Introduction

“(…) les groupes humains, en presence les uns des autres sur un meme territoire, se rencontrent. Ils se mêlent et mêlent les langues, les coutumes, les symbols, les corps. Ils engendrent autre chose qu’eux memes, des enfants qui seront different de leurs origins.” 

It is generally accepted that Portuguese-based Creole languages in Southeast Asia can be traced to the birth of the Portuguese-descendant community of Malacca, in the 16th century. In Asia, Portuguese presence gave form to a network of establishments along the routes of commerce and faith, contributing to the creation of a vehicular language and to the birth of new human groups with their own way of thinking, ideas and concepts, attitudes, and ways of life.

In this context, the necessary conditions came along for the outset of linguistic and cultural syncretism resulting from the encounters between the colonizer, the missionary, the trader, and the native. The offspring of these relationships gave birth to a new social and ethnic group that survived for hundreds of years as a separate community with prevalent ethnic and religious traces. To analyze the birth of these new languages in Southeast Asia and explain their diffusion and their durability we need to understand that they function as an axis around which cultural identity is developed and communication is set. 

1. Metize, Slaves and Converted

Thus, we can say that Creole communities were born from the encounters between Portuguese and natives in 16th century Southeast Asia – particularly in Malacca, after its conquest by the Portuguese in 1511, but also in Ceylon, India, and Indonesia (and later, in the 19th century, in Singapore). As it is common knowledge, it was forbidden for women to travel with men as they were not useful to war. With the absence of European women, European men married native women, and this situation was encouraged by the Crown as part of Afonso de Albuquerque’s politic of a fast settling of the seaports of trade. 

Another group that would contribute to the enlargement of the number of Portuguese-descendants would be the slaves, with the birth of “metize” children from the relationship between the Portuguese and local slave women, many times raised together with legitimate children.

Apart from this “physical métissage”, it is commonly believed that a cultural “hybridization” took also place, which resulted from the religious conversions led by missionaries, although a large part of these converted were in fact the women that had married Portuguese men, who consequently integrated part of the Portuguese culture in their own. Later on, after the arrival of the Inquisition, conversions took a high-speed path and the locals were quickly inserted in the social Portuguese environment upon conversion to Catholicism (in Malacca, from 75 women and 36 men converted in 1532, conversions reached 7.400 in the beginning of the 17th century). 

In 1641, after the Dutch overcame Malacca, many Catholics had to flee because they were forbidden to practice their religion. Amongst the destinations chosen by these “Diaspora” was Batavia. This would reinforce the “Portuguese” community that already lived at the then capital of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), which was the trading organization established in 1602 by the Dutch. These dislocated “Portuguese” would be integrated first in the community of “Black Portuguese”, close to the Portugeesche Buitenkerk  (which was the “Church located outside the walls”). Later some of these men would be moved to Tugu, situated very far from Batavia.

In the island of Java, Tugu would be the first community neighborhood to have its own school, build as early as 1678. The houses of Kampung Tugu were built with stone, as opposed to others in the surrounding area, which suggests a reasonable quality of life by then. The first church was probably put up around this time too, situated in the old tanah Serani (meaning “Nazarene Land”), a little far from contemporary Tugu.

2. “Beneveneaqui supra Java”

One can conceivably imagine that the case of Tugu has been somehow ignored by most Portuguese researchers because Indonesia was never a Portuguese colony. In so doing, it has remained practically unknown that important evidence of Portuguese culture has survived in this small village in the North of the island of Java, in Indonesia. 

Indeed, the members of this community have been singing for the last 380 the same songs sung in Portuguese-based Creole, and have been giving Portuguese names to their children, using fragments of a Portuguese-based Creole in their daily life. We believe that the groups’ management of elements in presence and its conscious or unconscious construction of malleable identities are worth of analysis, as also of celebration. This debate is driven to a great extent by the attempt to explain some of the reasons for the longevity of this community; for their acknowledgment by the surrounding environment; and for the contemporary use of elements considered part of a vast Portuguese cultural heritage, but also by the attempt to place it within a broader political, social and cultural context.

To understand the process of birth and permanence of a language, one must first look back to the first years of these communities and correlate that reality to a process going on in the “old continent”. In fact, although this dynamic process of creation of a new Sprachmischung (as Hugo Schuchardt would later, in the 19th century, denominate it) was already taking place, Creole languages are not subject of the attention of Europeans, who then were interested in the news that came from distant lands that concerned strange habits and different people. Despite this lack of knowledge, the important process of creation of a literary oral corpus that pertained to the so called “Culture of the Discoveries” was in motion.

