José Mattoso

The starting point for the thoughts that Professor José Mattoso shares with us in this article is the concept of national identity, which he sees as a phenomenon that may be natural or artificial, is differentiated and manifests itself in a way that varies from the clear to the obscure. The author then looks at the interaction between the concepts of national identity and independence, which he feels are not necessarily related. 

In the case of East Timor, the island was originally divided into two groups of small kingdoms – that of the "Belos" in the east, and that of the "Servião" in the west. The differences between these two regions were consolidated during the 18^th century, when the western part succumbed to Dutch rule and the eastern part to the Portuguese. When administrative, cultural and economic practises go on for a relatively long period of time, they have a decisive effect on the sedimentation of a national identity, and in this respect we must remember that the Portuguese presence lasted until 1975. 

However, the brutal occupation of East Timor by the Indonesian military which followed the Portuguese departure accentuated pre-national awareness and turned it into a true resistance struggle, the objective of which was to secure the freedom of the eastern side of the island. The strong Timorese traditions, such as the cult of the dead, the very close parent-child relationship and above all the fact that Timorese society attaches enormous importance to the values of respect and friendship, are the bases for the country’s own socio-cultural identity. Hard on the heels of these values comes that of honour – which is perhaps responsible for the ease with which the Timorese unleash physical violence. 

In the midst of all these factors the people of Timor will need to find a balance midway between independence, which has already been won, and a national identity that remains to be conquered.

Geoffrey Gunn

The author seeks to examine the interaction between language and culture in the construction of the identity of East Timor.

He first looks at the issues connected with the civilizational background to the beginning of the phase during which Portuguese and Islamic power expanded in the eastern archipelago. In this respect, while anthropology and culture do link both the eastern and western Timorese to the region and emphasise their common roots, "(...) the colonial experience and contacts and the civilizational influences that divided the two halves of the island (...) distinguish East Timorese society from other neighbouring Indonesian societies".

He then describes the emergence of the creole cultures, which developed as a result of the contact with the Portuguese in both the island of Timor and the archipelago as a whole.

Finally, the author examines the long-term results of the Portuguese influence and contrasts it with the consequences for the Timorese identity of twenty-four years of Indonesian occupation. The latter is still very present in the minds of the younger generation, who are fighting to lend meaning to their future as part of an independent nation-state.

A. Barbedo de Magalhães

Following the American defeat in Vietnam in April 1975, which created an international context that was extremely unfavourable to independence, the decolonisation that took place at the same time, beginning in 1974/75, and the brief taste of democratic freedom, the new country’s political fortunes created expectations and led to the rebirth of old dreams. The author explains that once the hopes of a pacific evolution towards independence had been dashed and in the aftermath of the UDT coup, FRETILIN also took up arms, and that from September 1975 onwards East Timor saw the formation of the FALINTIL, which subsequently came to control almost the whole of the territory.

But then international connivance managed to silence the press and rendered invasion and genocide possible. The author underlines the FALINTIL’s heroism and their respect for the people, which enabled the two groups to identify with one another and resulted in popular support for the resistance movement. The cross-party nature of this backing was crucial to the development of a truly national resistance and to the generation of both internal and external support.

Lastly, the article highlights the importance that was attached from day one to the external and diplomatic element, which Barbedo de Magalhães believes was a key factor for the Timorese Resistance movement.

Taur Matan Ruak

After outlining a brief summary of Timor’s history, in which he focuses on the island’s discovery by the Portuguese during the first decade of the 16^th century and their relations with the local peoples, which were essentially commercial in nature until the arrival of the first missionaries more than thirty years later, the author points out that until 1975 only 5% of the population – primarily the administrative elite and the Catholic clergy – spoke Portuguese.

From the 1960’s onwards, however, the language became a vehicle for both internal communication and contacts with Portugal and the other Portuguese-speaking countries. Besides this, thanks to its Greco-Roman roots, a knowledge of Portuguese also made it easier to learn other languages. The Indonesian invasion and the resulting splits within Timorese society meant that the use of Portuguese declined and only those people who emigrated to Macao, Australia and Portugal perfected their command of it.

From 1975 to 1979 it was also the language of the Resistance, but when the "Bases de Apoio" (the social groups who did speak Portuguese and their reasons for doing so) disappeared, things changed and only some of the correspondence between senior leaders continued to be written in it. Even so, at the end of the article Taur Matn Ruak says: "we never lost the desire to maintain the Portuguese language (...) despite the various difficulties imposed by the physical decline in the number of Portuguese-speakers".

