Hi Cornel, As usual, you raise interesting and important issues. It's crucial for the Goan community to understand its past and its peculiarities, if it wishes to go ahead in the 21st century, rather than always live looking over its shoulder ...
Maybe I oversimplified things by suggesting the affluent in Goa didn't migrate in the past. It might be sustainable to argue that the pressure to migrate was more on the middle-classes, the less-affluent and those hit adverselly by a highly stratified caste-dominated society. It was after all a society which allowed for little growth and upward mobility (both because of the nature of the over-romanticised society, and also because of the stagnant phase of the Portuguese colonial administration by the time the 19th and 20th century had dawned on us. (They Portuguese day-in-the-sun was in the 'sixteenth and 'seventeenth centuries, long before that of the British, French, Dutch, Danes ... and more or less contemporaneous with that of the Spanish. Historians, feel free to correct my understanding.) Then, there were also other peculiarities of migration. For instance, talk to almost anyone in Mumbai or Bangalore or East Africa, and you'll notice that the bulk of Catholic migration out of Goa took place from Bardez. Why Bardez? Diverse theories have been propounded over this, including the relationship between the elites of different regions with the Portuguese. (After the Pinto's Revolt, things might have gone "awry", in one sense, for Bardez.) But probably a role was played by the presence of early-in-the-day English-language schools like St Joseph's at Arpora (was it in the French medium earlier?) and Mater Dei Saligao (now a shadow of its past days, but making some headway when parents search despearately for English-medium schools... even senior writers like Victor Rangel-Ribeiro proudly state their links with this school). At the risk of being called too superficial in my analysis, one could also say that there were other factors linked to migration in Goa. Two generations back, ancestors you talk to recall the reality of epidemic and hunger in the region (howsoever much the Lusostagic among us might try to romanticise the past). When I visited the home of my journalist colleague Armenia Fernandes in Socorro years ago, I was intrigued by the photo of three boys -- if one recalls right -- in small coffins, at what was a mass funeral. Apparently, they were family members who died all together of the plague that hit Goa (Bardez?) around 1918, and which one finds references to when there's talk of the (probably overhyped) birdflu epidemic these days. Persons whom I spoke to, inspite of being small/middle land-holders themselves, recall times of poverty, when they had to "eat sparrows" to survive. Whether this is exaggeration or linked to some actual event around the early20th century, I cannot say. There do seem to have been times, maybe two generations ago, when a whole lot of the middle-peasantry in Catholic Goa got impoverished for reasons I can't quite comprehend fully. Obviously, the elite also migrated to gain access to wider opportunity. We had our Dr Gama Pintos in opthalmology in 20th century Portugual, Europe-educated Francis Luis Gomes, and when I got a scholarship to West Berlin in 1990, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Goans had been studying in that then-global centre of science in the 1920s! But, the pressures was more on the sub-alterns among us to feel the need to migrate. In turn, where we worked and grew up also defined our attitudes towards colonialism, 1961, out-migration, etc, etc. That's why so many East Africander Goans (or Bombay Goans) tend to be less nostalgic about the past, and are more concerned about getting on with life. In contrast, those who saw the Goa they knew change before their very eyes (and not gain much from the process, probably, or even be adversely affected) don't take to the twists of history too kindly. Complex issue this... FN -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Frederick 'FN' Noronha | Yahoomessenger: fredericknoronha http://fn.goa-india.org | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Independent Journalist | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436 ---------------------------------------------------------- Photographs from Goa: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fn-goa/popular-views/ _____________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. Goanet mailing list (Goanet@goanet.org) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: %(user_optionsurl)s This email sent to %(user_address)s