During the 17th century, the first known sample of a Creole comes up, in 1692, in a book by George Meister, that brings to us a dialogue set between two soldiers in Batavia that communicate in Malay-Portuguese Creole and which Meister denominates “Portugi”. This short conversation shows a little of local reality namely the weather conditions, but also expressions in daily conversations that take us back to a not so far Portuguese reality when people used words like “mercê” to say thank you or “bem-vindo” as a greeting:

“Indianisches-Portugiesisches und Deutsches Gesprache: 

Zwischen Zweden Soldaten (…):

Deutsch                                      Portugi

-Orenpare                                  -Orenpare

Lüd zu, Camrad                         Dabetjes Camrad

-Orlam                                       -Orlam

Grossen Dank, Camrad             Mutemerse Camrad

Willkomen auf Java                    Beneveneaqui supra Java

Major, oder Batavia                    Major au Batavia

-Orenpare                                  -Orenpare

Dieses ist ein überaus                 Este Terre     

warmes land                                mute cinte

-Orlam                                        -Orlam

Das machet die Sonne und dero heftiges Straken-brennen                Caufe Sole cum ille mute cima.

-Orenpare                                   -Orenpare

Ist hier allezeit so warm?            Semper aqui aussi cinte.

-Orlam                                        -Orlam

Ja allezeit, Jahr ein aus               Se semper anno de annos.

One would have to wait for the 18th century, nevertheless, to find such citations of Creole languages in Portuguese sources. In 1725 the notes of Dom Jeronymo Contador d’Argote in his Regras da Lingoa Portuguesa refer to Portuguese dialectology. D’Argote would then admit the existence of Portuguese dialects in India and Brazil, amongst others, referring that they are a mixture of barbarian languages and many words from ancient Portuguese.

Only the 19th century would bring a moment of awakening for the scientific and public interest in Creole languages, mainly by the hand of Hugo Schuchardt, who would namely study the language spoken in Tugu (“Malaio-Portugiesischen”), calling it the most noteworthy example of a Sprachmischung and writes down an example of one of the Creole songs sang at the time in the village that conveys the tradition of singing and dancing of the community:

“Sestavèra manesé saudoe; Ola dangsoe sortiadoe; Gia door kong vesádoe; Dja bringka koe prestadoe” (Friday night; many different dances; a lot of entertainment; to have a little fun).

But also the idea of punishment:

“Filoe filoe nang dislabadoe; Fai maij fica boesidoe; Koos thing denter pèkadoe; Amiang other dia atja kastigadoe” (Children behave; father and mother will not be happy; be careful with wrongful doing; afterwards you will be punished).

It is also Schuchardt who cites some members of the Tugu community when they say: “Djenti kampong Toegoe papija soea linggoe Portugies ki dja tjempra koe linggoe Malay, mas djenti akke kongfese premètesang Christang”. (Tugu people speak their own Portuguese language and maintain their Christian religion)

The survival of the language spoken in Tugu is finally reported, in 1936, by the Portuguese author David Lopes, who states that this is the only place where Portuguese language is spoken in the whole island of Java at the time.

3. “Anda-anda na bordi di mare Anda”

As we can see, some cultural traces are not easily extinct, surviving despite the variations of interest shown by the public or the academic world. This work, nevertheless, allows us to point out the existing conditions for the emergence of some of these indicative vectors of the existence of difference of a group, in particular of language – the Portuguese-based Creole – as a result of physical and cultural mixing carried in the Portuguese Expansion in Asia, giving origin to new ethnic communities.

Although it is generally understood that language was a political means of exerting control on the populations contacted throughout trade posts, the results of these encounters resulted in different levels of permanence of such cultural influence.  We should remember that at the same time that the Portuguese administration used the official and vernacular Portuguese language, missionaries made use of the Portuguese-based Creole to communicate with the natives. This simultaneous usage of the official language and of a “lingua franca” led to a paradox in the survival of the language in Southeast Asia: i) in the areas where political presence was long-lasting and geographically widespread, the Portuguese language is now hardly surviving and fading, like Goa or Timor, mainly because these were areas where Catholic religion achieved an almost total adherence from local populations, who used native language for communication; ii) in regions where political presence was small, the language still prevails, like Chaul or Malacca, due to the usage of the Creole as a vehicular language.

