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Southeast Asian cultural landscape, resistance, and belonging in East Timor's FRETILIN Movement (1974–75)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 October 2021
Abstract
The diversity of national imaginings within the East Timorese resistance movement against the Indonesian Occupation (1975–99) became visible through the country's post-independence politics. Namely, the contradiction between the returnee leaders and those who fought in East Timor over the representation of FRETILIN (the major nationalist movement since 1974) has been an important fault line. This article attempts to understand this discrepancy through a comparison of FRETILIN's campaigns in Tetun and Portuguese and how different audiences interpreted them. The article argues that FRETILIN modified its international rhetoric when it became a popular Tetun language movement to attract Timorese commoners. The Tetun version of FRETILIN provided sources for Timorese national imaginings based on local beliefs, sacred landscapes, and Southeast Asian social relations that deviated from how international audiences understood FRETILIN. This article thus contributes to the literature on Southeast Asian resistance and nationalism by revealing Timorese ideologies of resistance and nationhood.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2021
Footnotes
I would like to thank Maitrii Aung-Thwin, Julius Bautista, Sai Siew Min, Hajimu Masuda, Muhammad Arafat bin Mohamad, Nurfadzilah Yahaya, Takahiro Kamisuna, Fransisca da Costa, Mitchie Rivera and two anonymous reviewers for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this manuscript at various stages. The research for this article was funded by an NUS Research Scholarship and the Academic Research Fund Tier 2 ‘Reconceptualizing the Cold War: On-the-ground experience in Asia’ (MOE2018-T2-1-138). All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
References
1 The original Tetun version is: ‘Sai ona HEROI bo'ot ba Timor Leste nia Historia, sira nebe'e ho espiritu no forsa natural sira; Rai lulik, Fatuk lulik, Foho lulik, Be'e lulik, tasi no balada fuik sira, Pioneirus Libertasaun sira hamutuk ho Povu Timor konspira ukun rasik an kontra esplorasaun ne'ebe rezime Soeharto halo iha Timor.’ Delsio Guimaraes, ‘Tinan 9 Timor-Leste Restaura Ukun-Rasik-an: Reflesaun ida.’ [Nine years of Timor-Leste: Restore ukun-rasik-an: A reflection], 20 May 2011, http://delsiohinilospalos.blogspot.com/2011/05/tinan-9-timor-leste-restaura-ukun-rasik.html (accessed 15 Sept. 2017).
2 Henri Myrttinen, ‘Claiming the dead, defining the nation: Contested narratives of the independence struggle in post-conflict Timor-Leste’, in Governing the dead: Sovereignty and the politics of dead bodies, ed. Finn Stepputat (Oxford: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 95–113.
3 Some have already pointed to the religious dimension of the local resistance. See for example, Myrttinen, ‘Claiming the dead, defining the nation’, pp. 102–8; Susana de Matos Viegas, ‘Ancestors and martyrs in Timor-Leste’, in The dead as ancestors, martyrs, and heroes in Timor-Leste, ed. Lia Kent and Rui Graça Feijó (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020), p. 58; and Michael Leach, ‘Remembering the martyrs of national liberation in Timor-Leste’, in ibid., p. 69.
4 On Sagrada Familia, see Myrttinen, ‘Claiming the dead, defining the nation’, pp. 102–8. On Colimau2000 and its messianic vision, see Kammen, Douglas, ‘Fragments of Utopia: Popular yearnings in East Timor’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40, 2 (2009): 399–405CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ozorio Leque, ‘Istoria Colimau2000’ [A history of Colimau2000], Klaak Semanal, 8 Apr. 2008; http://klaak-semanal.blogspot.com/2008/04/istoria-colimau-2000.html (accessed 15 June 2021).
