Timor ba nafatin

Salazar’s curse

The story that there was oil in Timor is part of my childhood memories. One would open a hole [well], the oil flew strongly but the hole was closed straight away.
There were two different versions:
Some used to say there was not enough oil.
Others argued Salazar [former Portuguese dictator 1932-68] preferred that the idea of a rich Timor would not spread as that might have bad consequences for the “province” [the way Portuguese oversea territories were named by the regime at some stage], attracting external attentions, and thus it was better to pretend it [the oil] did not exist at all.
The common thought was that war might bring war.
And therefore we kept surviving, with no war and in poverty, always stretching our hand to the surplus of the other richer “provinces”, limited by our exiguous annual budget, poor, every time poorer but beloved, province deeply beloved by the Portuguese Empire that extended from Minho [a region in the North of Portugal, used symbolically the nation’s birth place] to Timor.
This photo illustrates precisely one of those [oil] wells, opened and closed in Suai.
Salazar died. The Empire ended.
We are independent and it is know, potentially rich. We have oil! Now that the chance is there, even if not too close, for us to abandon poverty, the crisis, conflicts and insecurity repeat themselves. Sooner or later, someone will come and say we are not able to manage our own wealth. Or that the gas refining installations will never be able to be located here in East Timor.
So are we condemned to be living on charity forever?
I would hate to recognize Salazar was right! I prefer to believe that it was his course!

Angela Carrascalão, June 7, 2006
Originally published in Portuguese at http://blogs.publico.pt/timor/