Segregated knowledge and culture erasure in Beja

Segregated knowledge and culture in Beja

Phoebe Cheng 2022

Environmental Architecture | RS3 Liquid Dessert | Super intensive olive economy

The essay is a fieldwork transcript and research review in mixed media journal format framed by three key pieces of literature:  The right of research by Appadurai; Pedagogy of oppressed by Paulo Freire and Escobar’s Territories of differences: Territories, movement, life, redes. This essay is contemplating on the segregation of knowledge among the locals and migrant workers; the separated publicity access; the erasure of landscape heritage, which are caused by the ongoing agriculture practice in Beja, Portugal.

Keywords:

[Segregated knowledge] [racialized publicity] [erasure foraging] [identity][financial farmland]

Along the olive oil economy sturdily grow, the tilling of super-intensive olive groves in southern Portugal is rapidly expanding in the past 20 years. According the Fortune business insight: ‘The global olive oil market size was USD 13.03 billion in 2019 and it is projected to reach USD 16.64 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 3.2% during the forecast period (2020-2027)’  [1] These monoculture farms are mostly operated by the multi-intentional companies, who are economically occupy but not physically participating the denature agriculture practices. The agriculture land ownership has shifted to incommensurable parties across continents, people who are rooted and nourished by the land are surrounded by the toxic nature with no authorities to access. Whilst the migrant workers who are assigned to executing the conventional agricultural process are being manipulated, and intentionally detached from their current living environment, legal and illegally. The structured daily life and language barrier segregate them to access the city to navigate, research or share the knowledge of the current field condition with the locals. This mono-nature culture spreads wantonly in Beja, and it is abusing human, nature and culture. Yet,  the segregation between local residents and migrant workers themselves is exacerbating the expansion of monoculture, to prevent this environmental encroachment, syncing the information and knowledge cognition of both is the initial step.

[1] “The Global Olive Oil Market Size Was USD 13.03 Billion in 2019 and It Is Projected to Reach USD 16.64 Billion by 2027, Exhibiting a CAGR of 3.2% during the Forecast Period (2020-2027). Fortune Business Insights, November 2020, https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/olive-oil-market-101455.

[2][3][4] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Oppressed, With an introduction by Donal Macedo (Bloomsbury, 2012).

[5][6] Arjun Appadurai, “The Right to Research.,” Globalisation, Societies and Education 4, no. No. 2 (2006): 167–77.

Ephemeral knowledge and cultured knowledge

As the largest region of the Portuguese agricultural economy, Alentejo has been considered and practiced since the Salazar dictatorship. The migrant workers as the executor of the agriculture practice, the structured day-to-day life situate them as the direct witness and experiencers of the season and bio-environment change. Their real-time and physical execution is valid and crucial to be understood as the ephemeral knowledge for the land health, specifically for the current minimum locally involved farming due to the low pay and poor working condition. Yet, these current farming-related knowledge that workers might be unaware of is vital to unfold the hidden and ongoing exploitation. Both Appadurai and Freire’s texts state ‘that knowledge is both more valuable and more ephemeral due to globalization, and that it is vital for the exercise of informed citizenship.’ (Appadurai, 2006，167).[7]  And ‘a critical perception of the world"—which "implies a correct method of approaching reality" so that they can get "a comprehension of total reality.’(Freire,20). [8]  This being said, the Cultured knowledge among locals who have lived in Beja before and during the expansion of olive groves intensification, have to experience ecological change throughout the years, and they share a common vernacular sense of the pattern of climate and biodiversity. More importantly, is the witness of the historical identity shifting post-carnation revolution in 1975 as the largest agricultural community in Portugal.

Therefore, to syncing these two parallel knowledge can radically embed the current unrecognized undergoing land ownership shifting, the erasure of both local culture and bio-heritage. 

