Cova da Moura: Citizenship,Neighborship,and Conflicts over Territory in Lisbon’s Periphery,1974-2014

Introduction

Throughout the 1970s, thousands of immigrants settled on the outskirts of Lisbon, in areas such as Concelhos of Oeiras, Amadora, Loures, and Odivelas. These people arrived from former Portuguese colonies in Africa, some regions of Alentejo, and other rural Portuguese regions. ¹ Men were employed in the industrial businesses that operated in those years, while women mainly worked on street sales and in domestic service. Residential insertion was extremely difficult due to the low socioeconomic profile of this population. A housing shortage was also acute in a country which during decolonization had to find accommodation for a group of between five hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand Portuguese people who had returned in only six years and had arrived mostly from Angola and to a lesser extent, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Cape Verde and Sao Tome. ² In this context, most of the African non-Portuguese population, black or mulatto, opted for the construction of makeshift housing near factories in suburban areas.

Thus, Alto da Cova da Moura was born around 1974—like many of the other enclaves of Lisbon’s suburbs, through the illegal occupation of public and private lands. After the arrival of a small number of Portuguese who built the first makeshift housing in the lower part of the hill, it soon became heavily populated, mostly by residents of Cape Verdean origin. This area as a whole, which occupies 16.5 hectares within the municipality of Amadora, offered a number of advantages to the new settlers. First, the aforementioned proximity to factories where most immigrants were employed. Second, these areas were located relatively close to Lisbon and were well served by the railway line linking the Portuguese capital to the town of Sintra. This ease of access to Lisbon was crucial, since many of the Cape Verdean women who came to the neighborhood used to work selling fish and needed convenient access to nearby markets to the port as well as to consumers in the city. Moreover, it was a vacant land whose owners were not interested in using, which explains the fact that its early occupation proceeded with the tacit approval of the local authority. ³

Over four decades, the population of this area has continued to grow adding a total of more than seven thousand inhabitants, 60 percent of African origin. The most recent migration flows respond not only to the action of networks already established in this territory but also to economic dynamics. Throughout the 1980s, the redevelopment of Lisbon’s District demanded a significant amount of immigrant labor, ⁴ which continued to settle in the neighborhood surroundings. Later, in the 1990s, the need for workers remained high not only due to the strong growth in the civil construction sector but also mainly due to the large amount of work prior to Expo ’98. ⁵ The result of this accelerated and disorganized growth has had several consequences for the neighborhood Cova da Moura. First, the serious problems of poverty, high unemployment, and problems linked to petty drug dealing and other petty crime have become deep-rooted. Second, as a result, a strong stigma was developed around this neighborhood and its people, who were recognized throughout Portugal as marginalized. Meanwhile, population growth in the metropolitan area of Lisbon means that this land, abandoned long ago, has now been revalued and considered much attractive for property investment. And finally, the state made a radical shift in its treatment of this neighborhood as a result of all these trends. If at first the attitude of the Portuguese authorities toward illegal occupation of this land was, as already said, indifference and tacit consent, the big and deep extension of the urban and social problems in this area made it to be considered a political priority, and preferred object of intervention plans.

In this article, we look closer at the policies implemented by the Portuguese state for the redevelopment of this area. These policies are interpreted as a project of territorialization that, as developed in ethnography, comes into conflict with other forms of territorialization practiced by the neighbors. Therefore, we propose to confront two seemingly incompatible ways to make order and sense of the same space. The first one, embodied in public policies, build their legitimacy on general principles which are presented as an unambiguous expression of a neutral and universal rationality. The second, in contrast, is connected with the particular experiences of neighbors and the cultural uniqueness and exclusivity claimed by this neighborhood. Through ethnographic description, we deal with the practices that embody each of the territorialization models, and we are able to analyze the main axes of the urban conflict that crosses Cova da Moura through the eyes of its protagonists.

This article is a product of one year of fieldwork, which was developed during the second half of 2013 and early 2014 in the framework of the research project “The role of immigrant associations in the integration process. Comparing POS and political cultures in the cities of Seville and Lisbon”. Primary data were collected on a qualitative basis, which included participant observation and implementation of in-depth interviews to locals. Observation exercises focused on modes of sociability among neighbors, paying special attention to relationship networks among them, as well as to their use of the spaces and their discursive construction of borders inside and outside the neighborhood. Interviews were aimed at capturing neighbors’ experience through their own words. Two different interview guides were used: a shorter one, which was used to record experiences and opinions of twenty neighbors, including men and women of various nationalities—Cabo Verdeans, Portuguese, Angolan, and Guineans—all of them having lived in the neighborhood for different amount of years, and a second more extensive one reserved for a small number of key individuals who have played a particularly prominent role in the neighborhood conflicts management and the neighbors’ strategies of self-organization. This second interview guide was created to reconstruct in detail the history of these people and to go deeper through their words in describing the history of this neighborhood. In addition, the information collected in the field has also been supplemented by consulting systematically bibliographic documentation and audiovisual materials on Cape Verdean immigration in Portugal, and especially all works already done in this neighborhood and its surroundings. Also, we have relied on consulting photographs produced by the neighbors and neighborhood associations, as well as in numerous print news, television, videos, and documentaries. ⁶

