Malaca Malaca 2

In Fernão Mendes Pinto’s Peregrinação (Pilgrimage) which was published in 1614 we find, as Rebecca  Catz notes, a highly colorful yet critical work for its time. Pinto’s work, is severely critical, albeit indirectly, of the Portuguese adventure of ‘discovery’. As Catz notes, the Portuguese “mission to conquer and convert all non-Christian peoples … was viewed, in the fiction of the work, as a false and corrupt ideal”. It is quite likely that it is for this highly advanced and reflexive critique, as much as for his conflation of autobiography with fiction, that Pinto was rewarded with the nickname Fernão, mentes? minto! (“Fernão, are you lying? I am!”). Nevertheless, Pinto’s place within the Portuguese maritime hagiography is memorialized in the gargantuan Discoveries Monument in Belem. A Koboi performance took place at this monument on the 9th of July 2018, highlighting the historical bond between Belem, the port from which the Portuguese adventurers set sail, and Malacca, their prized possession for 130 years (1511–1641) . For details please visit https://koboibalikkampung.wixsite.com/nuntengporta

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padr%C3%A3o_dos_Descobrimentos