Moderator: Marisa Ramos Gonçalves (CES)


Overview

This seminar is part of the series The Weft of Memory: dates to count, organised by the coordination of the thematic line Europe and the Global South: heritages and dialogues. The series aims to mark and reflect on less resounding dates, but equally determinant for the construction of the 25th of April 1974 and the independence of Portuguese-speaking African countries and East Timor. The seminars take place online, whenever possible on the date to be marked, every month, at 16h00, throughout 2023.

What ideals and expectations were built around the 25th of April and the decolonization process of East Timor in 1974-1975? The seminar presents the Timorese experiences of that period, the internal conflict and Portugal's abandonment of the territory, which culminated in FRETILIN's unilateral proclamation of independence of Timor-Leste on the 28th November 1975, in anticipation of the imminent invasion by Indonesia.

Luís Cardoso (author and former representative of the East-Timorese resistance in Portugal) and Adelino Gomes (reporter who covered the events in 1975) are invited to give their testimony on these events, moderated by Marisa Ramos Gonçalves (CES).
 

Bio notes

Adelino Gomes worked successively in radio, television (RTP, 1975-1976) and the press for 42 years. On the radio, he was an announcer, newsreader and reporter for RCP, RR and RDP. Banned by the government from working on the programme Página Um, where he had commented on the attack on the Munich Olympic village without having the text censored (6.9.1972), in 1973 he joined the Portuguese-language editorial staff of Deutsche Welle. He was a member of the initial team of Público as chief editor. As a reporter, he covered, among many other events of national and international importance, the 25 April 1974, the first hours of the land invasion of Timor (whose dossier he followed from late September 1975 until the first years of independence), moments of decolonisation and civil war in Angola (July 1975, 1992 and 1994), the First and Second Gulf Wars (1990/1 and 2003), Afghanistan (2001), and the fall of the Cédras regime in Haiti (1994). He is the author and co-author of books on the 25 April and Timor. In his 60s, still working in his profession, he returned to university, where he studied journalism and sociology.

Luís Cardoso was born in Kailako, a village in the interior of Timor that appears several times in his novels. He is the son of a nurse who served in several places in Timor, which is why he knows and speaks several Timorese languages. He studied at the missionary colleges of Soibada and Fuiloro and later at the Jesuit seminary in Dare and at the Dr Francisco Machado High School in Dili. He graduated in Forestry from the Instituto Superior de Agronomia in Lisbon. Cardoso has served as Representative of the National Council of the Maubere Resistance in Portugal. He is the author of the novels: Crónica de Uma Travessia (1997), Olhos de Coruja Olhos de Gato Bravo (2002), A Última Morte do Coronel Santiago (2003), Requiem para o Navegador Solitário (2007) and O ano em que Pigafetta completou a circum-navegação (Sextante Editora, 2013).

Marisa Ramos Gonçalves is a researcher and lecturer in the doctoral programme "Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship", at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. She is part of the research line “Europe and the global South: heritages and dialogues”. Currently, Gonçalves is working on the research project “Transnational histories of solidarity in the south - researching 'other' knowledges and struggles for rights across the Indian Ocean”, with a particular focus on Timor-Leste and Mozambique, in the scope of FCT’s Programme for the Stimulation of Scientific Employment (CEEC-IND). She is a member of the International Consultative Council of the Chega! National Centre, a memory institute of Timor-Leste. PhD. from Wollongong University, Australia, in the area of history and human rights, she taught at the Timor Lorosa'e National University and at the Australian Catholic University. Her research focuses on the themes of history and memory, human rights and reconciliation, local knowledge systems and social justice movements in the Global South, particularly in Timor-Leste and the Asia-Pacific region

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This activity will be provided through Zoom platform and does not require registration. Participation is limited to the number of places available >> https://zoom.us/j/84587553732  | ID: 845 8755 3732 | Password: 188302

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