Seguem alguns registros pontuais e sintéticos das sessões plenárias realizadas como parte do Colóquio Internacional Epistemologias do Sul – Aprendizagens Globais: Sul-Sul, Sul-Norte e Norte e Sul, organizado no âmbito do Projeto ALICE entre 10 e 12 de julho na Universidade de Coimbra.

Maurício Hashizume/Equipe ALICE News
21 Jul 2014

Sessão sobre Direitos Humanos e Outras Gramáticas de Dignidade; clique na imagem para ver o álbum (Foto: Carlos Nolasco)

No painel (que se seguiu à abertura) sobre o eixo temático “Direitos Humanos e Outras Gramáticas da Dignidade Humana”, a escritora, ativista e diretora da área da Comissão Islâmica de Direitos Humanos (IHRC), Arzu Merali, contestou as perspectivas que se limitam apenas a enfocar os níveis e modos de “aplicação” de padrões fixos e pré-definidos de direitos humanos.

Ela destacou alguns traços sociais de mutualidade e complementariedade presentes no mundo islâmico, associados ao modo de vida nessas sociedades, que não encontram “traduções” ocidentais. Daí a complexo desafio de assegurar o direito à diferença sem que haja subordinações. Mesmo o discurso da justiça corre o risco, em alguma medida, de se agarrar, segundo a ativista, em pressupostos de algum modo “universalizantes”, conforme, por exemplo, pontuam críticas que advêm do movimento feminista. Além disso, foram colocadas ainda as dificuldades não somente em termos da tradução intercultural na luta por direitos, mas também dos diálogos intraculturais.

Arzu Merali (frente) e Cesar Rodríguez-Garavito; clique na imagem para ver o álbum do colóquio (Foto: Carlos Nolasco)

Já o advogado e sociólogo colombiano César Rodríguez-Garavito apresentou alguns tópicos que vêm trabalhando com relação a agudos conflitos socioambientais decorrentes de grandes empreendimentos econômicos – que ele define como “campos minados sociais” – em curso na América Latina. A partir de casos como o da construção da Usina Hidrelétrica de Belo Monte, na Amazônia brasileira, e da tentativa de extração e exploração de petróleo em Sarayaku, no Equador, o painelista, que atua como professor no Centro de Lei, Justiça e Sociedade da Universidade dos Andes (Colômbia) e faz parte de uma ONG (Dejusticia) que também atua na mesma área, abordou aspectos relativos à consulta prévia, livre e informada – estabelecida pela Convenção 169 da Organização Internacional do Trabalho (OIT) – e as discussões de fundo referentes à própria governança e aos embates acerca dos direitos humanos.

A apresentação de Mireille Fanon Mendes France, filha do psiquiatra e ensaísta Frantz Fanon e presidente da fundação que leva o nome do mesmo, tratou do elo entre a expansão do neocolonialismo, fundado na regulamentação jurídica da violência, e as parcerias público-privadas que envolvem setores do poder público, agentes econômicos e instituições financeiras. Perante o fracasso dos frágeis ensaios multilaterais de regulação do capital, acordos de livre comércio têm se multiplicado e levado junto o que ela denominou como “guerra sem fim”, vinculada a “fusões e confusões” institucionalizadas no campo jurídico-normativo (haja vista a criminalização de “inimigos interiores”, sob a alegação de atividades “ilícitas” como a de “terrorismo”) que atendem a interesses comerciais de mercado.

Mireille Fanon e Nelson Maldonado-Torres; clique na imagem para ver o álbum do colóquio (Foto: Carlos Nolasco)

Para enfrentar esse neocolonialismo com robusto suporte econômico e que reforça os fundamentos da dominação com base em diferenciações étnico-raciais, a oradora defendeu, entre outras iniciativas, articulações geopolíticas alternativas que possam enfrentar “hierarquias ontológicas” e ajudem a desconstruir as profundas influências racistas das “epistemologias do Norte”. Para tratar inclusive dessas e de outras temáticas relacionadas, foi assinado, durante o colóquio internacional, um acordo institucional de cooperação entre a Fundação Frantz Fanon e o Centro de Estudos Sociais (CES).

O contraste entre as guerras associadas às colonialidades e os impulsos descoloniais do amor esteve presente na intervenção do filósofo porto-riquenho Nelson Maldonado-Torres. Ao recorrer ao pensamento de Fanon e de obras da literatura caribenha que ajudam a ilustrar o profundo corte promovido pela colonialidade/modernidade entre pessoas com “distintos níveis de humanidade”, ele denunciou o pluralismo que sustenta justamente na desumanização, em classificações sociais que “dão e tiram humanidades”. Para ele, a discussão sobre direitos humanos requer, portanto, o enfrentamento dessa matriz produtora de hierarquias que determina inclusive a própria existência ou não de sujeitos desses mesmos direitos.

