Xanana Thesis Chapter 1: 1946-78

CHAPTER ONE ^ The Last Days of Portuguese Timor A Blessing from God The Eternal World of Grandfather Crocodile I was born in Manatuto. My mother said it was either on the night of the 20th of June of in the early hours of the 21st, 1946, in the scorching heat that ripens the rice. By then, my sister Felísmina, born two years earlier, was probably enjoying childhood delights in the balmy afternoon of a coastal village: an earthenware bowl of steaming chicken soup, with locusts from the plains at harvest time, or with balichao: seafood preserves whose aroma of algae would waft even into a child's dreams, interrupted by the shrieks of fright at the sticky touch of dead octopus and amid stories of crocodiles. Only the Bible and the civilization of colonialism were able to destroy the bonds that tied the Timorese to their pair of goats, their vegetable plot and their beliefs in sacred sites. Xanana Gusmão, Autobiography, 19946 Evocative with joyful indigenous imagery the opening epigraph above comes from Xanana Gusmão’s own life-story, written secretly in his Indonesian prison cell. Xanana’s birth in 1946 was attended not only by the native midwives of his hometown of Manatuto, but also by the ghostly figure of the Grande Dame of European colonialism, Portugal. This lightskinned baby boy was delivered into the old world of Portuguese Timor, a society founded on the greatness of Portugal’s early discoveries and fed by racism and colonial oppression. The conflict between the two worlds, native and colonial, framed his early years. Pai and Mãe Gusmão baptised their first son José Alexandrě Gusmão and these were the names he was known by until, as an adult, he renamed himself. Having several names is an old Timorese custom and the power and mystery of knowing a person’s ‘real’ name is culturally significant.7 The middle syllable of Alexandrě, ‘Xan’ (pronounced ‘shan’), is the root of the nickname Xanana, which he says was inspired by the 50’s rock song ‘Sha Na Na’. Looking for a pseudonym under which to write poetry and articles in the 1970s he adopted the quirky, modern nickname and it stuck. In Timor today he is most often simply referred to by this one name and its’ scrawl in bold capitals is his customary signature and in this spirit it will be how he is referred to here. More familiarly in Timor he is also often referred to as Maun Bo’t, literally ‘big brother’ or ‘older brother’ but translated here as ‘Our Brother’ in keeping with the sentiments of this affectionate, respectful term. The most often repeated traditional myth of the island of Timor and its people attributes its creation to the transformation of a crocodile. The Timorese call the crocodile their 6 Xanana Gusmão (1994a) ‘Autobiography’ dated September 1994, in To Resist is to Win, Melbourne, Aurora/David Lovell Press, 2000, p. 4 7 Michele Turner (1992b) Telling, Sydney, University of NSW Press, p. 118 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 9 grandfather, Avô Lafaek, and regard him as a sacred animal. Their island resembles his shape. The half-island is small, only 470 kilometres south-west to north-east and only 110 kilometres wide at its broadest point, but it is diverse, both environmentally and in its people. Timor is a bridge between the Malay world and the Melanesian-Oceanic world; a place where different peoples have passed through and mixed in for thousands of years.8 Small kingdoms were linked by complex political alliances renewed by ritual exchange and marriage. Coastal Kings, experienced with the external world, exchanged tribute with Kings in the mountains, masters of the ritual and sacred world.9 It is these original Kingdoms that modern Timorese nationalists have hailed Maubere. Originally a common salutation meaning, ‘My Brother’ amongst the Mambai peoples, Maubere had become an insult during Portuguese times, meaning poor and ignorant native. For many it became a symbol of a cultural identity, of pride and belonging.10 The diversity of social life is matched by the island’s dramatic ecological contrasts: from Australian bush-like dry savannah to lush tropical forest and mountain alpine peaks. Timorese myth attributes the high mountain cordillera that runs along the centre of the island to Mother Earth’s final movements after she crawled underground to die.11 This 8 Originally sharing the same Mesolithic hunting and gathering ancestors as the Australian Aborigines, Timor became a bridge about 5000 years ago for migrating peoples of the Southeast Asian Island Neolithic culture who brought Austronesian or ‘Malay’ languages and agriculture to the islands. Non-Austronesian languages spoken by the original inhabitants, and by more recent migrants from south West Papua, mixed with the Austronesian speakers. While western Timor is populated by two groups of people: the Tetun and the Atoni, both Austronesian speakers, the situation in mountainous eastern Timor is much more complex. Approximately twelve mutually unintelligible languages are spoken, amongst them members of the Papuan language family including, Fataluku, Makassae, Makelero etc. 9 Elizabeth Traube (1995), ‘Mambai Perspectives on Colonialism and Decolonization’, East Timor at the Crossroads, eds. Carey and Carter Bentley (eds), London, Cassell, p. 44-45. Resistance stalwart José Ramos-Horta claims authorship of the adoption of the term during the political campaigning in 1974. Horta says the use of Maubere was the “single most successful political symbol” of the campaign and that almost immediately it became a symbol of a cultural identity, of pride and belonging. (José Ramos Horta (1987), Funu, Trenton, NJ, Red Sea Press, p. 37) 10 Ramos-Horta was born in 1949 of a Timorese mother, from the rebel-territory of Manufahi, and a Portuguese father exiled to Timor by the Salazar dictatorship. Educated at Soibada Mission and the Liceu, he completed his final year while working for the only newspaper, A Voz de Timor (The Voice of Timor). During 1970-1971 he was exiled to Mozambique for his anti-colonial activities. He worked there as a journalist and on his return took up at the paper again. The Mother Earth spirit, called Ina Lu, came to rest with her feet firmly pressing back the waters in the north, calming and controlling the female sea, but leaving her back to the male sea, unrestrained and wild (Traube, Elizabeth (1986) Cosmology and Social Life: Ritual Exchange among the Mambai of East Timor, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 39). Mother Earth first gave birth to Tatamailau (Tata Mai Lau), the highest and most sacred of mountains, and then to all other natural elements and living things. Other creation myths place Timor at the centre of the world where humankind was born from a union between Ina Lu and Father Heaven. The union involved marriage between the earth, in the form of the spirit Ina Lu, mother of all life, and heaven, as 11 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 10 traditional and sacred world was forbidden to the young José Gusmão, but through his fight beside the Maubere he came to appreciate their world. The people of East Timor still regard their traditions and customs as something sacred. It is in their traditions and customs that their unique way of seeing things, their way of being resides.... Their existentialist traditions tie them inextricably to Mother Earth. Their customs are impregnated with real-life experience and with the spirituality that inspires their lives.12 Day-to-day life in the traditional villages was organized by kinship and locality in a strict hierarchical society. The local hereditary king or Luirai was regarded as having divine attributes and his power was almost absolute.13 The Timorese lived according to animist Lulik belief systems where the living and ancestor spirits co-existed. Xanana’s people are Galolen, the ethno-linguistic group who populate the north-central coast where he was born.14 There are other Galolen people on islands to the north, and they are typically people of the sea coast. Xanana’s birthplace of Manatuto was an important landing and trading place in the region, one constantly open to foreigners and foreign influences.15 Xanana’s maternal grandfather was Kai Rala Alexandrě Henriques who is remembered by Xanana in the adoption of his indigenous name.16 It is clear that Xanana’s ancestors are important to his identity. Many of the modern resistance fighters claiming descent from the warrior tradition of their ancestors readopted their indigenous names. The full name Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão, symbolises his own mix of identity; his reclaimed indigenous ancestry combined with a unique and modern personal style, and his deeply felt Portuguese heritage. represented by the sun, the God-like, Maromak, the Shining One (Traube, 1995, p. 46; Patricia Thatcher (1993) ‘The Timor-Born in Exile in Australia’, Unpublished MA thesis, Monash University, p.64; Notes to Elizabete Lim Gomes (2001) Notes to ‘Birth in the Great Mountain Tatamailau’, Bitter Flowers, Sweet Flowers: East Timor, Indonesia and the World Community, Tanter, Selden and Shalom, eds, USA, Rowman and Littlefield, p. 105). Robert Domm (1990) Report from the Mountains of East Timor; Interview with resistance guerrilla commander, Shanana Gusmão, Transcript of Background Briefing, ABC radio, October 1990, p. 20-21. 12 In a feudal-style society the liurai’s extended family constituted the upper class, below them the dato, the nobility, then the common farming people and lower still, a caste of slaves (Thatcher, 1993, p. 48). 13 Xanana Gusmão (1997b) Replies to questions, Cipinang Prison, 14 July 1997. Xanana related only that his extended family were poor rural peasants but that during the war he discovered his family heritage was made up of mixed Timorese ‘races’ from the areas of the Midiqui, Makassae and Galolen ethno-linguistic groups. Xanana makes it clear that he has no Portuguese or elite Timorese ancestry although others have claimed he has (Veronica and Tony Pereira Interview, 1997). 14 15 Geoffrey Hull (2000) East Timor Languages Profiles No.3: Galoli (Galolen), Academy of East Timor Studies, University of Western Sydney, p. 1. Grandfather Rala gave him two names to choose from: “your grandfather on your father’s side, Kai Olok and from your mother’s side, Kai Rala”. Xanana favoured his maternal side choosing Kai Rala firstly because it was 16 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 11 Map 1.1 East Timor in the Region (Reproduced from ACFOA, 1991b, East Timor: Towards a just peace in the 1990s, Melbourne) uncommon and, secondly, because he shared this grandfather’s birthplace of Manatuto (Xanana Gusmão, 1999b, Interviews conducted by Sarah Niner in Prison House, Salemba, Jakarta during July 1999). Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 12 Conquistadors and Warriors The People of East Timor were never totally subjugated by the foreigners and always rebelled against those who stopped the free course of its history… This Maubere consciousness was never quelled neither with the whip nor with colonial laws but it was these things that actually forged and created foundations for our historical identity! Xanana Gusmão, 198617 Some Timorese characterized their Portuguese colonizers as younger brothers, recalled to Timor by the elders of the mountains to rule in worldly affairs.18 As siblings, the Portuguese are obligated, both in a traditional ritualistic and in a modern political sense, toward the Timorese.19 The Portuguese mixed freely and married with local elites creating new mixed race peoples, mestiços. Over hundreds of years the coming of foreigners engendered a wider sense of commonality amongst the Kingdoms of Timor.20 Revolts by Timorese against Portuguese rule were frequent and bloody. By the 1730s the Portuguese had occupied Xanana’s ancestral home of Manatuto and over the next 100 years they established a system of indirect rule using loyal liurais.21 The introduction of a new tax Xanana Gusmão (1986a) ‘A History that Beats in the Maubere Soul: Message to the Catholic Youth in East Timor and East Timorese Students in Indonesia’, 20 May 1986, To Resist is to Win, Melbourne, Aurora/David Lovell Press, 2000, p. 85-126. 17 Although such myths differed between regions, ‘it was logical, possible and plausible to identify the Portuguese with the figure of the “stranger king”’ (Traube, 1995, p. 49-50). 18 19 The early explorers were incorporated into the indigenous exchange system, effectively taking the position of coastal chiefs. Portuguese flags and other regalia, such as drums and swords, were venerated as sacred lulik objects, see, Geoffrey C. Gunn (1999) Timor Loro Sae 500 Years, Livros do Oriente, Maucau, p. 35-36. The nature of Portuguese colonialism was rooted in its glorious and unique beginning during the ‘Age of Discovery’. Led by Prince Henry the Navigator, the Portuguese set out to explore the rest of the world to reclaim for the Catholic faith millions of lost native souls while growing rich on trade and conquests. The Lusitanian mariners sailed their newly designed caravels south to Cape Verde in 1444, and Sierra Leone by 1460, eventually rounding the southern tip of Africa, opening the sea route to the Orient. Vasco da Gama made the first voyage to India (1497—1499) beginning a lucrative trade in spices and luxuries. In 1510 Portuguese conquered Goa, Malacca in 1511, and by 1512-14 they had arrived in Java and the Moluccas, the Spice Islands of which Timor was part. Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan described Timor, “In this island, and nowhere else, is found white sandalwood, besides ginger, swine, goats, rice, figs, sugarcanes, oranges, wax, almonds, and other things, and parrots of divers sorts and colors.” (Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage, p. 141, cited in Gunn, 1999, p. 42) The trade in the precious white sandalwood made the Portuguese regular visitors to the island but not until the early eighteenth century was a permanent fortress built on the north coast in Lifau, Oecusse (Oekussi). The Portuguese floundered for nearly four centuries in Timor, eventually ceding that half of the island to the hardnosed Dutch, but doggedly maintaining their foothold in the region, long after the sandal had all been chopped down and sold. Keeping Timor could have been for the Portuguese a simple case of Saudade. This notion and the plaintive blues-like music, Fado that embodies this feeling, is full of nostalgia and yearning for a past to which one can never return. Saudade is a recurrent theme of Portuguese culture and history recalling a glorious past when the Lusitanians led the world and ruled the seas. 20 The Portuguese were pushing eastward from Lifau to Dili, arriving in Manatuto in October 1730. By the following year they were under attack from 15 000 warriors. On 13 January 1731, breaking an 85-day siege at Manatuto the stubborn Portuguese escaped back to Lifau only to find it also in rebellion. Losing the battle but not the war the Portuguese had won certain allies amongst the Chiefs around Manatuto. This most eastern garrison was eventually revived and the outpost soon hosted some religious. By 1752, churches had been 21 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 13 system in 1903 saw the breakdown of an age-old pact between natives and foreign rulers. liurais were forbidden to collect their traditional tribute and every head of family was ordered to pay the government.22 Timor exploded. Dom Boaventura, allied with other liurais, and certain mestiços, led a ‘Great Rebellion’ that lasted for two years between 1910– 1912. Boaventura is seen not just as a hero of history by the Timorese but as the father, or perhaps grandfather, of modern-day nationalism, Mauberism.23 The final battle was fought in typical Timorese fashion by the rebels who mounted their last stand in the mountains, at Mt. Cablaque, a place of plunging ravines and high rocky fortresses. Boaventura vowed never to surrender and 12 000 men, women and children retreated to the mountain. A foreign force of over 8000 troops, was assisted by Timorese from the east (perhaps even Xanana’s grandfathers). Boaventura was on the verge of winning when troopships from Mozambique arrived. He broke the encirclement, leaving three and a half thousand of his rebels dead on the battlefield and over twelve thousand wounded. The Portuguese lost not even 300 men and suffered 600 wounded. A twelve-year established in both Lifau and Manatuto but “barlaque and other superstitions proved a major check on missionization” (Gunn, 1999, p. 98-101). Lifau was finally abandoned in August 1769 and 1200 people, mainly women and children, were evacuated by sea, some to the fort in Batugade, but most arrived on 10 October 1769 to what was to become the capital of Dili. The Portuguese won key allies around Dili, most important was Dom Alexandre of Motael, who legally ceded land to them. The location featured a secure and sheltered port, surrounded by a vast plain for cultivation and defence against local attack with the disadvantages of a sweltering climate and deadly fevers (Gunn, 1999, p. 108). New colonial policies of the mid-1800s implemented changes to taxation, labour and land organization. Timorese forced to cultivate coffee were obliged to give 20% of it to the Portuguese. Laclo and Ulmera (Liquica) revolted. Manututans, loyal to their Galolen kin in Laclo battled against the Portuguese from April to August 1861 but were defeated (Gunn, 1999, p. 127 p. 160-2 p. 182, p. 186). Gunn, 1999, p. 172-175. From the 1880s a seventeen-year ‘bloody rebellion’ had ensued. In 1895, the Kings of Raimean, Suai and Manufahi (now known as Same) in the west united in a blood pact. The King of Manufahi, Dom Duarte sent his eldest son, Dom Boaventura da Costa Soto Mayor to other kingdoms to drum up support for a large-scale revolt. It ended in a massacre and the surrendered of the rebels in 1900, but the ambitions of Manufahi were not dead (Yvette Lawson (1989) ‘East Timor: Roots Continue to Grow’, unpublished thesis, University of Amsterdam, p. 11-12; Gudmund Jannisa (1997) The Crocodile’s Tears: East Timor in the Making, Published PhD thesis, Lund Dissertations in Sociology 14, Lund University, p. 141-2). 22 When taxes were raised from one to two gold pataka coins the rebels taunted the Portuguese, “Venham cá buscar duas patacas, se são capazes”, “Come and get your two patakas if you can”. The Timorese whisper that the trouble really all began because Lieutenant Alves Silva, the Portuguese Commander of the Same post, in Manufahi, had fallen in love with Dom Boaventura’s wife, the pale-skinned Queen. Tormented by her beauty Lieutenant Silva intended to rescue her from a marriage he believed went against the laws of nature and the Portuguese colonial policy of keeping black and white skins apart. But Boaventura moved first and on Christmas Eve 1911 the rebellion began in earnest when Silva’s severed head was presented to his wife. (Ramos-Horta, 1987, p. 19; Gunn, 1999, p. 181-3; Luís Cardoso, 2000, The Crossing: A Story of East Timor, London, Granta Books, p. 5) 23 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 14 Illustration 1.1 Dom Boaventura, circa 1912 (Reproduced from Mendes Correa, A. A. Timor Português, Lisboa, Ministério da Colonias, Repűblica Portuguêsa) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 15 program of pacification and forced cultivation followed. Many liurais had been killed or taken prisoner and new loyal liurais replaced them.24 Village life remained largely unchanged but a deep and abiding passive resistance to the Portuguese developed.25 Xanana’s parents, Manuel Francisco Gusmão and Antónia Henriques, were born into the era of Boaventura’s defeat, as loyal subjects of the Portuguese in the long-held area of Manatuto. Timor was a harsh place where most lived in the poverty of rural isolation surviving on primitive subsistence farming. Malnutrition was widespread, infant mortality was often as high as 50%, and illnesses like tuberculosis and pneumonia were rife. Until the 1960s, electricity, adequate medical facilities, durable bridges, sealed roads and any form of media were non-existent. There is no mystery to their hoping and no doubt praying for something better. Catholicism had an enormous impact on Timorese culture. The religious commanded ‘godlike’ respect.26 The Catholic mission school system offered the possibility of selftranscendence, or at least escape from rural poverty or servitude. 27 Manuel and Antónia were part of a tiny select minority of less than one percent who made the difficult crossing from one society to another. Antónia Henriques attended the Colégio Santa Isabel in Manatuto and Manuel Gusmão, the Don Nuno Alves Pereira Colégio in Soibada. The curriculums hinged on religious teachings and stressed the superiority of the Portuguese language and way of life.28 The severe conditions at Soibada left such an impression on Manuel Gusmão that he would do everything he could to save his beloved eldest son from such an ordeal. 