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Rural and Urban Society |
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 Religion The Churches
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Rural and Urban society in Chaves, Portugal Introduction
The feira do gado (cattle fair) was once held where the Caldas now lie Introduction What is the Flaviense like? The question is hard to answer because for every generalization there is an exception, and there are still big differences between those who are still stuck in the villages and those who are part of a more urban society in the town. Rural Life
The community center of Vilarelho da Raia Years ago, when the area was isolated and almost everyone had been born here one could say that the Flaviense was probably insular, religious, poorly educated and wary of foreigners. Today there is still some of that, especially in the villages, but with people coming back from France or America, with television, adequate roads, and with an increasing influx of foreign workers it would be foolhardy to make such generalizations. The old stereotype of the Transmontano--stubborn, poorly educated, fanatically religious, the man with his cap and his moustache, the woman dressed in black and also mustached in middle age, one called Manuel and the other Maria, is fast disappearing. One thing that most visitors don’t see is that there are almost two separate cultures in Trás-os-Montes—the urban and the rural. In the isolated mountain villages of the mountains east of Chaves or in the Barroso--especially in villages like Pitões das Júnias, (20 km northwest of Montalegre at the foot of the Gerês—see Pitões das Júnias --you can still find a typical rural culture, although even here it has suffered some modifications with the emigrants who return from northern Europe in the month of August. The villagers in the remote regions of Chaves and Montalegre are still laconic and mistrustful of strangers as they see very few visitors. It is impossible to sentimentalize about their lives as the lack of proper gutters and an underground water system often makes the narrow lanes muddy and dirty. Streets are of dirt, or simple bare rock. Even in a village like Agostém just five kilometers south of Chaves the streets, if we could call them that, are made of jagged rock, which can easily cut a car's wheels. The Diário de Trás os Montes brought this news:
In most villages electricity was installed only within the last decade. The houses in the old part of the villages are built of enormous granite or slate blocks and are bitter cold in the winter. Sanitation is either non-existent or rudimentary, making for a very unhealthy existence, at least until recent times. Now these villages are inhabited by the old who get by on pensions of less than 200 Euros a month. Often there is a one room school house with just one or two pupils. There are no libraries, health clinics, or senior citizen day centers. Functional illiteracy is almost universal. Urjais, one of the most isolated villages in the concelho For years the people of isolated villages--especially those of the mountain areas like Travancas, Segirei, or São Vicente-- lived their lives cut off from the outside world. They developed their own customs, songs, festivals, and habits. By tradition, the bread -oven, which was fired up once a week, was both a meeting place for the village, and a local hostel for the traveler seeking shelter for a night or two. The nearest doctor was in Chaves and all babies were born at home. Dental care was non-existent, and even in Chaves a university educated dentist was rare until after the 1980s. In many cases a healer was called on to attend to any physical complaint. Infant mortality must have been horrific. It was a hard life and, despite rapid
change, still is. If
the men worked hard the women were like beasts of burden. The habit of working bent
over, tiring the kidneys, is still today part of village life. The women bend over to
sweep with a short-handled broom, to scrub the floor on their knees,
and to carry the heavy loads of hay for the cows or sticks for the
fireplace. It is no
wonder that so many people emigrated from these villages. Where we see a contrast between country and town is when on Sunday the country folk come down to the town to stroll and look at the shop windows. The difference in dress and even in physical makeup is obvious. In the schools in the larger towns there is even an unofficial separation of those from the town and those from the country. Many of the town children have access to libraries, computers, private teachers, private music, dance, and language schools. At school they inevitably do better than the children who are bused in every day from the distant villages. The dropout rate of the rural children is very high and there is little incentive to get an education. Most of them will not continue in the villages though, but will drift to the towns to be construction workers or waitresses in cafés. In fact there are very few children left in the villages. Every once in a while a village child is able to break the cycle and get a university education. At a private language school in Chaves, a student called Lúcia surprised everybody by saying that she was the first person from her village, Pitões das Júnias, to go to university--in her case to be a forestry engineer. When asked what her mother was probably doing at a certain time, she responded “bringing in the goats.” The Rural World in the Past When
discussing relations between the sexes in the rural world, we have to
avoid falling into generalizations or descriptions of customs that no
longer exist. The
rural world is going through a period of rapid transformation in which
in one generation time-honored customs have already died out. The most exhaustive
studies of the rural world of the Barroso, for example, are clearly out
of date. Written in
the seventies or eighties, they describe customs that were almost gone
even at that time. Padre
Fontes talks of boys offering gifts such as plates to the girls they
wanted to court. Or
it was the parents who arranged the marriage even without their
children knowing or wanting. On
other occasions there were intermediaries that arranged meetings with
the families with this same objective.
These people were called the casamenteiros—marriage
brokers. There
was also the alcoviteira who
covered for the young girls, when they wanted to be alone with their
boyfriends, by providing a place to stay in their house, when the
parents were against the relationship.
The boys and girls did work for this person and
brought her gifts and food. One strange custom related by Padre Fontes—and not corroborated--was the right that the boys had over the girls from the village. Even if they were engaged, or had a steady boyfriend, any boy, and only the single boys, had the right, always granted and never refused, to fondle the girls from the village wherever and whenever they wanted. A boy would pass by a girl in the street, in full view of everyone except for her parents, and put his hands on her breasts and hold her with his two arms. Even though she would complain and try to move away, he knew that there was no harm in touching her. Some of the girls would try to get away by grabbing the boy’s testicles or hit him in the face. This custom has apparently died out, so my feminine readers can breathe a sigh of relief. Unfortunately Padre Fontes does not tell us why this custom occurred or give us more detail. Perhaps it was something he saw once and not a generalized habit . |
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