ABSTRACT
The day I visited the Silva 1 family at their country house in a small town located 100km north of Lisbon, the weather was particularly stormy and cold. After a brief stroll in town, we went home for a cup of tea to observe and talk about the objects from Goa 2 that the family wanted to show me. Though both Mr and Mrs Silva are descended from Brahmin Catholic families that left Goa at the beginning of the 20th century, they have always firmly stated their current attachment to Goan culture. This was particularly the case concerning some aspects that, according to Mr Silva, pre-dated Portuguese colonisation and had only recently been rediscovered by families who had converted to Catholicism. However, when entering the house, the first object I encountered was a small ceramic image of Our Lady of Carmo, discreetly placed in a cavity in the wall by the main entrance. Noticing my interest in the image and in its location, and anticipating any question from my part, Mr Silva mentioned: ‘That’s the image of the patroness of our family, our Lady of Carmo!’ This apparently insignificant episode inspired this chapter, the overarching objective of which is to discuss the role played by religion in Goan transnational migrations from the last years of the Portuguese colonial period to the present. The following pages aim at capturing the original modalities through which Catholic Goan families handle their unique trajectories within the Portuguese “cultural space” that emerged from colonisation and manage their relationships with Goa. The presence of Our Lady of Carmo in the hallway made, in a way, perfect sense. Most probably, it has been with the family since they left Goa, and worked as a proof of family conversion five centuries ago. However, and unlike what had happened in the colonial period, the small statue now openly coexists with a diversified group of other objects of different origins. This could well indicate that contemporary intersections between transnational connections and religion appear to be promoting renewed paths and practices for the production, negotiation and expression of Goan Catholic identities.
