Justine, I always read your posts with interest and appreciation. But I just have a niggle with your title that I feel compelled to try and articulate.
"The immigrant experience" is too broad to mean anything and too specific in its assumptions to include everyone.
When you say "we immigrants will never understand," you're treating "immigrant" as an epistemological position - a way of knowing, or not knowing. But it's not. It's countless different relationships to place, history, power, belonging.
The framing assumes we immigrants are (or should be) all humble learners facing an impenetrable Portuguese collective memory. But that's not everyone's story. It might not even be most people's story.
It's performing a kind of respectful incomprehension that, oddly, claims its own authority.
Here's what I think: there is no single soul of Portugal to grasp or fail to grasp.
Portugal, like anywhere (and as you suggest), is an ongoing negotiation among people with vastly different relationships to its past, present, and future. The white roses and red carnations in parliament aren't revealing an essential truth that immigrants can't access. They're showing one moment in continuing arguments about what happened, what it meant, what it means now.
I'm not outside that because I'm an "immigrant." I'm at a different angle to it because of my particular history with this place.
After 35 years, my relationship to Portugal isn't characterized by what I can't understand. It's characterized by what I've lived, negotiated, lost, built, and continue to puzzle over.
And that's being something that doesn't fit neatly into being Portuguese/not Portuguese, insider/outsider, understander/non-understander.
Back to your Faulkner quote: ““The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The past continues to shape and be shaped by the present!
Whew! Excellent points and analysis--hopefully my whole post wasn't as ham-handed as you found my title. Coming up with a caption is always a challenge--yes, wanting to grab eyeballs, and in this case avoiding the term "expat." We can never capture everyone's perspectives, and that was my point, which I obviously didn't convey in my title, and perhaps not even in the piece. And I now have a new term: performative humility. I love it so much when discussion is stoked, and a result like your blog post makes me feeling sheepish worth it.
Thank you for such a generous response! And no, your post wasn't ham-handed at all - it was thoughtful and nuanced. The title just became a useful hook for something I've been trying to articulate for a while.
I think what's happening is a kind of overcorrection. There are so many Americans (and others) arriving in Portugal with unrealistic expectations - treating it as a solution to all their perceived problems back home, complaining when things don't work the way they're used to, making demands without learning the language or engaging with the actual place. The demanding expat is real and exhausting.
So there's this counter-trend emerging - performative humility from people who want to distance themselves from those immigrants. "Look how respectful I am, how aware of my limitations, how I would never presume..." But I think sometimes the pendulum swings so far that it gets in the way of just... engaging. As humans. Listening, laughing, playing, having actual conversations rather than positioning ourselves in relation to collective memory and epistemological access.
The irony is that both extremes - the demanding expat and the performatively humble one - prevent the same thing: genuine connection and negotiation.
And meanwhile, I notice a tendency among many Portuguese people to assume all (white) "estrangeiros" are retired, monied, non-Portuguese-speaking - and to hold "Portuguese culture" or "Portuguese soul" as something impenetrable to someone who is not from this terra. Which is its own kind of tiresome category-making that I find myself navigating (hence my previous blogpost!).
Anyway, thanks for your piece that sparked a conversation that was useful for clarifying my own thoughts.
Portugal’s contemporary literature offers profound and nuanced exploration of this pivotal era in the creation of the modern Portuguese state. If American immigrants to Portugal intend to make that country their home, it would behoove them to learn about the recent history of their adopted country from the Portuguese point of view. Some recommended reading:
- António Lobo Antunes (Nobel Laureate nominee in Literature) many books on the trauma and degradation of the Colonial experience e.g. “The Land at the End of the World” and the situation faced by the Retornados e.g. “The Return of the Caravels”.
- Mia Couto (internationally recognized writer born in 1955 in Mozambique) who provides a nuanced counter narrative employing magical realism to represent the African perspective of brutal colonialism in e.g. “Sleepwalking Land”
- Rita Seabra (former central leader of the PCP during the coup) her gripping memoir “Foi Assim” (translated and available on Kindle) about entering the Communist Party at 18 and rising to be at the right hand of Álvaro Cunha, Secretary General of the PCP, during the Revolution.