The unique characteristics of this study case offer a valuable insight into addressing territorialization processes in human societies. On one hand, we have an occupied land that was divided into lots by the own neighbors, who built the makeshift housing and later more permanent buildings, who ordered the streets and who fought for years for the installation of basic services (water, electricity, sewage). Therefore, we are talking about a peculiar process of territorialization from the bottom. At least in its early stages it was developed by residents themselves outside any form of state intervention, and where consequently residents feel as the original inhabitants of this territory and its legitimate occupants. On the other hand, at a later point, the territorialization project led by Portuguese state institutions with plans to urban intervention does not operate in a vacuum, but against a background of preestablished ways of living and occupying this space that had been already established among neighbors. As the two territorialization processes have come into conflict, each party has found it necessary to explicitly assert its territorialization project and defend it in speeches that dismiss the rival model as illegitimate. Finally, the case of Cova da Moura has the additional complication of involving a population of African origin, mainly Cape Verde, whose relationship with the state is not only built as members of Lisbon’s neighborhood but also as representatives of a radical cultural otherness. Formed by their colonial experience, this has continued until today thanks to ethnic differences as well as the legal status of foreigners that still affects many of them.

The first section of this article is dedicated to defining the concepts behind this work, and framing them in theoretical debates that serve as reference. Subsequently, we conduct an ethnographic tour into the deep urban conflict that Cova da Moura has been facing for forty years. We frame the process of settlement of Cova da Moura and its different modes of use and significance of the space in which it is translated. Subsequently, we describe urban intervention policies implemented by the Portuguese authorities, interpreting them as an alternative project for the same territorial space, and analyzing the opposition that have awakened in most neighbors. To conclude, a final section is dedicated to recapitulation of the main ideas of this text and to a proposal of new areas for discussion.

Processes of Territorialization and Urban Conflict

The concept of territorialization refers to most ways in which human groups develop differentiation of space by its appropriation, delimitation, and/or functional definition. ⁷ Therefore, talking about territorialization implies rejecting in advance the existence of a naturalized space whose objective qualities arise prior to the experience that human groups obtain from it. That is why physical and geographical space is always linked inextricably to the ways of life of human groups, ⁸ and it is the presence and intervention of these groups that makes the space a territory, a distinct place with a recognizable meaning. Thus, the concept of a territory needs to be understood as a filtered arrangement by culture of specific human groups. It is the concrete and symbolic construction of space which gives it a principle of meaning for those who inhabit it, and a principle of intelligibility for those who observe it. ⁹

From the perspective of territory, as a socially constructed space is logically derived, the possibility that different groups strive to confer upon the same space different and even opposed organizational principles. In this sense, the theory of social production of space has shown how under the capitalist model of production, space is a strategic resource in the fight that unequal groups are encountering among them. This has been observed by Lefebvre, ¹⁰ Castells, ¹¹ Harvey, ¹² and Lojkine. ¹³ Considering space as a resource in dispute determines that conflict between opposite territorialization models is not just a theoretical possibility, but a necessary consequence of the capitalist model of production.

The modern state has played without a doubt an important influence to the territorialization modes in capitalism. The spatial planning policies, urban rules, the systematic construction of public buildings, or the structuring of territory by the creation of major roads have been some of the tools that have allowed the state to produce spatiality itself. A spatiality of technocratic and bureaucratic character, as stated David Harvey, ¹⁴ ruled by a Cartesian rationality. Throughout application of the law, the daily work of its employees and the implementation of public policies, the State has a decisive power over physical distribution patterns of population, the architectural features of landscape, on the organization of space, and forms of mobility. However, according to Lefebvre ¹⁵ and Harvey, ¹⁶ this technocratic and bureaucratic production of space tends to cause systematic rebellion of population. Facing the Cartesian spatial model, designed by state representatives based on abstract and general criteria, specific spatial practices of the local population necessarily suggest deviations and contradictions. ¹⁷ In this sense, Lefebvre ¹⁸ proposed the concept of heterotopia to describe practice of space that people develop in their daily lives that coexist in tension with both the rationalized order of capitalism and the state—isotopia—as well as with the expressive desire of the population itself—utopia. Lefebvre states that heterotopias arise in tension, rather than as an alternative to the isotopia. Indeed, in Cova da Moura, as in most cases, we are not able to find that spatial practices of local population are confronting in a direct way the state and openly challenge its legitimacy. Rather than that, we observe a relationship of conflict where neighbors claim recognition for the uniqueness of a territory and negotiation on policies to be implemented.

