The Manuel Viegas Guerreiro Foundation (FMVG), based in Querença, in the interior of the municipality of Loulé, begins the new year with a renewed digital image and a new name for the FMVG Magazine, which is now renamed “Raiz”.
housed in https://www.fundacao-mvg.pt/, the new website now features modern, intuitive and multilingual graphics, allowing you to learn about the history and activity of the FMVG in Hebrew, Arabic, but also in English, French, Spanish and Italian.
The portal gives access to several works from the bibliographical collection of Manuel Viegas Guerreiro*, some imported from the previous portal and others digitized in the meantime. This is the case of “Buchmanes !Khu de Angola. Ethnographic Study", a book published in 1968, from "The Makondes of Mozambique: Wisdom, Language, Literature and Games" (1966) or entries by Viegas Guerreiro in the "Dictionary of History of Portugal", among other studies, communications and works related to Literature, Ethnography, Geography and Discoveries.
In addition to providing information in several languages, the "site" is adapted to people with specific needs, allowing, among other functionalities, to enlarge and reduce the text for those with low vision, to increase the readability of the characters (for people with dyslexia), or put the text in grayscale, changing the contrast (for colorblind people), among other features.
At the same time, the “site” presents scientific articles by various personalities in the field of History, Anthropology, Ethnography and Literature based on a re-reading of the work of Manuel Viegas Guerreiro, under the heading “Travels through the work of Manuel Vigas Guerreiro”.
Other projects also gain visibility to the world, such as the “Percurso Eco-Botânico Manuel Gomes Guerreiro” (PEB-MGG), an “in situ” garden with native species; direct access to “Revista FMVG Raiz”; photographs, videos, press clippings, information and records about the International Literary Festival of Querença (FLIQ). The Foundation is also carried out on the social networks Facebook and Youtube.
Premiere of the music video “A Raiz”
In 2023, the FMVG Magazine gains a new designation: “Raiz”, a name that «refers to the foundational, to the support, to fertility». The same rhizomatic concept was used in 2019, when the Foundation conceived an unprecedented video clip that would set the tone for the inauguration of the PEB-MGG, successively postponed due to the pandemic.
The video, created from a poem by Helena Madeira, author and performer of the composition for harp, features contemporary dance, with original choreography by Inês Mestrinho. The image is by Eduardo Sousa.
At the time the video clip was produced, the PEB-MGG was in its initial stage of plant growth. Filming therefore took place in a megalapiás, a set of rock formations from the Upper Jurassic, and in an upland orchard, both in the municipality of Loulé.
The premiere takes place now, "online", on the FMVG Youtube channel:
Foreign Community of Querença
At the opening of 2023, the Foundation highlights the meeting with the resident community of Querença, national and foreign, from the creative photography exhibition “Arte de Atraction”.
The author, photographer Vitor Martins, explains the concept: «daily, while we navigate our world, we make decisions that are influenced by the Art of Attraction, expressed as a transactional mechanism. Whether to ensure our survival, obtain food or for safety and comfort, we do not escape the need to “attract”».
A gathering will frame the exhibition opening on Saturday, January 28th, at 17 pm, at the Foundation's headquarters, to hear the reasons why Americans, English and French, among other nationalities, chose Querença as their new home.
«With the administrative autonomy process of the parish underway, the meeting intends to function, simultaneously, as a facilitating agent for the integration of this community, listening to testimonies from the local inhabitants, gathering ideas and emotions from all about this territory», explains the FMVG.
With the commitment to reinforce inclusion in the community of Querença, the Foundation is preparing to promote reading sessions with users of the Home for the Elderly in Querença. The “Read, listen and remember” sessions take place, from January 27th, on the last Friday of each month, alternating between the Home and the FMVG spaces.
In continuity: the environmental, educational and cultural mediation project with the school community of Querença in the areas of reading promotion and emerging literacy. The activities and experiences developed with children also stimulate environmental awareness, aesthetic sense and contact with Querença's cultural heritage and natural surroundings. Initiatives carried out by the Foundation in close collaboration with the Municipality of Loulé (CML).
Promotion of the work of Manuel Viegas Guerreiro
The FMVG is preparing to publish online and on paper the essay on one of the founding works of Viegas Guerreiro's anthropological practice and his thinking towards the Other: “Bochimanes !khū de Angola”. The critical re-reading, part of the initiative “Travels through the work of Manuel Viegas Guerreiro” is signed by Vítor Oliveira Jorge.
