About two years ago I wrote an article suggesting that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva should learn English. One reason was to be able to communicate directly with world leaders on the international stage and the other was to set an example to the less educated class from which he comes.

As far as I know he has not made any steps to learn English and is unlikely ever to do so.

The recent announcement that candidates for positions in the Brazilian diplomatic service need not have a qualification in English shows that ignorance is bliss in Lula’s Brazil.

This move reflects nothing more than the foolish anti-Americanism which infects the foreign service, the Itamaraty, and the inferiority complex this government feels in relation to the US.

The foreign service is run by a bureaucrat called Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães whose nationalistic view of the world is as narrow as Brazil is broad. His power is such that even the Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, has publicly backed the move even though he cannot possibly really believe in it.

Diplomats are noted for their reticence but two prominent ambassadors—one serving and the other retired—have voiced their opposition and stated that fluency in English was essential for any diplomat in the modern world.

This argument is irrelevant to the current administration which is almost proud of its lack of education. You only have to recall the number of times Lula has sneered at the intellectual qualifications and linguistic ability of his cosmopolitan predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, to recognize this.

Lula is constantly making speeches on the need to improve educational opportunities yet he never seems to take any himself.

Amorim said the move was being made to allow more people from a wider social background to apply for positions. This may be so, but will any of these people actually get jobs, break through the system and become senior diplomats?

Can we expect to see a black or mulatto or Indian Brazilian ambassador in Washington, Paris, Rome or London in the near future? Let us make a note to check the social background of the Brazilian diplomatic corps in 10 years time and see if it better reflects existing society.

I am willing to bet the move will make no difference and the service will continue to reflect its current cozy self-contained little world of professional diplomats and political hacks put out to stable.  

History Lesson       

Disliking a language because it belongs to an oppressor may be understandable but does not necessarily good sense. After all, the Brazilians are proud to speak Portuguese even though they declared themselves independent from Portugal almost 200 years ago.

If Lula would pick up a history book he would learn that Portuguese enjoyed a brief moment of glory during the 17th century when it was the lingua franca in Asia, thanks to the activities of Portuguese sailors and merchants.

In “The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600-1800”, the English historian. C. R. Boxer, describes the frustration of the Dutch in their attempts to impose their tongue (and harsh Protestant religion) on their settlements in India, Ceylon and the East Indies.

Boxer quotes a Dutch governor-general  as saying: “The Portuguese language is an easy language to speak and easy to learn. That is the reason why we cannot prevent  the slaves from Arakan who have never heard a word of Portuguese (and indeed even our own children) from taking to that language in preference to all other languages and making it their own.”  

Boxer goes on to write that “…Portuguese remained the lingua franca of the Dutch settlements despite periodic efforts by the government to displace it in favour of Dutch.

Not a few Dutch women, born and bred of European parents at Batavia (modern Jakarta), spoke a Creole form of Portuguese in preference to their mother-tongue, in which they could express themselves but haltingly.”

Nowadays, almost no one speaks Portuguese in Asia and the only presence are a few churches and fortresses scattered across the East like Ozymandias’ statue in Shelley’s poem.

The newly independent state of east Timor made the strange decision to have Portuguese as its official language, but its proximity to Australia is likely to result in this being changed in the near future.

What a pity Lula and his fellow reactionaries from the Itamaraty cannot enter a time machine and go back a few centuries to a time when globalization meant speaking Portuguese.

John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish journalist who first visited Brazil in 1987 and has lived in São Paulo since 1995. He writes on politics and finance and runs his own company, Celtic Comunicações—www.celt.com.br—which specializes in editorial and translation services for Brazilian and foreign clients. You can reach him at jf@celt.com.br.

© John Fitzpatrick 2005

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