Roma candidate for mayor in town from which family was driven in 1996. Portugal’s private television station enters Roma in the running for mayorship. (Lisbon) Vila Verde - the name of a small town in northern Portugal known all over the country as a synon ym for racism.
Portugal’s first private television station, ‘‘Sociedade Independente de Comunicao’’ (SIC) has seen to it that it is once again in the news. In 1996, a Roma family was driven from this place. Now SIC has sent a man with a Roma background to run for office of mayor here.
Vila Verde became the focus of public attention in 1996 after the town council had Joao Garcia’s shack torn down: neighbours had accused his family of drug-dealing. Thus deprived of accommodation, the Garcias spent weeks on the move in northern Portugal, l ooking for a new home. They were repeatedly driven from villages where they wanted to settle. As the mayor of Briteiros said, ‘‘Gypsies have different habits to us, so we don’t want them’’. The governor of the region of Braga, Pedro Bacelar Vasconcelos, be came personally involved in the search to find a place to stay for the Garcias, for which he was physically attacked by outraged citizens. In Vila Verde, the place where the Garcias’ odyssey began, Portugal’s first private broadcaster has, as a publicity s tunt, nominated the 23 year-old Roma, Jose Adelino Silva, to run for mayor.
Prompted by the broadcaster, a trotskyite faction, ‘‘Revolutionary Left-Wing Front’’ (FER), has agreed to let him be their candidate in December’s local elections. SIC had previously wanted the environmentalist ‘‘Earth Party’’ (MPT) to take him on board, b ut the MPT did not wish to be seen supporting an oddball choice. Gil Garcia of the trotskyite FER said on the topic: ‘‘I don’t care if people claim that we’re being manipulated. This is a matter of justice’’. Silva himself said of his nomination that it wa s more that merely some kind of choreographed news-item: ‘‘I know that SIC is trying to get itself noticed through me. But I’m going to use SIC to get something done for us Gypsies’’. Conversely, council-member Mota Alves accuses the station of ‘‘resurrect ing a long-dead topic and provoking the inhabitants of Vila Verde’’.
In a speech given as recently as 1992 at the Munich Kammerspiele, novelist Günther Grass said ‘‘look at little Portugal, where, despite many refugees from the former colonies, thousands of Gypsies live untroubled in the land’’. The situation for Portugal’s 30,000 Roma has, however, worsened considerably in recent years.