Six Hundred Years of Solitude

I thought that this title, inspired by One Hundred Years of Solitude, the epic novel by Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, suited what I wished to express regarding the 2027 anniversary of the discovery of the Azorean Islands by the Portuguese navigators of the fifteenth century. Historians remain divided over the precise date of that discovery, agreeing only upon 1427 as the year to be recorded in the Portuguese historical narrative.

It is now acknowledged that the Portuguese rediscovered the Islands, since they had already appeared on maps predating their arrival. Evidence of a Viking presence, revealed by scientific research into lake sediments on the Islands—including studies conducted by the Dom Luiz Institute at the University of Lisbon—indicates disturbances, as well as the presence of DNA and biomarkers associated with human activity and domesticated animals, such as sheep and cattle, introduced between the eighth and ninth centuries, approximately between AD 750 and 850. Recent scientific studies therefore suggest that human beings were present in the Azores several centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese in the fifteenth century. Navigators such as the Phoenicians may also have reached the Islands during antiquity. None of these peoples, however, appears to have settled there permanently for more than a century—a span of time sufficient to leave an enduring imprint.

Whether those peoples vanished into the labyrinths of time, their presence ultimately lost within them, the fact remains that, in the more recent period of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it was the Portuguese who took possession of and began permanently settling all the rediscovered Atlantic islands: Madeira in 1418–1419, the Azores in 1427, Cape Verde in 1460, and São Tomé and Príncipe in 1470–1471. All were uninhabited at the time and were eventually populated by diverse African and European peoples under Portuguese rule.

In the Azores, we shall commemorate that European rediscovery next year, marking six centuries of human life upon these Atlantic mountains.

From the beginning, Portugal pursued a policy of semi-abandonment toward those possessions considered smaller and less productive for the kingdom, as was the case with the Islands. Their governance was entrusted to donatary captains, with little concern beyond extracting as much as possible from what they produced for the benefit of the central government—the Crown.

Thus it remained for several centuries, even though the Azores repeatedly offered proof of their heroism in confronting the enemies of the kingdom, as happened in the city of Angra. From all the Islands arose distinguished citizens of exceptional merit in every field. With the advent of the Republic in 1910, the Azores would give the new regime its first presidents—Manuel de Arriaga and Teófilo Braga—yet even this failed to bring recognition of the islanders as citizens equal to those on the mainland. Colonial treatment was applied indiscriminately to all the colonies, without exception. Despite everything, and although abandoned largely to its own fate, the Azorean people suffered and overcame, alone, the cruelties and calamities of Nature.

On October 22, 1522, the most devastating earthquake in the history of the Azores destroyed Vila Franca do Campo, then the capital of São Miguel. The earthquake triggered an immense landslide that buried the town and claimed approximately 5,000 lives.

On the first day of January 1980, a violent earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale shook the islands of Terceira, São Jorge, and Graciosa. It caused 73 deaths, injured hundreds, and destroyed a considerable part of Angra do Heroísmo’s historic heritage.

On September 27, 1957, the Capelinhos volcanic eruption began on the island of Faial. Although it caused no direct loss of life, it destroyed farmland and homes, forcing more than 4,000 Azoreans to emigrate to the United States.

Then, on July 9, 1998, an earthquake measuring 5.8 struck the islands of Faial and Pico with great severity. It claimed eight lives, left thousands homeless, and devastated several parishes.

It would be wearisome—and sorrowful—to recount here the entirety of the suffering endured by the people who were left upon these islands. An exception must, however, be made for the regional governments established under the democratic regime that emerged from the military coup of 1974. Six hundred years of solitude came to an end when the Islands began to be governed by those who live in them, who know them intimately, and who suffer alongside all their inhabitants—those who govern with the full knowledge that only lived experience can bestow.

Yet six hundred years of abandonment in the solitude of the Atlantic were required before that day arrived.

José Soares is a columnist for several newspapers and magazines in the Azores and the Diaspora.