Policarpo Álvaro José António Francisco Xavier de Santa Rita Vaz, (Journalist.)

Em 1931 inicia a actividade jornalística como redactor do Heraldo, de que foi posteriormente redactor principal e proprietário

Alvaro was a journalist in Goa, having edited Heraldo for many years. In Portugal he was made a member of the Portuguese Parliament, representing Goa when it was no longer a Portuguese territory! There is a road in Lisbon named after him. dixit Luis SR Vas

Alvaro Santa Rita Vaz was a journalist all his life until he emigrated to Portugal in the 1960s. The last article he ever wrote before his death in 1969 was for a souvenir of the centenary celebrations of the chapel in Carona where the statue of St. Rita brought from Rome was installed after the Archdiocese ordered it removed from our house, since masses in private houses were now banned.

I am attaching the article. I hope you can read Portuguese well enough to enjoy it and his style. [UNDER PHOTOS: SANTA RITA] Below are some quotes on him I downloaded from Google books

Luis:

Alvaro Santa Rita Vaz

a vida do jornal [Heraldo], e que após o seu [Antonio Maria da Cunha] falecimento em 1947 foi mantida pelo seu redactor principal, o jornalista Álvaro de Santa Rita Vaz. Pena fácil e colorida , no artigo do fundo ou na crónica literária, Santa Rita Vaz honrou a tradição ...

New Statesman 1947

... the Governor's Budget Speech to his Council, and its editor, Captain Antonio Maria da Cunha, a retired Army doctor, was to face a court martial, while its sub-editor, Alvaro de Santa Rita Vaz, was to be tried in a civil court. ... [SEE BELOW]

Armas e inscrições do Forte de Baçaim:

Braz A. Fernandes, António Machado de Faria - 1957 - 282 pages - Snippet view Por intermédio do distinto jornalista Senhor Álvaro de Santa Rita Vaz, Redactor Principal do Heraldo, de Nova Goa, ... Ao Senhor Santa Rita Vaz deixamos aqui os nossos agradecimentos. ...

Boletím geral do ultramar: Issues 484-486

Portugal. Agência Geral do Ultramar - 1965 - Snippet view ESTADO PORTUGUÊS DA ÍNDIA Álvaro de Santa Rita Vaz O senhor Álvaro de Santa Rita Vaz nasceu em 1 de Abril de 1904, ... Em serviço de reportagem do seu jornal, o senhor Álvaro de Santa Rita Vaz viajou por diversas partes da índia,

    Parágrafos de literatura ultramarina

Amândio César - 1967 - 340 pages - Snippet view Também na lógica sequência das, datas, tenho presente um volume de Álvaro de Santa Rita Vaz que trata de um tema que ... Santa Rita Vaz é um homem culto e um patriota que não hesita em dizer e proclamar verdades, mesmo quando elas

    Estudos, ensaios e documentos: Volume 56

Portugal. Junta de Investigações Científicas do Ultramar, Portugal. Junta de Investigações Colonias, Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (Portugal) - 1959 - Snippet view Nâo nos tendo sido possivel encontrar em bibliotecas portuguesas exemplar tâo antigo deste jornal, foi-nos enviado de Goa o texto do artigo, graças à amabilidade do Sr. Santa Rita Vaz, actual proprietário e director do Heraldo, ...

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Antonio Maria da Cunha and Alvaro Santa Rita Vaz

Recently the following item appeared in the press:

‘At 20, Roque Correia Afonso (RCA) set up legal practice and emerged a brilliant advocate, with powerful oratory. He had a way with words, both spoken and written. He wrote copiously for Goan papers of the time. The ‘Heraldo’ had been slapped with a State suit. It had published extracts of a sermon by Fr. Sarmento Ozorio, an outspoken critic of Goa’s colonial rule. The editor, Dr. Antonio Maria da Cunha, sat in the courtroom, awaiting justice. When the public prosecutor concluded final arguments, it was RCA’s turn to defend the editor. “I have nothing to say,” RCA submitted, and sat down. The courtroom was stunned. The prosecutor wore a wide grin. The judge was bewildered. After a long pause, he asked RCA, “Have you nothing to say in defence of the accused?” RCA repeated his five words, but implored the judge to look at the accused, who was sound asleep. “Cunha’s conscience is so clean that he can peacefully sleep on a day when he could be sent to jail for years..” Cunha was acquitted. Records and proceedings of the case were published as a book, ‘A Opiniao da Justica e a Justica da Opiniao.’ by Luis de Menezes Bragança who had written the original report in the first place, anonymously, which had landed the editor in trouble.’

