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 English Corner |
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English Corner |
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Proudly Lusiads I live here in Europe now fifteen years, where I work for the American Government. In this context, I get to meet and to work with American and German people, having very little contact with the Portuguese themselves, my own ethnic group. The only Portuguese acquaintance that we have in this area is about one hundred and some kilometers from us, in Bad Kreuznach, where we lived five years. Besides them the other Portuguese friends are in the area of Heerlen in the Netherlands and in Amsterdam. It is this reality that makes me, for many Germans and Americans with whom I work, the only Portuguese they know. Now, both the American and the German culture have developed insensitive and uncaring ways of approaching the culture of others. In their Germanic/Anglo-Saxon delusion, they deem any other culture below their own unworthy of attention, to some even dispensing of any respect. Americans and Germans who are courteous or at least open to learn and to accept other cultures, are limited. The tendency among the public at large is to wish the foreigner out; accept no change, and difference of course, keep a distrust and distaste for anything foreign. They disdain and loathe what does not conform to their will and their way of thinking. In Germany, such xenophobia becomes a passion of hate as when the neo-NAZI sympathizers shout, “Ausländer raus!” In the United States there is the ever growing preoccupation about the numbers of aliens around and their taking advantage of the American system, their language and presence seen as undesirable. Gradually the request for laws that curb the open influx of immigrants becomes more vehement and the white supremacist or right wing groups more insolent and daring in their unorthodox views. As in a chicken yard, the weak, the other, the new in the group are pecked on, harassed, insulted, put to ridicule, threatened, abused, molested and curbed in their right to be who they are. Thus, as a Portuguese, upon noticing an accent, I am approached as if I have some kind o flu, about which they become curious. Often people acknowledge me by leading me through an inquiry process about my origins. This practice makes me feel as a non-Catholic would in the age of Inquisition, where people’s curiosity was more an attempt at isolating and undermining the dignity of others, disowning their right to be and to think differently. Thus, there is a medieval quality about such interviews, no matter how well intentioned they may seem, which bothers me. Such practice will usually go as follows: Upon noticing my accent, they ask if I am German, then on a negative, if I am then French. I find myself questioned as if I am Rumpelstilskin--my fate to “die” the moment they guess right my ethnic group. I tell them that I teach German and that I am European, but that I am proudly a Portuguese. Invariably, those who suffer of some sort of prejudice or Anglo/Deutsche überheblichkeit or arrogance, will right away on the mention of the Portuguese have me pigeonholed as either a Hispanic or from Spain. Next they match their associations with the closest thing to Portuguese, which in their way of thinking and ignorance is Spanish. In this fashion, they assault me with Spanish words and Spanish phrases. This their means of approaching me in my own terms--a practice that reminds me someone changing dollar bills into pennies, or “Giving Polly a cracker,” attitude that I resent. As Portuguese, I surprise those who behave towards me as if with a Spaniard or any other Hispanic by giving them an explanation of who we are as Portuguese. I right away tell them that it took Portugal thousands of years of struggle to become independent and distinct from Spain. To talk to me with Spanish words or confuse Portugal with Spain or any other Hispanic country, notwithstanding my respect for those cultures, is an insult and abuse. For example, this very week, I received an Internet postcard for the “Cinco de Mayo” from a friend back in the United States. This led me to thank my friend, but explain to her, “How do you think the Irish would accept your telling them that they are British or how do you think a British person would react if you took him or her for American?” I continued asking her to consider, “How do you think a Jew will react when you tell him he is Arab or tell a German that he is Latin, a Canadian that he is American?” The insult is identical. We the Portuguese are not Hispanic, and, with due respect to the Spanish and Hispanic people, to bunch us together with little respect for our individuality, is to me an act of genocide. That kind of disregard of course is offensive; of course it hurts. After my initial response, I notice