Caneco does anyone know what this translates to

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Carvalho

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Jun 4, 2024, 2:38:50 PMJun 4
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Dear members,

I have for many years been trying to find out the exact meaning of this slur that was used for Goans by the Portuguese 'caneco.' About a decade ago we had an interesting discussion on Goanet about this but nothing conclusive was arrived at. The word itself means mug, but how and why was it used as a slur.

Any imput appreciated.
Thank you,
selma

Nuno Cardoso da Silva

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Jun 4, 2024, 3:37:44 PMJun 4
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Found on the internet:
 

Indivíduo nascido na Índia Portuguesa ou seu descendente, fruto da miscigenação dos navegadores Portugueses com mulheres Indianas, com nome Português e que, de regra geral, professava a religião católica.

https://www.dicionarioinformal.com.br/caneco/

Used in Mozambique. I don't think it can be taken as a slur as it was basically descriptive.

Nuno Cardoso da Silva

 
 
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Subject: [GRN] Caneco does anyone know what this translates to
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Frederick Noronha

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Jun 4, 2024, 3:38:57 PMJun 4
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Just a reminder on what the earlier discussion on this issue said  (in case anyone is interested). Via Goanet:





Goanet highlights by Selma Carvalho

One of the interesting discussion on Goanet has been about the word
“canecos”. The Portuguese used this word, often as a racial slur, for
Catholic Goans but opinions were divided as to its actual meaning.
Here are some of the more interesting viewpoints shared by Goanet
members.
Gabriel de Figueiredo:
http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-July/179875.html

Bernado Colaco:
http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-July/179941.html

Monica Reis of the Indo-Portuguese Art Research Project:
http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-July/179934.html

Con Menezes:
http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-July/180027.html

Although a consensus was not reached on its actual meaning, there is a
strong possibility that it is a corruption of the word “canarims,” the
old Portuguese word for people of the Konkan coast. The fact that in
Africa, only Catholic Goans were called “canecos” and not the
Africans, leads credence to this theory.

--

Victor Rangel-ribeiro

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Jun 4, 2024, 8:11:35 PMJun 4
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Selma, I was a child in Goa in the 1920s and 1930s when the phrase was being used, to denote someone who did not quite belong, an outcast, but it had nothing to do with caste. Hope this helps.

Warmest regards,
Victor








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Pedro Mascarenhas

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Jun 5, 2024, 10:59:56 AMJun 5
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Dear Selma

On social media (blogs, forums, private conversations in restaurants, etc.) António Costa, former prime minister, was called  " caneco", "monhé", "chamuça", or even "black".
Before Mozambique's independence, racist Portuguese settlers used the word canecos as a racial slur for Goans. The word means a mug or  top-hat. 
An 80-year-old Goan told me years ago that the word was first used in the city of Beira (Mozambique) at the church door before a wedding: A goan guest who put his top-hat on his head upside down. He was the object of laughter and they said to him - Você parece um caneco,  You look like a mug. Whether it was a joke or not, no one could confirm it for me.


 

Tino de Sa

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Jun 5, 2024, 11:00:28 AMJun 5
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I think that 'caneco' arose from the fact that Goan Catholics, in spite of having adopted Portuguese ways in many respects, chose to ignore the use of toilet paper and preferred to use mugs of water to clean themselves.
The Portuguese found this amusing - people wearing western clothes, speaking Portuguese, culturally Portuguese in many ways - but using mugs of water after they defecated.
Hence the derogatory nickname.
Tino

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CAMCR53%2BW_ffQ4Ha-wTU-tgg2WzNdjHNJ6111o-C0KPJembgaig%40mail.gmail.com.


--
Dr. Anthony de Sa, IAS (Retd), PhD, FRICS, MPA (Harvard)
Former Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh,
Former Chairman, MP Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA)
Mobile (WhatsApp): +91-9810981818
         tino...@gmail.com

Sonia Gomes

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Jun 5, 2024, 12:56:22 PMJun 5
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Thank you very much Tino. For years my Aunt who was in Liceu was insulted by the mestico boys. They said, ' bonita esta caneca' because she was beautiful. She never knew the meaning. In fact no one did. This is brilliant and fits in. Thank you very much.


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Nuno Cardoso da Silva

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Jun 5, 2024, 12:56:43 PMJun 5
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Pedro,
 
Ninety nine percent of the Portuguese people took it as perfectly normal for a rather dark skinned son of a well known Goan to be Prime Minister of Portugal. But you prefer to draw the attention to the very few instances in which some idiots used slurs when referring to António Costa. Why am I not surprised?...And you also forgot to mention that while António Costa was Prime Minister, three other Goans held cabinet posts...
 
