Portugal Honorary Consul: ‘We Are Very Excited’
Andrea Moniz DeSouza, the Honorary Consul of Portugal, was at the House of Assembly on Friday to witness the announcement of a new 2019 holiday in Bermuda, in honour of the Portuguese community.
She was acknowledged by the Premier as being in the public gallery when he made the announcement that declared 4th November 2019 a public holiday to mark the 170th Anniversary of the arrival of the first Portuguese immigrants in Bermuda.
Premier Burt later commented, “Bermuda has many different cultural heritages and we should celebrate them. This is a first step in making sure we include various members of our community who have made important contributions. We want to be a government for everyone.
“We recognise there are divisions in our community and the only way to heal those divisions is by coming together and recognising the full history of our cultures and how they worked together, so that understanding can be passed on to future generations.”
Mrs. Moniz DeSouza said, “It was an absolute honour to be contacted by the Government to let us know that this was in the making for our community.
“We have been seeking to be recognised for so long for our contributions, and that we are a part of Bermuda. This will mean so much to our community. We are very excited.”
Great news, can we now work on getting a direct flight to the acores.
Please be mindful that Andrea does not speak on behalf of the entire Portuguese community.
“Dear Jack: Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.” — then-Sen. John F. Kennedy at the Gridiron Club dinner in 1958, reading a “telegram” from his father.
Will the PLP now recognize the historical divisiveness their funding members pushed between the Portuguese & black communities? Will they admit how the PLP & their supporters pushed UBP to pass laws that held back the naturalization of long term Portuguese residence while long term West Indian residents were allowed citizenship. Laws that made it so Portuguese could not bring their families or be anything more than a menial laborer in BDA.
Think you need to read your history books. It was the UBP who disenfranchised the Portuguese community and they even went as far as splitting up families when they sent some of them back home.
Lest we forget…
Where can we find this info?
UBP disenfranchised the Portuguese community to keep voters. PLP supporters have been the most vocal about the myth that Portuguese were brought in to take their jobs & make Bermuda more “white”. Cordell Riley has constantly repeated this fallacy into present day. They have even had strikes over the Portuguese. PLP’s last protest of OBA’s immigration bill was mainly because they don’t want long term Portuguese PRCs to gain BDA citizenship.
Lies..! You have no factual information to back this up! It’s funny your name is original truth because it should be non-original truth! Both parties have unclean hands but in those days UBP did what they wanted!
The Hon: Late Dame Lois Browne-Evans, fought long and hard for the rights of the Portuguese community in Bermuda, and is because of her fight against the U.B.P and their offspring of the O.B.A, that Portuguese Men were allowed to bring their wife’s here to Bermuda from the Azores, and eventually their children.
The Portuguese Community have done so much for Bermuda, and Bermudians, just as much as our West Indian Community, and I think that the Portuguese community deserve to be Honored and recognized for their contributions to Bermuda, especially those of the Portuguese community who helped to beautify this country with hard labor, and have since died, many in whom spent the better part of their life here.
Congratulations to the Portuguese Community,and to those who take issue with this well deserved Holiday, I simply say, get a life and give Honor were Honor is due.
So the PLP says but truth be it Monsignor Felipe Macedo & Vasco da Gama Club were the ones who fought for Portuguese rights. In April 1957 the first amendments to the laws allowing Portuguese to bring their wives after residing for 7 years were passed. Lois Marie Browne-Evans was elected into senate in 1963.
One other thing… if the government back in the day was looking to be so helpful did you ever stop to consider why they never pushed to have Portuguese taught in school even as an elective? Instead you had local Portuguese families who either didn’t pass on their language and from talking to some older local Portuguese, there were some who went as far to not pass on the language, but to change their name as well in order to be considered what some claimed was a better class of “white”… just like some blacks to “passed”.
She’s not the one who should be speaking for the Portuguese community. Quite the opposite actually.
Thank you Mr. Burt and the PLP on behalf of the Portuguese community. It’s important to build bridges because the Portuguese community is part of the heritage of the Island. In the Azores when I visited there were many Bermudian flags flying in various places and even a popular coffee shop based “Cafe Bermuda”.