On Monday the 26th of November, at 18:30 a protest took place at the door of the recently closed Ginginha bar do Rossio at Largo de São Domingos in Lisbon. Around 100 people, the music band ‘Al Gazarra’ and one man with a board saying ‘ASAE: protege-nos dos transgénicos, não do tradição[1]’ (coincidently the writer of this article), turned up to protest against the closure of one of the few small traditional businesses that still exist in Lisbon and to express their support towards the owner. Flyers were distributed by protesters amongst by passers to explain the motives of the protest.

The old and famous Ginginha do Rossio was closed by the Autoridade de Segurança Alimentar e Económica (ASAE)[2] for low hygiene conditions and technical defects. It should be noted also that the order of ASAE came in a joint operation, which also involved the PSP[3], the Direcção de Finanças de Lisboa[4] and the Direcção Geral das Alfândegas e dos Impostos Especiais sobre o Consumo[5]. The objective in that operation was therefore not only the inspection of restaurants and bars but also the investigation of citizens of foreign nationality that regularly concentrate themselves in this zone. In this operation thirty persons where taken to the police station, two persons were detained for reason of illegal residence in the country, and four persons were ordered to leave the country (Jornal de Notícias, 16-11-07). The closure of Ginginha was therefore only one of the consequences of the operation.

It was a coincidence but I was there when this joint authority operation took place more than two weeks ago. Or should I say joint authority raid and occupation of public space. The whole Largo de São Domingos was sealed of by dozens of policemen, no one was allowed in the perimeter, everyone who was in, was trapped. I was forced as a passing person to make a detour, only because some authorities decided that it was time and legitimate to infringe on the peace of what is normally a gathering place for a whole diversity of people of all different kinds of backgrounds and cultures.

Just because the closure of Ginginha on ordnance of the ASAE is set within this broader operation just described above, its actions can also not be analysed as isolated from those events. Spaces such as Largo de São Domingos are islands of social and economic diversity. Those spaces are maintained through a specific kind of social and economic relations rooted in tradition and sense of community. Such islands of diversity are however becoming increasingly rare in the urban spaces of the European environment. That is because the enormously powerful homogenizing, standardizing machine with the European Union as its machinist-engineer, tends to swallow those colourful places and spit them out again as another grey spot on what was already becoming a grey painting. Colour, diversity and social networks so important to sustain those that have little material and financial wealth are in danger or effectively disappear. Instead a colourless environment appears that is both profit maximizing on both the axis’s of time and space. Old social and economic relations in subtle equilibrium with the local physical space, integrating the individual are replaced by a new economic order. An economic order characterized by economies of scale and streams of goods and services, that only pass by like a train that does not have a reason to stop because there is no station. An economical order that has no possibility to adapt to ‘the local’, ‘the small’, ‘the unique’, ‘the individual’.

Having a closer look at the practices of ASAE, the closure of Ginginha de Rossio is only one expression of its active function in the homogenizing machine of the EU. Leaving the urban environment of the city behind in this paragraph and moving our focus to the rural environment, we can see that the same type of process, with involvement of the ASAE, target this space as well. The reform that western agricultural systems have undergone in the last decades has been one marked by industrialisation. This again encompasses the tendency towards homogenisation and creating economies of scale, again at the cost of local diversity, in this case not only social diversity, but also biological diversity. Recently, the pressure on locally based agricultural systems has become increasingly stronger through the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Now this specific and controversial aspect of agricultural is one very much dominated by large multinational industries, that have the interest of profit maximizing at the heart of the purpose of their existence. And those businesses find an active supporter and promoter in the EU. ASAE publicly announced in a press conference in the Algarve that it would not control GMO food product labelling assuming that GMO food products on the supermarket shelves are per definition safe. From every possible direction there exist however indications that GMOs pose real threats to both consumers and the natural environment while further leading to the undermining of social relations in rural communities.

Fact that ASAE, the agency which is supposed to be directly responsible for safeguarding consumer health dares to make such blatant statements declaring that GMOs are safe, while many indications point towards the opposite, that does take away every last bit of credibility when ASAE would defend that their action against Ginginha do Rossio is in the interest and for the protection of the consumer.

The impression of the larger context described above, involving both rural and urban environments, is very general and seems to be ungraspable by the individual. However, those processes manifest themselves at the same time through those small scale alterations of our living world like we see happening to the Largo de São Domingos, its Ginginha and the people there assembling, talking, discussing, arguing, and living; or when the first GMO field appeared this year in Silves, in the region of the Algarve which was previously declared as a GMO Free Zone by its regional governments.

In Lisbon only, the Ginginha case is unfortunately also not unique in its kind. Just on the other side of the Rossio square, Grémio is located, which recently has become a gathering space for artists, activists and the alternative progressive individual in general and previously already was a meeting space for older people to socialize. The same processes are generating increasing pressure on this space so that also this location is at the brink of being swallowed by the homogenizing machine.

Is their really nothing that local people can do in defence of their traditional environments that provide them with more social security and better life quality, at least in comparison with the vision of their near, seemingly inescapable future?

Fortunately, there exists a real possibility to answer pressure with at least an equal force of resistance. And it is important to immediately stress out that this not a mere theoretical statement that has no linkage with reality. Examples are there and they are happening now. The people of Grémio are organizing themselves, resisting to the pressures that seek to turn a colourful place into another grey spot. Ginginha was closed, but Largo de São Domingos did receive hundred protestors to oppose this event. The polemics on GMOs did rise to unseen levels after a group of activists decided to destroy part of the first GMO field in the GMO Free Zone of the Algarve. GAIA[6] also does wage campaign against the use of transgenics in agriculture and defends therefore the preservation of biological and social diversity. National governments are turning course under pressure of their civil societies, multinational food producing multinational refrain from using GMO in their products because they fear that consumers will decide against buying their products if they would contain GMO. But the care and the need of people for diversity does not express itself only through being against something, it expresses itself evenly to be for something. What else would have been driving the initial motivation of the people that built and maintain a space such as Grémio? But also new seeds that may lead to colourful flowering space are being planted regularly now. Look at the Mouraria neighbourhood, also not so far away from Largo de São Domingos, where people of GAIA have started to build a social centre, using space which was not even used before, re-establishing some of the social relations and networks that existed before but had been going into decline.

The choice is present and available in each and one of us. It is a choice ready to be taken. The potential for success comes then naturally if enough people find it valuable, obvious, necessary, attractive, fun or challenging, whatever the motive, to choose that path of resistance. Islands of diversity can become islands of resistance and its populations can be victorious in fighting of the invading homogenizing machine as long as people are numerous, persistent and creative enough to do so. Just because human creativity can and will never be defeated by the machine that is also slow, mindless and therefore predictable in its actions.

Add some colour to the painting and resist by joining one of the projects or campaigns below!

Johan Diels

GAIA

Grémio
http://gremiolisbonense.blogspot.com/ gremiolisbonense [at] gmail [dot] com

Centro Social da Mouraria (GAIA)

http://gaia.org.pt/node/2689 csm [at] gaia [dot] org [dot] pt

Campaign against transgénics in agriculture (GAIA)

http://gaia.org.pt/ogm ogm [at] gaia [dot] org [dot] pt