Supports

When I was a kid, I often heard that so-and-so was the breadwinner of the family and that, according to the "Aurélio" dictionary, it's that "person who supports a family, providing them with the means of subsistence." And in that same traditional dictionary, a retaining wall appears as a "wall, usually on a slope, that supports and retains a volume of earth."

On the shore of Itaguá Beach in Ubatuba, on the North Coast of the State of São Paulo, as an attempt to contain erosion caused by the advancing sea, stages of construction of a retaining wall can be observed, with deep concrete pilings. In the same strip of sand, about 1.500 meters to the north, there seem to be old battles with the sea [1] where it has been eating away at the edges [2] of this stretch of the beach, even though a gabion wall was put in place, which is giving way after one year and seven months of the work being carried out, in an area that should not be occupied.

According to the "Houaiss" dictionary, a gabion wall is a "hydraulic defense element consisting of a wire mesh or steel fencing used to protect earthen channels, slopes, roads, etc., from erosion." The question remains: in this specific case, will this type of retaining structure effectively protect the occupied area?

I confess that I haven't heard anyone refer to someone who helps others as a breadwinner in a long time. However, I see some retaining walls and gabion walls, mainly in sections of roads and highways, installed to contain mass movement on slopes, but I am unaware of the effectiveness of a gabion wall used, for example, to protect against erosion caused by sea level fluctuations. Regarding the retaining wall mentioned, for now, we'll have to wait and see what happens.

"Here / on this rock / someone sat / looking at the sea / the sea / didn't stop / to be looked at / it was sea / in every direction" - Paulo Leminski.

Sources

[1] "Fights with the sea"Article by Cacá Medeiros Filho, dated March 27, 2025."

[2] "Eating around the edges"Article by Heraldo Campos, March 26, 2025."

*Heraldo Campos is a geologist (Institute of Geosciences and Exact Sciences of UNESP, 1976), holds a master's degree in General and Applied Geology and a doctorate in Sciences (Institute of Geosciences of USP, 1987 and 1993), and completed postdoctoral studies in hydrogeology (Polytechnic University of Catalonia and São Carlos School of Engineering of USP, 2000 and 2010).