José Sarmento Matos: JAMAIKA

JAMAIKA follows part of the story of Bairro da Jamaica - a community in Seixal, Portugal, made up of around 700 inhabitants, often racialised and marginalised -, in its fight for the right to decent housing.

 

This documentary work, developed over three years, portrays the life of this community made up of immigrants from former Portuguese colonies - Angola, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe - and Portuguese people of African descent.

 

Between 2022 and 2023, around 98% of the Jamaica neighborhood was demolished. The families that lived there were relocated to decent housing, but their community prevails beyond Vale de Chicaros the place that has been home to so many since the mid-1980s. The book not only captures life in the neighborhood; the relocation of some families as well as the demolition of buildings.

 

JAMAIKA aims to act as an intimate visual memory of Bairro da Jamaica, also representing many other racialized communities and others living in similar housing conditions in the metropolitan area of Lisbon and Porto. Many of these families continue to suffer daily stigmatization based on their ethnicity, marginalization by city councils and harassment by the police.