While Miriam takes photographs of tram 28 in Martim Moniz in Lisbon, a prostitute approaches a tourist in English and drug addicts in Mouraria are kicked out by a local. On a nearby street, a Bengali Rasni asks, “Are we the problem?”
Less than a week before the announced and now banned far-right demonstration “Against the Islamization of Europe”, which organizers want to turn into a protest, nervousness is evident in conversations in the neighborhood. There are those who defend the strong immigrant community and those who believe the area has changed for the worse.
Cristina Correia was born and raised in Muraria. She supported António Costa when he was mayor of Lisbon and is now in favor of the October 3 protest, despite insisting several times that she is not far-right.
“Come live here and see what the hell it’s like to live here,” says the trader. “Actually, just look at what happened recently.” Moments before her conversation with Lusa, Cristina shooed away two foreigners who were trying to inject themselves on the stairs a few meters from the Rua da Mouraria.
“It’s always like this,” he says. Drug use has always been a problem in the area, exacerbated by tourists and immigrants, he said. “Everybody consumes it,” he laments, shrugging.
But Christina points the finger at immigrants as the source of the latest problems. “There are a lot of them, it’s just money laundering, shops change hands all the time. Things are getting worse every day, people are afraid. Try to go there at the end of the day, everyone is on the street and the person feels insecure,” he says, pointing north towards Rua do Benformoso.
There, in recent years, a “Little India” has been born, with dozens of shops ranging from ethnic restaurants, travel agencies to Pakistan or Bangladesh, cell phone stores to simple warehouses. Near mosques, in some cases in the basements of dilapidated buildings, hundreds of people gather for prayer every day.
And on the sidewalks, many immigrants are waiting for their future, brought by networks, some of them illegal, waiting for documents and living in precarious jobs.
“I get 400 euros [por trabalhar num armazém] and I pay 200 for a bed,” says Rasni, who arrived in Portugal six months ago from northern Bangladesh. “I just want the documents to stay here in Europe,” he tells Lusa.
As for far-right protest, Rasney knows nothing. But Rashid, who owns a small supermarket in the area, has already heard about it and is looking forward to it. “Maybe I’ll close it. There are police here, but I’ll close it. I don’t want any problems,” he says simply.
One of the owners of a Bengali restaurant admits that the establishment is more often visited by immigrants. “The Portuguese don’t really like our food.” But despite the fact that the clients are almost exclusively fellow countrymen, “business is going well.”
“We don’t understand how some stores can survive. They open only because they are interested in opening for employment contracts,” which is important for regularization processes. Assouani, the owner of a cafe and store, speaks about this. He came from Mozambique many years ago and settled in Muraria.
“Things have changed a lot in recent years and we feel more insecure because there has not been effective integration,” warns the trader. “It wasn’t well planned. Portugal has made it easier and it is now harder to impose rules.”
Mafalda, the owner of a tourism entertainment company, strongly disagrees. “I usually go to the store next door several times and they are always the same. I have no reason to complain about immigrants.” Moreover, he adds: “I leave here at night and early in the morning, and no one has ever done anything to me.”
“People who say it’s bad today want to forget what it was like 15 years ago. It was much worse,” says Ismail Ibrahim, a Mozambican from Beira who has lived in the area since the 1970s.
“Cities change, grow, transform. We go to other places, like London, and find immigrants exotic and beautiful. But not here,” says Ismail, given that Portugal is “becoming multicultural for the first time in your history.”
“Immigrants come here only because it is the cheapest area in the center of Lisbon. This happened to us. [retornados]we came here in an avalanche of decolonization, then it was the Chinese, now it is the Indians and Pakistanis,” explains a merchant on Rua dos Cavaleiros.
“Benformoso was a cobbler’s street and no one wanted to rent there. No one wanted to buy shops,” recalls a dealer who points to drugs as the real problem in the area.
On the streets above, towards the castle, the narrow streets are a place for shopping at any time of the day.
“The whole of Portugal came here to supply themselves with drugs,” and this consumption created “a very closed environment in the surrounding area,” Ismail explains.
Moreover, many drug dealers come from this area. “Now most of them are in prison, and those who sell them are not from here,” says a local resident who is wary of the business merging with the immigrant community.
“Many poor people come here hoping to find work, stay there and end up consuming because everything is at hand,” he adds.
On one side of Benformoso, two Indian immigrants were smoking drugs through a pipe with a Portuguese woman, very thin and with dark circles under her eyes, who had recently approached a Western tourist. “Do you want sex?”
After António Costa, then president of the Chamber, changed his office to Intendente, drugs and prostitution spread through the streets in the direction of Muraria and Marim Moniz, which many residents of the area complained about.
“Now we have prostitutes and men around them right here next to the Muraria shopping centre. This is in broad daylight. Everyone sees it, but it seems like no one wants to see it,” says trader Luse.
Vitor Cruz was born 70 years ago in Muraria – “he didn’t even want to go to the hospital to be born.” Today only one of the daughters wants to stay there, which she regrets. “What I miss most is people who disappear, die or leave. I don’t know anyone else.”
American Miriam, who photographed the symbolic electric car 28 moments later, does not know these stories. You are only in Portugal for two days and want to stroll the streets of Mouraria and Alfama.
“The Portuguese drove out all the Moors, didn’t they?” – he asks Lusa, not understanding the relevance of the question.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I’m Tifany Hawkins, a professional journalist with years of experience in news reporting. I currently work for a prominent news website and write articles for 24NewsReporters as an author. My primary focus is on economy-related stories, though I am also experienced in several other areas of journalism.