West Coast Observer: Soundings from the Portuguese

With a nod to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

By William Silveira

Acquiring new skills in old age is said to help ward off dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. Taking a half-way measure, I decided instead to improve my knowledge of Portuguese.
    I had spoken some Portuguese with my grandmother as a child and took 12 semester units of the language in college. I thereafter spoke in Portuguese to Portuguese-speaking persons, but less and less with the passing years. So, I have taken a subscription to a Portuguese language newspaper, Tribuna Portuguesa, a bi-weekly publication from Modesto, California. I have also started reading two books written in Portuguese by author Joel Neto.

One of the regular contributors to the Tribuna is Diniz Borges, who immigrated here from Portugal at the age of ten worked in dairies, then in sales. He then went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Sciences (1995) and a Master of Arts degree in Humanities (CSU Dominguez Hills, 2001). Diniz was hired as a Portuguese-language instructor at Tulare Union High School.
    Diniz is a very popular teacher. He teaches six periods of Portuguese, with 187 students. District-wide (Tulare Union High School District – three high schools) there are three Portuguese-language instructors, with 418 students. Any student interested in doing so can undertake four years of instruction in Portuguese. (I doubt whether, when I attended high school in Tulare in the 1950’s, there were any Portuguese-language classes in any high school in the State of California.)
    Diniz has been recognized for creating the best high school Portuguese-language program in the state. He is a very energetic man and has been recognized with many awards in education and in the realm of Portuguese-American affairs. He is the honorary vice-consul of Portugal in California.
    Diniz and Angela Simoes are creating a podcast through PALCUS (Portuguese-American Leadership Council of the United States). I believe its broadcasts will be in English.
    Diniz’s column in the Tribuna is in the Portuguese language and is entitled “Reflexos do Dia-a-Dia.” I would translate this as “Day-to-Day Observations.”

Diniz’s opinion piece for September 1 was entitled “O Odio e O Racismo na America” – I would translate this as “Hatred and Racism in America.” In this piece Diniz reflects on the August 12 events in Charlottesville and the role that our President, Donald Trump, had in that event.

    It is often recommended that students of American history read de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. I enjoyed it. It allows us to see ourselves through an outsider’s eyes. And while Diniz is not an outsider, he has sufficient involvement in both American and European culture to see clearly what lay at the root of the August 12 events.
    Diniz starts by observing that the demonstrations in Charlottesville were organized by white supremacists, “saudosista” (having nostalgia for) Nazis, the KKK, atavists of the alt-right, and other groups on the extreme right of American politics. He goes on to observe that these groups showed once again the bitter fruit and the inevitable result of our habitual intellectual dishonesty concerning race and racism. He states that despite all the battles and struggles we have had, we have yet to address this country’s original sin of slavery. He notes that we utilize tenuous euphemisms like “all lives matter” to abdicate an honest discussion about race.
    Diniz points out that the false equivalencies utilized by Trump in remarking on the events in Charlottesville show Trump’s lack of moral authority. Trump exacerbated tensions and put salt in the national wounds. He advanced the cause of the most repellent forces of the extreme right, which, until that point, had been at the margins of society.
    Diniz notes that Trump campaigned on a platform that questioned the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth records and wore a red hat (the predominate color in the confederate flag) that displayed the phrase, ad nauseam, “Make America Great Again.” Trump divided the country with his messages of nationalism, reignited the flames of racism, and put the most retrograde elements of the Republican party at the center of the stage. Instead of appealing to our better nature and historic values, Trump chose to elevate quarrelsome sentiments and ancestral resentments. In referring to the alt-right demonstrators at Charlottesville “as very fine people,” Trump legitimized racism, hatred, and xenophobia.
    After reading Diniz’s column and thinking about the events of August 12, I have concluded that the “Make America Great Again” slogan covers an agenda of these alt-right groups to make America again the land of inequality and injustice that existed in the early 1950’s, with equal disregard for minorities and the environment. It is to be greatly pitied that we have a President who gave a false legitimacy to their cause.

Copyright © 2017 by William Silveira