TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2024
History turns and twists in unpredictable ways, but Álvaro Pereira never failed to stand up for what was right when it counted the most.
The gentlemanly anti-colonial Freedom Fighter, who passed away yesterday at his home in Panjim at the age of 96, was an indomitable forceof non-violent resistance against the Estado da Índia, but refused to harbour any bitterness after his battle was won.Thus, when the times changed, and fates conspired to deliver one of his ownto the helm of Portugal, it was an especially meaningful full circle when Prime Minister António Costa warmly commiserated with Pereira on his first state visit to Goa in 2017.
The veteran journalist Mário Cabral e Sá (who is himself in his late 80s) once wrote a particularly lovely tribute to this “true freedom fighter” that is worth re-reading now. He said Pereira distinguished himself in the resistance movement for his “courage and resoluteness. He travelled all over Goa, distributing pamphlets highlighting Goa’s humbling submission to the dictatorial regime of Dr António de Oliveira Salazar [until he was] denounced to the Margao police by a civil administration official.”
Cabral e Sá recalls, “He was detained for a while to the Panjim lock up. One day his friend Padre Chico Monteiro, a saintly man whose political ideals diametrically differed from Alvaro’s visited him. Was he maltreated? The genteel Pe. Chico enquired. Yes, he was, said Alvaro. And very badly at that.Pe. Chico, who abhorred violence and inhumanity, went straight away to the cabin of Capitão Fernando de RevezRomba, the police commandant. Romba, a brash man, asked Pe Chico, "Did you expect me to fete him with bonbons?"
Many hard years in confinement ensued at the “horrendous” Aguada Central Jail. Cabral e Sá writes, “It was the daily routine of the jail manual to, first thing in the morning, parade the prisoners before the flag post, make them stand to attention, sing the Portuguese national anthem and salute the flag. Álvaro point blank refused to follow the routine. When admonished, he would cheekily say, ‘It is because I don’t respect your flag that I find myself here.’The jailor’s response was to mercilessly beat him up and transfer him to solitary confinement.”
As everyone who knew him is well aware. Pereira was fond of referring to thoseAguadatravails as “my university years”, when he built unshakable bonds of solidarity with his comrades.
For decades later, right until Covid-19 lockdowns shuttered Farm Products, his Azad Maidan landmark shopfront, it was one of the greatest glories of old Panjim to witness this increasingly elderly - but no lessunruly and voluble - cohort of erstwhile prisoners of conscience gather to reminisce, and also cast their critical eye on the current crop of misbehaving rulers. The coffee and snacks were always impeccable. As Cabral e Sáput it: “he and his wife [Flavia] run quietly, but very efficiently, a store that caters to the connoisseurs of good and classy edibles. Quality and freshness are guaranteed.”
It cannot be denied that Pereira – along with his entire generation of highly principled women and men who fought hard against daunting odds for independence from dictatorship – wasgrievously hurt by the steady desecration of their ideals in the aftermath of Goa’s annexure into India.
To be sure, there were never any regrets. How could there be, when their cause was so unerringly just, for deliverance from such an unhinged despotas Salazar?
Nonetheless,the sectarianism, corruption and sheer vulgarity that becamefiendishly rooted in contemporary Goa is most certainly not what they were fighting for,least of all the criminal incompetence that characterizes the current generation of “leaders.” As the nationalist poet Armando Menezes (1902-1983) – who was Álvaro Pereira’s uncle, and one of his main inspirations – sorrowfully observed about what occurred after 1961: “Freedom is greed, is violence / Lust, and the lordship of the fool.
Cabral e Sá recounts a telling incident, which really should be included in school textbooks so future generations understand who we once were: “The same Álvaro [who had been mercilessly tortured by CapitãoRomba], on Liberation Day, on coming to know that some ‘neo-patriots (hypocrites, really, who wanted to have the best of both worlds; till the day before they had licked the feet of the Portuguese and now wanted to ingratiate themselves with the new rulers) were planning to raid the Police station and beat up [the colonial officers].”
Rather than standing aside while the enraged mob enacted vigilante justice on his former tormentors, “Álvaro closed the doors of the Police HQ and stood at the entrance like a rock (among his many virtues was his athletic build) and said loudly, for everybody roaming around with malicious intent to hear and heed his words, "Nobody shall enter. They did their duty. We who have just earned our freedom, must show that we are civilized humans." Facing this unstintingbravery, “the boisterous crowd tamely melted down.”
Who are we compared to such giants? How much further can we fall compared to their example?
It is a deeply shameful fact that Álvaro Pereirawas compelled to witness his beloved city and state desecrated with extreme callousness. Along with his lifelong friendsin the freedom struggle, notably the steadfastsatyagrahi Gurudas Kunde (who stayed by his side, meeting almost daily for well over fifty years) he hated the hijacking of Panjim’s heritage waterfront – including the sacred flagpole promenade where the Tiraṅgā was first unfurled – by gambling fleshpots, and the incomprehensible erection of a giant toilet to cast its shadow on the monuments to their movement in Azad Maidan.
If there is any saving grace in the departure of this selfless hero at this point in time, it is that he will not have to watch Aguada Jail - thesite of his greatest sacrifices – reopened in its ludicrously garish, unconscionable new avatar as “tourism hotspot.”
At least Álvaro Pereira will be spared that crowning insult and indignity. May his great soul rest in peace.