29 Manuel obtained 24 By the 1940s liurais almost always represented a broken succession. (Helen Hill, 1978, ‘Fretilin: The Origins, Ideologies and Strategies of a Nationalist Movement in East Timor’, Unpublished Masters thesis, Monash University, p. 56; Gunn, 1999, p. 188) 25 Ramos-Horta, 1987, p. 19 26 Geoffrey Hull (1992) ‘East Timor: Just a Political Question?’, Occasional Paper No.11, ACSJC, North Sydney, p. 5 27 Gunn, 1999, p 214; p. 220 Timorese culture was not mentioned. Schools implemented the government policies of assimilation and sought to create a special class “which abandons its traditional culture and makes it its mission to spread the new ways”. In the thirties singing “Portugueza”, a fascist-inspired anthem was compulsory in primary schools, as was the Salazarist “Marcha da Mocidade Portugueza”, “March of the Portuguese Youth”. Common nationalist slogans of the time declared, “Tudo pela nação”, “Everything for the nation”, and, “Nasci Portugues; quero morrer Português”, “I was born Portuguese; I want to die Portuguese”. (Hill, 1978, p. 43, 45; Gunn, 1999, p. 219; Gusmão, 1999b) 28 29 Gunn, 1999, p. 132 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 16 the qualifications of a professoria-catechista in the early 1940s making an ambitious jump to a newly forming social class. The letrados, the learned, held an important and powerful social position as the bridge between the god-like foreigners and the common people.30 Illustration 1.2 Ruins of Santa Isabel, Manatuto, 2000 (Photograph by Sara Niner) 30 Agio Periera Interview, 1998 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 17 Illustration 1.3 Church of the Soibada College, Circa 1913 (Reproduced from Revista Colonial, Lisbon, I4:3, April 1913) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 18 A War and a Wedding (1939-1952) Immediately after the Second World War, the pride of Manatuto was the ruins of Saint Isabel College... These ruins acted as a symbol of the break between the two historical periods of Portuguese presence. Xanana Gusmão, Autobiography Xanana begins his life story in the shadow of World War Two with this image of its ruins. The Saint Isabel College was a testament to the native peoples, like his mother, converted within its walls, intimately bound to their colonizers through centuries of religion and influence, yet left utterly unprotected by them during this devastating modern war. Xanana suggested, with a sense of rueful irony, that after hundreds of years of colonization, they had little to be proud of but these few crumbling colonial walls. The Portuguese neither defended the Timorese from the Allies or the Japanese, nor, many years later from the Indonesians. Xanana’s disappointment drips from the page. Timor was devastated by the Japanese Occupation of World War Two. The number of East Timorese civilian lives lost was conservatively estimated at 40 000 and the survivors celebrated no victory. People were starving. Roads and bridges had been bombed and left unrepaired for over four wet-seasons and allied bombing raids had left few buildings standing.31 Manuel and Antónia had met, courted and married during the harsh occupation under the strict and watchful eyes of the priests and nuns.32 It was a carefully controlled courtship that demonstrated their deep acculturation to the Portuguese Catholic system. They set up home in the ruined town of Manatuto and worked hard toward bettering the family’s prospects. In doing so they created a strict clean and pious home; a poor put decent household built on the frugalness that war and depression foster. Respect for elders and God was paramount. In traditional Timorese culture good moral behaviour was essential for maintaining a respected social position and colonial society was just the same. Manuel and Antónia were vigilant in maintaining their hard-won status. In Timorese society a mix of indigenous and colonial values including formality, respect, Amongst those hardest hit, Portuguese Timor was the only country occupied by Japan during the Pacific War that received no war reparations to rebuild (James Dunn, 1996, Timor: A People Betrayed, 1996, ABC Books, Sydney p. 24-5; Gunn, 1999, p. 234-7). 31 Xanana imagined a romantic story of his parent’s courtship: an imaginary anecdote of young girls from his mother’s school writing love letters to boys from Soibada in Xanana’s autobiography was inspired by his sisters’ stories about their own school days (Gusmão, 1994a; 1999b). 32 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 19 loyalty and filial devotion were cornerstones of the family. Honourable behaviour, personal modesty, self-control, extreme politeness and sociability were seen as virtues.33 Antónia Henrique Gusmão’s first two children were born amongst her family in Manatuto, Felismina in 1944 and baby José Alexandrě, as Xanana was christened, in 1946. Xanana wrote, “As a son, I was the blessing from God for my father, the answer to his prayers.” He was cherished as the first-born son, followed by five more girls, after which another longawaited boy was the last to arrive. As the favoured child, he was bought up with the love and affection of both parents, and the indulgence of six sisters. Manuel Gusmão’s sentiment demonstrated the deeply patriarchal nature of Timorese society. Boys are treasured, always first entitled to what the family can afford, most obviously in the field of education. They are subject to less strict behavioural rules and duties, and, most disturbing of all, it is common and acceptable for men physically to abuse females. Common practice in patriarchal Timorese society was for boys to spend more time with father and for girls to spend time at home with mother, practicing the endless round of domestic tasks. Males are brought up to be directly responsible for the care and protection of their wives, children and parents. The eldest son was expected to take responsibility as family head if the father were to die.34 Young children were expected to help out in the home and do well at school but as Xanana admits he did none of these things.35 No doubt as the eldest son he was indulged rather than castigated for it. Xanana was envious of boys who did not have to baby-sit an array of little sisters. He described his leadership of the line of little girls explaining perhaps the source of the gentle side of his leadership and his ease with women. It also mirrors his later style as leader of the resistance when he identified himself as an ‘irmão mais velho’, a big-brother to his soldiers, it was a role he grew up and was forever comfortable with, hating the authoritarian father figures of both traditional and colonial society. 33 Thatcher, 1993, p. 71- 84 34 Thatcher, 1993, p. 74-5; Constancio Pinto and Mathew Jardine (1997) East Timor’s Unfinished Struggle: Inside the Timorese Resistance, South End Press, Boston, p.84 35 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 5, 7 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 20 As a teacher-catechist Manuel Gusmão was a natural community leader, esteemed and respected.36 Xanana grew up absorbing the manner and example of the moderate leadership of his father. Xanana’s family became assimilated, called assimilados, part of a tiny percentage (0.35%) who baptised, clothed and educated themselves in European fashion.37 Manuel Gusmão’s commitment to pulling the family out of the ‘small world’ of rural poverty and educating his eldest son was a defining factor in Xanana’s life. Struggling with post-World War Two austerity, Manuel looked away from his traditional culture and poor rural background and forward to a better, more prosperous future becoming ‘a good Portuguese’. His parents eschewed lulik beliefs and never told their children of their indigenous ancestry. Xanana’s childhood was directly affected and shaped by colonial policies of discrimination and cultural domination. Mission School in the Mountains (1952-1958) The Gusmão family did not stay long in Manatuto and in the late 1940’s they moved, ultimately settling in the remote southeast mountains in Ossu. The little town lies in a lush and fertile valley surrounded by mist-hidden mountains and alpine green pastures, dotted with grazing cattle, goats and their herders. As this next passage shows, the landscape is deeply etched in Xanana’s consciousness. I still remember vividly the journey on horse-back, possibly with my father, along a sandy river-bed, beneath the sad moan of the kakeus, Casuarina trees, which seemed to be responding to the inconsolable cooing of the small turtle doves, a sound which always managed to imbue the solitude of the wilderness with a penetrating bucolic melancholy.38 Xanana remembered his childhood as transient, journeying from place to place. He believed it created his “way of being” and meant he never acquired an attachment to a specific place as others did who were bought up rooted to a piece of earth.39 Xanana’s family lived in European-style in the town centre in a colonial mission-supplied home. The home was adorned with Catholic icons and the Portuguese newspapers and magazines of which Manuel Gusmão was an avid subscriber. At home he read little cf. Sr. Professor Alberto Soares and Sr Professora Maria Imaculada Soares Henrique, (1992) ‘The ProfessorCatechist and the East Timorese Regional School Teachers’, IV Jornadas de Timor, University of Porto 36 The ‘Portuguese Colonial Act of 1930’ centralized control of the colonies and established two sets of people: the indigenas, the unassimilated natives and the não indigenas which included whites, mestiços (those of mixed race) and assimilados. Natives who had mastered the Portuguese language and were baptised with a Portuguese name were classified as assimilado, assimilated, and awarded voting and Portuguese citizenship rights. 37 38 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 4. He writes, “…the concept of possession over a bit of land, a few trees, a hill, common in Timorese society was a thing that I did not think possible.” (Gusmão, 1997b) 39 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 21 children’s stories with his first son. It was through his parents that Xanana inherited his love of literature. 40 Manuel Gusmão taught the second grade of primary level at the Colégio de Santa de Teresinha.41 Xanana attended the boy’s school through 1954-55 to 1957-58 finishing up in July 1958, just turned twelve.42 The school was strict, conservative and deeply religious. Harsh physical punishment was the norm. He says he was not a good student and the priests frightened him.43 The mission system created a confusion of loyalty in the students. They were taught that Portugal was their Pátria, Homeland, but it was obvious they were Timorese. The students lived with these contradictions and the harsh manners of the priests did nothing to endear them to the children.44 A hellish whipping scene Xanana witnessed as a boy was powerfully burnt into his mind and these bloody incidents may be the well-spring for his strong anticolonial and anti-violence stand in later life.45 40 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 5 41 Boletim Eclesiástico de Macau, 1939, in Gunn, 1999, p. 215 42Xanana Gusmão (1999c) Timor Leste Merdeka, Indonesia Bebas, ed. Tri Agus S. Siswowiharjo, Solidamor, Jakarta, p. 205. In the 1956-57 academic year 191 students enrolled in grades three to six, three European, seven mestiços, 180 natives and one other. Of these 176 were Catholic and 15 were ‘pagan’; 172 were borders and 19 were day students, of whom Xanana was one. 43 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 5 Xanana explains this confusion between colonial and native culture as a growing ‘crisis’. “My entire youth was a difficult experience which I tolerated by virtue only of the strength of my will to win in life. The legacy of the Portugal’s neglect of the Timorese was a strong sense of our own cultural identity, and in some of the ‘educated’, as all those who had spent time behind a school desk were called, the struggle to uproot ourselves from our native culture caused a crisis of conscience. Other conditions, too, helped to strengthen our spirit of perseverance.” (Xanana Gusmão, 1995a, Answers to questions from John Pilger, Cipinang Prison, circa November 1995) 44 I saw prisoners at the administration post being whipped; they groaned as they were forced to stand on the burning rocky ground in the scorching sun with feet shackled. Sometimes, in my boyhood escapades with school-friends, the sons of liurais, I also saw agents or local people setting off in search parties, or returning with a crew of bloodied offenders who had not shown up for the forced labour on the roads, or the obligatory service as asu-lear, manual labourer, in the homes of the colonialists, Chinese, and assimilated Timorese.” The sequence of paragraphs prior to this whipping scene link it psychologically with his father and colonial system (Gusmão, 1994a, p. 6). 