João da Chela

A fiction writer, poet, and chronicler from a humble family, Manuel de Jesus Pinto left the «crags of Alto Douro» at 14 to work as a shop assistant in Espinho. There he suffered, helpless and without a future, which led him to embark for Angola in 1924, settling then in Sá da Bandeira. Considering himself a farmer and colonizer, he became one of the heralds of «that Portuguese odyssey which was a dramatic and holy epic» and of the prevailing political orientation. However, it was during the Second World War that the author chose the pseudonym that made him most known, João da Chela, the mountain overlooking the capital of Huíla, thus beginning the third stage of his life and the long series of «Crónicas da Huíla», which he would publish mainly in the Jornal de Benguela. The author's art is based on the description of the natural landscape and its human and social component, the latter being too flat or stereotyped; he reminds us of José Loureiro Botas for his photographic ability to evoke the habits and popular language of his Alto Douro, which he transcribes in Caminho Eterno.