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Mariana Correia Pinto is a journalist for Público, where she works closely and in depth in the Local Porto section. And it's no exaggeration to say that this "place" has a name - the sentimental territory, the object of study and research, and the mission of citizenship are one: Campanhã. The parish is, in fact, the subject of the book he published, "Porto, última estação".
The sun rises in the east, so its first rays are always towards Campanhã. But this is an area of the city that sometimes seems to unfold in shadows - between people who hide and problems that are concealed. Its status as a periphery is not new: it lies outside the city's main thoroughfare, has a dilapidated housing stock and few businesses and opportunities.
Mariana's relationship with Campanhã is triangulated across borders. She was born in Gondomar, in her grandparents' house, right next to that invisible line where Gondomar ends and Porto begins. She grew up in Bonfim, crossing over to the neighbouring parish to go to school. And while at work, she would grab any story that could bring her back to the east.
© Nuno Miguel Coelho
And why this dedication? It all comes down to the pillar that drives his journalistic work: "I want to tell people's stories that don't appear in the newspapers. What can I add that isn't being told?". In the newsroom, there are many topics that are imposed by the agenda, but Mariana tells us that "whenever I saw something that caught my eye, I went after it. And then it snowballs, because you create sources in that area, in a certain territory, and you make that your primary territory."
© Nuno Miguel Coelho
Listening with alertness
Some of these stories are inscribed in the collective memory, such as the Aleixo neighbourhood, where it was possible to have the privilege (and luxury, given the constraints of a current newsroom) of spending six months in close contact with the residents and discovering the lives that were lived there. Other stories are smaller, like that of a family Mariana met at a town hall meeting in Porto. "They were absolutely desperate, they were going to be evicted. It was a large family with several children. And they were living in absolutely miserable conditions."
Having found no specific solution at that meeting other than to remain on the waiting list for social housing, Mariana did what she could: "I saw such desperation in those people that, when the meeting was over, I went after them and asked if I could tell their story. And the story was very shocking indeed. Because they were living in conditions that nobody should live in the 21st century. And a news story came out. And then we made another one."
With this insistence, Social Security ended up reviewing this family's case and they were finally given decent housing. "I'm not saying that we were responsible for this family getting a house. I think we gave visibility to the case and showed the layers that existed there that, in fact, put them in a position to have a home. That was maybe five years ago. And those people continue to talk to me almost every month. They felt that I was the one who changed their lives. And it wasn't." Mariana is peremptory in her refusal of any kind of credit, just as she is in classifying her work as activism - "I don't like the word activism because it's often politicised. And there's a lot of 'justice' journalism that I abhor. I don't want to do that, and the line can be blurred."
"Poverty 'sells' very well. And that's the last thing I want to do with my work"
There is another border, perhaps less tenuous, that Mariana refuses to cross. When dealing with the people whose lives she portrays, she is very careful about what she exposes: "Poverty 'sells' very well. And that's the last thing I want to do with my work. I don't want to use people to make a good text. In other words, the person's life comes first." An essential precaution, not least because the impact of these pieces on the interviewer and the interviewee is uneven. In cases of social trauma, such as the homeless population, the journalist always tries to "protect people" and not "take the bloodiest part of the thing as if it were a weapon".
Wrong side of the tracks
When the opportunity arose to write a book for the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, he was asked to write something about Porto. At that moment, the gravitational pull of Campanhã seemed inescapable. It was 2017 and Campanhã's problems were well known and recognised. The figure of the railway station, the point of arrival for so much labour migration to the city, lent itself to the title of an exploration "about the evolution of Campanhã over time, and how the city became this broken city, on a ramp. Where everything comes to the West. And nothing reaches the East".
The book is divided into four chapters: one dedicated to José António Pinto ("Chalana"), a social worker at the Campanhã Parish Council; another dealing with the case of the MIRA FORUM project; the third focussing on the issue of housing; and, finally, a chapter with a forensic analysis of how poverty became established in this parish. With Espaço Mira (read Agenda Porto's report here), the issue of the appropriation of poverty by outsiders once again arises. "Some artistic projects make use of people in a leeching logic. But there's also a lot of art being made with communities that is absolutely structural and transforms people's lives - there are many companies and many people doing it in a very interesting way, like Visões Úteis, for example. But there are also those who do it by making use of communities. They use what they can from the people to do a great job, then leave and never come back. And people's lives probably get worse than they were before."
© Nuno Miguel Coelho
But not everything is gloomy. In the book, Mariana refers to Campanhã as the "land of promise", due to the long succession of revitalisation ideas that never reached their final stages. However, she admits that "at the moment you can see some things that mean it's no longer just the land of promise. There is already something being done, like the redevelopment of Parque Oriental, for example, or some affordable rent projects. Even the redevelopment of the Slaughterhouse, while not my preferred model, I think it will do something for this area."
Mariana is now going through a time of transition. On sabbatical from her job as a journalist, she is working on her next book, the result of a grant she won from the DGLAB (Directorate-General for Books, Archives and Libraries). Along the way, there was even time to write a play. But the mission of citizenship won't be left by the wayside: "I'd really like my daughter to live in a country that's even freer than the one I grew up in and, for that, I think journalism is very important."
by Ricardo Alves
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