Nuno Fox
In the same year – 1976 – in which Portugal approved its Constitution, establishing the fundamental rights, freedoms and guarantees of its citizens, José Baessa de Pina was born in national territory, devoid of the most elementary constitutional precepts.
Son of former Cape Verdean contractors who, before being mobilized to Lisbon by the colonial regime, endured forced labor in the fields of São Tomé and Príncipe, Sinho, as he is better known, became accustomed to telling his story in the plural.
Approaching his 50th birthday, the vice-president of the Cavaleiros de São Brás Association, based in Casal da Boba, in Amadora, reconstructs personal and family memories based on community ties that no demolition and relocation process has managed to undo.
Nuno Fox
This week’s guest on O Tal Podcast, Sinho recalls how the rubble of Bairro das Fontainhas, where he grew up, continued to be a place of belonging years after moving to Boba.
“In the relocation process, they didn’t worry about monitoring psychologists, [o efeito de] taking a person out of a self-built, down-to-earth community, which has a lot of solidarity and self-help”, notes the community leader, sharing one of the effects of uprooting.
“We were resettled in 2001. In 2004, we, young people, were still sleeping in Fontainhas. This needs to be studied. Why are you resettled in a neighborhood, and three years later you still go to sleep [ao antigo bairro]”.
The marks of this experience come alive in this conversation with Georgina Angélica and Paula Cardoso, and are also activated in the “Noz Stória” tour, led by Sinho as a tribute to his community, and a denunciation against the absences and excesses of the State.
“As long as the police station wasn’t built, we weren’t relocating. That was the first thing I felt: we’re going to continue to be ghettoized.”
Exclusion policies, notes the cultural agent, are clearly visible in the urban landscape that characterizes municipal housing neighborhoods, emptied of green areas and entertainment areas for children.
“There was a library, Pólo da Boba, and they took it away. It was the best tool in the neighborhood.”
Nuno Fox
Far beyond spaces, the logic of subtraction operates in the construction of personality, as Sinho tells us in this episode.
“My first language is Creole. I was beaten up several times because the teacher said I didn’t speak it correctly. This takes away your self-esteem, you want to stay in the corner.”
Today the father of a young woman – the Olympic athlete Taís de Pina – and teenage twins, Georgina Angélica and Paula Cardoso’s guest makes a point of breaking old cycles of shrinking.
“My father never spoke to me, there was little dialogue, very rigid. We are in another time, but still deconstructing, because there is an old model of upbringing that with these children today you have to negotiate, without leaving respect.”
Nuno Fox
In this conversation, the community leader also reflects on the lack of protection in labor relations.
“There is no precarious work. There are poorly paid jobs that make a person precarious”, he argues, warning of the power imbalances that weaken workers. “We have a Portugal with neocolonialism. We are seeing on television, in 2025, the same exploitation. It is clear in the news: 10 GNR inside a gang enslaving people”.
Listen to the full episode here.
Nuno Fox
Tal Podcast is a weekly podcast dedicated to interpersonal relationships and human affection. Through in-depth conversations with notable guests, the podcast reveals an original narrative and opens the doors to an international community of reflection and interest.
A pioneer in black and Afro-descendant culture in Portugal, it is a space where all lives fit, emotionally linked by experiences of trial and stories of humanization.
In long unscripted conversations, Georgina Angélica and Paula Cardoso present special guests, in new episodes, every Thursday on the Expresso, SIC and SIC Notícias websites or any podcast platform.
Tiago Pereira Santos with Nuno Fox
Georgina Angelica is a specialist in Education and Social Intervention. She works as an educator, trainer and speaker, with more than 20 years of experience in Portugal, England and Angola.
Paula Cardoso is the founder of the network Afrolink and author of the children’s book series ‘Força Africana’. She is also the presenter of the TV program “Rumos”, broadcast on RTP África.
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