LUSO LOGIC
The Portuguese Culture WEBA
Ray Vogensen
logical place for rubbish recycling bins. Notice the van
obstructing the zebra crossing.
Every culture has a certain way
of viewing things. Americans think they are a perfectly logical people
although they don't see incongruity in the right to purchase a handgun when
you are 18, but the prohibition of drinking a beer until you are 21. The only
developed society with the death penalty is the United States, and how do you
explain a presidential campaign that lasts for 2 years and costs millions of
dollars, when most countries get it over with in a few months with a lot less
money?
England is also not without its
“strange” habits, such as judges wearing wigs, cars driving on the left, and
the whole concept of a queen in the modern world.
Portugal of course doesn’t
escape these comparisons. It all depends on the observer’s own background
whether he sees a way of doing things as logical or not. For a devout Muslim
the very fact that some Portuguese women can wear short skirts, smoke, and get
a divorce is total immorality and illogical. For a Dane though, it would be
even conservative.
A logical place for an electricity
box.
That being said, there are some
examples of what one condescending Englishwoman once called “Luso Logic.” A
more generous observer would call it “a different way of seeing things.” One
Brazilian attributes the Portuguese logic to a lack of immigration. Mario
Prata, author of a popular (not in Portugal) book on Portugal entitled
Schifazfavoire, says that since the expulsion of the Moors almost no one has
immigrated to Portugal. Excepting some Spanish and French invaders (who
didn't stay) the Portuguese have lived their life among themselves. The
population of today is the result of the mixing of the same (some say there
were 5 original families) families for eight centuries. This meant that never
did a new way of thinking, of reasoning, of seeing the world, come into
Portuguese society. Another type of logic was formed, very different from the
Brazilian, which was the product of many different nationalities. Portugal
never had an element that disturbed its society. It was a pure race, unique.
According to Prata, and these are his words:
“ that is why they are all
the same, having the same face, the same height, the same way of walking, the
same way of thinking, and mainly the same logic--with the
same idiosyncrasies. There is a big difference in logic between them and us.
Their logic is unique, and ours a mixture of logics: Black, Portuguese,
Indian, Italian, French, American, German, and Japanese etc. etc. etc. “. . .
“ “The Portuguese is completely different from the Brazilian, like the
Englishman is completely different from the American or the Spaniard is
different from the Cuban. Portugal is closer to Albania than to Bahia. We
haven’t been brothers for five hundred years. We and Portugal have a past in
front of us.” (Prata, p. 64)
"Bread with sausage and without"
Prata may be exaggerating for
literary effect, and may have an axe to grind, but impressions do remain, even
with the non- Brazilian observer. Some examples that come to mind are: the
street signs that show the red symbol for prohibited entry into a certain
street—one way—and have the words “except for automobiles” written in tiny
letters at the bottom; the intersections in towns like Chaves and Vila Real
where cars coming on the right have the right of way. There are no signs of
any nature, neither a yield sign nor even a slow sign. These are
intersections that once had working traffic lights and now have no signs
whatsoever. Drivers on the main avenue are supposed to know somehow that the
driver entering on the right, in a small street, has the right of way.
Accidents occur again and again but stubbornly no one will change the system
