AEMI

MARIA BEATRIZ ROCHA-TRINDADE
Não permita Deus que eu morra,
Sem que eu volte para lá;
Sem que desfrute os primores
Que não encontro por cá;
Sem qu’ inda aviste as palmeiras,
Onde canta o Sabiá.
More recently, the great Portuguese poet
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen,
writes in The Sixth Book (Livro Sexto)
(1962):
When we don’t have the homeland we
have
Lost by silence and renunciation
Even the voice of the sea becomes exile
And the light that surrounds us is like
bars
Quando a pátria que temos não a temos
Perdida por silêncio e por renúncia
Até a voz do mar se torna exílio
E a luz que nos rodeia é como grades
We can also mention some concepts
related to the exile, such as deportation
and banishment. These are figures with
a precise legal content, consisting of the
expulsion of an individual from their
land of habitual residence, as a sentence
imposed by the courts due to the commission
of serious crimes.
Moreover, the word exile presupposes
that the location where the banishment
leads to is located outside the mainland,
meaning some situations of exile took
place, in the Portuguese case, in its colonies;
in the case of France, in the French
Guiana; in England, in Australia.
The notion of banishment is substantially
older and does not require the
target location to be located outside the
national territory: there are documents
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of sentences, cited in national jurisprudence,
in which the condemned were
merely ‘cast out’ to a different municipality
in their own country.
Given, however, that the notions of
exile, deportation and banishment are
limited to a criminal law framework
that currently lacks relevant legal content,
we will be left dealing with other
related concepts, ‘asylum’ and ‘refuge’.
Exile as separation and form of compulsive
travel implies a forced departure
from the place of provenance translating
into a particular form of mobility.
The exposition that follows focuses on
two of the major causes that lead to it:
one resulting from factors of a political
nature, and the other caused by major
natural disasters.
The present analysis begins with the
exile of the Portuguese court in Brazil
because of the French invasions (1807-
1814), the strategy behind this decision
and the way it was implemented, see
Table 1, next page. The transfer of the
Royal family and their entourage, estimated
at around fifteen thousand people
(nobles, officials and other servants),
involved careful planning and was certainly
very difficult to implement. 4
The stay outside of the country from
1808 to 1821 came to an end with the
Liberal Revolution that occurred in
Oporto on August 24th, which, in a
way, forced the King D. João VI to return
to the country on July 4th, 1821.
Subsequently, the Regent Prince D.
Pedro, who had been installed to ensure
the power of the Portuguese Crown
in Brazil, proclaimed its independence
on September 7th, 1822 - an unprecedented
act within the South American
independence framework, projecting a