– Marco Carvalho
The International Institute of Macau (IIM) will pay tribute to the memory of José Silveira Machado with two evocative sessions, one to be held this month in the Special Administrative Region and the other in October in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon.
Born in 1918, in the Azores, Silveira Machado lived in Macau most of his life. A well-known member of the Portuguese community, Mr Machado worked as a teacher and as a journalist and was one of the founders of O Clarim. In January 2018, when the centenary of Silveira Machado’s birth was celebrated, the president of IIM, Jorge Rangel, announced – in an article published in the newspaper Tribuna de Macau – the intention to pay homage to the “Macanese of the Azores”. Such a tribute will take place on May 24th, at the premises of the Portuguese Bookstore, near Senado Square.
In addition to the president of the International Institute of Macao, the leader of the Alumni Association of the “Pedro Nolasco” Commercial School, José Basto da Silva and the researcher António Aresta will also take part in the initiative. The investigator, who wrote extensively about Silveira Machado in the first volume of the book Jade Figures (published in 2014 by the International Institute of Macau), is seen by Jorge Rangel in a recent article as the best person “to remember the life and work of José Silveira Machado.”
In the aforementioned article, the president of the International Institute of Macau argues that “the necessary efforts must be made” to republish some of the most important works written by Silveira Machado, such as Macau in the memory of time, a book first published in 2002 .
Responsible for volumes such as The Portuguese Education in the Far East and Macau: A Cultural History, António Aresta will also be the main speaker of the evocative session that will take place in Lisbon in the second half of the year. The initiative is scheduled for October, the month in which José Silveira Machado would have celebrated his 101st birthday. The tribute should take place in the Lisbon Geographic Society premises.
Azorean by birth, but Macanese by soul and heart, The Professor – as he is still known today among the alumni of the “Pedro Nolasco” Commercial School – lived in Macau for almost seventy years, after first entering the territory in 1933 as a 15-year-old candidate to priesthood. An example of citizenship, Silveira Machado left his mark in domains as different as education, journalism and third-sector activities. More than a decade after his death, the affections he sowed continue to flourish in haunting manifestations of respect, as Miguel de Senna Fernandes pointed out to this newspaper in October: “He was one of us,” said the president of the Macanese Association.
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