45 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 22 Illustration 1.4 St, Theresa’s School, Ossu, Circa 1944 (Reproduced from A. Pinto Correia, Timor de les â les, Lisbon, 1944, p.160) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 23 Illustration 1.5 Reproduction of Xanana’s painting ‘Still Life’, March 1996 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 24 A revolt by the Timorese in nearby Viqueque in 1959 resulted in improved services from the Portuguese.46 Many more Timorese were educated, creating the first nation-wide generation of indigenous Timorese with a common education, language and life-experience. It became for many, like Xanana, the essential building block in their growing political awareness and discontent. It made them conscious of their own similarities contrasted to the difference to the colonisers and they gained an appreciation of the territory as a whole. These nationalist sentiments reached a critical mass with Xanana’s generation.47 Up the Hill to the Seminary (1958-1963) Manuel Gusmão, determined that José Alexandrě, still his only son amongst his now seven children, would “be somebody”, decided to pack him off to the Nossa Senhora de Fatima 46 Feelings of dissatisfaction fuelled an armed uprising against the Portuguese near Ossu on 1 May 1959, based in Wato Lari and Wato Karbau, near Viqueque. It appears that until the 1960s no ‘politically conscious’ elite existed in Portuguese Timor. The rebellion of 1959 can be described as another pre-nationalist or a ‘primary resistance’ movement. Rebels rioted attacking Portuguese posts in the area. The Portuguese Chefe of Viqueque gathered together some loyal Timorese and aggressively put down the uprising, killing hundreds of the rebels. Seven were publicly executed, machine gunned by a Portuguese Captain on the banks of the Bè-Bui river. The rest of the rebels, including some of the Indonesians, were exiled to Mozambique and Angola. (Bill Nicol, 1978, A Stillborn Nation, 1978, Widescope International Publishers, Camberwell, p. 17; Hill, 1978. p. 61-2; Dunn, 1996, p. 28-29; Jannisa, 1997, p. 154; Gunn, 1999, p. 109-110; Geoffrey C. Gunn, 2001. ‘The Five-Hundred-Year Timorese Funu’, Bitter Flowers, Sweet Flowers: East Timor, Indonesia and the World Community, p. 14; Jill Jolliffe, 2001, CoverUp, Melbourne, Scribe Publications, p. 45-6) It is a question of history whether the 1959 Rebellion was a genuine nationalist uprising by the Timorese or simply a local skirmish stirred up by fourteen exiled Indonesian officers (in what could be seen as an unsettling portent of what was to happen only fifteen years later). These military officers had been given political asylum by the Portuguese after fleeing a failed uprising against Sukarno on the island of Sulawesi, although some now suggest they were his intelligence agents. These men soon began intriguing with the discontented Timorese in an attempt to overthrow the colonial regime, apparently with the blessing of the Indonesian consul in Dili. The Portuguese were not impervious and 1959 had scared them. It became the impetus for an upgrade of schools, health and other government services. Xanana says they understood the increase in the military, compulsory national service, and the creation of the army reserves as “tactics necessary to contain the eventual rebellion of the Timorese.” (Gusmão, 1994a, p. 16) Xanana recounts that he was at school at the time of the uprising and only knew that there was ‘almost a war’. Although born of a loyal assimilado family and schooled in the missions, the obvious differences between colonised and coloniser left him with a reserve of ambivalence, critical impassiveness and resentment to the Portuguese. Xanana and other East Timorese nationalists later came to see the 1959 Rebellion around Ossu, along with the ‘Great Rebellion’ of 1912, as defining moments in the development of their unique identity as East Timorese people and their growing sense of nationalism. Even if the uprising itself was not a purely nationalist revolt it was certainly re-read as such later and the returning exiles caused a sensation many years later. The same pattern had occurred in other colonies and was the beginning of the end for European control. This creation of an educated class is an essential element in the creation of modern nationalism according to theorist Benedict Anderson’s nationalist text Imagined Communities, London-New York, Verso, 1991. Xanana childhood experience is a partial fit of Anderson’s model of the ‘Creole’ functionaries who became the first nationalists in colonial societies. 47 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 25 Illustration 1.6 Dare Seminary, circa 1962 (Reproduced from Lotos, No. 5, Winter 1962, p. 2) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 26 Seminário. He attended this junior Jesuit seminary at Dare in the hills behind Dili for four years (1958-59 to 1961-62).48 The priests at the seminary were a mixed bunch from all over the world. Xanana says that he owes his love of the Portuguese language to Father Isac Araújo who taught this and literature.49 Xanana’s command of Portuguese is excellent and its familiarity meant its adoption as the language of resistance and now of independent East Timor. Father André Días Rabago, a young Spanish priest, taught theology, morality and ethics and spoke of human rights and politics.50 Rabago and another Spaniard, José Rodriguez, were dubbed ‘nationalist teachers’ by some of the students. From these highly educated and liberal leaning teachers the boys had access to the most well-informed and open political analysis available on the island. Besides a bad academic record Xanana began to play the devil’s advocate, challenging and speaking out. He said, “I always enjoyed being ‘the Protestant, the incredulous, the atheist’”51. It was the beginnings of an intellectual, rather than a violent rebellion against the authoritarian nature of the Church and the colonial system, both of which now served to constrain and contain him. Dare was described as Timor’s “crucible of nationalist thought”.52 It became well-known for producing an educated elite from which emerged most of East Timor’s political leaders of the 1970’s.53 Xanana met the future leaders of East Timor while becoming part of the colony’s educated elite, even if his place was on its fringes. Xanana said goodbye to the Jesuits and his home for the last four years at the end of 1962. 54 He left the seminary ‘prison’ as an independent thinking young man of sixteen. The Jesuits had strengthened his intellectual skills and provided a framework for moral and political analysis. His manner of resistance and political ideology was forming; anti-authoritarian 48 Gusmão 1999c, p. 205; Gusmão, 1994a, p. 7-8; Gusmão, 1995a 49 Guterres Interview, 1998 50 José Gusmão Interview, 1997 51 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 8 52 Cardoso, 2000, p. xii-xiii 9 (Jill Jolliffe Introduction) Taylor, John (1999) The Price of Freedom, Australia, Pluto Press, p. 31; Even if the study groups at Dare were tame compared to the political revolutions of other young people in the rest of the world the friendships and political groupings formed here in 1960s were decisive to the half-island’s future. (Cardoso, 2000, p. xii-xiii) 53 54 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 8 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 27 and anti-colonial, based upon a strict code of ethics with little concern for social convention. Xanana’s upbringing engendered in him a sense of confidence and the dignity and grace of respectful and polite demeanour, a sociability and the old-world courtliness of a deeply patriarchal society. His indulgent parents seem to have little real control over him and from this point onward he substantially made his own decisions as master of his own future. The Outsider (1963-1974) Leaving Home (1963-64) In 1963 Antónia Henriques saved enough money for her son to move to Dili, enrol in school and look for work.55 The relatively open atmosphere of Dili was a dramatic change. For the ‘westernized town-dwelling’ population of 28 000 life revolved around the Portuguese military and administration and their sporting and social clubs. 56 The town was a replica of the metropole, Lisbon, with its main Square set on the harbour, in front of the Government Palace.57 Xanana aspired to better himself through education and by joining the public service, the most prestigious position a Timorese could hope for. Although he was educated and spoke Portuguese well, in the eyes of the profoundly hierarchical colonial society he was still only a ‘native’ from a poor rural family. Xanana resumed his studies in September with sixty to seventy other privileged students at the Liceu.58 There was a high failure rate and for those Timorese that did pass, a lack of opportunities for further study. Xanana lived on his wits, sleeping anywhere he could find a bed and in this way developing mature sensibilities. He explained. I had to be sensitive to people to know why they behaved in one way or another. Maybe this contact with all kinds of people was a lesson in understanding who people were and why they behaved in certain ways…. I think it was a very long process in knowing and understanding people. To survive I had to be unobtrusive… I didn’t learn it quickly, it took years and years— 1963-4—and then for years in the jungle.59 55 Gusmão, 1999b; Xanana Gusmão (1999a) Replies to questions, Jakarta, 3 April 1999, p. 9 56 Dunn, 1996, p. 7 57 Cardoso, 2000, p. 66; Tony Pacheico Interview, 1998 He was never to have his previous studies at the Seminary recognized and only managed to enroll at thirdyear level (Maria Gabriella Interview; Gusmão, 1999c). José Ramos Horta contends the school, “…was theoretically open to all, but in practice restricted to a few privileged individuals. I was among the lucky few.” (Horta 1987, p. 13) 58 59 Gusmão, 1999b Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 28 Illustration 1.7 Xanana, young student, circa 1966 (Reproduced from CDPM, Timor Leste, No. 66, July, 1991, Lisbon) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 29 Illustration 1.8 Liceu, Dili, circa 1944 (Reproduced from A. Pinto Correia, Timor de les a les, Lisbon, 1944, p. 96) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 30 Illustration 1.9 Xanana, basketball player, September, 1966 Caption handwritten on back of photo: Equipa da Assoçião Desportiva e Recreativa a UNIÃO de Dili/Timor. Vencedora do Campeonato Provincial de Basquetebol (campea pela 1a vez): Valdemar (Director), Jeronimo Días (Treinador-capitao) 14, Joanico 12, X. Gusmão 8, J. Avelar 7, A. Lopes 10, Pichto 2, Henrique Silva 15, António 11, Domingos Vun 5 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 31 Illustration 1.10 Xanana with Carlos António ‘Beto’ Barbosa and Pedro Melo, circa 1968 (Two Photographs courtesy of Carlos António ‘Beto’ Barbosa) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 32 While such skills developed out of the sheer necessity of survival, in juxtaposition a rich inner life was also burgeoning. Xanana exposed his inner