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This article serves as a response to Sir Andrew Green’s comment on the alleged misuse of Portuguese citizenship by Indian nationals of Goan origin whom the Daily Star and the Daily Mail have characterized as immigrants who travel to Great Britain to take advantage of it. Green’s perspective from a few months ago mirrors prevalent xenophobic views on the rights of immigrants to Europe; hence, the counterpoint offered here hopes to challenge such bias as it will surely continue to be expressed.

By: R. Benedito Ferrão e Jason Keith Fernandes.

Kafila / August 31, 2013.

Article in Portuguese: ALICE News.

Pigments in a Goan market. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

On 13 May, 2013, the Goan Ethernet was aflame with outrage at statements made by Sir Andrew Green, chairperson of Migration Watch, carried in the Daily Star and the Daily Mail. The Daily Star reported, “An Indian national from Goa can obtain Portuguese citizenship if their parents were Portuguese citizens prior to 1961,” and quoted Green as saying, “They can then move straight to the UK with their family. On arrival they can avail themselves, immediately, of all the benefits available to UK citizens.” The Daily Mail seems to have been spurred on by Green’s statement, going on to claim that “[a] number of Indian nationals from the former Portuguese territory of Goa are thought to have taken advantage of the loophole. Indians living in Goa can claim they have Portuguese heritage and so claim Portuguese citizenship. They can then move directly to Britain – without ever having to visit Portugal – and bring a family without meeting any qualification test.”

Given the manner in which the matter regarding Goan access to Portuguese citizenship has been reported in the British press, as academics studying Goa and the Goan community, we believe that there is a need to redress such misrepresentations and firmly call out, not only the wilful amnesia about Britain’s imperial past, but also the Anglo-centric interpretation of colonialism, the post-colonial, and de-colonised world order that motivates such representations. In so doing, our aim is to address not merely a need for Goans and others of former Portuguese India to assert the legitimacy of their actions, but to also enable a view of the global order from a position that is more respectful of the formerly colonised.

Addressing the aforementioned inherently Anglo-centric bias of the colonial and post-colonial context requires commencing with a review of the Western European encounter with South Asia. This engagement traces back to the late 15^th century with the Portuguese “discovery” of the sea-route to the fabled Indies. It resulted in the establishment of what came to be known as Estado da Índia Portuguesa, or the Portuguese State in India, which was centred in Goa in 1510. The boundaries of Portuguese India, which extended to other enclaves beyond Goa were firmly fixed only in the 18^th century in the face of contestation with, not just local, but other European powers as well. As a result of this early entry into South Asia, by the time the British departed from the subcontinent upon handing over power to two nation-states – India and Pakistan – the Portuguese State in India would outlast their English counterparts and have existed for approximately 450 years. This Portuguese state was markedly different from the one that the British had created in the course of their time in the subcontinent. Most significant, for the misrepresentations that we seek to correct, was the fact that through the length of its presence in the subcontinent, the Portuguese state attempted to recognise natives as citizens, or bearers of rights equal to those of persons from the metropole.

As a consequence, Goa was represented by non-white parliamentary representatives from 1834 when the declaration of the constitutional monarchy in Portugal created the space for a national parliament. These rights were extended universally in 1910 with the commencement of the First Portuguese Republic, only to be eclipsed somewhat during the course of the dictatorial Estado Novo, or New State, headed by Dr. António Oliveira Salazar. Nonetheless, the rhetoric of equality was firmly established and constantly referred to by Portuguese Indians, whether living in Goa, or as migrants to British India or, indeed, British East Africa where many Goans lived and worked, as bearers of Portuguese citizenship. Within this colonial framework, even if only in legal theory, racial and cultural difference was in fact surmountable.

This situation was certainly different from that existent in British India, or in any other part of the British Empire for that matter, where the only status enjoyed by the natives was as that of subjects of the British crown. As a result, one could argue that it was the failure of the British state to extend the much coveted status of imperial citizen to the comprador British Indian elites that caused members of that echelon to then set up their claim for independence from the Crown. The nationalist claims that these elites initiated rested on the creation of a national culture that accepted the racial and other differences that the British colonial system enforced. This situation ensured that extant differences were perpetuated rather than challenged.

