«Glory to those who Fight!
Allow me to pay a special tribute. First of all, to the young men who, while serving their country, were left mutilated or disabled. I want to state here that not only are they not forgotten, but quite the opposite, they are ever present in the government’s concerns. »
in: Razões da Presença no Ultramar
Marcelo Caetano, 1972
Almost all stories are bound to fade away. It’s inevitable, but….today, the (hi)story of the Colonial War still exists. It still goes on and is not yet closed in the silent dust of books or in the documents’ dark corners. Testimonies of those times emerge every once in a while - times believed to have passed and put to rest. But the truth is that talking about that time still hurts. The math is simple, or so we think: we’re in 2015, hence all the young and less young men from 1961 to 1974 are now in their 60s or 70s and we cross their paths in coffee shops, in public transports, in the supermarket’s cue, in the pharmacy…everywhere, and that seems not to be PRESENT to us.
When I set out to fulfil the project, I was aware that I would be touching a silent and unhealed wound. Although this is a wound that I share, as I was born in 1967, the work would be a way to settle this restlessness – if it is ever possible to make sense of a war that kills parents, sons, brothers, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. A war that by touching everybody seems to touch nobody anymore, camouflaged by the 25th of April and further silenced by a perception of freedom.
I found in Mora what can be found throughout the country. All that is needed is an attentive, aware and deep look, and the fountain opens up – the individual narrative pours, confesses, accuses, morns. Above of all, by coming out, it exorcises the carrying pain which is only revealed within a trusted circle of people.
More than a heartfelt homage to these generations, my purpose is to help to inscribe in our reality, in the PRESENT and in the first person, the testimony of each of these people.
We live in a world where the banalisation of image leads to indifference towards its content. With this work I felt compelled to register well beyond what I’m used to in terms of quantity. And yet, always feeling way behind from its potential….It happens that, in every single person I met, I was observing two wars – one, lived and drifting away with the passing of time, and another that was left to be told.
Hermano Noronha
February 2015
x