- Frank Carlucci (US Ambassador during the coup) his writings document weekly meetings with Mario Soares that convinced him to trust the Portuguese people to find their own way to democracy. Only 7 months before 25 April 1974 was the bloody coup of 11 September 1973 in Chile and Carlucci worked steadfastly to convince Kissinger and Ford to stay out of Portugal to prevent a bloodbath. I am convinced that the PCP coup of 25 November 1975 ended in a whimper because of the phone conversations going on that day in Belem with the US. Put simply, the US would never have allowed a founding member of NATO to become a Stalinist communist state in the middle of the Cold War. The CIA remained deeply involved in the proxy wars of post colonial Southern Africa. The fate of modern Portugal did not occur in a vacuum.
Denise, thank you so much for the read and these thoughtful comments. I've read Mia Couto but not the others, and I will seek them out. I was aware of CIA involvement but definitely want to read more on the topic.
Wow, so interesting! And Carlucci speaking Portuguese is very impressive, and unusual for the time. When he first starts to speak I think well, prepared remarks--but then he responds to a very complex and rambling question in excellent linguistic and diplomatic fashion. I can almost forgive him for being close friends with Rumsfeld, haha.
Carlucci was Rumsfeld’s man in Lisbon, to keep Kissinger on the back foot; without Carlucci’s fluency and commitment to collecting the facts on the ground, things could have gotten very ugly under Kissinger’s imperial ambitions.
Justine, thank you as always for your well-researched and educational posts. You're right...there is so much we don't know or understand and I really appreciate you focusing on these topics. I attended a gathering yesterday with several Portuguese friends and the time just following the 1974 Revolution came up in their discussions. It was fascinating to hear their stories and experiences. I have so much to learn.
Thanks, Justine, for this articulate lesson in the political/social history of Portugal. I’m struck always by the similarities and limits of our human playbook throughout history - freedom vs control, radical vs moderate, haves vs have-nots, war vs peace.
Wonderful learning experience especially for someone like me who knew so little about Portugal's history. An interesting juxtaposition in that the date of your post is December 7, Pearl Harbor Day.
Justine, thank you for casting a light on these periods of relatively recent history. I admire your research, and the way you’ve written up very complicated topics: warms my journalist’s heart! As I have been spending more and more time in Portugal over the past five years, I’ve been drawn to its history as a way of understanding the people and the culture better (and also just because I am curious!).
You are right: there is so much we immigrants will never understand. But that should not stop us from learning about what has formed our surroundings.
If we ever meet and you have time, we can talk about those days. You are on the right track to understanding what happened, but there are still many things missing. Things hard to read and even hard to get someone to talk about. Like your friend said: É complicado. E há feridas que não se devem reabrir porque nunca foram devidamente cicatrizadas, acrescentaria eu.
Just a little provocation: do you know what the military's real motivation was for the revolution?
That where anyone who want to understand what had happen, must begin. It ain't pretty and became uglier and uglier.
Paulo, thank you as always for your read and thoughtful comments. I think you have emphasized my point: we immigrants can never fully understand. But we must try. The wounds that might be reopened are not equivalent, but have some similarity, to Vietnam for Americans. As to the military's motivation: most likely some variation of total power and control, and wealth? And I would love to meet and discuss some time. Glad to know at least I'm on the right track . . .
Not even that, was a corporative coupe against the Decree-Law 353/73 established the conditions for the transfer of officers from the Special Staff to the Permanent Staff of the various branches of the armed forces. It´s well document but conveniently forgotten.
If it hadn't been for that reason, it would have been for another. The regime had reached a dead end and something had to change. It was inevitable. What was not inevitable was what happened in the period between April 25 and November 25, when the greatest destruction of wealth in Portuguese history took place and the former colonies were condemned to 40 years of civil war.
Justine, I always read your posts with interest and appreciation. But I just have a niggle with your title that I feel compelled to try and articulate.
"The immigrant experience" is too broad to mean anything and too specific in its assumptions to include everyone.
When you say "we immigrants will never understand," you're treating "immigrant" as an epistemological position - a way of knowing, or not knowing. But it's not. It's countless different relationships to place, history, power, belonging.
The framing assumes we immigrants are (or should be) all humble learners facing an impenetrable Portuguese collective memory. But that's not everyone's story. It might not even be most people's story.