Segregated Time, Place, Movement

Based on the argument Appadurai posed in the right to research that ‘a world of rapid change, where markets, media, and migration have destabilized secure knowledge niches and have rapidly made it less possible for ordinary citizens to rely on knowledge drawn from traditional, customary or local sources. (Appadurai, 167) [9] In, Alentejo, Traditional olive plantation as the local customary knowledge, which involves minimal human intervention, requires least human intervention, and no chemical feed has been minorized because of the economic competition. Conventional olive plantation, on the other hand, is industrial manufacturing in every season and every stage that fully survives on the chemical support from fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicides, it is been practiced in every season despite the suitability of the climate condition. These required the least amount of cultured knowledge about the land or the plantation habits. Thus, workers have been shaped as the machines that live in the industrial olive plantation calendar, who are been fully occupied and socially identified as mechanical humans. One of the obstacles to sharing this customary knowledge is the dictated time of everyday life.

According to a foreign grocery shop owner’s description, ‘the migration workers are depending on the seasonal need of olive groves.  December needs more labors, because of the harvest.’  Based on one of the reputational resident’s information, the working hours are from 7 am till 7 pm, no strict hours of working and the workers will be transported to fields by van. They are often been occupied as the complement of the machines, who are mandatory to work from 7 pm to 4 am to maintain the field before the machine work that will take place the next day. The unconditional labor feeding of the olive groves dominates workers’ leisure time freedom, projecting on their minimum public social interaction. The public square in Beja, as one of the most popular social open spaces, can visibly depict the segregation between locals and migrant workers. A minority of the workers are present around the square after farm works of the day, alienated from the majority where the locals are, many others are staying in the poor house, or located in the containers.

Such social segregation to a great extent resonates with Escobar’s territories of difference: place, movements, life, redes. he states that: ‘place-based struggles more generally link body, environment, culture, and economy in all of their diversity (Harcourt and Escobar, eds. 2005) … in a philosophical vein because place continues to be an important source of culture and identity; despite the pervasive delocalization of social life, there is an embodiment and emplacement to human life that cannot be denied’ (Escobar, 7)[10]. He especially discussed racial capitalism in Chapter Place, Settlement and inhabitant that ‘Race was a central organizing factor in the process of settlement and the region's economy… The view of the region as a sort of pantry or cornucopia of riches to be extracted was inextricably linked to the harnessing of black labor (from colonial slave mining to today's African palm cultivation), not infrequently through representations of race that depicted blacks in natural terms.’(Escobar, 47)[11]

[7] Appadurai.

[8] Freire

[9] Appadurai.

[10][11] Arturo Escobar, Territories of Difference Place, Movements, Life, Redes, 2008.

Oppressed and Oppressed

Both Freire and Appadurai emphasis on the inequity and education disparity is the derivation of race and class. In Freire’s text he emphasized to achieve education (social) equity is starts with identify one’s oppressed status quo, ‘Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly.’ (Freire, 47) [2]In order to free oneself from the oppressor, Freire suggests the oppressed need to has the recognition of the oppressed image. ‘The first stage must deal with the problem of the oppressed consciousness and the oppressor consciousness, the problem of men and women who oppress and men and women who suffer oppression. It must take into account their behavior, their view of the world, and their ethics. A particular problem is the duality of the oppressed: they are contradictory, divided beings, shaped by and existing in a concrete situation of oppression and violence.’ (Freire, 55) [3]However, in Beja, even the migrant workers and the locals are both situating in the same environment, but the majority of them are not consciously aware of their oppressed status quo.  The migrant workers are directly extracted by the multi-international companies and mafias who solely maximizing the benefit from each olive oil process, which is reflecting on workers’ poor living condition, toxic and hidden working condition. Thus, different ecological levels of oppression exist between both local and migrant work.

The workers on the one hand are the direct oppressed group that executes the oppressor’s order, which is to extract the nature land without benefit and respect the locals neither. On the other hand, they are also been marginalized within Beja city, where the major social public locates. With the language barrier, plus the identity recognition as racialized labor, the oppression in such cases is accelerating between the oppressed and the oppressed.  Freire described this as ‘The peasant situation; that is, oppression, remains unchanged... Thus, it illustrated our previous assertion that during the initial stage of their struggle the oppressed find in the oppressor their model of "manhood.’ (Freire, 46) [4]Different from Freire’s concept of freeing oneself from oppression is based on the recognition of self and other’s oppression, Appadurai’s proposition is based on the prompt of the universality of access to research as a basic human right. ‘Human beings are, in this sense, researchers, since all human beings make decisions that require them to make systematic forays beyond their current knowledge horizons.’ (Appadurai, 167)[5] He believes, it is basic to objectively learn about one’s living environment across generations, gender, and race, in order to generate an adequate situation and future decision-making. This argument in Beja is the restricted urban space sharing for migrant workers and unpermitted natural access rights for natives. Both lack the knowledge of their current situated environment, so they are both incomplete citizens to varying degrees. ‘This argument requires us to recognize that research is a specialized name for a generalized capacity, the capacity to make disciplined inquiries into those things we need to know, but do not know yet. […] since all human beings make decisions that require them to make systematic forays beyond their current knowledge horizons.’ (Appadurai, 167) [6]