According to the archaeologist and retired professor at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto, Viegas Guerreiro's monograph is one of the best works of anthropology from the Portuguese colonial period and fills a gap in the existence of studies of this nature.
According to Vítor Oliveira Jorge: «the reality it describes – taking into account the very internal dynamics of populations, which only in the “photographs” with which we illustrate them seem static, outside of history, when after all they are far from being simple “relics” stopped in time – makes this type of work always urgent, necessary, precious. A heritage of humanity, after all».
This year's edition will feature the volume "The Boers in Campaign Reports from 1957 to 1960", which will be part of the "Experiences of Africa Collection", developed by the Center for African Studies at the University of Porto.
The exhibition “Boers de Angola, 1957”, organized by Luísa Martins, researcher at CIDEHUS, from the University of Évora, extends its itinerancy through several spaces. These include libraries, archives, schools and universities. To receive it, just send the request to [email protected].
At the same time, the Foundation continues the process of organisation, technical treatment and safeguarding of the ethnologist's photographic, phonographic, documentary and bibliographic heritage, making these (digitized) materials available to national and foreign researchers, as is the case with the Koïsan slides and audios. (Bushmen).
Educational Resources Manuel Viegas Guerreiro
FMVG, together with CML, the association Ao Luar Teatro and the União de Freguesias de Querença, Tôr and Benafim, presents in June a set of Educational Resources created by children from the 1st cycle and pre-school schools in Querença, through which Manuel Viegas Guerreiro and his work will be made known to children and young people.
The project is part of the 1st Biennial “Culture and Education”, of the National Arts Plan.
Return of FLIQ and other events
Honoring the legacy of Luís Guerreiro, the first president of FMVG until his death (2017), the Foundation sets in motion another landmark meeting for 2023: that of FLIQ, which returns to the village of Querença on the 5th, 6th and 7th of May.
The 5th edition will be dedicated to “Literature and Landscapes”. With this look at the environment, other initiatives will punctuate the year, namely conferences, tours and exhibitions that lead us to urgent climate action: thinking and attitudes.
The creation of a plant sanctuary from the Red List of Vascular Flora of mainland Portugal is on the line of that horizon, in what is the ecological stage of the FMVG: the PEB-MGG, which marks the centenary of the birth of the remarkable academic Manuel Gomes Guerreiro, 1st Rector of the University of Algarve and Secretary of State for the Environment in the first Constitutional Government (1976-1977). The Route can be visited south of the Headquarters.
Manuel Viegas Guerreiro (1912-1997)
Born in Querença, he received a PhD in Ethnology from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon, where he was a full professor.
Ethnologist and anthropologist of the XNUMXth century. XX studied Portuguese popular culture like few others. Disciple and “secretary” of José Leite de Vasconcellos, Manuel Viegas Guerreiro worked with José Mattoso, Orlando Ribeiro, Jorge Dias, Lindley Cintra, João David Pinto-Correia, Margot Dias, Maria Aliete Galhoz and Michel Giacometti, among other exponents of academic life .
He carried out important research with tribes in Africa, namely the Khoïsan of Angola and the Makonde of Mozambique. In Portugal, he studied several rural communities, from the north to the south of the country and in the Azores. He taught university students in Brazil and Cape Verde.
After the reform, he founded the Free General Studies (free non-formal education), together with the philosopher and friend Agostinho da Silva. He left us a vast published bibliography, including monographs and scientific articles published in specialized journals.
In 1973, he received the West Prize in the year of his death, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Infante, «an act owed by Portugal to the Professor who honored Portuguese Science and Culture».
The ceremony took place on May 15, in the Aula Magna of the Rectory of Lisbon, as part of the Colloquium «Contadores de Sonhos», promoted by Livraria Civilização with the support of the Center for Portuguese Popular Traditions Prof. Manuel Viegas Guerreiro.
Its name is part of the toponymy of Querença and Lisbon.
His office in Paço de Arcos, Lisbon, is reproduced in Querença, in the “Biblioteca Museu Manuel Viegas Guerreiro”, located next to the headquarters of the Foundation that bears his name.
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