In the Tugu area it is important to note that, although the use of the language as a “lingua franca” has now faded, there is an fundamental part of the cultural heritage that still gives its people a sense of pertaining to Portuguese culture and history which is oral tradition. This folklore has been assimilated and formed a syncretism with local culture that can be studied considering the level of assimilation or fragmentation of Portuguese traditions. This heritage shows that there was a contact between different people at some point in history, perhaps diachronic, that allowed for a continuing exchange of symbols and signs, which now lead to a rich cultural heritage, generally accepted as a “Heritage of Portuguese Expansion”.

In Tugu this cultural feature is called keroncong, and it generally transmits stories of love, nature, places or life details. The players are called Tandjidor and their music can be divided in Cafrinho and Moresco. 

Moresco speaks of love and it goes like this:

“Anda-anda na bordi di mare Anda

Mienj korsan nunka contenti

Io buska ja mienja amada

Nunka sabe ela ja undi”

(Translation:

“Come along the ocean, come

My heart is never happy

I search for my love

I never find her”)

Together with songs and lullabies, Tugu people also still keep memory of sayings and proverbs that show traces of their culture and way of life, but also of their humor and their relationship with the neighbors and “The Other”, who were Malay. This difficult relationship could result from local hostilities and the fact that “Portuguese descendants” formed part of the soldiers’ formation of defense of Batavia against local powers, but it could also derive from the ancient antagonism “Christians vs. Moors”, perhaps inherited from the Portuguese. In this context, one can hear today the Tugu people saying humorously “Bastrada genti malay comi merdah” (“To the road, Malays, eat dust!”), or “Genti ladrang” (“Thiefs””) or even “Genti Doder” (“Crazy People!”). Besides being expressions that define their position towards “The Other” and their own identity, these sayings could also derive from a tradition in old Batavia of resourcing to offense and verbal insults in personal relations.

In the old days the Tugu people would sing and dance at the end of the day, when the sun was fading. Nowadays, any occasion is a good excuse to do it, but there is one very particular celebration that takes place every year in January called “Mandi-Mandi” that is structured with keroncong Creole songs sang by all the residents. It is a ritual of forgiveness and cleansing, in which the locals paint each others’ faces with white paint and pardon each other for everything that happened the previous year.

Songs are still sung in Portuguese in this corner of the island of Java. They are part of a culture that the locals call Portugis. In Indonesia, Portugis is the denomination used for a larger contemporary reality as local author Abdurachman states: “The term Portugis has survived until these days, as a reminder of the past. The term is now used to describe any phenomenon which is not obviously Indonesian and the origin of which is not immediately clear, but which shares one thing, they came to these islands in forgotten days.”

Conclusion

Some cultural traces are thus more difficult to become extinct and they endure the hardship of time, surviving even the variations of public interest, the connection to a cultural matrix, and the flows of cultural influence originated in a cultural matrix located in an ancient time. Some of these cultural traces indicate the presence of a social inclusion, others of social exclusion, some of both simultaneously.

In this short article we have tried to systematize possible causes and preconditions for the essential difference of a group, particularly language, following a set of physical and cultural metize encounters that took place hundreds of years ago, originating new ethnic communities, with their own language and culture.

We have pointed out some of the unique characteristics of these communities, particularly Tugu, and the role of language in the permanence and survival of this cultural and social phenomenon, in an environment conducive to the establishment of a “difference” towards “The Other”, with a particular look at the perspective of proverbs, sayings and oral tradition.  Although apparently innocuous and fable, these short sentences and songs reverse a process of erosion of a language and a culture that is called now “keroncong Tugu”, but also “Tugunism” and “Portugis”, overcoming harsh conditions that led to the extinction of other cultural and ethnic symbols.

