ABSTRACT
I am a visitor to Lisbon. I am not the typical tourist. Instead I have come to see small agricultural projects that occupy the urban interstices – tiny gardens, tended largely by Cape Verdean immigrants, on forgotten lands nested along highways, rails, valleys and other corridors throughout the city. As a visitor, my understanding of the Portuguese Estado Novo (New State) is learned rather than lived. I know that António de Oliveira Salazar ruled Portugal for over thirty years, an authoritarian regime that curtailed political freedoms, but of course I do not have a visceral sense of the impact on the social and material urban constructs. Nearly a half century after his death, the physical and economic presence of the past regime, and its colonies, is everywhere in Lisbon, the capital city. Some of my tour guides have remarked that it was easy to build things during the Salazar era, and the many looming buildings from the period reflect this. Their scale and monumentality are a sort of geologic testament to old fascist power; their aging facades and unkempt entrances reflect current unease and economic hardship.
