…President Granger lauds their contributions at Arrival Day function

PRESIDENT David Granger commended the many areas in which Portuguese have contributed to the Guyanese culture and economy, as he delivered the feature address on Friday, at a Commemoration Ceremony, on the lawns of the Sacred Heart Church in celebration of Portuguese Arrival Day.

Friday marked the 184th Anniversary of the arrival of the Portuguese. The Portuguese were the fourth of Guyana’s six races to arrive in the country, following the Amerindians, the Europeans and the Africans. Like the Indians, the Portuguese were brought to Guyana as indentured immigrants in the 1800s, majority of them coming from the Island of Madeira. They remained and their culture became an indelible part of the Guyanese multicultural society.

“Portuguese culture has permeated and enriched our diverse social tapestry. The original Madeirenses and their descendants have left a lasting legacy on our nation’s economic, intellectual, political and social development,” Granger noted.

Beginning in 2017, President Granger declared May 3 to be celebrated as Portuguese Arrival Day, as a deliberate effort to celebrate the contributions that the race has made to the country. “I didn’t do this to separate or segregate but, more importantly, to integrate the nation more fully by creating greater awareness of each other’s cultures and by engendering respect through knowledge. Their contributions to the nation’s economy, its multicultural character and political evolution have benefitted all of us,” Granger said.
The president gave a brief history of the development of the race since arriving in Guyana, noting the Portuguese as having a knack for entrepreneurship. “They were described by contemporary sources as industrious and thrifty,” the President said.

“Seven years after their arrival, one in every three new shops established in Georgetown was owned by Portuguese who, through shrewd business practices, began to compete with their other European counterparts in certain aspects of the retail trade, and, most prominently, spirit shops. Portuguese, within the first decade of their arrival, had owned almost eight out of every ten of the colony’s spirit shops.”

In terms of culture, the Portuguese are credited with making the Catholic faith a staple in Guyana. The ceremony being held at the Sacred Heart Church paid homage to the church being built in 1861 to allow Portuguese to practise their Catholicism.

The race was also noted for its strong sense of kinship and social responsibility, and the President named several prominent Portuguese Guyanese who played significant roles in the country’s history and development. “Persons of Portuguese origin have excelled in all areas of national life. They produced outstanding individuals such as academics Elsa Gouveia and Sister Mary Noel Menezes; architect, Albert Rodrigues; aviators Roland da Silva and Gerald Gouveia; businessmen, John and Christopher Fernandes and Peter D’ Aguiar; attorneys Bernard De Santos and David de Caires; legislators, Eugene Correia and Francis Dias; optician Jose da Silva; priests Fr. Malcolm Rodrigues and Louis da Silva; broadcaster, Olga Lopes-Seale; sports personalities Eddie Caetano and Stephen Comacho and cane farmer Joseph Vieira and I did not forget you Kit [Nascimento] distinguished journalist and public relations consultant and many more too numerous to mention,” the President said.

Also making remarks at the event was Honorary Consul for Portugal, Michael Correia. Correia emphasised the message that celebration of the Portuguese people and their contributions to the country contributes to building stronger ties of unity among Guyanese on the whole.

“Each of our six peoples has its unique character and composition, cultural and religious, but each combines to make a new heritage, Guyanese, which flows from this dear land of Guyana. Our Madeiran Portuguese descendants have proudly played significant and distinguished roles in every sphere of this country’s development and continue to do so, in politics, in commerce, in literature, in the arts and in religion, even though we are small in numbers,” Correia said.

He commended President Granger for putting so much emphasis on celebrating the ethnicity. “His Excellency reminded us on that occasion that ‘our diversity is an asset, not a liability’. He noted that ‘we are proud to belong to a society of many faiths’. We are proud of the tapestry of ethnicity within our country, but, he also reminded us that if left unattended, those differences can threaten mutual trust and can weaken people’s sense of belonging. We need to pay close attention to this and I commend our President for his focus on, precisely, this point.”