1.  Jacques Audinet, Le Temps du Métissage, Paris, Les Éditions de l’Atelier, 1997, p. 40.
2. Cf. Luís Filipe Thomaz, “Malacca: The Town and its Society during the First Century of Portuguese Rule”, Revista de Cultura, N.º 13/14, Macau, Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1991, pp. 68-79.
3. Cf. Campos Guimarães e Cabral Ferreira, O Bairro Português de Malaca, Porto, Edições Afrontamento, 1996, p. 44; Alan Baxter, “Portuguese and Creole Portuguese in the Pacific and Western Pacific Rim”, in Wurm, Stephen, Mühlhäusler and Tryon, Darrell T. (Editores), Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, Berlim, Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1996, p. 306

4. It is possible that the first Portuguese community in Batavia already lived there in 1633, close to Jalan Roa Malacca. This group was known as “White Portuguese” and was composed by people from higher social classes, including a Malacca captain, Dom Luiz Martin de Sousa Chichorro. Cf. A. Heuken, Historical Sites of Jakarta, Jakarta, Cipta Loka Caraka, 2007, p. 126; Descrição Histórica dos Três Reinos do Congo, Matamba e Angola pelo P.e João António Cavazzi de Montecúccolo, Tradução, notas e índices do P.e G. M. Leguzzano, Introd. Bibliográfica por F. Leite de Faria, Vol. II, JIU, Lisboa, 1965, p. 447.

5. Cf. Lilie Suratminto, “Portuguese Creole Language at Tugu Village: Colonial Legacy in Jakarta on the Verge of Extinction” (translation from “Bahasa Kreol Portugis di Kampung Tugu: warisan budaya colonial di Jakarta di ambang kepunahan”), Kata: Media Komunikasi Antarbahasawan, Depok, Dekan Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya UI, Vol. 7, No 1, April 2005, p. 9.

6. Cf. Ibidem.

7. Cf. Maya Jayapal, Old Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 47.
8. Maria Isabel Tomás (Introduction), in Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado, Estudos sobre os Crioulos Indo-Portugueses, Lisboa, CNCDP, 1998, p. 13.

9. Cf. Luís Filipe Barreto, “A Herança dos Descobrimentos”, Revista ICALP, Lisbon, ICALP, Vols. 7/8, March-June 1987, pp. 9-21.

10. Entitled Der Orientalisch-Indianische Kunst und Lust-Gärdner.

11. Georg Meister,  Der Orientalisch-Indianische Kunst – und Lust-Gärdner; Das ist: Eine aufrichtige Beschreibung Derer meisten Indianischen als auf JavaMaior, Malacca und Jappon, wachsenden Gewürtz- Frucht- und Blumen-Bäume/ wie auch anderer raren

    Blumen/ Kräuter- und Stauden-Gewächse sampt ihren Saamen nebst umbständigen Bericht deroselben Indianischen Nahmen so wol ihrer in der Medicin als Oeconomie und gemeinem Leben mit sich führendem Gebrauch und Nutzen;  Dresden und Leipzig, Den Christoph Befeltz, Feel Goth, 1731, fl. 215-318. Cf. http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb10228988_00312.html?contextType=scan&contextSort=scor e%2Cdescending&contextRows=10&context= sprache.

12. 2nd Edition, Lisbon, 1725, p. 291, apud José Leite de Vasconcellos, Esquisse d’une Dialectologie Portugaise: Thèse pour le Doctorat de l’Université de Paris, Lisbon, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1970, p. 55

13. Cf. David Lopes, A Expansão da Língua Portuguesa no Oriente durante os séculos XVI, XVII e XVIII, Barcelos, Portucalense Editora, 1936, pp. 20-23.

14.  Cf. Luís Filipe Thomaz, “A Língua Portuguesa em Timor”, Atas do Congresso sobre a Situação Atual da Língua Portuguesa no Mundo, 2ª Edição, Lisboa, ICALP, Coleção Diálogo-Compilação, Vol. II, 1990, pp. 313-338.

15.  Cf. Kenneth David Jackson, “O folklore do crioulo português da Índia e do Sri-Lanka (Ceilão)”, Atas do Congresso sobre a Situação Atual da Língua Portuguesa no Mundo, 2ª Edição, Lisboa, ICALP, Coleção Diálogo-Compilação, Vol. II, 1990, pp. 340-346.

16.  Cf. Maria de Jesus Espada, Io Dali Vos Mori, Lisboa, Prefácio, 2009.
17. Cf. Ronald Daus, Portuguese Eurasian Communities in Southeast Asia, Singapura,

    Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1989 (extrato retirado e traduzido da obra do mesmo autor publicada em 1983, na Alemanha, por Peter Hammer Verlag, com o título Die Erfindung des Kolonialismus), p. 29.

18. Paramita R. Abdurachman, Bunga Angin Portugis di Nusantara: Jejak-Jejak Kebudayaan Portugis di Indonesia, , Jacarta, Buku Obor, 2008, p. 38.

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