Photos: Gabriela Caldeira Cabral and Beatriz Santamaría
Now, as the fire extinguishes, bent by the rain and the strength of people’s arms, I ponder on what is said after this.
The feelings are many and contradictory. There is anger, yet resignation. There is sadness, but blown by hope. There is rage, yet solidarity. Above all, there is an enormous desire to understand what happened, how it was possible for it to happen, and a knot in the pit of the stomach, fueled by the certainty that if nothing is done, much worse awaits on the horizon.
I speak with the voice of someone who lived, 30 years ago, in a village on the foothills of the Serra da Estrela. There has always been forests, beautiful, thick stands of pine and oak, with large chestnut trees, eucalyptus, and various other trees whose names I do not know. How much did I play among them.
Believe it or not, there have always been wildfires. What is lacking today, which existed before, is people, young people, strong people. People who worked the fields around the villages. People who watered the pastures. People who herded animals that cleared the fields and thickets. People who planted beautiful vegetable gardens and made use of everything the forest provided. There were no waste, and everything was useful and used.
People who made water points. People who had water tanks. People who built dams along the streams so that they would have water for crops in the summer. And when the fire reached the nearby woods, still far away, they climbed the steep paths of the mountain slopes and, with the force of their hoes, blocked the path of the fire until the firefighters arrived. They fought alongside the brave ones in red until everything was over. Then they came down dirty, sweaty, and exhausted. They drank wine, laughed, and went home. That is how it was…
Now there are men, still strong, still brave, but age weighs on their bones. Climbing the mountain hurts. Wielding the hoe is difficult. Their hearts cannot withstand the strain of physical labor as before. The young ones are few, so few that in some villages, we count them on one hand.
No more, never again, in the midst of the whirlwind of misfortune, should the institutions of the State, through those who represent them, lose their heads. They should never strike those who, in their suffering, in their fear, in their desperation, only seek comfort, leadership, and trust.