thoughts at this seminal time of his youth. I was not sociable. I wanted so much to learn and study but it was hard because of the lack of money. I was not sad, but I was thirsty for knowing more and more. When I started the second job I spent most of my money on books. I tried to make a collection, a library. I think I wanted to believe that I was the only one who spent so much money on books. Although I took part in other activities, sports etc, I felt myself closed in my world; books do that. When I left the house I was a normal youth but when I was in my room I read till morning. I felt alone in my world… I think it was the start of my tendency to keep myself separate.60 From his first job his association with the Public Service was problematic. In his memories the offices were filled with nepotism and discrimination, incompetence and corruption. Yet it was the best a Timorese could aspire to and came with a secure and reasonable income. After an initial foray into unpaid then lowly paid work he was not offered a permanent position.61 A second position ended in disaster and he was back to square one after two unsuccessful years. Another year was to pass before he was admitted back into the Public Service and was able to return to school. By the end of 1964 he was living in his own palapa hut near the beach, making a little money from fishing, and associating with a group of disaffected of young men, unpoliticised and unhappy. He described this gang of teenage drop-outs as the tintanas, the red-wine drinkers. We swelled the number of thinkers amongst the tintanas, those who spent their nights drinking red-wine, and the frustrated. We were not hooligans or violent. Among us were the virgins straight out of the seminary who went off at dusk; mestiços who were just all talk; and troubadours, who defied the dogs with their singing and wooing of the hearts of girls whose parents reacted with insults and threats. In those youthful days I knew that tomorrow would have to be something different, something that could be counted in escudos.62 For Xanana and the tintanas this often-difficult adolescent process of establishing an adult identity and beliefs was taking place within an exceptionally conservative society. Xanana keenly felt his marginal position. He did not give his anger and frustration outward expression but it did provide a driving force for his ambition in the future. He was a young man frustrated by the narrow colonial society, strictly hierarchically ordered by class and race. Xanana demonstrated a strong belief in himself and his self-worth and a deep sense of personal injustice. 60 Gusmão, 1999b 61 Gusmão, 1999b 62 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 11 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 33 What he was really passionate about was sport. Xanana was a natural athlete who played soccer, basketball, volleyball and took part in gymnastic performances. He was a natural leader on the sports field and a tough and aggressive opponent. He said, “It was a joy to be good” and thoroughly enjoyed the competitiveness. Xanana was selected for the national basketball team just turned 22 in July 1968 and made his first trip abroad, to the northern Australian city of Darwin.63 He experienced a freer and more modern democratic society that he liked and related to. Sports, particularly soccer, proved to be his ‘passport’ into Dili society and he became well-known. In fact when some Timorese were told of his leadership in the early eighties they said, ‘Who? The goalkeeper?’ He explained. My life was not all sadness, my difficult youth was not without its brighter side. Sport was my passion and it provided me with a ‘passport’ to all the social events and parties. The indigenous sporting club União was known as the ‘indigenous home’ for stray players, drunks, and ‘kore-metan’, and membership meant a free ticket into any wedding party or birthday dance in any neighbourhood.64 Mari Alkatiri remembers meeting Xanana at the clubhouse on the weekends where they became ‘good friends’.65 After the Saturday night parties, for most in Dili Sunday afternoons were devoted to football at the Municipal Stadium.66 The Assoçião Desportiva e Recreativa União was a sporting and recreational union or club.67 Originally set-up for the former pupils of the seminary and diocesan colleges it became the most popular of the clubs in Dili.68 It was exclusively native Timorese and became a club of pride expressing a growing indigenous identity. Xanana gave União a prominent place in his developing political consciousness. I received a nationalist education after I left the seminary from the old people, most of them from União in Dili. They told me stories, many, many things about Dili, about the society, about the rebellions and the reasons behind them. It was some kind of political subversion and it made people conscious. … I started to learn our history… There was an element of political 63 NT News ‘Music and sport at the Stadium’ July 1968; Benny Lew Fatt Interview, 1997 64 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 11 Horta describes Alkatiri as, ‘an articulate radical of Arab descent’ whose ancestors had arrived from southern Yemen 200 years before (Horta, 1987, p. 34). Born in November 1948, he was educated at the Dili Mosque School and the Liceu. In early 1970 he was with Horta a founding member of a clandestine anti-colonial group in Dili leaving later that year to study surveying in Angola where he made contact with the MPLA (then fighting the Portuguese). Mari remembers that while Xanana played basketball for União when it came to football he was still with Academic (Mari Alkatiri Interview, 1998). 65 66 Cardoso, 2000, p. 57 União was founded by twelve Timorese assisted by a Portuguese priest, Father Ezequiel Enes Pasqual who took a serious interest in indigenous society. He was the author of ‘Alma de Timor Vista na Sua Fantasia’ - ‘The Souls of Timor seen through Myth’ Braga, 1967 67 68 Thomaz, 1976-77 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 34 analysis to the stories… Their stories were not told in concrete details but in a form of epic poetry. I began to understand this storytelling style as a form of traditional epic poem handed down orally from generation to generation.69 Xanana’s ever growing disenchantment with his white masters became channelled into the positive but competitive project of building up an exclusive Timorese team who could beat the Portuguese at their own game. Back to paper shuffling (1965-67) He regained his strength and purpose, firstly, obtaining a job as a draftsman, which he held down throughout 1966-67.70 He returned to night-school at the Liceu and while re-enrolling set eyes on Emilia Baptista. She says it was love at first sight.71 By the end of the 1960s he had a semi-decent job, was back studying, enjoyed success in the sporting arena, and had a pretty mestiço girlfriend. Photographs of the time showed a handsome and sharp looking young man in stovepipe pants and white pointed-toe shoes. Xanana’s life was more settled and satisfying and he swallowed his pride and began once again looking for another public service job. Several clerical vacancies were announced and he got his “first decent job.”72 People remembered Xanana as someone ‘different’ from these early days, someone who thought differently, was shy, an introspective poet, an outsider. He would “stand out in a crowd” and “had his own ideas and was a principled person”. One friend remembered, “Very simple, quiet fellow. Not making jokes. For me it was a surprise he became such a great leader and man. When he was young in the late 60s he always had the pose of a snob.“73 José Ramos-Horta wrote. Xanana Gusmão was reserved and shy, an unknown entity in the country. He was known to his peers in the pre-1974 period as a man of political integrity. However, always humble and discreet, he never boasted about his political beliefs. So no one would have predicted his ascendancy to the status of national leader.74 69 Gusmão, 1999b 70 Gusmão, 1999c Louise Crowe (1992) Notes accompanying video (Xanana, 1992, Producer Louise Crowe, Albert Street Productions, Melbourne) 71 72 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 11 Arsénio Horta Interview, 1997; Tony recalled, “Xanana, nobody knew anything of him, he had the appearance of a quiet person…” (Tony Pacheico Interview, 1998) 73 José Ramos-Horta, 1990, ‘Xanana Gusmão: Profile of a Legendary Leader’, Aide-Memorie, Vol 1, July 1990, Sydney 74 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 35 Xanana was not out to make a name for himself or seek power and influence. His outsider status, introspective nature and independent thinking enabled him to stand outside events analyzing, reflecting and seeing both sides. New Family; New Politics (1968-1974) Xanana’s life changed dramatically in 1968 when he received a recruitment notice for the Army.75 His 30-month period of national service in the Portuguese Army dated from August 1968 to 1971. The primary role of this remote army garrison was to keep watch over the border with Indonesia, but it was reduced drastically as troops were moved on urgently to fight in the African wars. Timorese eager for jobs enlisted and were trained to replace the Portuguese.76 Between 1974 and early 1975 Portuguese troops were reduced from 3 000 to 200. 77 By 1975, there were approximately 3 000 fully trained Timorese in the regular army and 7 000 segunda linha, second line or reserve troops with basic military training.78 Xanana completed the ninety days of basic training in 1968 at the Centro Instrucão, in Dili with two Timorese instructors, João Carrascalão and Nicolau Lobato. They were both to play pivotal roles during the looming crisis.79 Xanana’s colleagues from his training days 75 He made it clear that he “ did not want to be a soldier” and after avoiding this eventuality for many years he says he, “went out to salute many of my old Seminary and Liceu colleagues.” (Gusmão, 1994a, p. 12) 76 Relatório Annual de Comando 1972, 10 March 1973; Dunn, 1996, p. 38 Ramos-Horta, 1987, p. 48; Hill, 1978, p. 139. Horta adds, “The local army experienced dramatic shake-ups that were to prove disastrous. From a high of almost 3,000 troops in 1974, European army personnel was reduced to about 200 by the summer of 1975. This troop reduction took place at a time when the country was undergoing a delicate and unpredictable phase of the decolonisation process. Next door, Indonesia saw with relief the diminishing Portuguese military presence in East Timor.” Xanana only briefly mentions that some of his Portuguese army colleagues talked about the African Wars but the Army underwent great change during the period he served. The Relatório Annual de Comando 1972 states that their were 167 officers (163 Portuguese and 4 Timorese), 436 Sergeants (347 Portuguese and 89 Timorese) and 2 840 soldiers (1 149 Portuguese and 1 691 Timorese), a total force of 3 443. 