a revolução de 25 de
[+]O que gostarias de ter estudado em 1974?
Ruy Llera Blanes
É já um lugar-comum afirmar o papel fulcral que o 25 de Abril de 1974 teve no processo de descolonização das colónias portuguesas em África, nomeadamente no que diz respeito à incorporação da descolonização como desígnio do programa do
[+]O que gostarias de ter estudado em 1974?
Patrícia Alves de Matos
Se pudesse escolher uma temática de investigação sobre o período revolucionário português, qual seria? Foi este o desafio que os editores me colocaram. Inicialmente pensei em velhas ideias que tinha tido quando terminei a minha licenciatura em
[+]O que gostarias de ter estudado em 1974?
Marta Prista
Avril au Portugal. Pela mão do Comissariado de Turismo, o Estado Novo promoveu a viagem a Portugal recebendo os estrangeiros no dia do turista com flores, souvenirs e sorrisos de jovens trajadas à imagem do país que se queria.2 Em 1974, uns dias
[+]O que gostarias de ter estudado em 1974?
Constança Arouca
A caminho da exposição do Mário Cesariny, no MAAT, e já com a capa da celebração dos 50 anos do 25 de Abril em mente, pela primeira vez estive a observar com atenção a intervenção dos 48 artistas, na reinterpretação de 2022 do mural do
[+]Found in Translation
Francisco Freire
A Etnográfica inicia com este número uma nova proposta editorial. “Found in Translation” é uma secção concebida para dar espaço a mais antropologias, apontando a essa diversidade epistemológica reclamada na construção de um campo ele
[+]Found in Translation
Abdellah Hammoudi
Alguns leitores podem com razão interrogar-se quanto ao efetivo significado da expressão “antropologia em língua árabe”, uma vez que esta, ainda que cuidadosamente escolhida por mim, comporta diferentes significados, alguns deles
[+]Articles
Carlos Hernández-Fernández
Since the mid-20th century, a number of religious and festive pilgrimages have been held in Galicia and Portugal in which symbols of a funerary nature were used as a form of offering to give thanks for miracles or to pray for them to take place.
[+]Articles
Camilo Andrés Salcedo Montero
In this paper, I present the results of ethnographic research that analyzes the social effects on peasant communities (dedicated to working the land and fishing in the river) due to the delivery of compensation and the carrying out of works for the
[+]Articles
Antonio Guerreiro
The aim of this article is to understand how the Kalapalo, a Carib-speaking people of the Upper Xingu (southern Amazon), describe their relationship with their traditional lands in narratives and personal accounts of their occupation of the area and
[+]History of Anthropology
Ricardo Santos Alexandre
This essay revisits a classic text of anthropology, Edward Sapir’s “Culture, genuine and spurious”, taking it as a partner for a dialogue and reflection on the notion of culture. In “Culture, genuine and spurious”, Sapir is able to deliver
[+]Interdisciplinarities
Ion Fernández de las Heras
Partindo de uma série de considerações relacionadas com o meu trabalho de campo no meio rural do País Basco, sugiro que a coincidência conceptual entre a arquitetura e o construído pode levar a obliterações indesejadas para aqueles que se
[+]Dossiê "Futuros em disputa: abordagens teórico-metodológicas sobre o porvir nas periferias do Sul Global"
Paula Godinho e Raúl H. Contreras Román
A antropologia tem proposto alternativas para pensar os modos pelos quais o passado afeta o presente, sem dar igual importância às múltiplas maneiras pelas quais os futuros socialmente imaginados o fazem. Trabalhos recentes têm-no indagado no
[+]Dossiê "Futuros em disputa: abordagens teórico-metodológicas sobre o porvir nas periferias do Sul Global"
Berenice Vargas García e David Varela Trejo
A little over ten years ago, the anthropological academy of the global North baptized with the name “multispecies” a mode of study and writing that de-centers the human and that, in research, pays attention to the socio-cultural and affective
[+]Dossiê "Futuros em disputa: abordagens teórico-metodológicas sobre o porvir nas periferias do Sul Global"
Saraya Bonilla Lozada
This article reflects together with peasant women-defenders of the territory in Bajo Putumayo, in Southern Colombia. It resumes their narratives of the future and the understanding of time and space that they elaborate from their incarnated
[+]Dossiê "Futuros em disputa: abordagens teórico-metodológicas sobre o porvir nas periferias do Sul Global"
Julián Dzul Nah
This article presents the ways in which some people from Tixcacal Quintero (Yucatán, México), inhabitants or immigrants, remember the town’s henequenero past, and imagine its futures. Framed in a post-emigration context, which started in the