Padre João Felgueiras

After recalling sandalwood’s role as India’s first ambassador, the period during which Fernão de Magalhães circumnavigated the globe – when cartographers are already thought to have been familiar with the name Timor – and the reference to the island in Os Lusíadas, Padre João Felgueiras underlines the fact that in 1975 the territory was home to thousands of Chinese, who were commonly referred to as "China Macaos". Besides their own language, they originally spoke both Tétum and Portuguese, but in the end only Portuguese prevailed. 

It was the missionaries, however, who needed the widest vocabulary – at least, one that was richer than that needed for commercial relationships. Christianity created "firm bonds of Christian world solidarity", while the Portuguese administration of the island generated a feeling of belonging – two aspects that were both expressed in the Portuguese language and "lived side-by-side with one another". The resistance to the Indonesian occupation was a fight on various fronts – not just an armed struggle. 

The saga of the books in the library of the seminary at Dare, which were carefully taken from one place to another, is an episode that symbolises the lengths to which the Timorese were prepared to go to protect books in Portuguese. It began to be common practise to photocopy originals in order to compensate for the devastation that was caused when books were burned or ruined by the Indonesians. Another miracle involved the teaching of the Portuguese language, which the author calls "(...) an activity that springs more from the soul and the will of the people than any other initiative". This is why in conclusion he says that: "In Timor this language smells as sweet as sandalwood".

João Freitas da Câmara

IMPETU stands for "Timorese Students’ League". It was created in Jakarta in 1984 and its initial objective was to respond to students’ needs. However, later on it was used to keep Timorese national unity alive. During the 1980’s its activities were restricted to channelling correspondence and some very limited information, but its next step was to send that information on outside the country. 

The detention of Timorese students in Indonesia had a major political impact at international level. This was particularly true of the request for political asylum at the Dutch Embassy in Jakarta, but the similar incidents at the Swedish, French, British, Russian, American and Austrian Embassies were also headline news and came on top of Commander Xanana Gusmão’s call for the reorganisation of the clandestine front within Indonesia. The 1990’s were also the decade of the demonstrations against the Indonesian government that were fomented and organised by IMPETU. 

Taken as a whole, this process was a determining factor in the political transformations that we see today: the restoration of diplomatic relations between Portugal and Indonesia, the release of Xanana Gusmão and finally President Habibi’s authorisation of the referendum in East Timor.

Luís Costa

The author begins by describing Timor as a multilingual country in which various local languages with Austronesian and Papuan origins have existed side-by-side with Portuguese – the result of four centuries of Portuguese administration – and – during the twenty-four years in which the island was occupied by Indonesia – Bahasa. A United Nations survey in 1997 revealed that there are fifteen main languages. Portuguese is that of the resistance and the clergy, while the lingua franca is Tétum, which is the language of the dominant ethnic group and the liurai (ruler) of Ué-Hali in the Belo kingdom. Tétum’s position as a lingua franca was consolidated when the missionaries accepted it and adopted it as a language of prayer and catechesis. According to the author, Tétum functions as a language of national cohesion and a factor in the identity of all East Timorese.

Luís Costa then offers a brief introduction on the objectives of his Tétum–Portuguese Dictionary and Portuguese-Tétum Conversation Guide and the way in which to work with and consult them. He talks about the enormous influence that Portuguese has had on Tétum and mentions the East Timorese Constitution, which has established both of them as official languages. He makes two appeals: the first is that once an orthographical standard for it that everyone accepts has been defined, Tétum should really be developed; the second is that the conditions needed to ensure its wider use be created, especially during the first few years of schooling, and that teachers’ knowledge and practise of the language should be assessed.

Maria José Albarran de Carvalho

After beginning by mentioning East Timor’s 18 national languages, this article goes on to emphasise the fact that Tétum serves as a vehicle for communication between all of them. Malaysian, which had been a lingua franca in the 15^th century, reappeared after 1976, when it was imposed following the Indonesian invasion. However, throughout the vast majority of the territory it is Tétum that has served as a vehicle for inter-regional communication, alongside Portuguese, which was the language of religion and the colonialist, Hakka, and Cantonese, which was spoken in the mixed-race Chinese-Timorese milieus that were principally linked to the commercial sector. Portuguese has been spoken by an assimilated minority – it was used at school and by the bureaucracy and was imposed during the colonial phase – but above all by Christians, who have used it as the language of their religion. The significant role that Portuguese played in the genesis of the Timorese cultural and personal identity – inasmuch as it is spoken by 11% of the population and more than anything else was the language of the resistance, the language in which the mass was celebrated until 1980 and, also thanks to the Church, the only language spoken at school until 1912 – is well known. What is more, 98% of the first names and 70% of the family names of the Timorese people are of Portuguese origin.