77 78 Dunn, 1996, p. 38 Nicolau dos Reis Lobato is remembered proudly as the first heroic leader of the military resistance. Like Xanana, Lobato was born in 1946, the son of a catechist father from Soibada. He was educated both at Soibada and Dare. He had serious intellectual ambitions and dreamed of studying Law in Portugal but his family could not afford to support him. He worked in the Department of Agriculture and then signed up for the Curso Sargento Milíciano, the Milician Sergeant’s Course, which offered decent pay and some status, spending two years in the Army. (Cardoso, 2000 p. 68; Hill, 1978, p. 75.) Xanana recounts the similarities of their lives, “After the seminary, as a son of a coffee plantation owner, his life was more serious and he continued his schooling without difficulties. The stigma (na altura) of being ex-seminarians united us psychologically and sports brought us together from time to time. I crossed paths with him in the army as my instructor. After the years in the army and our day-to-day of public service life meant that we would greet each other. He was that type of guy who was balanced and serious and it was known that he spent his time studying.” (Xanana Gusmão, 1997d, Replies to questions, Cipinang Prison, 17 August 1997) 79 João Carrascalão, in comparison, came from a wealthy elite mestiço family notable for their ‘height and physical strength’. (Cardoso, 2000 p. 98-99; p. 77-78) His father, Manuel Viegas Carrascalão was an infamous Portuguese Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 36 recount stories of racist treatment they received and the passive resistance they returned to their Portuguese Officers including several comic drunken escapades.80 His reaction to the army discipline was similar to his resistance to the Jesuits. For the next few years Xanana served as a clerk at the main army camp in Dili. Here he met Borja da Costa who became a close friend.81 In 1969, after a long and difficult courtship he and Emilia married unconventionally in a registry office after Xanana had “insulted the priests”.82 Neither sets of parents were present. The couple had two children, Nito and Zeni. Xanana left the army at the beginning of 1971. He said, “I had joined the army, and left it, with a spirit of defiance, and disobedience, but I also learnt how to do what I did not want to and what I did not like.” A sense of discipline had been reinforced and the military tactics he learnt were invaluable to him in later life.83 Xanana worked in the Department of Finance from 1971-74 gradually being promoted.84 He became firmly entrenched in the conservative lifestyle of the colonial ‘functionary’, yet his attitude grew ever more critical.85 Although he was well aware of the beginnings of an deportado. Exiled to Timor he married a Timorese woman, Marcelina Guterres of Venilale, and established a prosperous coffee plantation and “later became mayor of Dili.” From this privileged background João and his elder brothers, Manuel and Mário studied at the Liceu. João then went on to study aerial surveying with Mari Alkatiri in Angola and further in Switzerland (Ramos-Horta, 1987, p. 29; CNRT, Biographical notes on Mário Viegas Carrascalão, Dili, 2001). 80 Conversation with Jorge Rocha, Portuguese Club, Darwin, 1997 Only a few months younger than Xanana, Borja was the son of a Luirai from Same on the south coast. He had attended Soibada and Dare and joined the Public Service in 1964. He completed national service between 1968 and 1971 at Laclubar. He said that it was this military training that gave him the confidence to speak out openly about racial discrimination. Like Xanana he was a voracious reader and had began to write nationalist verse in Tetum Terik, his mother tongue. He was quiet, thoughtful and a little shy, much as people describe Xanana from this time. He “…was not a military man; he was like a gentle deer, the bibi rusa which the Timorese love to hunt in the mountains.” (Jill Jolliffe, ed., 1976, Revolutionary Poems in the Struggle Against Colonialism: Timorese national verse Francisco Borja da Costa, Wild and Woolley, NSW, 1976, p. 8; p. 16) 81 Gusmão, 1995a; Emilia said they were married in October when Xanana was twenty-three and she twenty-one (Michele Turner, 1992a, ‘The Woman Who Waits’, HQ Magazine, Dec 1992). 82 83 Phone conversation with Xanana, 23 October 1998. Gusmão, 1999c; Gusmão, 1999b; Universidade do Porto, 2000, Doutouramento Honoris Causa: Kay Rala X.G., Lisbon; Along with the new job the family had also moved to Vila Verde nearby to his family. (Rúi Soares Interview 1997 and Toni Pacheco Interview 1998) 84 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 12. Xanana also published an article in A Voz de Timor, 24 April 1975, called ‘Smoking on the Esplanade’. This newspaper piece by ‘J. A. Gusmão’ was in the form of a fictional discussion between two characters, both public servants: an old man, an example of the old system and a young man, an example of “the sign of the times”. Their conversation highlights the growth in size of the Public Service and the resulting change in work ethic, affected by the new political and anti-colonial ideas circulating in Dili. The article illustrated Xanana’s ability to empathize and to understand both sides although his point of view interestingly, rests with 85 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 37 Illustration 1.11 Xanana with Emilia and Baby Nito, circa 1970 (HQ Magazine, December 1992, p. 73) the old man, a typist just as he had been. This old man introduced as the father of a large family, ‘the cross that he had to bear’, also resembles Xanana’s father and the old men from União. (J.A. Gusmão, 1975a ‘Smoking on the Esplanade’, To Resist is to Win, p. 13-15) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 38 emergent anti-colonial group he remained only a critical observer.86 The group was made up mostly of high school students and office workers and included José Ramos-Horta, Nicolau Lobato, Mari Alkatiri, Borja da Costa, Abílio Araújo and Alaríco Fernandes. Xanana was drawn more to Borja da Costa, his army colleague, a more thoughtful radical than others. Borja was influential in Xanana’s understanding and grievances against the Portuguese so they were fitted into a broader nationalist framework of criticism, not simply based on his own personal experiences of discrimination. Xanana reached a crisis in his life and resigned from the public service unable to stand the corruption and discrimination any longer. José Horta remembered his resignation as a clear political statement.87 His non-conformist behaviour led to this extremely unorthodox act. He applied to the Head of Agriculture, Mário Carrascalão, for a loan to establish a farm but the plan did not succeed.88 While he kept account of the political groupings he remained an outsider, preferring a more considered world of intellectual examination and quiet debate with informed friends. His outsider status, introspective nature and independent thinking enabled him to stand outside events, analyzing them and reflecting on different points of view. He was to remain uncertain and unconvinced by the upcoming period of new and revolutionary politics. 86 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 15 “I saw him on a motorbike with his wife on the back. He was completely dirty; he had just come out from work as a manual laborer. Seeing that picture, it struck me and I couldn’t help but be impressed because he had had a job in the provincial treasury department, working as a civil servant which was almost everyone’s ambition. It was a sign of stability and some sort of prestige. And to have quit that job and go and work with the lowest level of society, well, it only happened if you were either fired… or because you were a nut case. But I knew, I stood there and was struck by this and I thought, that was a political statement by Xanana.” José RamosHorta Interview, 1998 87 He said he simply “… wanted to be free of saluting the whites, free of bowing my head like the old public servants, just so you could eat and educate your children.” Mário determined Xanana needed more capital to start the venture and Xanana shy of taking such a large loan refused. He wrote, “And so died the illusion of not depending directly on the power of whites. No, I was not a racist and nor am I now; I just wanted to be free of the system.” (Gusmão, 1994a, p. 17) 88 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 39 Carnation, Thorn and Lotus (1974-8) Until the 1970s the Portuguese colony of Timor remained in a colonial time warp in the midst of newly-independent Southeast Asian neighbours. Still, Dili changed: new ideas, music and fashions began to reach the closed, conservative colonial society. A new life appeared in the cafes, bars and restaurants.89 Uncensored news was filtering through and one important source was thirty-nine Timorese students who were studying at University in Portugal.90 Decolonization followed a leftist coup in Lisbon, the April 1974 Carnation Revolution that deposed the fascist regime in power since the thirties.91 Timor was in limbo, but on 5 May the new Portuguese regime authorized the establishment of political parties. The two largest parties were: UDT (União Democrática Timorense - Timorese Democratic Union) and ASDT (Associação Social Democrática Timorense - Timorese Social Democratic Association).92 UDT was the first to form. Its most important leaders were Mário Carrascalão, and his brother João. Calling for progressive autonomy oriented toward a federation with Portugal with an intermediary preparatory stage of ten to twenty years leading to independence, UDT enjoyed the support of many liurai. ASDT was the fruit of the clandestine anti-colonial network of officials and teachers who had been meeting regularly on Dili’s esplanade. A graduate of the Jesuit seminary in Macao, Francisco Xavier do Amaral, a respected older intellectual who worked in the Dili Customs House, became the founding ASDT President at the suggestion of José Ramos-Horta. Ramos-Horta, a moderate who was impatient with the radical ideological debates then taking place within the emerging Timorese nationalist movement, drafted ASDT's manifesto. At its inception ASDT was a broad-based anti-colonial association with a The Chinese restaurant ‘Baucau’ in Xanana’s suburb of Kuluhun was a focus. It was “frequented mainly by the middle-class, soldiers of the garrison and ‘poor’ tourists (‘hippies’ and campers).” (Thomaz, 1976-77) 89 90 Hill, 1978, p. 165 Real change in Portugal had began with the establishment of the Armed Forces Movement (AMF) in October 1973. At the beginning of 1974, its two hundred officer-members sick of fighting and dying in the African wars, drafted a program calling for immediate independence for the colonies and complete democracy in Portugal. (Dunn, 1996, p. 204; Jannisa, 1997, p. 190) 91 92 José Ramos-Horta, 1987, pp. 29-39. Three other parties were: APODETI (Associação Popular Democrática Timorense, Timorese Popular Democratic Association, first called the "Association for the Integration of Timor into Indonesia"). It called for integration with Indonesia but with local autonomy; the short-lived Trabalhista or "Labor Party"; and KOTA, Kilbur Oan Timur Aswain, literally Sons of the Mountain Warrior Dogs, a royalist party promoting a return to the traditional liurai system. Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 40 nationalist ideology calling for independence following a ten-year preparatory period and demanding an end to racial discrimination and corruption. Xanana left Timor exasperated with the colonial regime and disbelieving that his old colleagues in the Public Service would ever be capable of running the country. He travelled to Darwin again seeking a broader, more diverse society in which to fulfil his ambitions. In September, he returned to Timor to collect his family with a loose plan to immigrate to Australia.93 In his absence ASDT had been transformed into Frente Revolucionária de Timor Leste Independente, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, commonly known as Fretilin. Like its predecessor, ASDT, Fretilin continued to call for socialist democracy. The formation of Fretilin marked a shift to the demand for immediate independence and a metamorphosis from an association to a ‘front’ presenting itself as the sole representative of the Timorese people.94 Xanana was still convinced that the Timorese were not capable of handling political responsibility but began to take an interest in the new politics. Justino and Borja were my most devoted persecutors for wanting to leave. I sympathized with Fretilin but was overwhelmed by worry about a future in our incapable hands. However, I gradually started to give way to my colleagues’ continuous ‘attacks’ upon me. Chico Lopes da Cruz tried to persuade me to join UDT.95 Xanana’s hard-headed stance was softening. His quiet way with politics though was about to be given a shake-up in a confrontation with real exploitation. While working as a labourer at the construction site of the Hotel Mahkota he led his first political action, a strike of workers demanding more pay. A growing sense of responsibility and involvement and a Turner, 1992a. Xanana adds, “Paradoxically, I was frightened when the 25th April 1974 came along... Could this mean independence? How? Our old Timorese elite was no elite, just a bunch of civil servants who, in their everyday conversations, sinned by saying, ‘for all intents and purposes’, ‘considering that...’ and, ‘... the misery of destiny’. I did not even want to imagine those people running Timor. I was surprised at the feverish enthusiasm of many of my friends and colleagues.… The freedom of choice crippled my ability to think straight and I opted for the easiest solution--to get out. I left for Australia, to find work and save up some money, perhaps to return some day” (Gusmão, 1994a, p. 18). 93 The group of Timorese students from Portugal, influenced by Maoist and Marxist thought current in Europe at the time, returned on the eve of Fretilin’s formation and radicalized the group. The students included Abílio and Guilherma Araújo, António Carvarino (Mau Lear) and Vincente dos Reis (Sahe). Ramos-Horta observed that the young radicals “were our best cadres; much was owed to their enthusiasm and ideas”; he also noted their lack of a power base within Fretilin. The more moderate Xavier do Amaral and Nicolau Lobato led the group and enjoyed the strongest support (Horta, 1987, p. 38). By December 1974 Fretilin had developed social and political programs, including educational and literacy programs based on the teachings of Paulo Freire, agricultural cooperatives, basic health care, political conscientization, and the promotion of indigenous culture and religion. 94 95 Gusmão, 1994a, p.18 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 41 blossoming of political consciousness was perhaps a sign of the times. Xanana described his feelings about his colleagues, the exploited workers. I became outraged that the older master bricklayers were receiving less than I was. I tried to convince them to protest, but they said, “Don’t think about it son. Look down there, see those others? They are looking for work. If we protest, we’ll be sacked and they don’t mind coming and collecting 20 escudos a day for cassava for their children.” The blacksmiths were going to be sacked. We protested. I incited them to arm themselves with iron bars against the foreman if they did not get to keep their jobs. We lost the action. I felt guilty—once again.’96 Illustration 1.12 Xanana with Simões family, Darwin, 1974 (Photograph courtesy of Simões family) 96 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 18 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 42 Illustration 1.13 Ramos Horta, 1975 (Reproduced from A Voz de Timor, Dili, 5 May 1975) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 43 Illustration 1.14 Vicente Sahe addressing crowd (Reproduced from East Timor News, Sydney, No. 32, 4 May 1978, p. 1) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 44 Illustration 1.15 Francisco Borja da Costa, circa 1975 (Reproduced from Francisco Borja da Costa, 1976, Revolutionary Poems in the Struggle Against Colonialism: Timorese national verse, ed. Jill Jolliffe, Glebe, Wild and Woolley) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 45 Xanana was still sceptical about this new political process that was creating tensions and divisions in Timorese society: “I struggled between getting involved and keeping to the sidelines. It was not that I did not want to join in, but I could see that the situation could get completely out of hand.” But months later he says he realized that, “if I wanted to fight for my Homeland there was only one way to do so,” and during Fretilin’s first year anniversary celebrations on May 20, 1975 he joined them.97 In January 1975, a coalition for independence between UDT (who compromised their strong pro-Portuguese stance) and Fretilin (who accepted a longer period of transition to independence) was formed. Following internal disagreements, UDT withdrew from the coalition on 26 May 1975. Between March and July 1975 the Portuguese Decolonization Commission organized local elections to select liurais to form an executive council that would prepare for general elections for a Constitutional Assembly to convene in October 1976. With villagers throwing a pebble into the basket of their chosen candidate, it appears most of those elected were Fretilin members or supporters.98 Civil War (1975) Following several anti-Fretilin and anti-Communist rallies in Dili on 9 and 10 August, UDT mounted a full-scale coup on the 11th.99 For several days fighting raged in the streets of Dili. Credible estimates of the death toll in the civil war range from 1 500 to 3 000.100 Xanana portrayed himself as a moderate who strove to avert the dangerous consequences of actions of more extreme and irresponsible political leaders. He was himself jailed by UDT, his life saved by someone he had earlier helped. He said, “I learnt a lesson that would guide me through all the war. I understood that we could love each other independently of all this!”101 Fretilin gained the upper hand and took revenge. Some Fretilin members held UDT leaders responsible for the killings in the countryside and beat, jailed and killed numerous UDT 97 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 21 The outcome of the elections remains controversial. Hill states that 90 percent of liurais elected were FRETILIN supporters, while Dunn quotes a figure of 55 percent. Taylor, based on an interview with Portuguese MFA Office Major Jonatas, claims that results were even. Most commentators state that support for Fretilin was higher in the rural areas (Hill, 1978, p. 122-23; Dunn, 1996, p. 88; Taylor, 1999, p. 45). 98 Dunn, 1996, p. 150-51. In a signed statement, João Carrascalão, the coup leader, acknowledged his responsibility for the civil war (Dunn, 1996, p. 189). 99 Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong (1984) War Against East Timor, London, Zed Books Ltd, p. 50; Jannisa, 1997, p. 211 100 101 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 21-22; p. 27-29 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 46 supporters.102 The Timorese community split into two bitterly divided factions. The civil war had a profound effect on the community and Xanana. He said, “Our revolution of thorns was one that penetrated the flesh of all Timorese”.103 Comparing the civil war to a cockfight, he effectively laid the responsibility at the feet of the confrontational and macho-aggressive attitudes of the various political leaders.104 During the three-week civil war Fretilin reconstituted the Timorese soldiers of the Portuguese Army who, on 20 August, had come out to join Fretilin as an armed militia, Falintil (Forças Armadas de Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste, Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor). Having gained control of the territory, Fretilin transformed itself from a loose political group to a de facto government bent on achieving political stability and economic recovery. The incorporation into Fretilin of conservative soldiers who had served in the Portuguese army led to a decline in the influence of the radical wing. The ascendancy of Nicolau Lobato at this time increased the influence of his blend of “revolutionary African nationalism, pragmatism and conservative self-reliance.”105 A growing tension between Marxism and nationalism within the Timorese resistance movement from this time was to become acute after the Indonesian invasion. Xanana again took the moderate line and empathized with both sides, refusing the radical position of the Marxists.106 The Indonesian government and military had been directing a destabilization campaign called Operasi Komodo (Operation Komodo Dragon) against Portuguese Timor since October 1974, broadcasting anti-Communist messages into the territory from Kupang and infiltrating APODETI and later UDT. In early 1975, Komodo was transformed into a military operation and training of APODETI supporters in West Timor began. After being “invited” by UDT leader Lopes da Cruz to intervene militarily in September, Indonesian forces took the western town of Batugade on October 8 and on October 16 five foreign journalists filming these battles were killed at Balibo. Atabae fell on 28 November. 102 Ramos-Horta, 1987, p. 55 103 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 30-31 104 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 31 105 Jill Jolliffe (1978) East Timor: Nationalism and Colonialism, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, p. 153-54 106 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 32-3 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 47 Also on 28 November 1975, Fretilin declared East Timor independent at a formal ceremony outside the palace in Dili and named Xavier do Amaral the first President of the “Democratic Republic of East Timor” and Nicolau Lobato Prime Minister. Xanana photographed the event in his capacity as journalist, poet and newspaper editor of the Jornal do Povo Maubere, with the new Department of Information with Borja. He was nominated to the Central Committee, Fretilin’s fifty-member policy making council but he refused the appointment. After the civil war he desired rather, “a role outside the political parties, in order to have access to the complete process of liberation of our homeland”.107 His reluctance to being part of a partisan movement and one whose actions he sometimes disagreed with was clear. The next day Xanana decided to volunteer for military service at the border and asked Borja to watch over his family. Xanana, Emilia and the children spent Sunday together at the beach, their very last day together as a family. He left for Maubara on 30 November with little ceremony.108 Xanana’s arrangement with Borja proved tragically futile. The Timorese poet was shot and killed by Indonesian troops on the first day of the invasion. Invasion and Resistance (1975-1978) On December 7, 1975, the Indonesian military launched Operasi Seroja, Operation Lotus, with a full-scale military invasion of Dili. As many as 2 000 citizens were killed in Dili in the first few days. Tens of thousands of East Timorese fled their homes to the mountains behind Fretilin lines; entire villages did the same as the Indonesian troops advanced. By the end of 1975 20 000 Indonesian troops were stationed in East Timor and by the following April this figure had risen to 35 000.109 20 000 Falintil troops armed with a recently augmented arsenal of modern NATO weapons taken from Portuguese stocks put up substantial resistance for the next three years. 