Letters from Portugal: A Geração à rasca

Three French men, Louis XVI, Napoleon Bonaparte and Alexandre Dumas, are credited with declaring that ‘Europe ends at the Pyrenees’, or alternatively, that ‘Africa begins at the Pyrenees’. What these wicked, wicked men suggested was that the Iberian peninsula, comprising Spain and Portugal, shared more with Africa, northern Africa at any rate, than it did with Europe. A number of Portuguese too will laughingly use this reference to explain away the laxity that marks this western most part of the European continent.

It is no secret that the Portuguese economy is today in an unholy mess. A good number of Portuguese will lay the blame for this mess squarely on the same laxity. The sins on this list are rather long. They will agree that Portugal is not marked by a meritocracy. If you don’t come with the right name and the right background, moving forward could be substantially difficult for you. Add to this the political graft that marks the country’s operation. Business interests and political leadership are shamelessly twined, official power used to further private interests. Joining the European Union has meant that the directives from Europe regarding the setting up of systems and procedures are met, but in a manner that recalls the spirit of that famous response by the Spanish Viceroys in the Americas, ‘I obey, but do not comply.’ The procedure is followed, but the spirit absent, resulting in applicants being caught in the nightmare of bureaucratic purgatories. But perhaps what makes this worse is the situation where there is no widespread culture of popular dissent in Portugal.

In apparent synchrony with the North African comparisons however, the pot boiled over subsequent to the Afro-Arabic revolutions. Fed up with the situation in the country that includes the cut back of funding for students, the lowering of salaries of public functionaries, the rolling back of the rights of workers, the significant amount of unemployment among the young, a good amount of these under the excuse of dealing with the economic crisis, a group of 4 young persons finally said enough is enough. This group of 4, speaking in the name of the geração à rasca, or the cornered generation called for a demonstration in Lisbon on the 12^th of March. They pointed out that their generation was the most qualified generation in Portugal’s long history ever. And yet, large numbers of these youth are unemployed and have to emigrate, to find futures outside of the country.

The response to this call was monumental. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese congregated to march in the protest scheduled to end at Praça de Restauradores. So large were the numbers that once at the end of the march, they carried on to other parts of the city, continuing to voice their protest at the systems that has pushed the lives, dreams and ambitions of so many in this country into crisis. So large was the demonstration that some have pointed out that this was the single largest protest demonstration in the country subsequent to the collapse of the Estado Novo in 1974. This is perhaps a dubious distinction, pointing once more to the lack of a vibrant culture of political dissent in the country.

As powerful as this demonstration was however, one wonders if it continued to resound with the problems that mark this wonderful but sadly traumatised country. The leaders of the demonstration failed to offer a suggestion to go forward beyond the manifesto that launched the demonstration. The manifesto itself, framed in the broadest possible manner to attract broad support, did not get down to specifics. And here lies the problem, one that we share in Goa. We can demonstrate all we want, but until we are able to mobilise this anger and transform this into a sustained critique of the system, and create agendas for change, we will remain in the rut.

This is not yet the moment for critique though. This is the moment to congratulate the geração à rasca and wish them strength to network and combine to create options for systemic change in their country.

(A version was first published in the Herald March 20 2011)

The African in Goa: Village Goa beyond the Gãocaria

Every month the Xavier Centre in Porvorim hosts History Hour, a platform for local (national and international) scholars to discuss their works. In doing so it provides happy stimulation for a diverse audience. Last Friday the Centre played host to the release of Beyond the Beach: The Village of Arossim, Goa, in Historical Perspective. The work of Dr. Themistocles D’Silva, the book is a history of the village of Arossim from which Dr. D’Silva hails from.

The work is clearly a labour of love from one of its native sons, perhaps born from the nostalgia that émigré sons feel for their motherland. Dr. D’Silva’s work however also continues a longer tradition, that initiated by his father, Justino da Silva. Justino da Silva, was an archivist of village history, having laboured over the genealogical charts of the prominent families of the village. In his presentation of the work at the Xavier Centre, Dr. D’Silva pointed out that he hoped that his book did not remain an isolated work. On the contrary, he pointed out that there was a need for greater numbers of us to put into writing the histories of our villages, increasing the documentation on the rich histories of Goa beyond the beach. Such histories also go beyond the Goan histories obsessed with the sixteenth century and the Portuguese governance of the territory. Indeed, in the course of the presentation Dr. D’Silva pointed to the urgency of the task given that many of the older generation and their memories are passing away, and that private archives fall victim to the ravages of insects and weather. On this front perhaps Dr. D’Silva was being kind to the custodians of these archives. Though Goan society has produced a number of luminaries, the same intellectual drive that powered these luminaries is not necessarily passed on to the next generation. Many archives have no doubt been discarded into dust heaps and kitchen back-yard fires.