The Portuguese State in India came to a definitive close with the actions of the Indian state in 1961, when the Indian armed forces invaded the Portuguese territory of Goa. While an anti-colonial movement was afoot in the region, the eventual decolonisation of Goa cannot be said to have resulted primarily from the anti-imperialist movements of its own soil due to the military intervention of the Indian state and its subsequent denial of the right of self-determination to the Goan populace. Additionally, in an imperialist act that was echoed in the newly independent nation’s actions in Kashmir and the north-east of the country, the formerly British India unilaterally integrated the territory of Goa into itself. If India was able to get away with this, it was because the developing post-colonial order was awash in racist and ethnocentric perspectives engendered to a large degree by British colonial practices. These were predicated on the assumption that territorial contiguity and the presence of the Hindu religion across the geographic expanse, though not exclusively or without diversity, gave India ample right to take over marginal territories such as Goa and Kashmir.

The significant fact that the Goan people were legally Portuguese citizens was given short shrift and eclipsed by an act of the Indian parliament that bestowed on them Indian citizenship. Hindered by an effectively xenophobic understanding of Indian-ness, and its relationship with the countries that surround it, in contrast to many other legal regimes, the Indian state does not permit its citizens to hold multiple nationalities. Therein, unlike British Indian subjects, in being made a part of the Indian state, Goans and other Portuguese Indians lost their Portuguese citizenship, and the ability to be both South Asian and European, only to have Indian citizenship thrust upon them, and be fixed as solely Indian.

It was only subsequent to the normalization of relations between India and Portugal that a number of former citizens of the Portuguese State of India were able to reclaim their Portuguese citizenship. It is precisely because of the unfounded allegations of the Daily Mail that it should be stressed that these Portuguese Indians are not petitioning for new citizenship, nor exploiting a loophole. What they are doing is reclaiming a legitimate right that was lost owing to the actions of the Indian state. There is no need for them to prove their Portuguese character as the Daily Mail suggests, for their parents, if not they themselves, were Portuguese, and 450 years of Goa being a part of Portugal has made those Goans as Portuguese as any other person in continental Europe who holds Portuguese citizenship. The Daily Mail’s claim is profoundly offensive since it is based on the racist assumption that only Caucasians can be Portuguese and European. This assumption is of course buttressed by the fact that the colonial practices of states like Britain considered only whites to be properly British or European.

The British nation’s historical record when it comes to matters of who is deemed British enough is a controversial one. Note that in the 1960s and 70s, the aftermath of decolonisation in East Africa and Africanisation policies, emergent from impoverishment due to colonisation, saw the vilification and expulsion of Asians who were then denied entry to the United Kingdom despite being holders of UK passports as colonial subjects. In 1972, when 50,000 Asians were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin, the very notion of the Commonwealth was proven to be one in name only because, by 1968, the right of colonial-era UK passport holders to enter Britain had been withdrawn in response to an increase in economically induced out-migration from Kenya in 1967. It is important to stress here that not only were Asians – Goans included – in East African countries because the British administration of those colonies had recruited them, but also that their labour had benefitted the Empire. Goans were given British subjecthood to serve the colonial administration in many cases. In so much as Goans were nominally British, their UK passports served more as travel documents than a guarantee of citizenship rights, as became painfully evident in the post-colonial period. While Goans and other colonised groups had been British “enough” to serve the regime, it became apparent that was no longer the case once their usefulness had been outlived. This was a profound abdication of national  and legal responsibility, not least for the racialised political climate induced by years of British colonial rule in Africa. In fact, the colonial legacy continues to reveal itself as is the case with the revelation this year of the destruction of records relating to violent and deadly atrocities committed against Kenya’s Mau Maus who rebelled against British rule.

For all the problems that Portuguese colonialism produced, and the racism that accompanied it, what must be underscored is that it is also differentiated by the legal rhetoric that recognised, and continues to recognise, the multiple groups outside of Portugal as equally Portuguese. Thus, the Portuguese Indians who recover their Portuguese citizenship and then migrate, not merely to Britain but across the world, trace a path similar to other Portuguese nationals who are currently in flight from a Portugal laid low by the European crisis. Portuguese legal history and flows of migration are often ignored by the largely Anglo-centric understanding of the world. The recognition of the Lusitanian milieu allows for a reconstruction of European-ness outside of the racist frameworks that currently delimit it.  It permits a corrective to the manner in which the post-colonial world was constructed along racist lines, restricting the ability of persons to freely move internationally. While white privilege has ensured an ease of travel for some, the accompanying racism leads to the outcries as evidenced in the reports by the Daily Star and Daily Mail, as well as the ritual humiliations of non-white travellers at embassies, consulates, and immigration check-points globally. In challenging this racism that underlies the statement attributed to Sir Andrew Green, there is also an option opened up for Europe wherein the racism that undergirds the European project can be challenged, and in re-understanding the flows of capital and populations that have contributed to European hegemony today, the current crisis can be utilised as a way to reimagine the European Union’s association with the world outside itself and as the product of its own history.

