11 July 1993

Notes from Lisbon

        It is not the present but the past that Portugal boasts about. The visitor to Lisbon is regaled with the achievements of Portugal during the Age of Discovery -- and is shown the monuments to such persons as Afonso de Albuquerque, who conquered Ormuz -- the gateway to the Persian Gulf -- in 1507, made Goa (in India) the capital of the Portuguese possessions in Asia in 1510, captured Malacca in 1511, and then opened sea trade with Siam (Thailand), the Moluccas (the Spice Islands, now part of Indonesia) and China. In Albuquerque's time, Portugal ruled the Indian Ocean. When Portugal was at its zenith, it also held Brazil and much of the African coast.
        Portugal's boast is echoed in the first lines of the Lusiads, the epic of Portuguese seafaring written by Luiz Vaz de Camoens: ``This is the story of heroes who, leaving their native Portugal behind them, opened a way to Ceylon, and further, across the seas no man had ever sailed before.''
        The Portuguese, however, do not speak much about how they lost their overseas possessions. They lost their Asian possessions within the next century or so. The Dutch took over much of Indonesia; the British won control over the Malay peninsula, Ceylon and almost all of India; the French established a presence in Indochina.
        By the end of World War II, Mozambique, Angola, Macau, East Timor and three cities in India (Goa, Daman and Diu) were all that were left of the Portuguese. Since then, India has annexed the three cities, Indonesia took over East Timor, Angola and Mozambique have won independence and Portugal has agreed to return Macau to China in 1999.
        One of the thoughts that comes to the mind of the Filipino visitor to Portugal is a what-might-have-been. What would have happened if the Philippines had been colonized by Portugal and not by Spain?
        This is not an idle question. The Portuguese were in the Pacific before the Spaniards were -- and the Philippines is not too far away from the Spice Islands, where the Portuguese maintained garrisons and trading posts.
        Too often, we forget that Ferdinand Magellan (Fernando de Magallanes) was a Portuguese soldier named Fernao de Magalhaes, who had distinguished himself in battle while fighting under Albuquerque and Francisco de Almeida, Albuquerque's predecessor.
        In 1493 Pope Alexander VI divided the New World between Spain and Portugal. Today, it is clear to us that the line of demarcation that the pope drew put the Philippines in the Portuguese hemisphere. In 1494, Spain and Portugal agreed to move the line of demarcation 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This agreement placed the Philippines more deeply in the Portuguese hemisphere.
        But since it was difficult in those days to compute longitude, there was some reasonable doubt about whether any islands east of the Spice Islands belonged to Spain or Portugal.
        On this basis, Magellan (who had since lost favor in the Portuguese royal court) was able to persuade the king of Spain to outfit an expedition that would reach the Indies by sailing westwards. This was the voyage on which Magellan claimed the Philippines for Spain.
         Spain was not able to establish a permanent presence in the Philippines until 1565, when Miguel Lopez de Legazpi arrived in the Philippines from Mexico and his navigator Andres de Urdaneta was able to find an eastward route back to Mexico.
        Interestingly enough, the Spanish authorities had concealed from Urdaneta the mission of the expedition. Urdaneta was convinced that the Philippines lay on the Portuguese side of the demarcation line, and he had publicly stated that, as a priest, he was not about to violate the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas.
        The Spanish authorities, however, took the position that the Philippines lay on the Spanish side of the demarcation line. They instructed Legazpi to follow the route of Villalobos direct to the Philippines -- and to conceal the objective of the expedition from Urdaneta until the fleet was well out to sea.
        One wonders what might have happened if the Spanish authorities had followed Urdaneta's recommendation to avoid the Philippines and go to New Guinea instead.
        If the Spaniards had not colonized the Philippines, it is by no means certain that the Portuguese -- who were already overextended -- would have done so. But if the Philippines had been colonized by Portugal, the Philippines could very well have gone the way of Indonesia: it would fall to the Dutch and could now be part of a ``Greater Indonesia'' -- or, at least, this is what I believe.
        I didn't get to speak with many Portuguese, but they were all vaguely aware that the Philippines could well have been a Portuguese possession. While they granted that it was difficult to compute longitude accurately in the late 16th century, they were quite happy to accept the suggestion that Spain had been less than honest during the entire affair.
        One of them even asked me for the title of the book that declares that Urdaneta had believed that the Philippines lay on the Portuguese side of the demarcation line and that Legazpi had been instructed to conceal from Urdaneta the mission of the expedition. I have promised to send it to her.
        Unfortunately, all I saw of Portugal was a few places of historical interest around Lisbon -- the churches, monuments and the like that tourist brochures invariably boast about. I wasn't in Lisbon to do any sightseeing.
        I was there to attend an international media conference on the state of world population. The meeting, which was sponsored by the UN Fund for Population Activities, dealt mainly with problems of migration.
        The trouble is, there wasn't enough time to get very deeply into the topic. There were journalists from about 20 countries present.
        I would certainly have enjoyed an extended discussion with Guido Santevecchi of the Corriere de la Sera (Italy), Axel Wermelskirchen of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany) and Toshihiro Horiuchi of NHK (Japan) on Filipino migrants to their respective countries. I must confess that I am so parochial that I am not interested at all in the migration problems experienced by certain African countries or the role that non-government organizations might play in a forthcoming international population conference in Cairo.
        Lunch and dinner were not times for serious discussions. They were occasions for sampling Portuguese cuisine (as well as Portuguese wines) and figuring out what the menus meant. Those of us who could read Spanish didn't have that difficult a time. As one of us said, ``Just imagine that Portuguese is bad Spanish.''
        Those who didn't know Spanish relied on Flavia de Leon Vaz of Folha de Sao Paulo (Brazil) to furnish the translation.
        There was one time I had to furnish the translation. I was having dinner with Kannika Chivapakdee of Radio Thailand, when the seminar director stopped by our table and said, ``Hoy, tayo na.''
        ``He says we must go,'' I said.
        ``You speak Japanese?'' Kannika asked.
        ``No,'' I laughed. I had to explain that Hirofumi Ando, the seminar director, is Japanese, but he is an alumnus of the University of the Philippines.

                                                                                    ***

        Trust journalists to stick together. The only ``excitement'' during the conference was provided by Bolivian journalist Amalia Pando, who came late to the conference because of what had happened to her during her stopover in Brazil. Policemen at the airport beat her up ``to show you what we think of journalists.''
        Andre Martin of TSF Radio Portugal made an impassioned plea for some action -- and Rossanna Fuentes of El Financiero (Mexico) drafted a protest.
        ``Are you going to sign that petition?'' I was asked by K. Gangadharan of Asian News International (India). He didn't say so, but it was clear that he was a trifle concerned that we had only Amalia's side of the story.
        ``If Flavia signs, I will,'' I said. ``If a Brazilian journalist is ready to believe that the policemen in her country are perfectly capable of doing such a thing, that's good enough for me.''
        Almost all of us signed.