SUNDAY 14 MAY, 2017 – UWI TODAY
23
CULTURE MATTERS
Lusofesta
keeps growing
This year, for LusoFesta 2017,
students reading Portuguese
language courses, minoring in Minor in Brazilian Studies
and majoring in Latin American Studies, were divided into
four groups each representing four Lusophone cultures,
namely, those of the Brazilian State of Amazonas, the
Republic of Guinea-Bissau, Macau in China (or Macao
in English, a former Portuguese colony), and Madeira (an
autonomous archipelagic region of Portugal and the origin
of most of the Caribbean’s Portuguese communities of
19th century origin).
The Festival received great support from the
Prefeitura de Manaus (capital of Amazonas State) through
the Embassy of the Federative Republic of Brazil in Port
of Spain for Amazonas, the Reece Có family of Guinea-
Bissau, from the Confucius Institute (CI) for Macau,
and from the Centro das Comunidades Madeirenses
e Migrações (CCM) and the Conselho da Diáspora
Madeirense (Madeiran Diaspora Council) for Madeira.
The week-long event, with daily screenings of award-
winning Portuguese-language films fromaround theworld,
culminated in the grand LusoFesta Day, opening with the
national anthems of all four countries (projected on screen
in both Portuguese and English, and Mandarin also, in the
case of Macau), and with the national anthem of Trinidad
& Tobago translated into Portuguese. His Excellency Paulo
Bozzi of the Embassy of Brazil brought greetings, as did
Roger Camacho of the Associação Portuguesa Primeiro
de Dezembro in Port-of-Spain and J. Jude Xavier of the
Portuguese Community, and three students of Portuguese
of the Universidade de Ciência e Tecnologia de Macau on
a specially pre-recorded video.
In the Bag
Every year as one of its many activities
,
the Eric Williams Memorial Collection
Research Library, Archives and Museum,
holds the Eric Williams School Bags Essay
Competition. This year, the winner was
Safiya Moore, a Form Six student at Bishop’s
High School in Tobago. We are reproducing
an excerpt here. The full essay, 54 years, can
be found at our online version at
.
uwi.edu/uwitoday/default.asp
– 54 Years –
By Safiya Moore
The Caribbean region’s constituent
nations are relatively young in comparison
to the wider world. However, as a region it
maintains the characteristics of many other
countries that are centuries ahead of them.
In particular, when analysing any country
and attempting to determine its successes,
failures, history and potential future, its
architecture is a tangible way of ascertaining
the progression, regression and background
of a region. Architecture literally conveys
pivotal information. Figuratively, a country
can be viewed as a piece of architecture and
analysed accordingly. More specifically, in
analysingTrinidadandTobagoaswecelebrate
more than fifty years of decolonization,
both the unique actual architecture and the
figurative consideration of the twin-island
state as a piece of architecture, allow for an
understanding of our successes and failures
since Independence in 1962 and, what
these may augur for our future. In the case
of Trinidad and Tobago, our foundation
should be considered as our history
before Independence. The construction
team should be considered as our human
resource, the skeletal superstructure of our
architecture considered as a combination
of the parliament, judiciary and media, and
the overall building, as our adaptation to the
various experiences we have been exposed to
over time.
Nearly all the territories featured are multilingual, and
each group of students was asked to discuss the topic “The
Impact and Challenges Associated with Portuguese as an
Official Language in Our Territory” (territory referring to
each area represented, Amazonas State of Brazil, Guinea-
Bissau, Macau of China, and Madeira of Portugal). Brazil is
home to 237 languages, 7 of which have official or co-official
status, including 3 which are co-official in the municipality
of São Gabriel da Cachoeira of the State of Amazonas
(with over 45 indigenous languages); Guinea-Bissau has
23 languages; and Macau has 6 languages. In the case of
Madeira, Madeira is not multilingual but is bidialectal,
and has its own regional insular variety (dialect) of the
Portuguese language, related to the Azorean and southern
Portugal’s varieties, and to the Northeastern varieties
of Brazilian Portuguese, and speakers of some varieties
of Madeiran Portuguese (such as the famous footballer
Cristiano Ronaldo) have sometimes faced discrimination
even within Portugal. Yet Portuguese continues to operate
in all these contexts as a symbol of regional, national and
international unity, even while facing its own challenges in
the social and educational systems of each territory.
The more formal segments of the morning’s
proceedings were interspersed with dances of three
of the territories, and a musical rendition of one. The
morning ended with Gerelle Forbes’ rendition of Sorriso
de Criança/A Child’s Smile (a samba by Dona Ivone Lara,
1979), originally performed by Ms Forbes at the DMLL’s
7 de Setembro 2016 premiere of the A Alma Brasileira
concert. Guests were then invited to tour Little Lusofonia
in the CLL Atrium, with the stunning displays mounted by
staff and students for each territory.
EDUCATION MATTERS