5 While the labels used in this paragraph are not entirely of Timorese origin, the distinction and acknowledgement of diversity within Southeast Asian actors can be a starting point for history writing in their own terms. See Smail, John R.W., ‘On the possibility of an autonomous history of Modern Southeast Asia’, Journal of Southeast Asian History 2, 2 (1961): 72–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benda, Harry, ‘Peasant movements in colonial Southeast Asia’, Asian Studies 3, 3 (1965): 420–34Google Scholar.
6 These include: Jill Jolliffe, East Timor: Nationalism and colonialism (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1978); Helen Hill, Stirrings of nationalism in East Timor: FRETILIN 1974–1978: The origins, ideologies and strategies of a nationalist movement (Otford, NSW: Otford Press, 2002); James Dunn, East Timor: A rough passage to independence (Double Bay, NSW: Longueville, 2003).
7 See the bibliography and notes of Hill, Stirrings of nationalism; and Michael Leach, Nation-building and national identity in Timor-Leste (London: Routledge, 2017).
8 Alarico Fernandes and José Ramos-Horta, Relatorio da Visita a Jakarta (Indonesia) do Secretario Geral do Comite Geral, Alarico Fernandes, e J.M. Ramos Horta, Encarregado das Relações Externas (1 May 1975), pp. 1–2. Arquivo & Museu da Resistência Timorense (henceforth AMRT), Pasta: 05000.284. Available at http://casacomum.org/cc/visualizador?pasta=05000.284 (accessed on 28 June 2021).
9 Benedict R. O'G Anderson, Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).
10 See Michael Leach, ‘The FRETILIN literacy manual of 1974–75: An exploration of early nationalist themes’, p. 60. Available at: http://www.laohamutuk.org/ (accessed 28 June 2021); Jeffery Hays, ‘Rise of East Timorese independence movement and the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia’, Facts and Details, https://factsanddetails.com/southeast-asia/East_Timor/sub5_10e/entry-3582.html (accessed 14 Sept. 2017).
11 Thongchai Winichakul, Siam mapped: A history of the geo-body of a nation (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994).
12 Benedict Anderson, ‘Imagining East Timor’, Arena Magazine 4 (Apr.–May 1993); http://www.ci.uc.pt/timor/imagin.htm (accessed 28 June 2021).
13 Leach, ‘The FRETILIN literacy manual’, p. 64.
14 Angie Bexley, ‘The Geraçáo Foun and Indonesia: Exclusion, belonging, and the nation-state’, and Maj Nygaard-Christensen, ‘The UN document leak: The production of political controversy’, in Fieldwork in Timor-Leste: Understanding social change through practice, ed. Maj Nygaard-Christensen and Angie Bexley (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2017), pp. 99–124; 191–207.
15 Andrey Damaledo, Divided loyalties: Displacement, belonging and citizenship among East Timorese in West Timor (Canberra: ANU Press, 2018), http://doi.org/10.22459/DL.09.2018; Takahiro Kamisuna, ‘Beyond nationalism: Youth struggle for the independence of East Timor and democracy for Indonesia’, Indonesia 110 (Oct. 2020): 73–99.
16 Tim Cresswell, Place: An introduction (Malden: John Wiley & Sons, 2015).
17 Arthur, Catherine, ‘From Fretilin to freedom: The evolution of the symbolism of Timor-Leste's national flag’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 49, 2 (2018): 227–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Reynaldo Ileto, ‘Religion and anti-colonial movements’, in The Cambridge history of Southeast Asia, vol. 2: The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ed. Nicholas Tarling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 198–9, 207. See further Leque, ‘Istoria Colimau2000’; and James Scambary, ‘A survey of gangs and youth groups in Dili, Timor-Leste’, AusAID, Dili, 15 Sept. 2006, available on the East Timor and Indonesian Action Network (ETAN) website, pp. 5–6, 12–13; http://www.etan.org/etanpdf/2006/Report_Youth_Gangs_in_Dili.pdf (accessed 16 June 2021). These accounts of Timorese resistance groups refer to Colimau2000, Sagrada Familia and Orcenaco's millenarian beliefs, use of magic, and rural prophets.