107 Xanana Gusmão (1994q), Letters to Mukya, October- November 1994 Haunted by memories of the civil war his wife was unhappy about being left alone at yet another uncertain and dangerous time. She remembered, “He said not to worry… He would only be gone a few days, would return on December 7” (Turner, 1992a, p. 74). 108 109 Dunn, 1996, p. 259 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 48 Illustration 1.16 Mari Alkatiri, Rosa Muki Bonaparte, Nicolau Lobato and Mau Laka, 1975 (Photograph by Jill Jolliffe. Reproduced from Jill Jolliffe, 1978 East Timor: Nationalism and Colonialism, St. Lucia, University of Queensland Press) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 49 Illustration 1.17 Swearing in of East Timor’s first Cabinet, 1 December 1975 (Reproduced from The Age, Insight 2, 18 May 2002, Jill Jolliffe, ‘When East Timor flew its flag in defiance’ Caption notes that Xanana is third from the left, possibly in the third row) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 50 Illustration 1.18 Xanana, photographing Nicolau Lobato, 1975 (Reproduced from Robert Domm and Mark Aarons, 1992, East Timor: A Western Made Tragedy, Sydney, Left Book Club) Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 51 Behind Fretilin lines life was easier than in occupied areas: food was still adequate and people were united. Xanana became a Falintil fighter and minor political leader. The Supreme Council of the Resistance, a Fretilin structure created in response to the crisis, met in Soibada in May—June 1976. The agenda included changes in military strategy toward more guerrilla warfare, the tightening of political organization, and increasing food production. In sum, the council created the basis for an organized resistance.110 At the meeting, ex-Portuguese army soldiers, many of whom came from strong Catholic and politically conservative backgrounds, were frequently at odds with the politicians. Differences centred on Fretilin’s social and political programs that were predicated on an ideological revolution to overthrow colonial and traditional power structures. Professional soldiers, committed to classical fixed-position warfare and the protection of civilians, clashed with proponents of mass mobilization in a guerrilla-style military resistance.111 To avoid further division the Council appointed many soldiers to the Fretilin Central Committee.112 Xanana once again displayed understanding for both sides, noting he had friends in each camp, but believed the sergeants did not have the political vision to lead and the Fretilin policy of ‘politics in command’ should prevail.113 Revolution in Resistance (1977-1978) At the next national conference in 1977 at Laline, sharp debate centred on a proposal to declare Fretilin a Marxist movement. In the end, stepped-up Indonesian military operations prevented ratification of this proposal. Xanana recalled that “we were still dazzled by a vision of a miraculous process of human redemption” through Marxism.114 As the Indonesian offensive isolated Fretilin bases from one another, internal conflicts grew.115 Divisions deepened as the military situation grew more desperate and opponents of a single Gusmão, 1994a, p. 42. East Timor was divided into six sectors, each supervised militarily by a commander, then subdivided into smaller political and military units. Falintil troops were further divided into intervention forces, and smaller units or ‘shock brigades’. A political commissar was in charge of social and political activities in Fretilin-controlled areas. Each region had its own regional commander and a regional secretary who was responsible for organization of food production, housing, education, health-care, and political education (Lawson, 1989, p. 53-54). 110 111 Lawson, 1989, p. 53 112 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 42 113 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 42 114 Xanana Gusmão (1987a), ‘Ideological Turnaround: Message of the 7th of December 1987’, To Resist is to Win, p. 133 115 Jannisa, 1997, p. 231-32; Lawson, 1989, p. 66-73; Pinto and Jardine, 1997, p. 72 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 52 revolutionary front were denounced as ‘counter-revolutionary’ and ‘reactionary.’ The revolutionary ideology that the Fretilin Central Committee had embraced provided the rationale for arrests and executions of a number of so-called counter-revolutionaries during this period that Xanana documents in his autobiography.116 Cadres were tried. Some were tortured and killed. One such trial eventually drove Xanana to question and disobey his superior, Sera Key, who in late 1977 was conducting an investigation into a group of supposed ‘counterrevolutionaries.’ Xanana announced to the Fretilin Central Committee members present that he would no longer tolerate violence and torture in his region. He began disobeying orders and policies he found ‘immoral’. In his autobiography, he emphasized his commitment to ‘persuasion and conciliation’ growing out of the civil war and this early period in the mountains.117 From his early attitudes we can already see Xanana as a moderate leader favouring the middle-ground and preferring negotiation over confrontation. This is also borne out in Xanana’s relationship with other leaders such as Vicente Sahe.118 He learnt more about politics and ethics and leadership from this thoughtful man than any other he fought with. Xanana explained that he, 116 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 45-51 Sera Key’s baptismal name was Juvenal de Fatima Inacio, born to a Portuguese father and Timorese mother. Xanana had initially been suspicious of his political conversion to Fretilin but Sera Key went to become a member of the Central Committee and the Minister of Finance. By this time he had become much more politically radical than Xanana and is taking part in political violence. 117 One particularly poignant episode concerns Xavier do Amaral, the founding president of ASDT-Fretilin. He was arrested by Fretilin in September 1977 after failing to attend the council meeting. In circumstances that are still far from clear, he had apparently sought to arrange a compromise with the occupying forces to stop the slaughter. He was deposed as president, charged with treason, unauthorized negotiations with the enemy, plotting to seize personal power and creating divisions between the military and civilians. Xavier’s closest associates were expelled from the Central Committee and some were beaten and killed in a subsequent purge. After being held in captivity by Fretilin, Xavier was captured or surrendered to the Indonesians during the battle for Remexio on 30 August 1978. For the next 22 years he lived in Indonesia under close government scrutiny. In 2001 he stood against Xanana in the Presidential elections. Vincente dos Reis was the son of the liurai of Bucoli. Educated at the Liceu in Dili he won a scholarship to study engineering in Lisbon in 1972. After witnessing the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 he gave up his studies and returned to Dili in September. He became one of the returned students who joined Fretilin and was seen as responsible for its radical shift and dubbed one of the nine ‘bad wolves’. He abandoned his Portuguese surname and took up an old pre-Portuguese family name, Sahe. In Bucoli he set up various initiatives: an agricultural collective and also a cultural, women’s and youth group. He became Minister of Labor and Welfare in the Democratic Republic of East Timor cabinet. (Hill, 1978, p. 80; 209) After the invasion Sahe was appointed to the Supreme Council of the Resistance, a Permanent Central Committee alongside Nicolau Lobato. He took control of the Eastern part of the island where Xanana was based. 118 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 53 …was really struggling in my region but… Sahe’s self-sacrifice impressed me. The people adored him: his simplicity, his patience in educating the cadres, his soft way of criticizing their mistakes, his calmness in facing situations. It made him an exemplary teacher of what a leader should be. He knew how to listen and that was important for me.119 Sahe’s leadership style as an example for Xanana during a time when he was developing as a leader. Another influence was another whose leadership he praised, Nicolau Lobato. In a lament on the loneliness of leadership, at the end of the autobiography, Xanana explains similar reactions in Nicolau. 120 Xanana clearly portrayed these two men as role models for leadership: intelligent, inclusive, consultative, methodical and moderate. They are qualities we see Xanana emulating as he grows as a leader. In early November 1977, Vice-President Nicolau Lobato replaced Xavier as President only to be killed by Indonesian troops in December 1978. By this time the resistance had been virtually destroyed. At the end of 1978 the last stronghold of the Timorese resistance at Mt. Matebian was wiped out in the final stage of a systematic annihilation campaign. Xanana was right in the middle of the horror of the bombing and fighting. Sacred home to the souls of Timorese ancestors, Mt. Matebian was the site where Xanana Gusmão’s life changed and he was transformed forever into an aswain Timor, a warrior son of Timor. It was this crisis that transformed Xanana from an apprentice leader to a serious and hardened reorganizer and military commander of the remaining resistance forces. There can be little doubting the dramatic effect of the gruesome events he witnessed during the endless bombardments. These events forced him to take the initiative, escaping the terrifying encirclement down the back of the mountain with other surviving Falintil. This period and the years to follow, which the East Timorese describe as the really ‘dark years’ of the struggle, can be described as a crisis transformation and they undoubtedly hardened and toughened him. The fall of Matebian together with the death of Nicolau Lobato and many other resistance leaders brought an end to this initial phase of resistance. An estimated 100,000 East Timorese had died during the first three years of the invasion and occupation. Xanana Gusmão survived the horror and emerged months later as the only leader still alive able to re-imagine the resistance and pull it back together. 119 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 44-45 120 Gusmão, 1994a, p. 68 Chapter 1: The Last Days of Portuguese Timor 54