Portugal and the Portuguese have many ambivalences in their make-up, probably not unlike most others. If one chides the Portuguese, it is because they are over-sensitive to criticism, particularly coming from an outsider. They say: “Quem não sente não é filho de boa gente”, meaning, if you have no feelings you can’t belong to decent people. They hate being called colonialists, and often retort by referring to the stiff-lipped Britishers who kept the Indians at arm’s length, while the Portuguese mixed easily with the natives.
The late Prof. Charles R. Boxer, the well-known English historian of the Portuguese colonial empire, in his more recent writings opted to refer simply to “maritime” empire to please his Portuguese friends, but never stopped dropping hints about his deeper convictions, such as describing miscigenation as a cover for the outdoor relief of the metropolitan bastards.
After winning many accolades from the Portuguese historians, politicians and institutions during the early fase of Salazar regime, Prof. Boxer became a person anon grata when he dared to expose Portuguese racism in a series of talks at the University of Virginia in 1962. They were published a year later as Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415-1825 (Oxford, 1963) and raised a hornet’s nest, and Prof. Boxer was welcomed again in Portugal only after the end of the Salazar regime in 1974.
Among themselves the Portuguese cultivate the mastery of “loose tongue” (má língua), but tend to display a espirit de corps and unite to confront any non-Portuguese imitating their bards who sang “cantigas de escárnio e maldizer”, satirical folk-songs containing double-talk about social mores. The Portuguese proverbs, like we do in Konkani opari and mhonn’neo, have much of the folk wisdom that differs from the erudite discourses of the academics and politicians who tend to be politically correct and resort to cover-ups.
One such proverb says: To god own all saints give help (descer todos os santos ajudam), meaning that to rise in life you have to count upon your own efforts. As a historical endorsement of this popular wisdom, all saints did not save thousands of Portuguese devotees who were crushed inside the churches by the great earthquake of 1755 that destroyed Lisbon on November 1, the feast day of All Saints. On that day and the following days the saints truly helped many Portuguese to godown to their graves.
Another instance of the national ambivalence is Portugal presenting itself as a very Catholic nation. It earned its independence from the Spanish kingdom of Leão by promising vassalage to the Pope in exchange of yearly payment of four ounces of gold, a tribute that remained often unpaid. Again, on the eve of the Portuguese expansion worldwide, following the so-called Discoveries, Portugal sought the blessings of the papacy in exchange of the so-called Crown patronage of the Church in the newly discovered lands.
The crown patronage, often known as Padroado was a masterly strategy for military and commercial expansion under the guise of extended crusade to deprive the Ottomans from their income of Asian trade, which gave them power to continue holding the Holy places of Christianity in the Middle East. The Portuguese always fought tooth and nail to retain the privileges of Padroado, but forgot often their obligations.
The Portuguese national politics during the period of Spanish rule and following the Restoration in mid-17th century was marked by tense relations with the papacy. That was also the case during the liberal politics that suppressed the Religious Orders, starting with the Society of Jesus in 1759.
Very ambivalent was the First Republic that issued a decree of separation of the Church and the State in 1911, but would not hear of dropping the privileges from the Padroado. Curiously, the fourth centenary of the conquest of Goa in 1910 was celebrated by the new Republic with a special exposition of the relics of St Francis Xavier with the usual funfair.
The regular expositions of the relics of St Francis Xavier had become a strategy of political manipulation of the saint in the face of the growing interference of the British administration, particularly in Bombay where the Goa Padroado enjoyed special privileges among the Goan diaspora there.
The expositions of the relics of St Francis Xavier acted as a magnet for the faithful from all over India, providing thereby an extraordinary display of the Portuguese presence in Goa. This acted somewhat as an irritant to the British administration in India, which reacted strongly once when the Archbishop of Goa sought to appoint military chaplains to the military camps in British India in the late 19th century. The British Secretary of State for India, Sir Charles Wood, conceded the Portuguese Archbishop’s request, but reminded him that it was not his right to care for the subjects of the British empire.
To conclude, the former President of Brazil, Lula da Silva, irritated the Portuguese no end with his statement in Madrid last week that the slow academic progress of his country was due to the Portuguese. It raised hackles of the Portuguese public, meaning “don’t let us down, we are Portuguese”. It reminded me of the former Portuguese archbishop-patriarch of Goa, D. José da Costa Nunes, who stated that if Goans were somebody they owed it to the Portuguese.
(Teotonio R. de Souza is the founder-director, Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa (1979-1994).