19 Robert Dom, ‘Maulindo's feet’, 1996, AMRT, Pasta 06497.003, pp. 4, 6. I believe there is a slight linguistic confusion here. My understanding is that such amulets are called kakaluk in Tetun and they are considered lulik (sacred, holy, prohibited).
20 Ibid., p. 7.
21 See Reynaldo C. Ileto, Pasyon and revolution: Popular movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979); Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Millenarianism and peasant politics in Vietnam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983); Ileto, ‘Religion and anti-colonial movements’.
22 Ileto, Pasyon and revolution; Vicente Rafael, The promise of the foreign: Nationalism and the technics of translation in the Spanish Philippines (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).
23 Dionísio da Costa Babo-Soares, ‘Branching from the trunk: East Timorese perceptions of nationalism in transition’ (PhD diss., The Australian National University, 2003). Babo-Soares argued that in Timorese vocabulary, nationalismo (nationalism) meant ‘unity’, ‘identity’, ‘solidarity’, and ‘togetherness’. He also paid attention to Timorese usage of botanical terms to explain local understandings of nacionalismo, for e.g., how ‘branches/factions’ of the tree are viewed to have emerged from the ‘trunk/national unity’ in the post-Indonesian period.
24 This observation is based on my working experience as an electoral officer in UNEST (2009–10). In co-organising national and local elections with Timorese polities, UNEST utilised existing social organs such as town meetings and village workshops for thorough electoral education, preparation and voting. These proved to be more effective than relying only on pamphlets, TV, newspapers, comics, and the radio.
25 Tsuchiya, Kisho, ‘Representing Timor: Histories, geo-bodies, and belonging, 1860s–2018’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 50, 3 (2019): 365–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Hans Hägerdal, Lords of the land, lords of the sea: Conflict and adaptation in early colonial Timor, 1600–1800 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2012).
27 Neil Deeley, The international boundaries of East Timor, 2001, IBRU: Centre for Borders Research; https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/ibru-borders-research/ (accessed 28 June 2021).
28 José Simões Martinho, Timor: Quatro Séculos de Colonização Portuguesa (Oporto: Livraria Progredidor, 1943), p. 266.
29 Even today, many East Timorese maintain their Portuguese nationality. See for example, Eve Webster, ‘UK's East Timorese population faces loss of rights after Brexit’, The Guardian, 27 June 2021: ‘Many of the East Timorese community travelled to the UK on Portuguese passports but have a strong East Timorese sense of identity’.
30 Arthur, ‘From Fretilin to freedom’, p. 238.
31 Tsuchiya, ‘Representing Timor’.
32 Amaral, Xavier do, ‘Discurso do Camarada Presidente’, Jornal do Povo Maubere 8, 15 (1975), pp. 1, 5Google Scholar.
33 This is a methodology used in Rafael, The promise of the foreign.
34 Tetun is categorised as an Austronesian language. Dili vernacular frequently uses borrowed terms from Portuguese. As the Portuguese settled its colonial capital in Dili in 1769, they began to use Tetun to communicate with the Timorese. The majority of the European settlers in Dili, however, did not attain mastery of the complex grammar of classical Tetun. Instead, Timorese who had migrated from other areas and the Portuguese were inclined to speak in a corrupted mixture of Tetun and Portuguese. Ironically, a more simplified and egalitarian version of Tetun developed in the colonial capital.
35 Abilio Araújo, Autobiografia de Abílio Araújo: Dato Siri Loe II (Lisboa: Alêtheia Editores, 2012), p. 114.
36 FRETILIN, FRETILIN/Manual e Programa Políticos (Lisboa, 1974), AMRT, Pasta: 05005.002., p. 3.
37 Ibid., pp. 4–5.
38 Ibid., p. 6.
39 The social categories of civilizado (the civilized), assimilado (the assimilated), and não-civilizado (the uncivilised) became important in the post-Second World War Portuguese Empire, primarily because of the official need to raise the status of the non-European elites within the Portuguese official hierarchy while controlling those whom the government perceived as ‘uncivilised’ elements of the overseas provinces.
