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Paper short abstract

In the Portuguese town of Soajo, claims over the correct naming of a mountain range walk in hand with a fight for self-definition and of righting historical wrongs. This paper will address this ongoing conflict as a window into contemporary struggles for the survival of a mountain community.

Paper long abstract

The naming of the northern portuguese Soajo mountain range has confounded researchers throughout history, and has been the subject of political dispute. Soajeiros, the locals, argue that it is the right and only way to name the mountains. Through time, however, different outsider accounts placed the otherwise named Peneda mountain range somehow where Soajo is, arguing instead that Soajo is either somewhere else, or confined in ill-defined cohabitation with Peneda.

For soajeiros, this exceeds the matter of convention. Losing the mountains means losing a struggle that dates to the loss of Soajo administrative autonomy. It means the erasure of belonging to the mountains, of territory, identity and community.

This secular struggle is, today, intensified with the advent of tourism as a main economic force, and the way it normalises local practices within mainstream forms of presentation (in Soajo particularly, by engaging with the concept of “biocultural heritage”). However, the idiosyncratic struggles of soajeiro identity preservation, as well as the framing of claims to territory, may be sidelined in favour of more easily accessible commonplace imagery and naming conventions. Including that of mountains.

This paper draws on fieldwork ongoing in the Soajo region. It will peek at current disputes over identity, territory, and autonomy, through the framing of naming mountains. Here, past and present coalesce, towards legitimacy-building and heritage-making within the shifting uncertainties of living in mountain communities.