Currently, there are many local populations facing recurrent conflicts with the forms of territorialization that the state develops through laws, public policies, and investments. Winchester et al. ¹⁹ provide good examples such as the resistance of people from the Third World against territorial organization models based on Western concepts of environmental conservation and tourism, the resistance of the Sikh community in Singapore to relocate their temples, or as the resistance of the local population of Dayton (Texas) against installation of a waste disposal company. Cova da Moura is a unique case of urban conflict, which has certain parallels with others but also differences that should be taken into account. In this case, it is necessary a theoretical discussion on the concept of neighbor, an identity referent that used to be central to urban conflicts but has not received the attention it deserves in theory and in public debate until now. ²⁰

The category of “neighbor” seems to be polysemic depending on the context where it is applied. In her excellent ethnography about El Alto (Bolivia), Sian Lazar ²¹ retrieves and analyses the antithetical conception that Francois-Xavier Guerra ²² states between identities of neighbor and citizen. From Guerra’s perspective, which Lazar introduces partially in its works, the citizen is shown as an individual component of an abstract community—the people, the nation—while the neighbor is always shown as someone specific, rooted: territorialized. Taking into account the liberal concept of citizenship that builds individuals as anonymous reproductions of a rationalized and universal model, the notion of neighbor is built based on a specific and distinct identity. Neighborship as a category does not result from legal status or legal recognition, but active participation in a bounded network of social relations, which produces its own meanings and is based on personalized recognition. Based on this difference, we can better understand the conflict between two territorialization projects in Cova da Moura: first, the state proposes a rationalized territory for a standardized citizen; whereas neighbors defend a territory formed by specificity and uniqueness of their experiences. Whereas this tense relationship between citizenship and residence is common to other urban conflicts, the neighbor category in Cova da Moura has a set of distinctive features that are worth detailing.

Being a resident in Cova da Moura implies being part of a deteriorated and severely stigmatized environment. Instead, this neighborhood is home to significant internal heterogeneity. In the lower parts, we have white people of Portuguese descent who are reasonably integrated to society living in good quality homes, while in the upper areas, most of the population, mostly of African origin, are settled in humble homes and exposed to serious problems of poverty, marginalization, and lack of infrastructure. The condition of resident has a minor importance in the first group, where people avoid identifying with the image of the neighborhood that is projected mainly through media. Actually, it is the second group, and particularly those of Cape Verdean origin, who have made their neighborship an identity source of paramount importance and, by extension, who exert more pressure in defense of recognition of cultural uniqueness of the neighborhood. Practices such as graffiti, rap music, and aesthetic appeal to support leaders of the African independence—like Amílcar Cabral—and other generic black identity like—Martin Luther King—or to claim for African origin in names of streets of the neighborhood and shops are an evidence to a collective effort to secure a bond between each neighbor with its community, with the neighborhood itself, and with Africa as homeland.

The importance of this immigrant origin forces us to relativize the own physical boundaries of this neighborhood and also the limits of the condition of neighborship. Much of the population of this neighborhood is fully integrated into the vast network of people, places, and relationships that are part of the Cape Verdean diaspora. ²³ The movement of persons among the various enclaves that are part of this diaspora is a constant. It is common for people from the neighborhood to take some time away visiting their family in Cape Verde and Sao Tome, to temporarily emigrate to France and Belgium, or to host, for an indefinite period, relatives living in the United States. This interweaving of the neighborhood in a transnational scenario clearly presents a contrastive feature comparing with other neighborhoods in the surroundings. It is significant in this regard that it is common among these residents to refer to the neighborhood as Ilha da Cova da Moura (Cova da Moura Island). By characterizing this neighborhood as an island, neighbors are simultaneously claiming a double identity of its territory: its radical difference from the rest of Lisbon and its symbolic integration in the Cape Verde archipelago.

This connection with a foreign community certainly raises particular consequences in relationship with the territory. In Cova da Moura, it is possible to appreciate an apparently paradoxical situation: the affirmation of ethnic otherness—the foreigner origin—is an important part of the discourse on the vindication of the territory. This formula appears more often in the opposite sense: tend to be locals who, precisely for being autochthon, mobilize their ethnic identity to claim exclusive control over the territory. This is clearly seen in “Small-town defenders” living in Hazleton (Pennsylvania) which were studied by Steil and Ridgley, ²⁴ where the condition of neighbor is built on an idea of a community of native people against immigrants who are perceived as a threat. Cova da Moura, on the contrary, is daily built by most of the neighbors as a non-Portugal, or to put it another way, as a different Portugal which is a reflection of a silenced history of colonial experience, of immigration, racism, and exclusion.