“Beja: Praça Da Escravatura Moderna.” Esquerda. Accessed July 20, 2022. https://www.esquerda.net/artigo/beja-praca-da-escravatura-moderna/79401.

The identity of being seasonal workers is interiorly and exteriorly impacting their drive to interact with the regional culture through participate the same public sphere.  Despite of the language barrier, the conscious of necessity to be part of the city is varied among workers. Some of them are traveled from Spain to earn the seasonal money; some others are working in Beja for the legal permit which allows them to return with their family; and some of the cruel scenarios are workers’ family were purposefully been settled in Morocco/ other regions in Africa for the workers to return, as a method to prevent their residents in Alentejo. Thus, the identity of being migrant workers cannot be concluded under one condition, it is varying of hidden factors forming and restraining workers’ primary self- identity to be in the city. Which Freire and Escobar both expands their remarks on. Freire believes to free from the oppression ‘Self-depreciation is another characteristic of the oppressed, which derives from their internalization of the opinion the oppressors hold of them.’(Freire,63) [1]Different with Freire’s rather theoretical narration, Escobar elaborated  his reviews of the identity through a rather exterior angle, he narrated his proposition of labor and racism by giving the example :  the settlement of the Colombian Pacific, which in large extent similar with Beja’s current labor demography,  ‘the Andean plateaus were inhabited by the civilized and good white people of European origin; the humid, tropical lowlands by blacks and indigenous groups incapable of reason and progress’ under the premise land condition which ‘… indigenous groups, organized in the well-known were often forced to encomiendas, supply food for the cuadrillas. Slaves obtained their freedom in a variety of ways, including self-manumission through the purchasing of their freedom with the proceeds from independent mining they conducted on Sundays and festivities. (maroonism) was also Cimarronismo important as a source of freedom, leading to the consolidation of free settlements known as where processes of cultural, demo palenques, graphic, and military resistance and reconstitution took place.’ (Escobar, 46)[2]

Information and Knowledge

Gathered from the conversations with several local activists, that if Spain’s lack of rainfall continues, they might close off the river Guadiana feeding to Alqueva dam from the Spain side, which is the water reservoir built for the irrigation system in Alentejo. Also, the current Beja real estate price is rising, which directly affect the migrant workers’ living condition, specifically for those who already have limited utility access. These prevailing information between certain groups in Beja can be crucial for workers and local farmers who rely on the irrigation system, and their income is dependent on olive farming. To distinguish the validation of this information requires a certain level of understanding of the local authorities and knowledge of the region. Yet, the disconnect of different residents in the same region, information that closely relates to the ecology and population movement is currently only shared among the elites and who have the knowledge capacity to process this coded regulation-based information.  ‘Knowledge (both abstract and empirical) is the coin of the realm, and the capacity to distinguish knowledge from rumor, fact from fiction, propaganda from news, and anecdote from trend, is vital for the exercise of informed citizenship. (Appadurai 168)[]

In conclusion, the current land and labor exploitation in Beja, Alentejo is only been acknowledged among several local environmental movement groups. The ecological abuse and racial capitalism are not been widely shared with the mass majority of the locals, nor those who are working as the toxic process frontier. To simply inform the ongoing land ownership financialization and ecological crime is not enough for the locals and workers to act on. Instead, foremostly educating why super-intensive agricultural practice is threatening global climate health and human right is the cornerstone that needed to be utmost emphasized. Thus, syncing the knowledge among the local and migrant workers is to firstly unify the recognition of being oppressed, then merge the understanding of the mono -nature that happening in the privatized  farm land is the process of toxication nature,  the nature that once been liberal from the dictator by the peasants.