Atrium

EDITORIAL

Luís Sá Cunha Editorial Director

The definitive thesis for Luso-tropicality was structured by Gilberto Freire.

The human and environmentalist characteristics of a Macau di tempo antigo are adequately integral to the Lusitanian anthropologic theories of this author.

The validation of this can be easily illustrated. It is enough to listen to an old nhonhonha speaking in her native tongue the sweet and melodious Creole Dialect of Macao. It is abundantely expressed in the "Mediterranean" profiles of the typical Macanese architecture of the patrimonial era. It is patent in the daily street fashions of descendants from families of other sunny lands. There are striking resemblances between the oldest stretches of the Praia Grande and the coastal profiles of the early towns in the Brazilian litoral.

During these last decades many were the Macanese settled in Brazil for reasons of familiarity of ambiance similitude and cultural fraternity. And it is presently foreseen that many more will migrate to that consanguineous part of the world before 1999. These people will be the representatives of the renewal of the expanding Macanese Diaspora.

The definition given at the dawn of the Brazilian nation by Manuel Bandeira of their human kind reennacts itsef to the Macanese people in these last days of an Empire in scission: --"É um Português à solta!" (-- "It is a boundless Portuguese!").

The parameters of the Macao/Brazil gemination are per se more than sufficient to justify this issue of the "Review of Culture", already conceived some years ago and much exalted thanks to the enthusiastic collaboration of Fernanda de Camargo-Moro.

This issue attempts to bring together the first results of a diagnosis as well as stimulating a future prognosis, thus furthering the consolidating link which binds two communities so historically close, yet geographically so remote. Our thoughts aim to strengthen the confraternity of the Lusitanian 'family', and the reinforcement of affections which bind the fraternal community of all those who, dispersed worldwide, converse and correspond in the same mother tongue.

This introductory survey reveals that the major and quasi-exclusive contacts between China and Brazil, and vice versa, have been historically channelled through Macao.

The intentions of this issue equally aim to restate, and thus reinforce to both the Chinese and Brazilian nations in their related greatness and potentialities, synchronous in their geo-political global objectives, the memory of past encounters and the basis for future exchanges.

As always, Macao remains on the alert as the fulcrum of this entente, confirming the vocations of these two nations throughout the centenial fluctuations of their evolutive histories. Macao as constant interlocutor of their maritime trade became integral to their extraterritorial expansion; and in their centripetal mission, the receptor of the world's foreign nations' broadcasts proved to be the converging messager of two civilized hemispheres.

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