Moreover, the particular situation of each household also seems to have an important influence on forms of attachment to local community. On one hand, proposals for urban intervention in the neighborhood, which are threatening to demolish most of houses, favors the extension of a shared feeling of being part of the same neighborhood. On the other hand, however, the intensity of that feeling and its implications vary depending on whether you are a homeowner or renter, if houses are of a better or poor quality, and whether possessing a strong network of friends and family in the neighborhood. Finally, it should be taken into account that the concept of the neighborship and its importance also connects with a strong local tradition, deeply rooted especially in poor neighborhoods of Lisbon, where local organizations have played a key role in recent times and in such matters as the urbanization of the territory, literacy, and the democratization of the country after the dictatorship. In this sense, we found a significant difference with other cities. For example, Fava ²⁵ explains that in Buenos Aires the condition of neighbor is closely linked to a middle class belonging, to a European origin, and to processes of upward social mobility through trade and education. In Portugal, the importance of neighborship reference appears to be stronger in the so-called popular neighborhoods, and is related more frequently with symbols and cultural codes of the working classes. Something that has a direct impact on the implications of the fact of being a neighbor, as if in Argentina’s capital this represents a “inversely proportional condition to political affiliation, as well as the exercise of protest in public space,” ²⁶ in Portugal the recent history is deeply rooted in highly politicized neighborhood movements and large protest activity. In Cova da Moura, this neighbor activism, attached to the ethnic diversity of its people, the unique settlement process of the neighborhood, and its serious socioeconomic problems have resulted in powerful territorialization forms, as we will see in what follows.

The Neighborhood and Its Neighbors: History and Configuration of Territory in Cova da Moura

The process of spatial configuration in Cova da Moura was shaped by the extremely precarious conditions that delimited their settlement. Throughout the 1970s, immigrants who came first from Portuguese rural areas and subsequently from Cape Verde, found in the area a vast piece of wasteland, where any form of settlement would necessarily require the investment of labor. The first task for the new settlers was building houses with their own hands, which at first would be makeshift homes built with waste materials, primarily wood. These materials were obtained by the residents themselves in sawmills and landfills of the surroundings. Both the collection of these materials and their transportation were tasks developed more or less independently by each household. The construction of such makeshift housing took place at night and in the spare time left by the long working hours. All family members took part in this task, adults worked as laborers and children helped in loading and transporting materials. Certain phases of the construction process, such as placing the roof, demanded a greater amount of labor. For these specific tasks, each family searched for voluntary help of other adults among their own neighbors:

When I got to the neighbourhood there were no houses here, there was nothing: only wooden shacks. In order to make the houses, neighbours used to help. You spoke to your neighbours to do it. . . . I like the neighbourhood because in the past there was nothing but now it is fine. (João Lucio; Cape Verdean, 69 years)

Collaboration among neighbors therefore seems to be a practice that is rooted in the territorialization forms of the neighborhood from its earliest stages. Due to the hardness of the context of reception, organization and solidarity seem to be essential requirements for these migrants to continue to exist as a community. ²⁷ Once the shacks were built, the access to illegal electricity points and the construction of the first structures for water storage demanded a high degree of cooperation from neighbors. The whole process created strong networks based on a big sense of neighborship and with a strong element of mutual solidarity ²⁸ that later will play a decisive role in the claim for basic services for the neighborhood. In 1978, the first neighborhood association was born, which brought together many of the oldest inhabitants of Cova da Moura who played an important role in ensuring improvements for the neighborhood. The first installations of water, electricity, and sewerage services to the low-lying areas of the district, mainly inhabited by the Portuguese were followed. Meanwhile, the neighborhood population was nourished by the arrival of thousands of Africans who settle in the highlands, and that will take longer to achieve standardized access to these services. Since 1984, an Azorian and a Belgian married couple, both highly politicized who have arrived in the upper area of the neighborhood in the early 1980s, passed to lead a broad organizational process leading to the Association Moinho da Juventude, which involved the Cape Verdean population until it became a protagonist:

We did the first meeting in order to get water to 900 people. We also did not have water in our house. I had been living a year here at home, and we had only one fountain [for all of us]. We had to do something to get our installation of water and sewer for these 900 people. This was on November 1st 1984, and this is what we call the beginning of the association. They were 900 people who had no water, it was a three-year fight to get water and sewage system. Here at that time used to live about 3000 people . . . 4000 people. So it was a quarter that had not yet water and sewage in the house. (Adele; Belgian, 70 years)

