This maritime space was the cradle of civilizations, trade, war, encounter, and escape. Today, it has become an open wound in the Western world. Into it flow the debris of wars, the trail of dictatorships, the poverty generated by decades of economic plunder, and the violence of Western foreign policies. It is the sea where a certain idea of Europe shipwrecks daily—a Europe that proclaims itself the guardian of human rights yet erects walls, patrols borders, finances militias, and watches, not as a silent accomplice but as an active instigator, the death of thousands of migrants who are merely trying to survive the chaos inherited from colonialism and the consequences of neocolonialis
The Mediterranean is the perfect metaphor for European hypocrisy: it calls a “crisis” what it itself creates and sustains; it calls a “threat” those fleeing the threats it sowed; it calls a “civilizational clash” what is, at its core, an unequal encounter between violated worlds and a project of well-being built upon centuries of colonialism that persists under neocolonial forms of dependence.
Another sea, the Atlantic—vaster and seemingly more peaceful, yet no less a generator of conflict, or at least a tool used to fuel political and military projects of a crumbling hegemonic order. It was across the Atlantic that Portugal learned to see its maritime projection, sometimes as a bridge, sometimes as an echo of interests that are not truly its own. The Atlantic is the strategic route of submarine cables, energy traffic, U.S. military positioning, commercial routes linking continents, and the growing militarization intended to defend questionable imperial projects—projects that urgently need to be brought to an end. The specter of a generalized war is already visible; let us use diplomacy as an instrument in international relations and abandon war once and for all.
It is in this Atlantic that the Azorean islands lie. The archipelago is the strategic point on the geopolitical chessboard over which Portugal has less and less sovereignty. The Lajes Base, the mid-Atlantic positioning, the military and technological corridors—these make the Azores an instrumental center for Washington and Brussels, yet they remain a periphery for Lisbon. The capital rarely understands the magnitude of what it holds, or if it does, it has failed to harness this asset—not as a platform for war but as a support for peace, cooperation, and a meeting point between worlds.
Portugal stands between these two seas—not only geographically, but historically and politically. This condition could be strengthened, but it has instead been diminished. It could serve as a bridge, but has become merely an outpost for external interests that use and discard it according to political contexts and the benefits yielded for the powers that sustain Western hegemony.
Portugal has never known how to make use of this natural asset and remains a mere spectator. Let the reader not think this is nostalgia for Portuguese colonialism or imperialism, nor should one imagine—even for an instant—that I defend a more interventionist Portuguese position in support of U.S. or NATO military actions. Nothing of the sort. The geographic position of the Azores, halfway between Europe and the Americas (North and South), between Macaronesia and the African continent—in other words, the entire Atlantic basin—gives the archipelago a centrality that should be valued. Yet the country insists on positioning itself as a “model student” of Atlanticist strategy, in the worst sense of the term, even when that strategy reinforces inequalities, fuels conflicts, and normalizes war.
See how the pen runs when we let it go unchecked, toward complex, perhaps interesting matters that were not my initial purpose. When I sat down to write, I intended to address one of the human conditions of our time: migration. I am halfway through the text and still adrift between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Though indeed both seas have served—and continue to serve—as routes for the movement of people: some forcibly, others by choice, yet always as a result of violence and predatory political and economic systems. So it was with slavery; so it is today with war, poverty, and the collapse of local economies—regions where, for varied reasons, hunger and the denial of a dignified life push citizens into migratory journeys that contain no romanticism, only desperation. Most are not digital nomads, nor do they hold golden visas.
Contrary to what so many official narratives claim, migration is not a choice; migration is a flight from death. And it is not a natural sentence inscribed in fate, but a condition manufactured by a global economic system that transforms entire regions into zones of extraction, dependency, and despair. Europe and the United States—so quick to proclaim values and rights—are equally quick to deny any link between their prosperity and the suffering of others. They pretend not to understand that every boat crossing the Mediterranean toward Europe carries, besides lives, an inventory of historical responsibilities. Every person crossing the U.S.–Mexico border bears the marks of decades of economic, military, and political interference.
What is striking is not only the harshness of migratory trajectories, but the growing brutality with which the West chooses to “defend” itself from those it labels a threat. Europe has transformed its borders into laboratories of dehumanization: detention centers, razor wire, surveillance technology, drones, agreements with phantom states turned into human kennels. Political rhetoric—sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted—tries to convince us that this violence is necessary to preserve our way of life. But no one says, at least with honesty, that this way of life is unsustainable without the systematic destruction of Global South economies and the cheap, invisible, disposable labor of immigrants who, once inside, are useful but never welcome.
The United States, which for decades presented itself as a “nation of immigrants,” has today turned its southern border into a militarized zone where exclusion technologies worthy of dystopian fiction are tested. Walls, thermal sensors, constant surveillance, private militias—the Mexican border has become the stage for an undeclared war against unarmed civilians. And, as in Europe, the violence is legitimized by discourses labeling migrants as invaders, criminals, or a cultural threat.
What troubles me is not only the visible violence at the borders but the growing persecution within host countries themselves. Across Europe, laws restricting rights proliferate, media campaigns demonize entire communities, assaults go unpunished, and parties rise to power promising to “clean,” “repatriate,” and “protect” those who are “from here.” In the United States the climate is similar: criminalization, mass deportations, labor exploitation, communities living in the shadows—without rights or voice. Xenophobia and racism, once hidden under hoods, now parade in daylight with triumphant arrogance.
But if we look closely, we will see that this violence directed at migrants serves a specific function: distraction. The image of the migrant is constructed as the external enemy to conceal the true internal enemy—the economic model that precarizes, impoverishes, and abandons most of the population. It is easier to blame those who arrive than to confront those who hold power. It is easier to build walls than to question why so many people seek to cross them.
Perhaps what we still lack is full awareness that the Mediterranean and the Atlantic are not only geographies: they are mirrors in which we see ourselves—or should see ourselves. Seas that carry histories that are also our own.
What is at stake, ultimately, is not migration but humanity.
And perhaps this is the future that remains to us: to choose between the barbarity of borders and the humanity of bridges.
Translated by Diniz Borges
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