– Marco Carvalho
Founder of O Clarim and a former administrator of Taipa Island during the later years of the Portuguese dictatorship, Gastão Humberto de Barros passed away on Sunday at the age of 89 due to complications associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The information was provided by his son, Gastão Humberto Barros Jr. The body of the former deputy head of the Bureau of Civil Administration Services will be sent to the People’s Republic of China this Friday, where it will be cremated. Earlier, around 10 AM, a Mass will be said in the Diocesan Funeral Home, Mr Barros Jr.
Born on December 10th, 1929 in Volong Street, in the heart of the most traditional of the Macanese neighborhoods, the São Lázaro district, Gastão de Barros has his name associated with the foundation of O Clarim, but it was as a civil servant that he gained notoriety, first as administrator of Taipa and chairman of the Municipality of the Islands, then as the administrator of the Municipality of Macau and, finally, as the deputy director of the Bureau of Civil Administration Services, the department that preceded the Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau (SAFP).
The years in which he was in charge of Taipa and Coloane, back then two secluded and remote archipelagos, were some of the most troubled in the history of Macau, but his tactfulness, the diplomatic skills he displayed and the rare ability to promote reconciliation in the months following the 1-2-3 incident, in late 1966, earned him a commendation from then-Governor Nobre de Carvalho and the recognition of the Portuguese Government: “My father was an appeaser, a peacemaker,” says Gastão Humberto Barros Jr. “It was my father, as the chairman of the Municipality of the Islands, that helped to ease the distrust between the Chinese and the Portuguese community. So much so that, at the inauguration of the Isthmus Macau-Coloane, in 1968, just over a year and a half after the riots , Governor Nobre de Carvalho was greeted by a large crowd. Amongst the mass, with the Portuguese flag in their hand, were some of the instigators of the 1-2-3 incident,” the son of the former mayor claims.
Despite being nominally Taipa’s colonial administrator during the riotous final days of 1966, the 1-2-3 incident surprised Gastão de Barros more than 10,000 kilometers away. A diligent and persevering civil servant since January 1949, the young Macanese was sent to Portugal to strengthen his administrative skills at the “Instituto Superior de Estudos Ultramarinos” (the Institute of Overseas Studies) as part of the process of developing and transforming the political and administrative organization of the then Portuguese colonial territories.
Gastão de Barros should have stayed in Lisbon for three years. He returned to Macau after little more than one year in Portugal’s capital city: “When the uprising took place, my father was enrolled in the second year of the degree in Government Studies. The Overseas Ministry didn’t like the way Rui de Andrade, the interim administrator, managed the events and said my father needed to return,” Gastão Humberto Barros Jr recalls.
Win back affection
On his return to the Far East, Gastão de Barros found his beloved islands crippled by distrust. The revolutionary slogans that swept Macau in the hot winter of 1966 could no longer be heard, but the then Portuguese enclave was still being hampered by distrust. From Lisbon came orders to do the impossible in order to pacify the territory and to regain the affection of the population. With no time to entirely digest the recent riots, the Governor’s Cabinet launched an ambitious project aimed at ending the isolation to which the islands were condemned. In the later years of the “Estado Novo,” prodded by the fierce winds blowing from Beijing, Portugal does more for Taipa and Coloane that it had done in almost two hundred years.
As the mayor of the Municipality of the Islands, Gastão de Barros is responsible for overseeing the construction work that definitively placed Taipa and Coloane within a hand’s reach of Macau: “It was during my father’s consulate as administrator of the Municipality of the Islands that infrastructures such as the Taipa-Coloane Isthmus and the Nobre de Carvalho Bridge were made and inaugurated. On the other hand, the water supply to Taipa was normalized, with the construction of new reservoirs,” Gastão H. Barros Jr explains. “My father, he even asked Edgar Cardoso, the engineer behind the construction of Nobre de Carvalho Bridge, for a technical opinion on the construction of a small reservoir next to what is now the Hovione premises. This reservoir still exists today,” he adds.
A promoter of bridges, both physical and metaphorical, Gastão de Barros also supervised the beginning of the construction workers of what is now Macau largest graveyard, the Sá Kong Buddhist Cemetery. Nevertheless, the most emblematic project in which the now deceased former mayor was involved was the first crossing between Macau and Taipa. His son recalls: “A few days before the inauguration of the Nobre de Carvalho Bridge, already after the end of the Portuguese dictatorship, a ceremony was held to mark the end of the construction works. My father was invited to put the last shovels of pitch on Taipa’s end of the bridge. Joaquim Morais Alves, the then mayor of Macau, did the same on the peninsula. This has always been a moment my father evoked with a particular sense of pride,” illustrates Gastão H. Barros Jr.
The winds of democracy arrived to Macau with the usual backwardness. Removed from the upper echelons of the administration, Gastão de Barros returned to the limelight in the late 1970s, after being appointed administrator of the Macau Municipality, a position he held for just over two years. In the early 1980s, he was summoned for what would be his last major challenge in the administration of the territory , temporarily replacing Augusto Pires Estrela as the head of the Bureau of the Civil Administration Services.
By then, his glory years were already far in the past, but Gastão de Barros had already conquered his place in history. In 1948, at the age of 19, he joined José Patrício Guterres, Herculano Estorninho, José Silveira Machado, Rui da Graça Andrade, José de Carvalho e Rêgo, Abílio Rosa and Rolando das Chagas Alves and he suggested to Fathers Fernando Leal Maciel and Júlio Augusto Massa the creation of a Catholic-inspired newspaper that could give voice to the aspirations of Macau’s young people. The first issue of O Clarim, with no more than eight pages, hit the newsstands on May 2nd of that same year.
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