Two processes of territorialization occurred relatively autonomously in Cova da Moura throughout the 1980s. In the lower part of the neighborhood, the Portuguese neighbors, with a number of years living there and who were grouped in a neighbor association, will get a series of important urban improvements and implemented an organizational strategy oriented to cooperate with the state. Throughout the decade, when makeshift dwellings are replaced by built constructions, it was this association that managed the subdivision of land in the neighborhood, the delimitation of the urban layout, the pavement of the streets, and the installation of the electricity, water, and sewerage. Meanwhile, in the upper area of Cova da Moura, the lack of improvements gained in the lower part, combined with a growing sense of racial exclusion in areas such as access to employment and citizenship legal status itself, triggered a distinctive process of self-organization, which involved that the Association Moinho da Juventude started having a considerable impact on neighborhood spaces.

The activity of the Moinho da Juventude focused on the needs of the most vulnerable neighbors. This meant, during the first years, providing special support to its female population from Cape Verde, which was growing in the area by effects of family reunification in the 1980s. For this population, who like men need to work outside home to provide a salary, there soon emerges the need for support in the care of the children during working time. Thus, the association created a small library, first at Fernando and Adele’s home—the married couple mentioned above—and later in a small building built by volunteer work of the residents. In this library, children can spend evenings being cared by volunteers of the association while their parents work. Soon the growth of association lead first to legal registration as Instituição Particular de Solidariedade Social (IPSS) ²⁹ in 1987, and two years later to the first cooperation agreement with the Portuguese Social Security for provision of services in the neighborhood. Thereafter, obtaining grants from the own Social Security and the European Social Fund will help to raise resources to amplify the impact of the association in the neighborhood, while their leaders develop contacts with government agencies, universities, and national and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). All this work lead to the construction of the first main office of the association, through a unique combination of local self-organization and external support:

The construction of the first building had the support of volunteers from Belgium, Holland and Germany, to build the main office. And then we got small funds that we were looking for in several places to buy materials . . . It is an organisation that is called the Companions Builders. They are in several countries, and they help during holidays: they are the ones who pay their trip, and we have to provide them food and accommodation to compensate their work. (Adele; Belgian, 70 years)

From this moment on, the association Moinho da Juventude experienced extraordinary growth in terms of their support levels among neighbors, its ability to mobilize resources and legitimacy. In a few years, the association appeared to become the main collective actor in Cova da Moura, and thanks to the gradual assumption of new responsibilities as IPSS, it managed to create child care and school canteens, training workshops, extracurricular activities, legal advice service and cultural mediation, professional employability office, literacy classes, and sports teams in four disciplines. With more than eighty hired neighbors, today the association manages to give employment and economic resources to many families in the neighborhood. It is interesting to note, on this point, the spatial impact of this process.

First, the growth of the association itself demanded an increased physical presence within the area. Now the daily activity of the association is coordinated from a big main headquarters building with no fewer than five offices. It incorporates a large child care room with two classes and a large patio in an annex building, as well as a community kitchen and rooms where dining service is offered to children in day care room. In another smaller building, located a few blocks and a few hundred meters of the office building, the association provides legal services and job counseling daily, while a third building hosts a library, a small meeting room, and several offices. Finally, cultural activities, including batuke classes and rehearsals of traditional dances are held in a fourth building, a house of several plants temporarily donated to the association by a family that emigrated to France several years ago. In short, today the association has constant presence in four points of the neighborhood, which are central spaces of neighbors’ social interaction. Basically, all residents of Cova da Moura, especially those in the higher areas, have a direct or indirect contact with the Association Moinho da Juventude:

Everyone in the neighbourhood has great respect for the association. Because if you do not participate, your brother is involved, or your son goes to kindergarten, or your neighbour works in the kitchen, or grandfather goes to literacy class. (Jorge Carlos; Cape Verdean, 25 years)

To understand the strong growth experienced by the Association Moinho da Juventude and its decisive impact on territorial organization of this neighborhood, it must be taken into account the limited presence of the Portuguese government for two decades. Cova da Moura was considered a forgotten place for a long time by institutions, outside the big development plans implemented in the Portuguese capital, and subject to serious problems of poverty, precarious facilities, and stigmatization in its public image. This institutional neglect was perceived by neighbors as an affront and as a form of institutionalized discrimination. This exclusion of institutional plans for the area acted as an incentive in the process of self-organization and reaffirmation of identity. In the late 1990s, the Moinho da Juventude held a constant presence in all areas of the social life of the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Cova da Moura suffered a serious deterioration of its public image, becoming increasingly associated with marginalization and crime. Especially during the middle of this decade, the growth of the city of Lisbon, together with the improvement of public transport supported by the Expo ’98, pushed up property prices in the area and provoked the first signs of interest among builders and real estate agents. That is when different Portuguese state institutions turned their eyes to Cova da Moura. In a few years, it went from being forgotten to being an absolute priority for urban intervention.