It's performing a kind of respectful incomprehension that, oddly, claims its own authority.
Here's what I think: there is no single soul of Portugal to grasp or fail to grasp.
Portugal, like anywhere (and as you suggest), is an ongoing negotiation among people with vastly different relationships to its past, present, and future. The white roses and red carnations in parliament aren't revealing an essential truth that immigrants can't access. They're showing one moment in continuing arguments about what happened, what it meant, what it means now.
I'm not outside that because I'm an "immigrant." I'm at a different angle to it because of my particular history with this place.
After 35 years, my relationship to Portugal isn't characterized by what I can't understand. It's characterized by what I've lived, negotiated, lost, built, and continue to puzzle over.
And that's being something that doesn't fit neatly into being Portuguese/not Portuguese, insider/outsider, understander/non-understander.
Back to your Faulkner quote: ““The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The past continues to shape and be shaped by the present!
And it got me writing a blog post for even more food for thought! - https://www.being-bev.com/blog/we-immigrants/
Whew! Excellent points and analysis--hopefully my whole post wasn't as ham-handed as you found my title. Coming up with a caption is always a challenge--yes, wanting to grab eyeballs, and in this case avoiding the term "expat." We can never capture everyone's perspectives, and that was my point, which I obviously didn't convey in my title, and perhaps not even in the piece. And I now have a new term: performative humility. I love it so much when discussion is stoked, and a result like your blog post makes me feeling sheepish worth it.
Thank you for such a generous response! And no, your post wasn't ham-handed at all - it was thoughtful and nuanced. The title just became a useful hook for something I've been trying to articulate for a while.
I think what's happening is a kind of overcorrection. There are so many Americans (and others) arriving in Portugal with unrealistic expectations - treating it as a solution to all their perceived problems back home, complaining when things don't work the way they're used to, making demands without learning the language or engaging with the actual place. The demanding expat is real and exhausting.
So there's this counter-trend emerging - performative humility from people who want to distance themselves from those immigrants. "Look how respectful I am, how aware of my limitations, how I would never presume..." But I think sometimes the pendulum swings so far that it gets in the way of just... engaging. As humans. Listening, laughing, playing, having actual conversations rather than positioning ourselves in relation to collective memory and epistemological access.
The irony is that both extremes - the demanding expat and the performatively humble one - prevent the same thing: genuine connection and negotiation.
And meanwhile, I notice a tendency among many Portuguese people to assume all (white) "estrangeiros" are retired, monied, non-Portuguese-speaking - and to hold "Portuguese culture" or "Portuguese soul" as something impenetrable to someone who is not from this terra. Which is its own kind of tiresome category-making that I find myself navigating (hence my previous blogpost!).
Anyway, thanks for your piece that sparked a conversation that was useful for clarifying my own thoughts.
I love thinking about these things! And batting them around. Which makes me: a recovering academic.
Portugal’s contemporary literature offers profound and nuanced exploration of this pivotal era in the creation of the modern Portuguese state. If American immigrants to Portugal intend to make that country their home, it would behoove them to learn about the recent history of their adopted country from the Portuguese point of view. Some recommended reading:
- António Lobo Antunes (Nobel Laureate nominee in Literature) many books on the trauma and degradation of the Colonial experience e.g. “The Land at the End of the World” and the situation faced by the Retornados e.g. “The Return of the Caravels”.
- Mia Couto (internationally recognized writer born in 1955 in Mozambique) who provides a nuanced counter narrative employing magical realism to represent the African perspective of brutal colonialism in e.g. “Sleepwalking Land”
- Rita Seabra (former central leader of the PCP during the coup) her gripping memoir “Foi Assim” (translated and available on Kindle) about entering the Communist Party at 18 and rising to be at the right hand of Álvaro Cunha, Secretary General of the PCP, during the Revolution.
