Rosto de um Portugal esquecido - Face of a forgotten Portugal
João Rafael has 52 years old. Lives in Évoramonte a small village in the forgotten interior of Portugal, more or less 175km from the capital, Lisbon. It is part of the resistance against desertification, a scourge that none of the last portuguese governments bothered to fight. In all life he saw friends go to the city in search of better living conditions but he remained irreducible and decided to stay in his homeland to work in what today the younger do not want to do. Still works in a traditional way and under extreme conditions from what land gives him.I accompanied him during all last year and i could testify the struggle and perserverance of a man that complains of the rural people only appear in the news when extreme fires or droughts arise and not in cases of resilience such as your
João Rafael is portrayed with a chainsaw and a ladder, the material needed to climb to prune the branches. This work is done substantially between the months of January and March