Public Policies and Neighbors’ Resistance in Cova da Moura

For a quarter of a century, this neighborhood was invisible to the government, thus allowing consolidation of a problem, which includes among its many facets a serious dispute over the ownership of the land. It legally belongs to a family that, during this first period, was able to harmonize their claims with the strategy of the administration, which allowed the occupation as a lesser evil. In the late 1990s, however, these areas experienced a sharp rise in their potential value, and become a popular target for urban planners and speculators. This caused landowners to increasingly pressure the State for compensation for the occupation of their land, and in turn motivated a new attitude from the State to push for the clearing of the neighborhood. In this way, the divestment suffered by Cova da Moura over twenty-five years has made the area highly sensitive to a potential problem of gentrification. Basically, we observe a growth in the area of the rent gap, which authors such as Smith ³⁰ define as a central mechanism of gentrification. Thus, prolonged divestment in the area causes a devaluation of the built space, which contrasts sharply with a potential value of the land that grows due to factors such as the quality of the views, ³¹ the improvement of public transport, and the best equipment in the environment. This disparity between the potential ground rent level and the actual ground rent capitalized increases the profit margin for potential investors. That is why authors such as Mendes ³² have seen in the devaluation of Cova da Moura a process deliberately produced for the purpose of the productivity of subsequent capital investment.

In the definition of gentrification by authors such as Clark, ³³ the key element of the phenomenon is the substitution of users of a space by others with higher purchasing power. As we cannot say that such a substitution has occurred in Cova da Moura to date, the gentrification of the area continues to be more a potential risk than a consolidated problem. However, neighbors have a high awareness of this risk and tend to reject public policies implemented since the early 2000s.

In 2001, the City Council of Amadora launches Renewal Plan for Cova da Moura, which is considered the first initiative directly aimed at transforming the neighborhood. With the aim of clearing and transforming the housing and urban layout of the area, this program openly proposed the demolition of 80 percent of the existing homes in the neighborhood. It was intended as a forceful intervention, which would definitely tackle many and varied problems of a neighborhood weighed down by poverty, exclusion, and marginalization. However, soon this would be met with opposition of the neighborhood’s population.

Neighbors began to develop a strategy of resistance to the Renewal Plan, to be led by a united committee, ³⁴ which brought together several associations, including the powerful Moinho da Juventude. Within several years, these institutions collected signatures from neighbors to inform residents of the issue and to express widespread rejection of such plan. In the statements by this neighbor commission, it is possible to appreciate the clear awareness of the existence of two opposing proposals for the territorial organization of the area. Representatives of this commission denounced the Renewal Plan as an attack on the local people, whose forms of spatial occupation are considered part of a history with a unique identity:

Many of the lines of the urban layout of the neighbourhood enable a wealth of social and local community in the area. They are anchored in the history and culture of its “resident-builders” and reflect the investments made here over three decades. ³⁵

What we observe here is that the same neighbor networks that were forged in the process of its construction now use a speech that claims their legitimate ownership, and even question the motives of authorities. After years of institutional passivity, neighbor organizations accused the Renewal Plan of responding to illegitimate interests and being linked to property speculation. Among the population, all of humble means, the concern began to grow of possible relocation to unwanted apartment blocks where they would have to pay a rent. The conviction grew that the Renewal Plan was not aimed at improving the lives of the community but rather at a process of gentrification that aimed to capitalize on the rising value of land in the area. This fear of the neighbors is consistent with the interpretation of gentrification by authors such as Harvey, ³⁶ who point out that political authorities use to act as defenders of the interests of promoters and speculators, and their interventions may have as their ultimate objective the incorporation of urban land to the market circuits.

It should be noted that, by opposing this plan, most of the neighbors assume a position of attachment to the neighborhood, a development that translates into a discourse of identity reaffirmation. Thus, the Cape Verdean identity was reactivated as an axis of resistance against the risk of gentrification, which was suspected to underpin in the institutional renewal plans. From this moment on, and throughout the last fifteen years, the history of Cova da Moura has been a loop of litigation spurred by speculative desire of landowners and interested construction companies. This speculative pressure has been supported by a set of plans that follow the urban hygienist lines set by the Renewal Plan of the City Council of Amadora. For example, the Urban II Programme for Damaia and Buraca districts, ³⁷ financed by European funds, sought to produce a deep transformation to the urban and social profile of the area, based on four objectives: (1) renew the urban environment and enhance public spaces; (2) integrate the African population; (3) revitalize the social environment; and (4) promote an improvement in the socio-educational environment for young population. ³⁸ The Bairros Críticos (Critical Neighborhoods) program that Portuguese government implemented between 2005 and 2013 included Cova da Moura and two other areas with serious problems of urban and social vulnerability: Lagarteiro (Porto) and Vale da Amoreira (Moita). All these initiatives strengthened an institutional discourse that portrayed Cova da Moura as an anomalous space ³⁹ and as a case of urgency in which to intervene. From the perspective of the institutions, urban policies that were proposed appeared as a first opportunity to organize a space which was presented as chaotic, meaningless, and therefore dangerous.