[+]Dossiê "Futuros em disputa: abordagens teórico-metodológicas sobre o porvir nas periferias do Sul Global"
Norma Bautista Santiago
In the Mixtec language or Tu'un Savi the word future does not exist, however, among the people who assume themselves to be part of the People of the Rain or Ñuu Savi; population of indigenous origin in southern Mexico, there is the notion of what
[+]Dossiê "Futuros em disputa: abordagens teórico-metodológicas sobre o porvir nas periferias do Sul Global"
Raúl H. Contreras Román
This article explores “humble dreams” as a local model of an imagined future, emerging from diverse and historically situated conversations that build common sense and enable people to imagine other possible lives and engage with them in the
[+]Dossiê "Futuros em disputa: abordagens teórico-metodológicas sobre o porvir nas periferias do Sul Global"
João Carlos Louçã
After the end of the Cold War and the Soviet bloc, the 1990’s promised the expansion of capitalism to the most remote corners of the planet. Globalization was the way economic liberalism assumed this purpose by ensuring that economies and
[+]Resources
Juliana Carneiro and Thiago Allis
This work aims at identifying and analyzing the entanglements between mobilities, ethnography and tourism, based on an integrative literature review. It seeks, in particular, the use of ethnographic methodologies applied in the field of mobilities
[+]The Cut
Francisco Martínez
This essay engages with alternative regimes of invisibility by investigating the things that are kept, and the practices that take place in basements of eastern Estonia. The use of hiding infrastructures is here taken as part of wider claims about
[+]The Cut
Mariana Tello Weiss
The text is highly inspiring from both a theoretical and methodological point of view. It proposes an ethnography of the basements in Sillamäe, a small village in eastern Estonia. A village that, because of its history - marked by war and the
[+]The Cut
Tamta Khalvashi
“Where is a bunker?” This question started to haunt many of us in Georgian cities when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Quest for bunkers, basements and shelters, for spaces of both opacity and safety, was drawn from the possible
[+]The Cut
Hermione Spriggs
“The opaque is not the obscure” (Glissant 1997: 191). So begins Fran Martínez’ text on basements, which he approaches as spaces of opacity that can nonetheless be entered
[+]The Cut
Patrick Laviolette
Francisco Martínez starts his essay with a quotation by Édouard Glissant. He might just as easily have chosen something from Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space (1958) or Dick Hebdige’s Hiding in the Light (1988) to introduce what lays on the
[+]Pedro Figueiredo Neto and Ricardo Falcão
22.11.2023
Routier is the self-designation employed by Senegalese men driving decades-old vehicles overloaded with mostly second-hand items from Southern Europe to be sold in West Africa. By seeing like a routier, the piece seeks to feed an on-going debate not only on how to depict borders writ large but also on how certain groups of people embody, see and are seen by contemporary borders.
Visual approaches have not been systematically employed in the study of contemporary borders despite their affordances in bringing to the fore individual perspectives and experiences (Kudžmaité and Pauwels 2020; Ball 2014). Drawing on the concept of borderscapes, whose plasticity and inherent aesthetic nature stimulates an exploration of diverse border universes (dell’Agnese and Szary 2015), this visual essay interrogates routiers’ border(ing) enactments and contingent meanings.[1]
Routier is the self-designation employed by Senegalese men driving heavily laden, aging vehicles from Europe into Africa. This perilous journey takes them through Morocco, the Western Sahara occupied territories, Mauritania, and finally to their destination in Senegal. Some even beyond. The vehicles used by routiers are eventually sold and integrated into regional transportation systems. In Senegal, popular models include the Peugeot 504/505, older versions of the Renault Trafic, Volkswagen Golf, and Toyota Hiace. During their journey and upon arrival, routiers deliver money remittances and personal belongings. They also barter and trade diverse goods, mostly second-hand objects, some of which in need of repair: clothing, household appliances, toys, spare parts, rice, cosmetics. Not only do the vehicles they travel in regain value as they move south, but even items that are considered obsolete or even waste in Europe gradually become valuable (Neto and Falcão 2022).