The author also mentions the topazes – an Indian term that means ‘bilingual’. They are also known as casados (literally, ‘married ones’), because they were the product of the mixed race policy that was initiated in Goa by Albuquerque and was then transplanted to Malacca, where there are many such Euro-Asians, whose communities absorbed Chinese and slaves from a variety of origins and played an important part in the genesis of Timor.

In this article Professor Hull answers some pertinent questions about language, culture and society in East Timor. Research and Publications Director at East Timor University’s National Institute of Linguistics (INL), Geoffrey Hull has dedicated much of his research as a linguist to the study of Tétum and other native East Timorese languages – an area in which he has published many works, including a dictionary of modern Tétum and a reference grammar – to the point that Xanana Gusmão invited him to outline the primary strategy on language, education and national identity at the Timorese National Resistance Council’s strategy conference in August 2000.

Rui Manuel Loureiro

The author begins by mentioning the fact that "as soon as they reached India (at the end of the 15^th century)" the Portuguese "carried out a systematic physical and human survey of Asia in order to remedy the enormous gaps in the existing European knowledge of the region, which continued to be based on old Medieval treatises". 

Following the successive conquests of Goa, Malacca, Hormuz, Ternate and Macao between 1510 e 1555, they created a maritime network which interlinked their new territories and which, besides providing a market for a substantial quantity of luxury goods that were shipped via the Cape of Good Hope, "opened the doors to an increasing Portuguese intervention in inter-Asian commerce (...), the volume of which very frequently exceeded the trade between Portugal and the Orient". 

In 1512 Francisco Rodrigues drew various maps of the East Indies, on which, for the first time in the history of European cartography, there appeared Timor – the island "where the sandalwood is born". However, the first Portuguese foothold in the "islands of Timor" was actually to be established in Solor, by Dominican missionaries who built the first fort there. This was followed by Flores and Timor itself, where the sandalwood trade and the conversion of the local people proceeded side-by-side. Dominican missionaries, royal officials, powerful private merchants, the Dutch and finally, in the 17^th century, mixed-race Luso-Asians grouped themselves in forces that were sometimes opposed, sometimes allied and often split into factions, all of which coexisted, but not always peacefully.

Artur Teodoro de Matos

Born in Goa, the Dominican friar Manuel de Santo António was appointed to the post of Visitor in Timor. Arriving by ship in Lifau at the beginning of 1698, he set up residence in the kingdom of Luca, from which he organised his apostolic activity in neighbouring areas and managed to convert several local kings. However, following the death of António Hornay, neither Mesquita Pimentel, nor his successor as Governor, Coelho Vieira, were able to restore Portuguese sovereignty in the island and the Governor of India then appointed António Coelho Guerreiro to the post. 

When Guerreiro arrived on the island, it was thanks to the intervention of Frei Manuel de Santo António that he managed to negotiate with Lourenço Lopes. From that moment on Dom Manuel was the object of a great deal of praise from the new Governor, who called him the "human angel". When Guerreiro was replaced by Jácome Morais Sarmento, it was once more thanks to Frei Manuel de Santo António that Domingos da Costa and his captains offered the new Governor their allegiance. 

Despite this, a serious dispute arose between Morais Sarmento and Dom Manuel when, in a rash and heated moment, the former imprisoned and unjustly humiliated Dom Mateus da Costa. Da Costa was finally released and restored to his position by the next Governor, Dom Manuel de Sottomaior, but thenceforth the relationship between the prelate and the civil authority was always a quarrelsome one. Dom Manuel de Santo António is thought to have died at the age of 73, following a life that had been dedicated to Timor. The island’s political and religious history will have to reserve a special place for him.

Luís F. R. Thomaz

This article is a transcription with comments of a brief manuscript that is currently in the Rio de Janeiro National Library. It was written by Colonel João Marinho de Moura, a former Governor of Timor, and is dated Lisbon, December 1795. It is only one of a number of documents about Timor that were taken to Brazil when King Dom João VI transferred the imperial capital to Rio de Janeiro. The text reflects the concerns that were then rife in Portugal as a result of the French Revolution. 

Where Timor was concerned, there was a fear that Holland, which had occupied the western part of Timor since the Battle of Penfui in 1749, would take advantage of the chaos in Europe to annexe the eastern part of the island as well. At the end of the day these fears proved unfounded and during a period of relative peace under the governorship of José Pinto de Alcoforado, the cultivation of sugar cane and coffee was developed.