The construction of this discourse involves a public exposure of the problems of the area, which soon became famous throughout Portugal as a negative example of urban exclusion and lack of cultural integration. ⁴⁰ From the late 1990s, rising unemployment and the fact of having abandoned the neighborhood for many decades spawned a significant petty drug problem, which is directly linked to episodes of recurrent violence, the presence of firearms and periodic police operations in the area. All of these elements resulted in conflicts that aroused the interest of the media, further contributing to the negative image of the neighborhood, which the community did not identify with.

The Association Moinho da Juventude has been critical of this process of stigmatization of the neighborhood, which connects with the plans of territorialization that the authorities created for the neighborhood. The association’s leaders interpreted the increasing stigmatization of the area as a process directly linked to the speculative interests and consider the dissemination of an image of Cova da Moura as dangerous place as part of a strategy of gentrification of the surrounding area, with the ultimate aim of expelling the resident population:

This neighbourhood is in a very good location: near Lisbon, near Sintra, near Cascais. It has an optimal location and it is built on a hill which is also excellent, because it has an excellent view here. That is why real estate is very interested in this field. . . . They have stigmatised the neighbourhood since 2002 because there was a plan to do here: destroy the neighbourhood. . . . The plan was to tear down 80 percent of the neighbourhood, leaving only 20 percent. . . . We were invited to leave and later people with more money would come here. (Adele; Belgian, 70 years)

Having faced the problems of invisibility, residents now face the dissemination of images presenting the neighborhood as a dangerous ghetto. This would lead them to develop a series of initiatives to combat stigma. These are initiatives that try to spread a positive image of Cova da Moura, which values the history of this neighborhood and dignifies its people. What is interesting is that these strategies explicitly led to an alternative territorialization project, built around Cape Verdean identity.

Based on this alternative discourse, which is ironically connected with the institutional image of Lisbon that claims cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism, Cova da Moura presents a process of self-construction as a Cape Verdean neighborhood. It is possible to appreciate an organized strategy to make visible at all levels the Cape Verdean origin of most of its neighbors that is reconstructed as a source of pride and cultural richness to the Portuguese capital. This strategy involves a number of urban transformations that brought meaning to the spaces in the neighborhood and were expressly linked to the idea of a Cape Verdean identity in exile. So, the whole area was filled with graffiti depicting images of strong content of Cape Verdean, African or even generically black, including the colors of the flag, maps of the islands or portraits of Amilcar Cabral.

Within a labyrinthine layout of narrow streets, which were retitled with names that evoke places, expressions, or characters from the history of Cape Verde, it is possible to appreciate that it contrasts sharply with the rigid order of the neighborhoods of social housings from the surrounding areas. This practice of renaming the spaces in the neighborhood is a radical challenge to the dominant model of urban planning, and an affirmation of the exclusive legitimacy of the neighbors over this territory. ⁴¹ A renewal process and the visibility of Creole words is observed in all signs that adorn the streets and mostly in all the initiatives of the residents led by the Association Moinho da Juventude. This language, spoken in the majority of the islands and reviled as a vulgar dialect, becomes laden with a sense of pride and identity. Now, the neighborhood claims words like sabura or morabeza, and even rescues the aesthetic use of the feature letter K in the written language of Creole.

Sabura (cheerful, pleasant) is the name given to a project that marks the final stage of this process of reaffirmation of identity. This initiative, supported by the Association Moinho da Juventude, consists of organizing visits to the neighborhood to outsiders. ⁴² These programmed visits aim at combating the stigma and dismantling the image of Cova da Moura as a dangerous place, offering instead a gentle and quaint portrait of a Cape Verdean space. These visits to the area are lead by young people from the association through a predetermined route named Routeiro das Ilhas (The Islands Route), and which symbolically constructs a walk around the neighborhood as an approach to the history and identity of Cape Verdeans immigrants. Throughout these tours, visitors discover African hairdressers in the area, bars, and restaurants specializing in Cape Verdean dishes and an unordered set of alleys whose colors, smells, and sounds constantly reflect an idea of the strong sense of Cape Verde in the background.