Below, we present ten captioned images that depict and explore the borderscapes of routiers as they perceive, imagine, and experience the multitude of borders in which their livelihoods are embedded. Selected still images stem from audiovisual materials collected between 2017 and 2019 during ethnographic fieldwork and the filming of a documentary among Senegalese routiers.[2] Our research included extensive fieldwork in Lisbon and Dakar, as well as two ten-day journeys from Portugal to Senegal, travelling in late 1980s Peugeots 504s with the same seasoned routier: Mbaye Sow, who is now 63 years old. However, since pandemic restrictions were introduced in early 2020, most of this activity has disappeared, and the actors who once participated in it have either moved elsewhere or had to find other means of making a living. This is not to say that the flow of goods came to a halt, only that it has found other trajectories, from individual carriage by plane or bus to container shipping.
The result is a constellation of more or less singular perspectives that feed an on-going debate not only on how to visually represent borders writ large (Kudžmaitė and Pauwels 2020), but also on how certain groups of people embody (Mbembe 2019; Agier 2016), see and are seen by those very borders (Ball 2014; M’Charek 2020; Plájás, M’Charek and Baar 2019). Ultimately, our exploration is an invitation for the reader/viewer to embark on a journey of discovery.
A SENEGALESE ENCLAVE
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2019.
The Senegalese workshops in Reboleira, a parish of Amadora in the outskirts of Lisbon, are located along a short segment of a former military road. In the mid-2000s, following the violent clearance of an existing informal neighbourhood, routiers seized the opportunity to set up their open-air car workshops in the area.
BORDER LEXICON
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2017
This image depicts the road entering Rosal de la Frontera, located approximately 4 km away from the official border between Portugal and Spain. The only elements that acknowledge the existence of an international border are the road signposting and the border-lexicon applied to localities. Border checkpoints were dismantled in the mid-1990s following the implementation of the Schengen Agreement, and nowadays, there is virtually no control or surveillance, at least at the gateways and moments of crossing well identified by routiers. For them, this is essentially an economic frontier, which they master well, strategically juggling with the differential cost of things, particularly in terms of fuel, which is more affordable on the Spanish side.
ACROSS THE STRAIGHT
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2017.
Some 11.000 nautical miles (20 km) separate the ports of Algeciras (Spain) from Tanger Med (Morocco). (…) For routiers, crossing this border means that while obstacles may not suddenly disappear upon entering “Africa”, things can be more easily managed, and the relative value of the vehicles and goods carried automatically increases.
MNEMONIC BORDER
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2017.
The unknown and occult, fear, and landscape elements but also mountain ranges, rivers, forests, have represented – and still represent – some of the foundational and empirical arguments at the origin of many border demarcations and imaginaries throughout history.
INVISIBLE LINES
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2019.
In the near horizon lies the borderline between Morocco and Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony known for its rich fishing and phosphate resources. That rectilinear imaginary line, which we cannot see but only grasp through other elements, shall remain invisible inasmuch Moroccan sovereignty is not called into question. Subtler aspects inform about the status and plight of this territory. As routiers move into Western Sahara occupied territories’, urban settlements gradually fade away, and the distances in between grow larger.
BORDER SOUNSCAPES
Source: © Ricardo Falcão 2022
At the Morocco-Guerguerat strip border post, a huge, ten-meter tall scanner analyses vehicles. (…)
The straight horizontal line of the spectrogram (first 53 seconds) depicts the sound emanating from the scanner: a humming noise mixed with a warning siren that is repeated in short cycles. The humming low noise is interrupted (final seconds) by a hissing sound from the release of a truck’s air brake, now ready to move forward. Indifferent to the geopolitical limit, birds fly and sing continuously across the arid and littered landscape.
“KANDAHAR”
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2017.
A cemetery of vehicles grows by the day in the roughly 5 km of the Guerguerat buffer zone between Morocco and Mauritania border posts.
TRAVELLING BORDER
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2019.
The road is the routiers’ own country. Beyond the roadside lies the unknown, an immense uncharted territory.
BORDER TWINS
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2019.
