Travel and Statues

In the Travel section of today's newspaper is an article about São Tomé and Príncipe, the former Portuguese colony located off the western coast of Africa almost exactly on the Equator. It is a tiny country made up of two volcanic islands with a total population of about 160,000. The islands were uninhabited until the Portuguese discovered them during the Golden Age of Exploration. (In an earlier post I wrote about the nearby nation of Cameroon, and other Portuguese discoveries along the African coast and the Indian Ocean.)

A photograph accompanying the newspaper article shows a boy riding his bicycle past statues of Portuguese explorers, against a backdrop of palm trees and a brilliant blue sky.

It is the statues that drew my attention, for they so closely resemble the one of Pedro Álvares that stood (still stands?) on the Praia Grande in the Special Administrative Region of Macau in China. The statues are in a style that might have originated in the 1940s or 1950s under the Salazar dictatorship of Portugal. Indeed the statues in São Tomé and Macau might have been the work of the same sculptor, or might have come from the same Lisbon workshop, as others I have seen.

They are almost cartoonish in their stylization, and in their granitic larger-than-lifesize bulk, steely horizonward gaze, pageboy-bob haircut. Think Prince Valiant in stone, strong-jawed, with the heavy cloak of a Soviet soldier-hero, standing tall in sturdy boots, a weapon or a scroll tucked under one broad-sleeved arm. Heroic poses are common to monuments, but the Portuguese colonial empire seemed to have reached the very pinnacle when it came to heroic poses.

In the old days in Macau, that tiny blip on the China coast that today is a gambling mecca soon to rival Las Vegas, there were heroic statues galore. The main square in front of the Leal Senado building, now cobbled in wavy patterns in black and white that can give unsuspecting visitors a case of mal-de-mer, there once upon a time stood the bronze statue of the Macanese hero, Vicente Nicolau de Mesquita, drawing his sword to do battle against the Chinese at Passaleão, just across the Macau border.

During the tumult of Mao's Cultural Revolution, the city fathers (then Portuguese), were obliged to remove the offending effigy.

In its place there is now a fountain of sorts.

Sic semper transit … whatever.



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