Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511-2011, vol. 2: Culture and Identity in the Luso-Asian World: Tenacities & Plasticities

4. Remembering the Portuguese Presence in Timor and Its Contribution to the Making of Timor's National and Cultural Identity

4 REMEMBERING ThE PORTUGUESE PRESENCE IN TIMOR AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO ThE MAKING OF TIMOR’S NATIONAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY Vicente Paulino1 Culture is the memory of a people that never dies. “Manifesto Maubere”, Fernando Sylvan Culture is a framework of human adventure, a result of time and space, an attempt to contemplate, understand and transform it in pursuit of an ideal of harmony and perfection. A healthy relationship with nature and with the community in which it is housed are the crucial elements of any culture. The true subject of culture is man himself on the basis of “tradition”. Thus, for the sake of continuity, every human community shapes its own assets so that these are preserved. Culture cannot exist without society and, likewise, no human society can exist without its culture, because culture is the soul of the human being in all of its branches. In other words, despite cultural variations that distinguish human communities and “because of its cultural legacy, the man moved away from the animal, but has become closely dependent on men. So in order to become a man, it is essential for him to live his life socially and 88 Remembering the Portuguese Presence in Timor and Its Contribution 89 under the influence of all stimuli which provides him with his family and his tribe.”2 Stuart Hall defines culture as a set of structures of meaning, or a process that has to do with the implementation of joint practice and depends “on its participants interpreting meaningfully what is happening around them, and making sense of the world, in broadly similar ways”.3 This chapter will seek to remember the Portuguese presence in Timor and its contribution to the formation of the cultural and national identity of East Timor. First, it describes the initial contacts established by merchants, sailors and Portuguese missionaries with the island of Timor and its people, then goes on to address the cultural traits of the Timorese. Second, this study will examine the results of the long-term Portuguese influence over some 450 years, contrasting these with the consequences of twenty-four years of Indonesian occupation that caused the massive destruction of cultural Timorese entities, among them the “sacred houses”. Third, it will engage in a comparative analysis of Timorese national identity and culture with those of Japan and Korea. EAST TIMOR, ThE ISLAND OF SANDALWOOD The island of Timor, as part of the far-flung Portuguese seaborne empire, was the richest in sandalwood in the Asian region. It was the sandalwood that attracted the attention of the Portuguese to the island. But this had long been the history of the island of Timor, which was an ancient land considered to be a meeting place for different groups of traders from around the world. The existence of the island was noted in fourteenth-century Chinese geography, which saw it as the “the end of the world”. The name of Timor was famous for its sandalwood and still alludes to tropical fragrance. The first reports about the existence of the island of Timor are contained in brief references in Chinese, Javanese and Arab literature. From the Chinese literature, the oldest reference concerns the sandalwood trade and consists of twelve to twenty lines of text, repeating almost verbatim the same wording until the end of the sixteenth century, when they started reporting the Portuguese presence on the island.4 Javanese chronicles have been reporting on Timor since the fourteenth century but are even more laconic, merely citing specifically the island’s name in the list of who sent tribute to the Majapahit kingdom in East Java, which ruled the area from the late thirteenth until the beginning of the sixteenth century. First driven by mere curiosity, then out of interest, the Portuguese established their presence on Timor around 1514–15. The first expedition 90 Vicente Paulino took place on board a junk named the Luso-Malay.5 According to a report drafted in 1514 for the king of Portugal, Dom Manuel I, from the captain of Malacca, Afonso Lopes da Costa, successor of Jorge de Brito, that reveals the direct contacts with the island of Timor: “os nossos junques que varo pera banda de Timor e Malaquo” (our boats that went close to Timor and Malacca). From this and other fragmented documentation such as price figures for sandalwood that appear in correspondence sent from Malacca, we know today that the...