- Frank Carlucci (US Ambassador during the coup) his writings document weekly meetings with Mario Soares that convinced him to trust the Portuguese people to find their own way to democracy. Only 7 months before 25 April 1974 was the bloody coup of 11 September 1973 in Chile and Carlucci worked steadfastly to convince Kissinger and Ford to stay out of Portugal to prevent a bloodbath. I am convinced that the PCP coup of 25 November 1975 ended in a whimper because of the phone conversations going on that day in Belem with the US. Put simply, the US would never have allowed a founding member of NATO to become a Stalinist communist state in the middle of the Cold War. The CIA remained deeply involved in the proxy wars of post colonial Southern Africa. The fate of modern Portugal did not occur in a vacuum.
Denise, thank you so much for the read and these thoughtful comments. I've read Mia Couto but not the others, and I will seek them out. I was aware of CIA involvement but definitely want to read more on the topic.
https://pt.usembassy.gov/a-path-to-democracy-dialogues-between-mario-soares-and-ambassador-frank-carlucci/
Wow, so interesting! And Carlucci speaking Portuguese is very impressive, and unusual for the time. When he first starts to speak I think well, prepared remarks--but then he responds to a very complex and rambling question in excellent linguistic and diplomatic fashion. I can almost forgive him for being close friends with Rumsfeld, haha.
Carlucci was Rumsfeld’s man in Lisbon, to keep Kissinger on the back foot; without Carlucci’s fluency and commitment to collecting the facts on the ground, things could have gotten very ugly under Kissinger’s imperial ambitions.
Absolutely, fascinating!
Justine, thank you as always for your well-researched and educational posts. You're right...there is so much we don't know or understand and I really appreciate you focusing on these topics. I attended a gathering yesterday with several Portuguese friends and the time just following the 1974 Revolution came up in their discussions. It was fascinating to hear their stories and experiences. I have so much to learn.
Thank you, Lani! It's great to have some of the history basics to enable conversations. And endlessly fascinating.
Thanks, Justine, for this articulate lesson in the political/social history of Portugal. I’m struck always by the similarities and limits of our human playbook throughout history - freedom vs control, radical vs moderate, haves vs have-nots, war vs peace.
Thanks, Vicki! So true--I like the phrase: history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes . . .
Wonderful learning experience especially for someone like me who knew so little about Portugal's history. An interesting juxtaposition in that the date of your post is December 7, Pearl Harbor Day.
Yes, Pearl Harbor Day occurred to me--
That’s a very clear overview, thank you. It’s helpful to perceive how complicated it really is.
Thank you!
Justine, thank you for casting a light on these periods of relatively recent history. I admire your research, and the way you’ve written up very complicated topics: warms my journalist’s heart! As I have been spending more and more time in Portugal over the past five years, I’ve been drawn to its history as a way of understanding the people and the culture better (and also just because I am curious!).
You are right: there is so much we immigrants will never understand. But that should not stop us from learning about what has formed our surroundings.
Thank you so much, Caroline!
If we ever meet and you have time, we can talk about those days. You are on the right track to understanding what happened, but there are still many things missing. Things hard to read and even hard to get someone to talk about. Like your friend said: É complicado. E há feridas que não se devem reabrir porque nunca foram devidamente cicatrizadas, acrescentaria eu.
Just a little provocation: do you know what the military's real motivation was for the revolution?
That where anyone who want to understand what had happen, must begin. It ain't pretty and became uglier and uglier.
Paulo, thank you as always for your read and thoughtful comments. I think you have emphasized my point: we immigrants can never fully understand. But we must try. The wounds that might be reopened are not equivalent, but have some similarity, to Vietnam for Americans. As to the military's motivation: most likely some variation of total power and control, and wealth? And I would love to meet and discuss some time. Glad to know at least I'm on the right track . . .
Not even that, was a corporative coupe against the Decree-Law 353/73 established the conditions for the transfer of officers from the Special Staff to the Permanent Staff of the various branches of the armed forces. It´s well document but conveniently forgotten.
Wow. Seemingly trivial things with massive consequences.
If it hadn't been for that reason, it would have been for another. The regime had reached a dead end and something had to change. It was inevitable. What was not inevitable was what happened in the period between April 25 and November 25, when the greatest destruction of wealth in Portuguese history took place and the former colonies were condemned to 40 years of civil war.
It was unforgivable.
I really enjoyed this educational post!
Thank you, Megan!
Thank you for this thoughtful analysis. It's a difficult balance, but as you note, it's one we immigrants must attempt to navigate.