R. BENEDITO FERRÃO is an academic who works on post-colonial and diasporic issues. He has served as a lecturer in the United States and India, and has been published internationally. Find his blog at thenightchild.blogspot.com, or on Facebook at The Nightchild Nexus.

JASON KEITH FERNANDES was recently awarded a PhD in Anthropology by ISCTE – IUL, Lisbon for his study on Citizenship Experiences of Goan Catholics, as his thesis is titled. In addition to his academic pursuits, he intervenes in the public sphere through op-ed columns that appear in The Gomantak Times, O Heraldo, and The Goan, and are archived at ww.dervishnotes.blogspot.com.

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Nuestra concepción de la democracia y sus prácticas tiene que descolonizarse. Descolonizar la democracia significa desaprender su matriz eurocéntrica centrada en la perspectiva del sujeto masculino, blanco, heterosexual, burgués, alfabetizado y cristiano”, afirma Antoni Aguiló, investigador del Proyecto ALICE, en esta propuesta de reflexión.

La democracia del voto en la mirada de Alejandro Salazar.

A pesar del cambio de estatus legal y político que los procesos de descolonización supusieron para las antiguas colonias occidentales, la hegemonía de las formas ideológicas y culturales occidentales no ha sido alterada de manera significativa. Como afirma Ashis Nandy: “Occidente está ahora en todas partes, dentro y fuera de Occidente: en estructuras y mentes”.

En este punto confluyen las corrientes de pensamiento que denuncian la presencia de una ideología neocolonial y occidentecéntrica fundada, en palabras de Boaventura Santos, en una racionalidad “perezosa, que se considera única, exclusiva, y que no se ejercita lo suficiente como para poder mirar la riqueza inagotable del mundo”. Esta razón colonial es concebida esencialmente como una forma de negación, subordinación o eliminación de la diversidad humana, pues equipara diferencia con deficiencia y confunde diversidad con desigualdad. El resultado es una actitud arrogante caracterizada por la falta de reciprocidad en las relaciones humanas. El colonialismo, desde este enfoque, consiste en “todos los trueques, los intercambios, las relaciones, donde una parte más débil es expropiada de su humanidad” (Santos), corriendo el riesgo de ser tratada como una propiedad u objeto manipulable. Así, donde la razón colonial penetra, se llevan a cabo dinámicas de deshumanización, incluso sin la presencia de administraciones coloniales.

Estas corrientes comparten el reto de contribuir a descolonizar el pensamiento dando voz a las víctimas del colonialismo y otras formas de dominación. Descolonizar el pensamiento significa luchar contra los diferentes sistemas de opresión y dominación que pretenden imponer una sola forma de pensar, de ser y vivir. Es hacer frente al colonialismo (como negación sistemática de la humanidad) y a sus instrumentos de legitimación (económicos, políticos, mediáticos, académicos, etc.) para construir nuevas relaciones de respeto mutuo, igualdad y solidaridad. Es, en síntesis, dignificar la condición humana en sus más diversas expresiones.

La democracia representativa liberal ha sido y es una de las instituciones al servicio del colonialismo occidental. Más allá de su afán universalista, se trata de una forma particular e histórica de democracia que despunta en la Europa que proclama el ideario liberal-burgués del progreso, la razón y la emancipación. Fue la modernidad capitalista y liberal la que, tras siglos de desprestigio, recuperó la democracia en su forma representativa para limitar el poder de la monarquía absoluta, combatir los privilegios de las élites nobiliarias y extender el poder político a la burguesía emergente.

Sin embargo, la democracia representativa no fue concebida originariamente como un instrumento para canalizar las aspiraciones populares de orden económico, social y político. El liberalismo se apropió de la representación política como “estrategia de los ricos para asegurar y mantener su propia posición de dominación socioeconómica por medios políticos” (Pateman). Desde sus orígenes modernos, la democracia representativa estuvo regida por una matriz cultural occidental, individualista, clasista, racista, patriarcal, homófoba, excluyente, competitiva, consumista, explotadora en el empleo y depredadora del medio ambiente. La democracia representativa formaba parte de un modelo civilizatorio que impuso alrededor del mundo el señorío del ser humano blanco, varón, adulto, heterosexual, propietario de bienes, cristiano y padre de familia. Entre los destinatarios de la democracia no figuraban los asalariados, las mujeres, las personas con discapacidad, los pobres, las personas no blancas ni las minorías étnicas y sexuales, grupos considerados inferiores y, en razón de ello, susceptibles de ser cosificados, explotados y silenciados. Este hecho evidencia el carácter colonial de la democracia liberal y del tipo de relaciones que estableció con una multiplicidad de sujetos a los que despolitizó y deshumanizó.

