Dear John, If you google "Casimiro Monteiro Goa", you will get quite a lot of information on CM who it is said was an agent of the dreaded PIDE (Policia International de Defense do Estada), the equivalent of USA's CIA or Israel's Mossad.
I personally do not know much about Agente Monteiro besides the fact that he was both reviled and revered in the Goa of the Portuguese years depending on who was affected. I copy some passages in Floriano Vaz's Sunday Ramblings that I found on the internet whose conclusion was that Agente Monteiro dispensed speedy justice. All I know of Agente Monteiro is what I heard of him from people and from a Konkani tiatr of the same name (one of the 2 or 3 tiatrs in my life) staged in Byculla Bombay when I was 15 years old. Your best bet would be Dr. Teotonio D'Souza the Goan historian who often posts on Goanet and has his own Goa Research website. CM figures in one of his research papers (as I see from Google) which are mostly in Portuguese. There are several people on Goanet who may come forward to give you information. Among them will be our Alfred Tavares (there are few people in Goa of those days that he doesn't know) and Valmiki Faleiro whose propensity for researching his various articles is well known. Here is Floriano's Sunday Rambling: It seems that one timber merchant cum timber contractor was operating his very successful timber business in Goa supplying timber to various outlets, timber such as teak wood, which was freely available in forested areas of Valpoi etc. This contractor is believed to have been operating in a dubious manner, where, he would get the forest department's mandatory clearance to cut say 50 teak trees, but would actually cut 100 or more. And this was not without the connivance of the officials of the forest department who were kept happy by this contractor with ample gifts during Ganesh, Divali and Christmas festivals. It is believed that one such upright lower official of the forest department had the courage to send back such a gift from this contractor, not because he wanted a better and a more expensive one, but merely because he disliked to be bribed and taken for granted. Due recognition was registered by the contractor in this particular case which was considered as an insult. Things started to get out of hand gradually as the contractor was denuding the government forests of its teak trees to the extent that an anonymous letter reached the desk of the brand new and very young Director of forests by the name of Maciel Chaves, first out of college from Lisbon, having been deputed to take charge in Goa, ratting on the deeds of the timber contractor who hailed from Marcel-Goa. The director was duly warned that the personnel of his department could not be trusted and could be on the payroll of the contractor. It is believed that young Chaves started making clandestine inspection trips to the scenes of the crime , talking to people etc. This, having alarmed the contractor, he made contact with the Azad Gomantak Dal, which was then making regular incursions into Goa as satyagraha strikes, to have this young Director assassinated. A 'supari', as it is known in ordinary parlance. The unfortunate thing actually happened. The young Director was shot dead during one of AGD's incursions into Goa. I am told that a tearful funeral service of this young Director was conducted at the chapel of the old GMC complex at Campal, which complex is now renovated for the IFFI-04. Perhaps the body was taken to Portugal for burial. With Casimiro Monteiro in charge (Agente Monteiro as he was called), the investigations into this murder was conducted on a war footing, given the efficiency of the Portuguese Police. It seems that the timber contractor from Marcel was duly picked up in the middle of the night and taken in. The intensive interrogation is believed to have lasted for almost a month when the accused died in custody. Same night, it is believed that Casimiro Monteiro and two of his guards carried a bundle, hardly considered as a human body, tied up in a bedsheet, to the contractor's home in the dead of the night. The home people having been woken, were ordered to conduct the funeral rites of the remains there and then without allowing the sheet to be unwrapped . Agente Monteiro is said to have left only when the body was totally consumed by flames. To us, in our make believe democracy, where our shoes get worn-out by making trips to the court rooms, this type of swift and horrifying justice makes our legs weak. But then, one could sleep without fear, keeping the doors and windows of the houses open precisely for this very reason of swift justice during the Portuguese rule. And, by the way, the identity of this criminal contractor, who thought he would be able to pillage Goa's forests by having the thorn in Maciel Chaves removed, the blame of which automatically and satisfactorily dumped on the satyagraha movement, must be known to a few in Goa who are still alive . I shall refrain from divulging this name for the moment in order to save the faces of the family members, perhaps the contractors' off-springs, who may or may not be immersed in the current Goa's politics of sin. On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 6:49 AM, JOHN MONTEIRO <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dear Bernado > I was indeed shocked to the core (& I am still bodily shaking) to read the > report Roland had posted, for the incident in 1955. As much as I feel my > personal life has nothing much to do with the events of today, on Goanet, or > in Goa itself, & maybe of no interest to anyone outside the Monteiro family, > I am pleading with everyone who may have any information regarding the > "Agente" Casemiro Monteiro (& his brother) who were in Goa during the 1950's.
