By MARIO LUIS GRANGEIA*

Camões overseas, a symbolism for the Portuguese diaspora

1.

Individuals and families from all walks of life have immigrated to this long-standing mixed-race South American country, especially European citizens after the belated end of formal slavery in 1888 – so much so that the 1900 census recorded that foreigners made up 6,2% of the population. As this percentage has fallen – to less than 0,5% in recent censuses – there have been movements to commemorate the sagas of these groups through municipal, state and even national days.

Italians, Japanese and Jews won dates in Brasília for their immigration: February 21, for the arrival of 380 Italian families in Vitória in 1874; June 18, for the landing of 781 Japanese in Santos in 1908; and March 18, for the reopening of the first synagogue in the Americas, in Recife in 2002.^[1]

Other foreigners have subnational days and, in the absence of a generic Immigrants' Day on the country's calendar, they have December 18, which the United Nations has established as International Migrants' Day. This choice alludes to the signing of the convention on the rights of migrant workers and their families in 1990.

It is true that these days are not always celebrated, but they have at least symbolic value for (re)valuing the roots and fruits of so many family trees. Historically, the largest immigrant group on Brazilian soil dates back to the country of the former colonizers. In the 2000 census, for example, one in three foreigners was originally from Portugal.

And if there were a day for Portuguese immigrants… which one would you choose? Three days would come to mind: (i) March 7… for the “immigration” of the court to Rio de Janeiro, the destination of the 1808 fleet? (ii) February 6… for the founding of the emblematic colony of Nova Lousã in 1867? (iii) June 10… for the Portuguese holiday of Portugal, Camões and the Portuguese Communities Day?

The transfer of the court to the colony, due to the advance of Napoleon's troops, marked the Portuguese's search for a new life in other territories, but this choice would be imprecise, after all, Brazil remained under Portuguese rule until 1822.

In fact, contrary to authors who claimed that 15 people (8% of the population of Lisbon) were on the fleet with Queen Maria I and Prince Regent João – a version read in the memoirs of English Navy officer Thomas O'Neil, who did not witness the embarkation –, historian Nireu Cavalcanti collected the names of those accompanying her in eight collections in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro and concluded that there were 420 civilians, religious and military personnel and 101 Navy officers.^[2] The 14 members of the royal family and more than 400 companions would perhaps be “pre-migrants”.

2.

The exercise of imagining a day like this does not need to be limited to pioneers. It can refer to the arrival of a representative group, such as the 380 Italian families who disembarked from the steamship Sofia in Vitória in the summer of 1874, heading to the Tabacchi farm in Espírito Santo, the landmark of National Italian Immigrant Day. Hence our consideration of February 6, the day of the arrival, in 1867, of the first 29 immigrants to the Portuguese Colony of Nova Lousã, established in the current municipality of Pinhal in São Paulo and a model for the adoption of free labor in times of slavery.^[3]

The colonial nucleus was conceived by João Elisário de Carvalho Montenegro, known as Comendador Montenegro, who was born in Lousã, near Coimbra, and who emigrated to Rio de Janeiro in the early 1840s. He prospered as a traveling salesman and in 1867 acquired his coffee farm in Pinhal. Instead of having slaves or farmers with partnership or contract work, he recruited people from Lousã who he knew and paid them monthly.

The imperial government provided a subsidy for the passage, since the migrants were already hired, and the wages allowed the employer to pay off the debts for the trip in five months. He linked the success of his farm to the fact that “the system adopted in the establishment for the remuneration of the service is the monthly salary, the only system that does not produce discontent among the colonists, cause or give rise to complaints and even serious riots, as has been a living example in some colonies of this beautiful province.”^[4]

Although unique and emblematic of Portuguese immigration (and anti-slavery ideology), the case of Nova Lousã would, in my opinion, be overlooked as its symbolic landmark in favor of June 10th – the Day of Portugal, Camões and the Portuguese Communities. The Portuguese holiday created in 1978 alludes to the death of the poet Luís de Camões in 1580 and the day was called by the dictatorial regime of the Estado Novo (1933-1974) as the Day of Camões, Portugal and the Race.

The similarity of official dates on both sides of the Atlantic would meet the sought-after valorization of Portuguese both there and here. It would also refer to the author of the classic The Lusiads who, on the eve of his death and Spain annexing Portugal, wrote in a letter that “finally, I will end my life and everyone will see that I was so fond of my homeland, that I was not content to die in it, but with it”.^[5]

Echoing Camões and other notable authors, Portuguese immigrants interviewed in one of the research projects at the root of my book Brothers from overseas? Portuguese and immigration in Brazil, they gave many demonstrations of affection for their homeland even without having lived there for so many years (they demonstrated other feelings about life in the two Portuguese-speaking countries, but it is not possible to reconstruct them in this article).

In defense of this Portugal Day as a hypothetical landmark for a possible Portuguese immigrant day, I would like to use the sensitive words of Brazilian singer Adriana Calcanhotto, who, after performing for so many years in Portuguese cities, went to live in the homeland of great poets: “Portugal Day is not the day of a general, a strategist, a discoverer, a trailblazer, a king, a coup plotter, a conqueror, an authoritarian dictator, a lunatic, or even a metalworker. It is the day of a poet. What other country is like that?”^[6] Nothing else would better justify this choice for that imaginary date.

*Mario Luis Grangeia, analyst at the Public Prosecutor's Office, holds a PhD in sociology from UFRJ. Author of, among other books, Brothers from overseas? Portuguese and immigration in Brazil (Editora UFRJ).

Notes

[1] Laws 11.687/2008, 11.142/2005 and 12.124/2009.

[2] Cavalcanti, N. The urban reorganization of the new headquarters of the Court. Magazine of the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute. n. 436. Jul./Sept. 2007. p. 149-199.

[3] Truzzi, O.; Scott, ASV Pioneering, discipline and paternalism in labor relations between landowners and immigrants in the XNUMXth century: the case of the colony of Nova Lousã, in São Paulo. History: Journal of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto. III, vol. 6. 2005. p. 339-354.

[4] Monte-Negro, JE de C. Pamphlet on the Nova-Louzã Colony founded by João Elisário de Carvalho Monte-Negro in 1867. Campinas: Typography of the Gazeta de Campinas, 1872. p. 2.

[5] Camoens, 1850 apoud Machado Filho, Aires da M. Our classics: Camões Epic. v. 14. 4th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Agir, 1966. p. 3

[6] Calcanhotto, A. Lusa Saga: the story of a journey🇧🇷 Rio de Janeiro: Cobogó, 2008. p. 125.

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