La dimensión colonial de la democracia liberal permanece todavía en sus conceptos, valores y usos históricos. He aquí algunos ejemplos: 1) la hegemonía de modelos de democracia representativa, elitista y formal creados en Europa y Estados Unidos y presentados al mundo como espejos de democracia en los que mirarse. La autopercepción de Occidente como espejo de democracia oculta la naturalización y globalización de un canon democrático que toma como base la experiencia política de cuatro países occidentales: Francia, Inglaterra, Holanda y Estados Unidos. 2) El descrédito de concepciones y prácticas de democracia que no hablan el lenguaje de la democracia representativa: formas participativas, deliberativas y comunitarias que interpelan directamente a la monocultura de la representación. 3) Las estrategias eufemísticamente llamadas de “promoción internacional” de la democracia (guerras preventivas, misiones de “paz”, etc.), que supeditan los anhelos populares de transformación económica, política y social de los países intervenidos a un modelo de democracia adaptado a los intereses de la globalización neoliberal. 4) La presencia renovada en Europa de una Herrenvolk Demokratie (“la democracia del pueblo de los señores”). Aunque este concepto se introdujo “en referencia” a determinados regímenes segregacionistas, como el de la Sudáfrica del apartheid, donde minorías blancas se proclamaron señoras de la mayoría negra, permite describir la actual apropiación neoliberal de la democracia representativa. Vivimos en democracias electorales que, a pesar de reconocer formalmente la igualdad jurídica y política de sus ciudadanos, son compatibles con reglas salvajes que aseguran el dominio de élites políticas y económicas neocoloniales. Es la “democracia” de los señores de la globalización y del dinero, cada vez más agresiva, arrogante y excluyente. La democracia se ha convertido en su instrumento de ataque, en un espejo de las antiguas sociedades coloniales reproducidas hoy en el sur de Europa, donde es utilizada para establecer grados de inhumanidad que abarcan más y más gente: parados, pensionistas, funcionarios, familias desahuciadas, enfermos sin urgencias, estudiantes, inmigrantes, estafados por las preferentes, etc.

Nuestra concepción de la democracia y sus prácticas tiene que descolonizarse. Descolonizar la democracia significa desaprender su matriz eurocéntrica centrada en la perspectiva del sujeto masculino, blanco, heterosexual, burgués, alfabetizado y cristiano; denunciar una democracia falsamente representativa que iguala a opresores y oprimidos en las urnas, y cuyos rituales fingen una normalidad que para muchas personas es sinónimo de abandono e injusticia; rechazar la falsa universalidad de una democracia de siervos y señores que camufla las ideas e intereses de la clase, grupo o cultura dominante. También significa romper el espejo colonial en el que la democracia liberal se ve como forma superior de organización política para reivindicar que la democracia no debe construirse únicamente sobre la base de procesos electorales, sino a partir de prácticas que no pueden quedar subsumidas en la democracia representativa, blanca, clasista, elitista, racista y machista globalizada. Las asambleas deliberativas, la rotación de cargos, el mandato imperativo, los referéndums, la iniciativa legislativa popular, el presupuesto participativo y la democracia electrónica, entre otras prácticas, forman parte de la vida secreta de la democracia.

La descolonización de la democracia sólo puede resultar de dos aprendizajes: 1) la humanidad de unos no puede construirse a costa de la inhumanidad de otros. No hay una forma de ser humano más plena y legítima, pues “cada hombre encierra la forma entera de la condición humana” (Montaigne). La democracia tiene que ser un espejo poliédrico cuyas imágenes reflejen las variadas formas de humanidad vigentes. 2) Hay que promover el diálogo y la complementariedad entre las diversas formas de democracia, reconociendo, con Martha Nussbaum, que “las ideas primigenias de la igualdad, la democracia y los derechos humanos existieron en muchas culturas”, aunque bajo diferentes formas y lenguajes. Sin diálogo entre democracias, la democracia se vuelve un discurso monocorde y su diversidad se pierde.

* Antoni Aguiló es filósofo político y profesor del Centro de Estudios Sociales (CES) de la Universidad de Coímbra.

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