This ar­ti­cle is not on­ly about the Por­tuguese of the is­land of Madeira who set­tled in Trinidad from May 1846, but al­so about the Por­tuguese who over the cen­turies for sev­er­al rea­sons set­tled in the West In­dies and, as such, con­tributed to the his­to­ry of the re­gion in one way or an­oth­er. In oth­er words, it is about the over­all his­tor­i­cal pres­ence of the Por­tuguese in the Caribbean. In fact, his­to­ri­ans tell us that the Por­tuguese have been part of the life, econ­o­my and so­cial cul­ture of the Caribbean since the 15th cen­tu­ry. His­to­ry has it that the first Por­tuguese to set foot in the West In­dies were the sailors on board Christo­pher Colum­bus' three ships-the San­ta Mar&ia­cute;a, the Pin­ta and the Ni­na-which land­ed on the small is­land of San Sal­vador (or Gua­na­hani) in the Ba­hamas on Oc­to­ber 12, 1492. Colum­bus learnt to be­come a skilled sailor and map-mak­er in Por­tu­gal, the most im­por­tant sea­far­ing coun­try in Eu­rope at that time. There he met many ex­pe­ri­enced sailors, some of whom ac­com­pa­nied him on his maid­en voy­age to the New World, al­though he was at the time at the ser­vice of the Span­ish Crown and not at Por­tu­gal's ser­vice. Since the days of Colum­bus, the Por­tuguese have em­i­grat­ed over the cen­turies in large num­bers to the Caribbean for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons, main­ly re­li­gious, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic.

The two most im­por­tant waves of mi­gra­tion to the Caribbean were (i) those of the Por­tuguese Jews, who im­mi­grat­ed from the 15th to the 19th cen­turies for re­li­gious rea­sons and (ii) those of the Por­tuguese from the is­land of Madeira, who came to the Carib-bean in the sec­ond half of the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies, al­so for re­li­gious but main­ly for eco­nom­ic rea­sons. These two waves of Por­tuguese im­mi­grants have great­ly im-pact­ed on the eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment of the West In­dies. Their in­flu­ence can still be felt to­day. The first group of im­mi­grants were Sephardic Jews who left Por­tu­gal to es­cape from per­se­cu­tion by the Catholic In­qui­si­tion in that coun­try. It is dif­fi­cult to give ex­act num­bers of the Por­tuguese Jews that set­tled in the Caribbean be­cause they are said to have come be­tween the 15th and 19th cen­turies, but they cer­tain­ly came in large num­bers (sev­er­al thou­sand). They set­tled from Suri­name (for­mer­ly Dutch Guiana) in the south to the Ba­hamas and Ber-mu­da in the north. Im­por­tant com­mu­ni­ties set­tled in Cu­ra­cao and Aru­ba (where they left the Pa­pi­a­men­to lan­guage), Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica.

They made their in­flu­ence felt not on­ly in the aca­d­e­m­ic world, but al­so in pol­i­tics, trade, agri­cul­ture (sug­ar plan­ta­tion in­dus­try) and the arts. They built Por­tu-guese syn­a­gogues and ceme­ter­ies in all the coun­tries they set­tled, some of which can still be found to­day: Suri­name, Bar­ba­dos, Cu­ra­cao, Ja­maica and the Ba­hamas, among oth­ers. The sec­ond large group of Por­tuguese set­tlers came to the West In­dies in the 19th cen­tu­ry and al­so the first part of the 20th cen­tu­ry. They orig­i­nat­ed from the Azores, the Cape Verde Is­lands and al­so from Madeira. By far the largest group came from Madei-ra. In fact, with the end of slav­ery in the West In­dies as a re­sult of the Slav­ery Abo­li­tion Act pub­lished in Lon­don in 1833 (ef­fec­tive from 1834), many farm­ers in the re­gion were left with­out their tra­di­tion­al labour force and were there­fore forced to im­port in­den­tured and con­tract work­ers from sev­er­al parts of the world, in­clud­ing the Por­tuguese is­lands of the At­lantic, to work on Caribbean farms (es­pe­cial­ly sug­ar plan­ta­tions). At that time, the is­land of Madeira was suf­fer­ing from se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic prob­lems and the Protes­tant com­mu­ni­ty there was the ob­ject of re­li­gious ha­rass­ment by the Catholic cler­gy of Fun­chal. The con­di­tions were set for Ma-deira to be­come a ma­jor sup­pli­er of agri­cul­tur­al work­ers to the plan­ta­tions of the West In­dies in the 19th cen­tu­ry.

Prac­ti­cal­ly all coun­tries of the re­gion-from Guyana (then De­mer­ara, British Guiana) to Cu­ba-re­ceived agri­cul­tur­al work­ers from Madeira. The great ma­jor­i­ty set­tled in De­mer­ara and Trinidad (in­clud­ing, in the lat­ter case, the per­se­cut­ed Protes­tants of Fun­chal, who re­ceived the pro­tec­tion and as­sis­tance of the Greyfri­ars Pres­by­ter­ian Church of Port-of-Spain). The rest is his­to­ry and is well doc­u­ment­ed in the works of many dis­tin­guished de­scen­dants of Madeirans, for ex­am­ple, the schol­ars Sis­ter M Noel de Menezes of Guyana and Dr Jo-Anne S Fer­reira of T&T. From their writ­ings, we learn that the Madeiran peo­ple moved from the agri­cul­tur­al fields, soon af­ter their ar­rival in the Carib-bean, to en­ter not on­ly shop-keep­ing but al­so oth­er pro­fes­sions and trades. To­day, they are in all walks of life, ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to the po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and so­cial life of the West In­dies, with their im­por­tant so­cial con­tri­bu­tion be­ing felt every­where in the re­gion. Among them, I would like to men­tion Dr Ralph Gon­salves, the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent & the Grenadines. Not to be for­got­ten are those who joined the British armed forces of the West In­dies and fought brave­ly dur­ing the First and Sec­ond World Wars, thus con­tribut­ing to the present free­dom of the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

Dr Luis Rit­to, a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and aca­d­e­m­ic di­rec­tor at the In­ter­na­tion­al School of Pro­to­col and Diplo­ma­cy in Brus­sels, and for­mer EU am­bas­sador to the UN or­gan­i­sa­tions, the Holy See and the Sov­er­eign Or­der of Mal­ta, lived and worked in Madeira for some ten years, and as EU am­bas­sador trav­elled through­out the Caribbean, vis­it­ing both Trinidad and Guyana sev­er­al times

(This ar­ti­cle ap­peared in Por­tuguese in the Di&aa­cute;rio de Not&ia­cute;cias on May 8)

Dr Luis Rit­to

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