Antonio Costa, a politician beyond the colour of his skin

Sao Jose Almeida

It was 1976, Maria Antonia Palla had gone to pick up her son Antonio Costa from school. She did so rarely, but on that day she reached the doors of the Fernao Lopes School in Lisbon, and inquired about her son with the attendant. It was after much insistence that the man realized which child the mother was asking about and blurted out: “Oh, the black!”

Maria Antonia was stunned but also very worried. That night, at home with her son, she decided to talk to him over what she viewed as a problem: the possibility of her son being the victim of racism. Casually she asked the boy what they called him in school. He immediately replied: ‘Antonio’. She insisted and he added the surname and said they also called him Antonio Costa. Since the boy was not getting the point, Maria Antonio told her son what had occurred at the school gate and the attendant’s reaction. Calmly, Antonio Costa asked her, ‘Mother, have you looked at me? Have you seen my colour? I am dark.”

Antonio Costa was born in Lisbon on July 17, 1961, son of journalist Maria Antonia Palla and of the writer Orlando da Costa. And if Maria Antonia came from a Portuguese family, republican and secular from Seixal, Orlando was the son of a Goan family, Brahmin and Catholic of Margao, territory that was integrated with India in 1961, following the liberation of the Portuguese possession of Goa, Daman and Diu. Son of a white Portuguese woman, and a Goan from Margao, India. Antonio Costa has therefore inherited some genetic features of his father, rather, the colour of his skin is brown, as is that of the Indians.

Never held me back

Today, just as in his adolescence, Antonio Costa accepts the colour of his skin. To Publico he affirmed, “The colour of my skin never held me back.” Asked whether he ever felt discriminated, a victim of racism, he said, “Personally, never. I may have heard someone calling me ‘monhe’ once or twice, but that was rare.” He explained that the colour of his skin was normal and he never felt any different because of this. “It was also not something to be proud of,” he added.

The candidate to the prime ministership says that only now have journalists taken interest in this, and attributed this to the fact that his victory in the primaries reported by Indian newspapers, that pointed out that for the first time a candidate to the prime ministership in the West is of Indian origin.

“In India this is news because there is a new attitude in relation to Goans,” says Antonio Costa. “There is a new attitude, the Indians have a more uninhibited relationship with the Goans and Goa has a Hindu government.” He points out that there is new interest saying, “especially in relation to Goans who had come to Portugal, and were seen in a bad light. There was a barrier against Goans in general, who were considered as being one with the colonialists.”

The general secretary of the PS considers that his ascent to this charge and his selection in the primaries as prime ministerial candidate has nothing to do with breaking any racist barrier in Portuguese politics. This argument by Costa is endorsed by Goan anthropologist and researcher at the Centre for international Studies of ISCTE, Jason Keith Fernandes. “Antonio Costa’s victory does not signify that there is no racism,” affirms Fernandes. He recalls, “The English one can say ‘invented’ racism, but were in India with their empire and treated the sons of kings like white persons. They studied at Oxford, along with the song of the elite Britishers, and were totally English. In any empire, the elite of the territory are treated like the elite of the conqueror.”

Fernandes adds, “To understand racism one has to look at how the Goans of the lower classes were treated, where the people have no power, are not special.” The fact that the son of an elite Goan is candidate to the prime ministership doesn’t change anything in relation to racism whether in politics or in society in general. He proffers an example: “India had a woman Prime Minister in Indira Gandhi, but this does not indicate the status of the woman in India.”

On the contrary, this researcher argues that doubts being raised that Costa is different indicates that racism exists. “There is a story of a Goan woman who felt offended in a Lisbon restaurant when she heard it being said that she ate like a Portuguese and spoke like a Portuguese,” said Fernandes. He concluded, “She felt offended because they doubted her.” The dilemma is this, doubt shows that we are not live in a time where there is no racism. We are all stained by racism. It is enough to say that we are not racist to be raising the issue. There is racism and what we have to speak about it.