Between the twin border towns of Rosso-Mauritania and Rosso-Senegal, a smoky barge ferries cars, trucks, people and goods across the river Senegal. Locals cross freely without any form of control. This sudden in-betweenness of the river as a border provides an unique opportunity to capture images.
THE BORDER WITHIN
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2017.
Mbaye Sow negotiated for extra time to meet a police officer responsible for overseeing the convoy of routiers travelling from Rosso-Senegal to Gambia. (…) It is worth noting that according to Senegalese law, vehicles older than eight years are not allowed to remain but only to traverse the country. However, this does not prevent the routiers’ networks from finding alternative ways to re-enter Senegal.
Despite their resilience, routiers constantly feel like foreigners no matter where they go. (…) Be it in Europe or in West Africa, routiers embody the frontier (Mbembe 2019; Agier 2016; Konrad 2015), a shifting, mobile frontier that remains within them.
THE MISSING PICTURE
In early 2020, the routier activity came to a halt due to the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to the closure of international borders. Since then, most routiers have sought alternative sources of income in Europe or Senegal. Mbaye Sow, for instance, first migrated to France to work as a fruit picker, then moved on to Germany to work in an Amazon sorting facility, before eventually returning to Portugal to work on a construction site in Lisbon.
Although land borders have since reopened, most of the routiers we met did not return to Reboleira.
Pedro Figueiredo Neto e Ricardo Falcão
NETO, Pedro Figueiredo (pedrofneto@ics.ulisboa.pt) – ICS-ULisboa, Portugal. Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7687-7202
FALCÃO, Ricardo (ricfal@gmail.com) – CEI-IUL, Portugal. Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7419-865X
Para citar esta versão:
Pedro Figueiredo Neto e Ricardo Falcão, «Seeing like a routier: routiers’ borderscapes between Southern Europe and West Africa», Etnográfica Ágora-Multimodal Alt [Online], 2023, posto online no dia 10 novembro 2023.
URL: https://etnografica.cria.org.pt/ptcms/multimodal-section-audiovisual/175
REFERENCES
AGIER, Michel, 2016, Borderlands: Towards an Anthropology of the Cosmopolitan Condition. London: Polity Press.
DELL’AGNESE, Elena, and Anne-Laure A. SZARY, 2015, “Borderscapes: from border landscapes to border aesthetics”, Geopolitics, 20 (1): 4-13. DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2015.1014284.
KONRAD, Victor, 2015. “Toward a theory of borders in motion”, Journal of Borderland Studies, 30 (1): 1-1 DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2015.1008387.
KUDŽMAITĖ, Gintaré, and Luc PAUWELS, 2020, “Researching visual manifestations of border spaces and experiences: conceptual and methodological perspectives”, Geopolitics, 27 (1): 260-291. DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2020.1749838.
MBEMBE, Achile, 2019, “Bodies as borders”, From the European South, 4: 5-18. Available at: < http://europeansouth.postcolonialitalia.it > (last consulted October 2023).
M’CHAREK, Amade, 2020, “Tentacular faces: race and the return of the phenotype in forensic identification”, American Anthropologist, 122 (2): 369-380.
NETO, Pedro F., and Ricardo FALCÃO, 2022, “Routiers’ transformational trajectories of waste, from Portugal to Senegal”, in Giulia Daniele, Manuel J. Ramos and Pedro F. Neto (eds.), Border Crossings In and Out of Europe, 87-105. Available at: < https://cei.iscte-iul.pt/en/publicacao/2022-border-crossings-in-and-out-of-europe/ > (last consulted October 2023).
PLÁJÁS, Ildikó Z., Aamade M’CHAREK, and Huub van BAAR, 2019, “Knowing ‘the Roma’: visual technologies of sorting populations and the policing of mobility in Europe”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37 (4): 589-605. DOI: 10.1177/0263775819837291.
[1] Our thanks to Mbaye Sow, his family, and all the (infrastructure of) people in Portugal, Morocco and Senegal that made this work possible. This work was supported by the Instituto do Cinema e Audiovisual (ICA, I. P.), and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) under the contract: 2021.03558.CEECIND/CP1696/CT0002.
[2] Yoon (2021, 84 min., dir. Pedro Figueiredo Neto and Ricardo Falcão; produced by Sopro Filmes).