The Sabura project and the set of urban interventions implemented by the Association Moinho da Juventude have incorporated the fight against stigma as a priority. This fight against the bad image of the neighborhood is part of a strategy to counteract the deterioration and, in equal measure, to prevent the aggravation of problems that end up justifying external intervention and the gentrification of the urban order. Cova da Moura, renamed significantly as Kova-M, is thus striving to resist the speculative pressure and to maintain in its core all immigrants who built it.

Conclusion

After more than two decades of being neglected, in the early 2000s, Portuguese institutions started to show a new interest in implementing urban policies in Cova da Moura. The proposal for Renewal Plan of neighborhood—driven by the Municipality of Amadora, as the Critical Neighborhoods program, promoted by the central state and the Urban II Project, funded by the European Union—agree on the urban transformation as a strategic way to address a set of complex problems in this neighborhood. All of them suggest stipulated forms to intervene in the territory, establishing new criteria for formal demarcation, its order, and its functional definition. Therefore, all of them share a vision of territorial organization for this area along the standardized criteria of the modern Western urban model.

This model is governed by general principles theoretically based on universal rationality which, by its own condition, thinks of itself as politically neutral. Public institutions involved assume a priori a Cartesian rationality criteria that would bring to Cova da Moura the same planning proposals existing in the rest of the country. This model of spatial planning is seen as the only desirable, the only reasonable one. Any form of resistance is perceived as an anomaly. In this institutional discourse, Cova da Moura appears as a lawless space where human relations lack a guiding principle or are ruled by the wrong one. The three decades of institutional blindness to the problems of this area are interpreted by the institutions as lost time, that has resulted in an anomalous space that requires an emergency intervention.

However, these planning proposals have not received the support they expected, and in fact have aroused a strong opposition movement among neighbors. Collected signatures; letters to mayors, lawmakers, and ministers; gatherings; and protests appear as a constant that requires the need for an alternative proposal for the territorial organization of the neighborhood. Neighbors are opposed to the fact that their homes will be demolished, are opposed to the prospect of abandoning their neighborhood, and demand an active role in the organization of the space they inhabit. And it is not just because the owners have an understandable fear of losing their homes. In parallel, in their speech and in their practices, they claim collective ownership of the territory. It is presented as having value due to their experiences, networks, and memories, which have been woven into its history.

What we see in Cova da Moura is, therefore, a conflict between two incompatible forms of territorial organization of the same space. On one hand, institutions rely on current legislation, as well as Cartesian planning principles that are equally shared by the media and by private companies interested in the increasing value of land. On the other hand, the neighbors present an opposite view defending the value of uniqueness and a demand for real and unique experiences. Contrary to the Universalist criterion of the Cartesian urbanism, residents claim the uniqueness of a neighborhood that is already different by its history and which they understand belongs to them.

The case of Cova da Moura offers an interesting scenario for analysis of a central fact in urban conflicts, the neighborship itself. The development of the conflict reveals that in this Portuguese neighborhood, the neighbor’s identity is constructed largely in opposition to the citizen’s. Indeed, the latter is clearly incorporated in the discourse of political institutions as an abstract entity, which is diluted in a Portuguese, a European, or, more generically, a Western community. Actually, it is for this neutral citizen that governments plan an urbanism that aims to be universally valid. Meanwhile, the neighbor is the figure that supports the critical speeches of the Moinho da Juventude Association and the other institutions from the neighborhood commission. This notion is clearly rooted in the history of the neighborhood, and linked to the participation of a specific and enclosed set of relationships. Really interesting here is that, to the extent that the conflict has been developed and the parties have been festering, both parties have been moving apart, as each presents markers that distinguishes it from the other.

From this perspective, we can interpret the growing importance of the Cape Verdean identity in local strategies of resistance. Practices such as renaming streets with names of Cape Verdean and African origin, the profusion of graffiti inspired in an aesthetic that identifies with the African or generically black which reclaim the Cabo Verdian’s identity of neighbors in local expressions like Sabura, Kova-M, or Ilha da Cova da Moura, cannot be interpreted as a mechanical result of preponderance of Africans and their descendants in the neighborhood. In this context of urban conflict, the expression of Cape Verdean identity and Africanness as markers of the neighborhood underlines a neighborship identity that radically confronts to the notion of citizenship used by institutions. Foreign origin has curiously become the definitive way to test belonging to the neighborhood. It questions the legitimacy in this place of a state that was not involved in its construction and only belatedly expressed an interest in its development.

Moreover, this singular articulation of the notions of citizenship, neighborship, and territory can help us to diminish the importance of other discourses where the condition of the neighbor is reserved to nationals for their alleged ties to the original territory. This case seems to demonstrate that the relationship between these parties is variable, is defined historically, and therefore should be contextualized in all cases.