What is most interesting in this book, is that Dr. D’Silva has written it by combining the various influences that have moulded him as an individual. In doing so, he brings to the fore a central problem in the manner in which we think about the Goan village, and thus Goan identity.

A member of the village elite of Arossim, his book locates the village gãocaria (or Comunidade) as one of the points of departure for his narrative. This is not entirely out of place; the Comunidade was a powerful institution in our history and to speak of a village history without delving into the history of the Comunidade would produce a dull, incomplete history. However to speak of the village from the point of view of the Comunidade alone does not exhaust the history of the Goan villages, since there were (and are) a number of people who while living in the village, were not gãocars of the village. What would the history of the Goan village look like if we were to write a village history from their point of view? The threads that Dr. D’Silva draws out gives us a hint into this possibility.

Dr. D’Silva points out in his book a fact that has by and large been left unsaid and unspoken in the public sphere about the Goan village. This fact is of the presence of African slaves within our village communities. The few voices that do mention the presence of the African are Dr. Savia Viegas, Adv. Valmiki Faleiro, and Margaret Mascarenhas in her novel Skin. While speaking of the presence of the African slave in Goa, Dr. D’Silva manages to point out to us that the Goan village was not an idyllic, happy setting for all. These slaves were ill-treated sufficiently to make them want to escape. And escape they did, into the jungles of British-India where slavery was abolished much earlier than it was in Portuguese-India. Dr. D’Silva made reference to the fact that the failure of their master’s to provide a nutritious diet to the slaves forced the latter to poach for fish from the village ponds at night. He also pointed to the fact that these African slaves and their descendants lived at the edges of the villages, pointing to their social marginalization.

When we speak of the African slave’s presence in Goa’s villages, we must recognize that their descendants married local men and women, or if they did not marry, in any case produced babies with local persons. This gives to a good amount of Goans, a history different from those of the gãocars – who in any case could not have been a majority of the population. When speaking of the Comunidade we often create – as did Dr. D’Silva - for the Goan, a Hindu pre-history. If we recognize the presence of the African’s as a part of the Goan village – by not being obsessed with gãocarial histories – we create a Goan with an African history. And what a different, richer and more exciting history that would lead us to!

The entire row over a proposed mosque close to the site of the former World Trade Centre resulted, among other things, in a couple of discoveries about US History. It was pointed out that by virtue of the presence of African slaves in early USA and the site of New Amsterdam (subsequently New York city), early American history includes the history of peoples who professed an Islamic faith. True many African slaves were baptized when they were brought to Goa, but as the Hindu-past obsessed histories tell us, mere baptism does not drive away former influences. In addition to these African slaves, Adv. Valmiki Faleiro has pointed out the presence of Chinese labourers (who worked the railway line that passes through Arossim) and of their marriage to local people. In addition, we have the presence in pre-Portuguese Goan history of the many Muslims who converted to Christianity to save their lives and properties.

All of these people contribute to the histories of Goan villages, which we, befuddled by Gandhian idiosyncrasies, often erroneously believe to be where the real Goa resides. To effectively write about these histories, or to even realize that they exist, we need to move beyond the framework of the Comunidade centered histories that we still take as the central focus of our local history writing. While largely within the frames of this traditional perspective, Dr D’Silva was possibly able to move beyond this traditional framework because of the fact that he is not trapped by traditional social-science ways of writing about Goan history. Or the fact that he has clearly spent a good amount of time in and interacted with the politically inclusive trends of thinking about society within the United States.

For his effort we must thank Dr. D’Silva, buy his book, and then go write our own village histories!

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 12/ 11/ 2011)

The Politics of Apologies: Portugal, Slavery and the Politics of the World Order

I get extremely agitated when Portuguese academics express the need to apologize for, and attempt to undo the damage done during the colonial period, especially that of the slave trade that was conducted in part by them. It is not that there is no need to recognize that this slave trade, and other heinous practices under colonialism took place. There is such a need. An example of this need for recognition is the rather disingenuous manner in which in the course of a competition searching for the 7 wonders of the Portuguese architectural world, the history of slavery linked to a number of Portuguese architectural marvels was omitted. But this recognition does not necessarily imply the need for an apology. Even if it does, the fact of apology carries its own baggage; baggage that can further complicate relations between the colonizer and the formerly colonized.