I asked Antonio Maria da Cunha’s grandson, advertising icon Gerson da Cunha about this. He wrote back:

Dear Luis,

Family mythology holds that it was the paper's printing of Sarmento Ozorio's piece that landed my grandfather in Aguada [jail]. Perhaps he wasn't acquitted but got a light sentence. A large crowd greeted him and escorted him home when he was released.

Warm regards,

Gerson da Cunha

A retired judge who read the judgement of the case told me that the magistrate had ruled that it was acceptable for an ethnic Portuguese priest to cast aspersions on the Portuguese but for a Goan newspaper to publish a report on it amounted to a racist slur!

Antonio Maria da Cunha was an eminent journalist who founded O Heraldo in 1900 and when he had differences of opinion with the owners, left it and launched his own daily Heraldo (without the definite article O) in 1908 which he owned and edited till his retirement. His book Evolution of Journalism in Portuguese India is still the basic reference book for historians on the subject. When George V, King of England visited India in 1911 for his coronation at the Delhi Darbar, da Cunha covered the event with a series of dispatches published in Heraldo and then included them in his massive survey of Indian history: India Antiga e Moderna, now digitized by the University of Aveiro and available online at the site http://memoria-africa.ua.pt/collections/BEAG/tabid/217/language/pt-... .in the section Goa-Historia of the Biblioteca Digital.

By contrast, his successor, grandnephew Álvaro de Santa Rita Vaz was a popular journalist rather than a scholar. Whenever I visited him in his house which doubled as his office he would be sitting at his desk talking to visitors while at the same time reading news agency dispatches. He would then set the despatches aside and write his own ‘copy’ for the paper. As he came to the end of each page he would send it down to the printer in the basement and follow it up with the next page and so on….

Many important functions in Panjim, Goa’s capital, were held at the Clube Nacional. Alvaro, sitting in the audience, would write on his knee a report of the event as it occurred. When completed, he would roll it into a tube, tie it up and drop it from the veranda of the Club which was on the first floor, down on the road where his printer was waiting to catch it! Alvaro would stay back at the Club for dinner along with other journalists and guests. Thus the news item appeared on the next day in Heraldo while his competitors carried it a day later.

Marcos Gomes Catao, nephew of Church historian Conego F. X. Gomes Catão, writes: ‘HERALDO [was] a paper one started on at a very tender age so homely in its coverage. We went there to look for 'Arrivals & Departures' with news of GOANS coming on leave from Africa or India or leaving at the end of it; the panegyrics of the dead in the Obituary notice, so romantically titled Goivos e Perpetuas ( i.e.Gillyflower blossoms & Everlasting flower)’.

Recently I mailed to a cousin t. Alvaro’s last article he wrote before he passed away and got the following response:

Hi Luis,

Thank you for the article you sent recently written by Primo Alvaro. I forwarded it to a cousin in the States who reverted stating Primo Alvaro always wrote beautifully and was wondering if you would have the article he wrote when your great grandmother of Aldona died...............Primo Alvaro's grand mother…If you do, shall appreciate your forwarding it to me.

Will have to check Heraldo of that date.

Luis

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  • ********* http://hemeroteca.abc.es/nav/Navigate.exe/hemeroteca/madrid/abc/196...
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      • ********* No rescaldo do esbulho do Estado Português da India Alvaro de Santa Rita Vaz. Published 1965 by [s.n.] in Lisboa . Written in Portuguese. Classifications Library of Congress DS498.8 .V28 1965