40 Paulo Castro Seixas, ‘Translation in crisis, crisis as translation’, in East Timor: How to build a new nation in Southeast Asia in the 21st century?, ed. Christine Cabasset-Semedo and Frédéric Durand (Bangkok: IRASEC, 2009), pp. 65–80; DOI: 10.4000/books.irasec.632.
41 This is based on my experience of living in Dili in 2009–10.
42 José Ramos-Horta, Funu: The unfinished saga of East Timor (Trenton, NJ: Red Seas, 1987), p. 37.
43 A series of Maubisse police reports on ‘Ocorrência com um Indivíduo Chinês’ in Jan. 1975, Arquivo Nacional de Timor-Leste (ANTL), Box 1247, detail a quarrel (or a street fight) between Timorese soldiers and an ethnic Chinese. According to the report, the ethnic Chinese ‘insulted’ the soldiers as filhos da puta (sons of prostitutes) and ‘mauberes’. The investigation revealed that the Chinese man was drunk at the time, and one of the insulted soldiers was his sister's boyfriend; a private issue rather than political one. In other words, at the time of FRETILIN's formative period, some Timorese could get angry if labelled as ‘maubere’.
44 David Hicks, Rhetoric and the decolonization and recolonization of East Timor (London: Routledge, 2015), p. 194: Morito Aoyama, Higashi Chimoru: Yama no Yousei to Gerira [East Timor: Mountain fairies and guerrillas] (Tokyo: Shakai Hyouronsha, 1997), pp. 167–9.
45 The Magna Carta Concerning Freedoms, Rights, Duties and Guarantees for the People of East Timor, for example, utilises ‘o Povo de Timor-Leste [the People of Timor-Leste]’ instead of maubere. Refer to ‘Carta Magna de Liberdades, Direitos, Deveres e Garantias do Povo de Timor-Leste aprovada na Convenção Nacional Timorense na Diáspora, Lisboa e Peniche’, 25 Apr. 1998, AMRT, Pasta: 06237.177.
46 FRETILIN's Manual e Programa Político uses ‘timur oan’ on pp. 5, 7, 8, 10, etc., and ‘Povo ai Timur’ on pp. 3, 6, 8, 10, etc.
47 Ibid., p. 8.
48 Ibid., p. 10.
49 See for example, Alberto Osório de Castro, A Ilha Verde e Vermelha de Timor (Lisboa: Herdeiro de Alberto Osório de Castro e Edições Cotovia, 1996), p. 74. Originally published in Seara Nova, 28 June 1928 and 27 June 1929.
50 FRETILIN, Manual e Programa Político, p. 7.
51 Ibid., p. 8.
52 Ibid., p. 9. During the Indonesian Occupation, many guerrilla leaders repeated the rhetoric of egalitarianism and emancipation from ‘all forms of exploitation’. See for example, ‘Discurso de Alarico Fernandes na Rádio Maubere’, 24 May 1978, AMRT, Pasta: 05000.012.
53 Hence, some veterans of the war against Indonesia felt that the ‘independence granted by the UN’ was rule, once again, by foreign money-masters and/or lacked rasik blood-ties. Aside from CPD-RDTL, Dr Antero Benedito da Silva, for example, uses ukun-rasik-an along the 1975 FRETILIN ideal. He calls the post-independence polity ukun-an (self-rule without rasik), and calls for a ‘total’ social change towards a ‘genuine’ ukun-rasik-an under which Timorese people will be free from socio-economic dependency. See Antero Benedito da Silva, ‘Pedagojia ukun Rasik-an: Mata dalan organiza komunidade’, Kdadalak, 10 June 2015; http://kdadalak.blogspot.jp (accessed 16 Sept. 2017).