Goans and the 

others

Sandra Ataide Lobo, researcher at the Centre for the history of culture at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, says, “For the Portuguese the Goans are only these elite, the others are not viewed as Goans, but are viewed as Indians”. She stresses, “The real Goans do not look at themselves as Indians.” It is the other Indians who came to Portugal, following the decolonization of Mozambique who are the ones viewed as ‘monhes’. As to the Goans, “there was always more cultural curiosity than racism because of the colour of the skin,” argues Ataide Lobo, herself a Goan.

So, despite being in a racist society, what distinguishes Antonio Costa is the fact that he is a Portuguese of Goan origin. So here is an elite person who is above the classification based on skin colour. This is confirmed by Rosa Maria Perez, professor and anthropologist at ISCTE and researcher at the Center for International Studies, Lisbon, and the Indian Institute of Technology, India, “There is a phenotypic component that has no social impact. In relation to Goans in Portugal, either cultural or socially, there has never been a dichotomy based on racial or phenotypic component.” She stresses, “The Goans are different from all Indians. Goans were Portuguese, they were not Indian. Racism is strangeness by colour. But the Goan was not viewed strangely because of the difference of his skin colour.”

Antonio Costa explains what distinguishes Goans. “There is a social difference between the Goans who came to Portugal before 1961 and other Indians who came later, just as did the Africans. The Goan and Indian community grew here, but only because of the decolonization of Mozambique.” He adds, “In India, there are lot of differences, and the Goans always used the Catholic religion and the Portuguese language as a difference. The Goans feel so different that they say, for instance, ‘the Indians’, when referring to other people of India.”

With the elite Goans viewing themselves as Portuguese, Antonio Costa himself identifies with his Goan ancestry. “I understood always, even as a child I was called Babush, it was the elite that my father belonged to. He and many friends Bruto da Costa, Narana Coisoro and Kalidas Barreto,” says Antonio Costa.

For poetry and for Pessoa

Orlando da Costa (1929-2006), by chance, was born in Lourenco Marques. “My grandmother Amelia had a pulmonary disease and went to Switzerland to get treated. On the way back she halted at Lourenco Marques to visit her sister. She was pregnant and stayed two years in Mozambique and bore a son.” Orlando da Costa grew up in Margao, in the family house on Rua Abade Faria, where even toady his cousin Anna Karina Pimpula lives, says Antonio Costa. And Rosa Maria Perez stresses that the ‘family is of the local elite, the ancestral house is typical Indo-Portuguese, and that there are ancestors of Antonio da Costa that excelled at the Goa Medical College.

As a youth, “Orlando da Costa was part of the anti-colonial movement and left Goa because of this and was even arrested,” recalls Perez. Antonio Costa adds, “After liberation, my father was one of the few – if not the only – who was considered a freedom fighter.” Orlando da Costa left Goa at the age of 18. “His father wanted him to go to Bombay or England to study, but he wanted to go to Lisbon, because of the Portuguese literature and because of Fernando Pessoa (Portuguese poet),” says Antonio Costa. He added, “He arrived in Portugal in 1948 and went back only in 1975. He was not in contact with Goa for many years. His brother, my uncle, returned to Goa in 1965. I went there in 1979, I was 18 then, and my brother (journalist Ricardo Costa) was 11.

In Lisbon, Orlando da Costa joined PCP (Communist Party) in 1954, a party that is militant till death. A year earlier he had married Maria Antonia Palla, feminist and PS member after April 25 (Carnation revolution of 1974). They had a relationship even earlier, but decided to marry after Orlando da Costa was jailed the first time. Civilly married, Maria Antonia would be able to visit him, if he was arrested again. That both his parents had a ‘political history in Portugal’ is one of the reasons why it is “not surprising that Antonio Costa is the general secretary of the PS,” says Ataide Lobo.