When Portugal apologizes for slavery, it does not do so on a blank slate. It does this on a slate that is already loaded with a large variety of meanings. For example, it is understood that slavery was the slavery of ‘black’ people. Further, it is understood that this slavery was conducted by ‘white’ people. Thus when we apologize for slavery, we apologize not only as Portuguese, but as ‘white’ people who did grievous injury to ‘black’ people. What this apology does therefore, is to re-inscribe race back into international relations. It makes some people (not all) from the African continent black, and the people in continental Europe white.

This easy equation between white and black is also deeply problematic because the historical situation is not so cut and dry. When Portugal engaged in slavery, it was not only white people who were conducting this trade. The trade flourished also because there were other groups from the African continent (‘black’ and otherwise) who participated in this trade. Not just those in the African continent though; the slave trade was profitable also for a number of Goan families, whose current fortunes are built in part by their participation in the slave trade. For the Portuguese to ignore this complexity and shoulder the entire blame for the slave trade is sweet, but it results in another patently colonial act. It casts the (‘white’) Portuguese as responsible and the others (‘Black’ and African) as not. Classic colonialism rested on the distinction between the all-knowing, responsible, adult White, and the child-like, irresponsible, coloured native.

None of this is to suggest that the Portuguese are wickedly manipulating statements to re-inscribe a racial dimension to post-colonial relations. On the contrary, the urge to apologize comes from the more conscientious segments of Portuguese society, who are appalled by attempts to forget or ignore the barbarities committed in colonial times. However what they fail to realize is that given that the postcolonial world is already configured by certain practices established by the dominant powers of the world, their apology only goes to further complicate and worsen postcolonial relations.

What might these practices established by dominant global players be? Take for example the fact that when we speak of slavery we very often only speak of and imagine slavery in the Atlantic Ocean circuit (i.e. toward the Americas). The slave trade in the Indian Ocean is completely erased. Further it is imagined that only Africans were enslaved. Historians of Goa will know that there was also a slave trade in Chinese and peoples from the Far East. And yet one but rarely hears of this trade.

The reason for this bias is owing to the Anglo-American leadership of the debate. This stress leads to the whole imaginary that is created particularly for the US based Afro-American, that the continent of Africa is ‘Home’. There is the specific imagination of these Afro-descendants in the Americas as the African ‘Diaspora’. Some time ago, in the sixties and the seventies, the whole idea of a return to Africa, that was quite fashionable among Afro-American activists. The experiences of those who ‘returned’ were disastrous. The idea however still has some resonance. This longevity can be explained by the similarity of this construction with other racist and nationalist imaginations. It feeds from and in turn supports the whole idea of the State of Israel and the right of Jews to return to a land (that is imagined as originally being theirs). It buttresses the whole idea of Muslims in India being invaders and hence eternal outsiders to the country. The slave discourse that the Portuguese unwittingly enter into when they wish to apologize is loaded with such ideas. And to be sure, there would be some in Portugal, who would like to see Portugal as a ‘white’ space, with the Blacks knowing for sure that Africa is their space, to which they are more than welcome to return to.

As I stated before, there is a need for us to not ignore or forget the cruelties of colonialism. However this whole business of apologies seems to generate as many problems as it does benefits. For one it is similar to the whole idea of righting historical wrongs. When one tries to do that, one invariably gets into a larger mess than one started with in the first place. Have a look at the wars in the Balkans, the Basque demand, the Hindutva demand. Secondly, the apologies generate as indicated above a whole new system of relations between peoples and countries. The recognition of culpability generates the demand by African (and other Third World countries) for Western developmental aid. Once again, though we recognize that Western European and Northern American wealth is built on colonial exploitation, we should recognize that the demand for aid is not so innocent. It is the demand not of the masses of people of the African and Asian nations, but of their elites. The developmental aid that comes in on the backs of the recognition of responsibility is used to cushion these elites, and to push projects that invariably hurt the poor and the marginal of these countries. Finally, the politics of apologies push certain populations in the formerly colonized spaces into tight (and dangerous) corners. In the context where some segments blame Goan Catholics for the real and imagined attacks on Hindus during the pre-Republican Portuguese regime, does this politics of apology not further condemn the Goan Catholic?

The field of postcolonial relations is a mine-field. In the case of Portugal, which does not share the history of dominant world powers, the field is even more fraught with dangers. A case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. There are for sure however, ways in which we can recognize the sorrows of the past, not ignore them, and then go on to build relations that do not depend on apologies, especially when they involve the creation of further complications in our already troubled world. This route involves recognition of the combination of local and overseas elites in colonial domination. The route involves a refusal to allow any actions that would reinscribe racism and clientalism of formerly colonized States into international relations. The route involves getting on with our lives and not getting caught up in nationalist politics.

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 14 Oct 2009)