Good afternoon, and thanks for having me. I'm going to just use my 10 minutes because I know it's lunchtime, so everybody must be hungry,
so I'm going to speak to you about the Portuguese community in Bermuda.
We often hear that we define the ethical groups in Bermuda as three major ones.
There's black, white and then the Portuguese. And sometimes even on surveys about race, we still see Portuguese as an option.
Very interesting when we look at the Portuguese being a nationality and not a race per se.
So today is a very, very interesting date because tomorrow, November 4th,
Sunday marks the one hundred and sixty ninth anniversary of the arrival of the first group of Portuguese immigrants to Bermuda.
OK. Please be reminded that next year on the same date, you have a holiday, as stated by Premier Burt.
Yes. So you're very welcome for the day off. Yes.
So why do the Portuguese come to the island, OK?
There was a push to modernise our agricultural industry because we had a decline on the seafaring industry.
It met its demise. So we had to get our economy going.
So Governor Reid proposed that we should develop or redevelop, rather the agricultural industry.
So we needed labour. We needed expertise.
So we looked around. And a group of 58 Portuguese nationals came on November 4th nine.
Sorry, 18 49. If you look on the map of the world, if you look due east, you'll find that Madeira is on the same parallel.
OK, so the idea was to bring those people to Bermuda so that they can plant vine and make wine just like the mandarins do.
Madeira Madeira wine is something that it's a. Something off of just like port wine, something exquisite, so we wanted that as well in Bermuda.
However, we didn't go into that type of business. We developed agriculture.
OK. There is proof that agriculture grew in the in the following decades two, three decades.
Four decades it grew. And sometimes we give credit to the Portuguese that came here.
Of course, they had the role in that, but there was also introduction of technology.
Governor Reed introduced technology mainly ploughs, but that was the introduction of that.
Between forty nine and the turn of the century, the Portuguese population grew.
There was growth in the population and by nineteen ninety one we could see that a lot of the Portuguese immigrants that came,
you know, their children, their grandchildren, they start venturing into other occupations.
We start seeing them into other occupations, and they were also educating themselves.
There's an article on the Road Gazette, I believe, February nine, 2011.
Mr Trevor Monae's mentions that a grand uncle was the first Portuguese student accepted that Salter's OK, so there was some progress.
OK. When it comes to discrimination,
we have to look at the Portuguese as someone that came in the middle of the two main ethnic groups in Bermuda, the whites and the blacks.
OK. And they faced discrimination from both sides, particularly when they came in.
Eighteen forty nine. OK. The whites were discriminated because these people came.
They would they came to do menial, menial jobs, low paying wages.
They couldn't speak. The language they couldn't ride. They couldn't read.
So they were kind of pushed to the side. They did the labour.
They stuck to each other in communities.
But that's a form of a way that they were discriminated against by the white population from the black population, of course, in 1849.
Why were we bringing people in? We had enough people available on the island that could do those types of work of jobs.
But so there was a pushback from the black community as well, and some would say rightfully so.
Why are we bringing people when we have labour available on the island?
OK, now moving forward to the twenties, as doctor, as the minister, Brown said.
And Mr Winfield said there was a change in labour.
It was the importation of other of other groups and despite the in spite of the progress that the Portuguese have achieved,
they still didn't get membership into certain clubs.
So they form their own club, Worksman Workman's Club, in nineteen thirty five and it's still open today.
It's Vasco da Gama and we can Mr Abel Pimentel.
He was the first president and we can look at him as the first social activist coming from the Portuguese community.
You don't accept us. We can create our own. And the club became a centre for culture, a centre where the Portuguese could go and get help.
Get educated, get assistance. OK, so the club is still a very vibrant club in Bermuda over well, 85 90 years.
It's still in operation, OK? As was mentioned before, with the stricter immigration rules, the Portuguese living on the island, the newcomers,
not the ones that were here in eighteen forty nine, but there was strict rules and the Portuguese were unable to bring their wives and their children.
OK, so one can imagine that in those days they couldn't travel back and forth as we do today.
So they would they would lose important years in the life of their children, their formative years.
The parents would be away from them. OK. There was a priest.
Father. Father Felipe Macedo.
He was an advocate, too, for the Portuguese community, and he fought for that rule to change.
So in 1958, there was a change. And from then on, the Portuguese of living on the island, they could bring their wives.
In fact, there's an article in the Bermuda magazine that says that he performed up to a thousand weddings,
so people that united or reunited and boyfriend girlfriends.
And then they got together and he got the married, OK.
Like Mr Pimentel from Vasco da Gama, the first president like Father Marcello, we have had other activists from the Portuguese community.
We can, we can name a few. We have Miss Patricia Mudd.
She was the first that she wrote a book on that on the Portuguese Bermudian history.
A very interesting book I think is the only one of the kind. So I look at her as an activist,
someone that was proactive in in helping the Portuguese with the problems they had or at least tell the story of the Portuguese.
We often hear Mr. Trevor Monice advocating for the rights of Portuguese people on the island.
We often hear about Mr Robert Perez and of course, who can forget, who can forget Eddie de Mello?
He was an advocate for the Portuguese rights on the island.
So when it came to resistance, I gave you examples, you know,
people that may have fought against discrimination towards the Portuguese community on the island.
But I understand and that the Portuguese were not a a defiant people.
OK. They were not a defiant people. And I take the the idea of Rennie at or large.
She presented in one of these forums at Oxford University,
and she mentions and I take her ideas and they want to bring it to the plight of
the Portuguese on the island is that the Portuguese understood that loose lips.
And noise could get you in trouble. Yes, it could get you in trouble.
It could. You could go home and that's often the the the trap that comes towards the community.
So the the choice was to bite your tongue, do what you must and get ahead in life.
And many did. So if you look at our community today, we see a lot of we see a lot of business leaders.
We see a lot of business owners and we still see remnants of what we eat, what the Portuguese did in eighteen forty nine,
most of the farming is still in the hands of Portuguese food distribution construction.
So there was a lot of progress, a lot of progress over the years, and we even had a period between 88 and 92.
There were about six amps that carried the Portuguese name.
OK. Carrying a Portuguese name is a strong aspect of your heritage, of course,
but it doesn't mean that those people who carry that name will be advocates for the for the for the for the community.
And I was just I was just I would just end by saying that again with the ideas of Mr Rennie and alarge that there's a sentiment in the Portuguese
community even to this day that there is a passive aggressive approach by the various governments towards the plight of the Portuguese people.
OK. There is a procrastination. There is a pushing to the side.
There was an hesitation in taking care of some of their issues.
And the main issue that we know here is the fact that they feel or the generally they feel that they belong to Bermuda.
They were allowed to come here a century or so ago. They were allowed to be working here for 40 50 years.
They were allowed to to bear children and grandchildren.
Yet there are some people that still don't have something that says, I belong to this island and they live as Bermudian.
They feel Bermudian. But this passive aggressive approach by the different governments is something that they feel should be addressed.
Thank you very much. Thank you.