But above all what distinguishes Orlando da Costa is that he ‘belonged to the Goan elite’, underlined Perez, insisting that ‘he is not Indo-Portuguese, but is a Goan Brahmin Catholic.” And Fernandes agreed, “Antonio Costa has been elected because of the work of the Brahmins since the XVIII century for their rights as citizens.” The Goan anthropologist explains, “The Goans were Portuguese citizens since the beginning of the Portuguese sovereignty over Goa,” and from the beginning there was a fusion of European social stratification with the Indian, bringing about a new elite. This elite class was born in Goa ‘and consisted of Luso-descendents who were few, and were called reinois and had their ancestors in Portugal, but within this elite there was a powerful native elite – the brahmins and chardos – the first being the priestly caste, and the latter the warrior caste, both being landowners.

Ataide Lobo remembered that there ‘exist all types of Goans, the Goans are not just an elite’, and underlined that ‘the castes that formed the native elites were the Brahmins and chardos’. “To Portugal the largest influx was of Brahmins who went there to study.”

Brahmin weight

In a territory where, the ‘Indo-Portuguese were few, the Brahmins always dominated society and also power in Goa’. Moreover, underlines the historian, they owned property too. With Portuguese sovereignty over Goa, the Brahmins assimilated Catholicism and ‘a majority were Catholic, it was only in the XVIII century that there began to be Brahmin Hindus in Goa’. In this manner, explains the historian, ‘it is this nucleus of Catholic Brahmins that always dominated and moved to Lisbon and other colonies.’

Perez argued that ‘a peculiarity of the Portuguese colonialism in relation to Goa is that there was a large movement of the elite’. She added, “The elite Goans studied in Lisbon or Coimbra. They were the administrative elite, the Catholics as well as the Hindus. In Goa, the Catholic elite absorbed the superior caste, the Catholics are Brahmins. Colonialism in India discriminated between Catholics and Hindus and Brahmins and others. Positions in the colonial administration were held by Brahmin Catholics. The Goan movement is old, it was accentuated with the coming of the Republic (1910) and continued in the Estado Novo (1926).”

On the other hand, Ataide Lobo recalled that the Brahmins ‘are well educated’. “Education for them is to do with class. They studied and through this fought discrimination and sought other opportunities. They were citizens of the empire, they had rights and to assert those rights they studied.” It is this that makes for a special situation in Goa and of the Goan elite when compared to the other Portuguese territories, concluded the historian, underlining that in Cabo Verde, where there were elite creoles, these never acquired the status that the Goans did.

“The Goans imposed themselves in local government, always competed with Portuguese descendants for political space, and in Portugal there have always been Goans, and so they have been able to conquer that space. There has always been integration and miscegenation. There are Goans across Portugal,” said Ataide Lobo.

The Goan uniqueness in the Portuguese empire was such that after the liberal revolution of 1820, when the first elections were held in Goa, there were two, the first and at that time only, native deputies: two Catholic Brahmins. “At the very first time two native Goans were elected as deputies. In other colonies there were white people elected. In Goa, the whites of Lisbon, negotiated with the Goans, with the Catholic Brahmin elite of Goa,” said Ataide Lobo.

The first two Goa deputies were Constâncio Roque da Costa, an ancestor of Alfredo Bruto da Costa, and Bernardo Peres da Silva. The last, says Ataide Lobo, ‘exiled himself in Brazil during the fight for liberties and aligned with the liberal cause. And, ‘when King Pedro ascended the throne, made a presentation to the king on the Estado da India. He was nominated governor though for a short time,  for when he reached Goa, the Luso-descendents revolted.

Ataide Lobo concluded saying, ‘From the XIX century, the Goan elite invested more in education and in the liberal structures’. “The Goan Catholic Brahmins are formed in liberal ideas with the objective of moving out of the rut.” Fernandes stated, “The fact that Antonio Costa is prime ministerial candidate is conclusive proof of the power of the Brahmins since the XVIII century.”

(Translated from Portuguese by Alexandre Moniz Barbosa courtesy Publico)