Another link between the history of Timor and Brazil in this field was the importation in the 17th century of the crops that are still the staple Timorese diet today – maize, sweet potato and cassava.

Paulo Pires

This article is a journey through the history of the press in Timor before the Portuguese Revolution on the 25th of April 1974 and is set against the island’s historical and cultural background. The author points out that until the 1950’s, the readers of texts written in Portuguese were almost exclusively Catholic missionaries and a few senior officials in the colonial administration. 

After the Second World War and the restoration of the Portuguese government of the island, which had been exiled during the Japanese occupation, it was decided to commence a new era of reconstruction in Timor, particularly in the cultural field. However, the Portuguese who subsequently went to the territory were mainly military personnel stationed there for brief periods, and senior bureaucrats. In fact, the shortage of teachers meant that both reservist and career officers combined their military duties with teaching at Timor’s only high school, where they were known as "teaching agents" rather than teachers. 

A mere 27% of the population actually went to school. Even so, prior to 1974 a few periodicals did appear in Portuguese, including the magazine Seara, which was promoted by the Díli-Timor Diocese, the journal of the army in Timor, which was entitled A Província de Timor, and the official journal of the provincial government, A Voz de Timor. 

Following the 25th of April Revolution the latter gained a new élan, with more pages and a larger print-run. However, the fratricidal struggle between the UDT and Fretilin, which was heightened by the invasion by the Indonesian army, cut short any possibility of a revival of the Portuguese-language press in the island until independence a short while ago.

Maria Júlia Farnandes

This article was written in homage to Francisco Borja da Costa, who died on the 7th of December 1975 – the first day of the Indonesian invasion of Timor – and whose words are now sung in the new country’s national anthem. Son of the liurai (local chief) António Costa and brother of Luís Costa, the author of the Tétum-Portuguese Dictionary and the Conversation Guide, he was born in the Manatuto region, attended the former 4th class in Soibada and then went to Díli, where he completed high school before joining the civil service. 

The 25th of April 1974 found him on a traineeship at the Diário de Notícias in Lisbon, following which he returned to the island as a journalist for the newspaper Voz de Timor. After the creation of Fretilin – a name that he is thought to have suggested – he again went to Lisbon for another period of training, this time at República. However, as one of the founders of Fretilin, his name was on the list of people whom the Indonesians had orders to kill, and when they invaded the territory shortly after he returned to Timor again, he was murdered. 

As a poet he was inspired by the island’s traditional poetry and anyone who understands Tétum feels as though they are listening to the poetic discourses of wise men. The objective of the Foundation that bears his name, which was created with the backing of a number of foreign NGO’s, is the study and dissemination of the Tétum language and the defence, development and dissemination of the East Timorese culture and identity.

Amongst other initiatives, such as publications (the magazine Coral for example), and with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Borja da Costa Foundation is continuing to award scholarships to Timorese students.

Peter Stilwell

The poet and silviculturalist Ruy Cinatti arrived in Timor for the first time in July 1946, four years after the violent Japanese invasion. He had just been appointed secretary to the Governor, Óscar Ruas, and the period was one of reconstruction, so at first his time was completely monopolised by his secretarial duties. However, during the last few months of 1947 the Governor authorised him to travel freely around Timor with local guides in order to conduct a phyto-geographic survey for his degree thesis. 

In 1948 Cinatti came back to Lisbon (where his thesis was awarded virtually maximum marks), before returning to Timor in 1951, this time as head of the Agricultural Service. His affection for the Timorese had grown still further in the meantime and he became more and more convinced that a sustainable agricultural development of the island would only be possible if it were to be carried out in close articulation with the local culture and with respect for the need to conserve the forests. 

Back in Lisbon in 1956, Cinatti published a manifesto entitled "Em favor do Timorense" (In favour of the Timorese) and two years later submitted an "Agrarian Development Plan for Timor". Meanwhile he had moved to Oxford, where he worked on his doctoral thesis. In 1961, when he again travelled to Timor, this time to gather data for his PhD, he was shocked to note the way in which the territory’s cultural heritage was being dilapidated. He took 6,000 metres of film during this visit. He made his last trip to the island in 1966. 

In January 1975 Cinatti wrote a long letter to the Diário de Notícias, warning the country of the danger that Timor was in, but the letter was never published and the subsequent Indonesian invasion was a bitter blow to him.