The Social Life of Georesources: Extractions and Extractivism in Porto Santo Island (since the 20th Century)

Abstract

Since Porto Santo’s settlement began in the 1420s right up to the near end of the past century, a peasant society prevailed based on rainfed agriculture with a Mediterranean type of ecosystem (cereals, wine, livestock). The island’s geological configuration also favoured the extraction of lime and derivatives, exported to Madeira. Work in the quarries provided extra income to sustain the population. By the 20^th century, the extractivism involved more georesources: mineral water (circa 1920 – circa 1990), Portland cement (1922 – circa 1940) and the “pozzolanic episode” (1937-1962), the ruins of which gave me a pretext and context for this work. From the early nineteen hundreds, its contrasting climate with that of the neighbouring island transforms summer holidaymaking into a new type of extractivism. Since then, tourism shapes society and the territory. The beach, with its surging material and intangible representations, has become the main insular resource. Based on a family documental legacy, fieldwork, institutional archives and my childhood memories, a re-enactment of the insular georesources’ social life is essayed. The crumbling remains of the pozzolan factory becomes a device allowing us to go back in time, resulting in tangible and intangible heritage that currently challenges property speculation. I draw inspiration from the exhibition project Weight and Measure (1992) by the sculptor Richard Serra to set the parameters of an experienced sensory culture of Porto Santo: temperature, sounds and seasonality. From them emerge the narrative axes that configure the “second creation” (David E. Nye), constructed on a different peripheralization of the island, which no longer arises from the double oceanic isolation, as in previous centurie. The current peripheral condition stems from integration and subjection to external economic imperatives, while casting aside its endogenous potentialities.

Keywords

Georesources; Porto Santo Island; Social Life; Luís de Freitas Branco (1898-1965); 20^th-21^st Centuries; Extractivism; “Second Creation”; Pozzolan; Cement.