that the speaker takes a second look at me, and starts reevaluating me as the Portuguese about whom they have no idea. We, then, talk some more about who the Portuguese are. I tell them that we are the offspring of Celtic people called the Lusitanians and that our language and culture stem directly from them. I explain to them that, in the same way that English did not become Latin or French as a result of invasions by the Romans and the French, Portuguese, in spite of other influences, has a distinct Celtic base. All other influences that came afterwards did not at all replace that expression that is the base of our Language. Ask a Spaniard or any one Hispanic and they will confirm that Portuguese is not Spanish, although we share with them a very close history, especially the Latin, Germanic and Arab invasions. To the American and/or German, who fixated on their cult or premise that all Northern people are fair, blond and blue-eyed, to tell that the Portuguese are Celtic, is the same as blasphemy. In their deep conviction that the Northern races, Celtic or Germanic, have nothing to do with the South and Latins, they cannot help it but be bewildered. To tell them about the Lusitanians, therefore, is the same as to want to convince them that they have eyes between their legs. That the Portuguese, however, are the descendants of the Lusitanians, is a fact that is as real as Viriato, and the guerrillas against the Romans, who identified them and reported on them. That these Lusitanians are related to their Irish, Welsh, Scottish, French, Belgian, and other European Celtic counterparts, is a reality that took Rome about two hundred years to overcome. Take the word Portugal and Galizia, take the word Wales. If we replace the G for W and W for G, we get Portu-Wal and Wal-izia. On the other hand Wales becomes Gales, and that is the exact translation of it in Portuguese, for example, the country of Gales (There is no W in the Portuguese Language). The word Portugal itself came from a word meaning Port by Cale that was pronounced very close to Gale or Gaele--In a foreign area, the Latin ear was not very keen to certain foreign sounds. Thus Cale or Gale reverted in time to Gal, as in PortuGal. In the same manner, all the Celtic world was referred to as Gaul, and a Scottish Highlander of Celtic origin is a Gael. It is not coincidence that makes this comparison of terms, therefore, compatible. One could think of us as Portuguese as the Portuwelsh, if not in the exterior, Welsh, as another Atlantic people of Celtic origin, tune in to the rhythm of the sea, stubborn, unpredictable, having a dreamy quality that ties them to legends, the past, the delusions of the sea; who have a gentle and rough disposition at the same time, and are believe or not, naturally inebriated as proud Lusitanians, sons of Bachus. Being a Portuguese, I share with my people a desire that encompasses the globe. With them, I navigate in these two cultures, the American and the German, and set them to a background of wider global thinking to find that both American and German cultures have the quality of setting themselves as a creation apart and above the culture of the rest of the world. As much respect that I have for both these cultures, yet, I resent the quality I find in both of them to shuffle and heed little respect to the dignity expressed in the diversity and uniqueness of others, a their genuine tendency to minimize the expression of any non-Anglo/Germanic group even to the point of consciously obliterating from their awareness others’ the right to Be. In this respect, as a Portuguese, I resent some American and German attempts to shuffle my origins together with the Spanish or the Hispanic. Indeed, I find this kind of disrespect, germane to such attitudes as those that led to the practice at the gates of Ausschwitz, where, the SS, like watch dogs of hell, positioned themselves to eye other human beings with no respect to the person or their dignity---their sole preoccupation, if they fit to survive or were unimportant and weak enough to deserve the crematories and be exterminated. In my observations, I find, that sadly enough, such heinous practices go on in deed even today, as when people discriminate with lowly intentions, to ridicule and to find fault, instead of to celebrate and welcome the diversity and the uniqueness of each one of us with a kind heart and a rich human understanding. Thus, a Portuguese and rebellious in nature, with all due respect to all Spaniards, I will not accept being called anything Spanish, and will call a spade a spade and welcome a global attitude, by revealing the short comings of an old world order. So doing, I know deep inside that I am acting as a global thinking Portuguese marooned between the American and the German cultures. Silvério Gabriel de Melo Vogelbach, Germany |
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