54 FRETILIN, Manual e Programa Político, pp. 11.
55 Ibid., pp. 12. As a matter of fact, the Portuguese government spent more than it gained from Timor in the last three decades of its rule.
56 Ibid., pp. 13–14.
57 Here I utilise the methodology employed in Ileto's Pasyon and revolution.
58 Luis Costa, Borja da Costa: Selecção de Poemas/ Kilbur Daolin (Lisboa: Lidel, 2009).
59 Edward Relph, Place and placelessness (London: Pion, 1980), chap. 6. Specifically, he writes on p. 90: ‘An inauthentic attitude towards place is transmitted through a number of processes, or perhaps more accurately “media”, which directly or indirectly encourage “Placelessness”, that is, a weakening of the identity of places to the point where they not only look alike but feel alike and offer the same bland possibilities for experience.’
60 Jolliffe, East Timor, p. 5.
61 Arthur, ‘From Fretilin to freedom flag’, pp. 235–6.
62 The Timorese who stayed in Casa dos Timorese (including Borja da Costa and Abílio Araújo) experienced the revolutionary moment of April 1974 at the political centre of Lisbon with students from other ‘overseas provinces’. Araújo listed Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Dostoievski and Gorki among others as anti-colonial writers who influenced Borja da Costa (Autobiografia de Abílio Araújo, p. 107). Arguably, Pátria-Pátria expressed the experience of the Timorese in Lisbon more than that of the rural Timorese.
63 Masao Yamaguchi, Jiyuresuru Henkyou kara: Chimoru kara no Tegami [From a shaking periphery: A letter from Timor], Chuoukouron, 1064 (Nov. 1975): 58–77.
64 Hill, Stirrings of nationalism, p. 76.
65 Xanana Gusmão, To resist is to win! The autobiography of Xanana Gusmao with selected letters & speeches (Richmond: Aurora Books with David Lovell Publishing, 2000), p. 27.
66 Concerning the association between resistance and mountains in Southeast Asia, see Ileto, Pasyon and revolution, pp. 79–94; Chandler, ‘An anti-Vietnamese rebellion’, pp. 18–19; James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). There is massive evidence of mountain worship in broader Eurasia, for example, in Japanese spirituality related to Mount Fuji, the Biblical references to worship in ‘high places’, and the status of Mount Olympus in Greek mythology.
67 Several versions are available: see for example, AMRT, Pasta: 05005.017, p. 67; Jornal do Povo Maubere 8 (8 Nov. 1975), p. 5.
68 Hägerdal, Hans, ‘The slaves of Timor: Life and death on the fringes of early colonial society’, Itinerario 34, 2 (2010): 19–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare the descriptions in Affonso de Castro, As possessões portuguezas na Oceania (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1867), pp. 319–20; Douglas Kammen, ‘Master-slave, traitor-nationalist, opportunist-oppressed: Political metaphors in East Timor’, Indonesia 76 (Oct. 2003): 74–8; Hägerdal, Hans, ‘Slaves and slave trade in the Timor area: Between indigenous structures and external impact’, Journal of Social History 54, 1 (2020): 15–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
69 Castro, As Possessões portuguezas na Oceania, pp. 319–20.
70 Jolliffe, East Timor, p. 71.
71 Anderson, Imagined communities.
72 Inácio da Moura, ‘Criança Timor’, Jornal do Povo Maubere 2, 4 Oct. 1975, p. 5.
73 Kammen, Douglas, ‘Subordinating Timor: Central authority and the origins of communal identities in East Timor’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde 166, 2–3 (2010): 244–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
74 Francisco Borja da Costa, ‘Kdadalak’, in Hinos e Canções da Revolução do Povo Maubere (Lisboa: Vento do Leste, 1977).
75 Babo-Soares, ‘Branching from the trunk’.