With my kindest regards
 
Nuno
 
 
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2024 at 11:34 AM
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To: "'Carvalho' via Goa-Research-Net" <goa-rese...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [GRN] Caneco does anyone know what this translates to

Carvalho

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Jun 5, 2024, 12:58:58 PMJun 5
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Thank you everyone who responded. Once again, we have not arrived at a definite etymology for this racial slur. Like many words that were used for us, this one is lost to history. Even the exhaustive internet cannot throw up a plausible etymology. The word 'mug' in English is used derogatorily for someone who is dumb. Perhaps, the answer lies in that direction. But alas, we cannot speculate on such flimsy evidence.

Take care,
selma

Victor Rangel-ribeiro

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Jun 5, 2024, 7:42:06 PMJun 5
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Dear Sonia, I was growing up in Goa in those days, and do not agree that the term 'caneco' was used by the Portuguese to identify a class of people who washed their posteriors after defecating; it was just a racist slur. The mixed race mestizo boys were as racist in Portuguese-held Goa as the Anglo-Indians were in "British India". Attitudes changed after Independence, but they changed very very slowly.

Warmest regards,
Victor

John de Figueiredo

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Jun 5, 2024, 8:37:56 PMJun 5
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Victor,
“The mixed-race mestizo boys were… racist in Portuguese-held Goa”
Do you believe that the so-called “mestizos” (with all due respect, I consider this a racist term, hence the quotation marks)were racists throughout the 451 years of Portuguese rule in Goa?
JM de Figueiredo 
Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 5, 2024, at 7:42 PM, 'Victor Rangel-ribeiro' via Goa-Research-Net <goa-rese...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Tony Gomes

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Jun 6, 2024, 7:58:50 AMJun 6
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I lived in Goa (in Aldona & Loutolim), and in Panjim during my Lyceum days. At the external Lyceum of Matmo, I had several Portuguese soldiers as classmates as well as mestizos. I don’t remember any Portuguese soldier/officer and mestizo using the word ‘caneco’ in reference to a Goan. Moreover, as guest speaker, I have lectured at several conferences in Lisbon, and more recently at the University of Lisbon. The Portuguese always teated me as one of them even showing more deference to me than to the invited doctor speakers from England, Germany and Sweden. I’m sure others in this group might have had a different experience. Tony (Anthony Gomes)

Sonia Gomes

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Jun 6, 2024, 7:59:04 AMJun 6
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Vitor and Dr. Figueiredo, my account is purely hearsay. My aunt Elsa da Rocha, who was in the Liceu much before the Liberation narrated the following. She said, that there were the Portuguese as well as the Mesticos studying in the Liceu. In fact I do remember she saying that the Mesticos came to the Liceu( building) solely to create 'confusoes'. Now every time the Mesticos saw the girls from the Liceu they shouted out, Canecas. Oi Canecas. They called out to my aunt, esta caneca e bonita, because my aunt was beautiful. I remember asking her what is a caneca. She replied she did not know why they were called canecas, which literally means a jug like receptacle. She never could figure why the Mesticos called them canecas. Now Tino de Sa's explanation fits in perfectly. My aunt also mentioned ' os rapazes Mesticos eram ameceadores'. I have no clue, neither did my aunt, where canecas could be fitted, racist, casteist or some other. Thank you. Sonia


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wrdsilva

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Jun 6, 2024, 7:59:19 AMJun 6
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The term race (Rasse, le race etc.) was not in common parlance in early Spanish-Portuguese colonisation. The frame of thought was Catholic, Roman Catholic, to be precise, and based on Christianus-Paganus, Christian and Pagan, where pagus (Latin) meant village in Latin, payee in French, Heath in English and Heide in German. So, you have pagan, payee, heathen and die Heiden in contrast to Christian (Roman Catholic). The absence of soul in the dark-skinned was the cause of discrimination and colonising domination, and enslavement. After the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the onset of the so-called Age of Reason, race and its European equivalents became perspectives of discrimination and domination, and also enslavement. The Portuguese trilogy was: casticos, mesticos and nativos. These were the castas, from castus, casta, castum (in Latin) which meant chaste, pure. Casti connubii meant chaste married or pure married couple. Casa was house, casado was married man, and cazar meant marriage which is the same in Sanskrit: grha, grhasta etc. Both were male-dominated expressions. Women were 'given' in marriage, that is, change of place of residence by the ritual of giving away the virgin or kanya. ,
This was appropriated into French, caste, and English. In this way, India became a caste society with a hierarchy of pure-impure castes. The hierarchy was Indian, the word or term, Portuguese, French and English. It remains so. Like this term formation came a variety of terms, caneco was one of them, a cup, a mug etc. and was used to distinguish the castico from the nativo, and the mestico went along with the castico in contrast to the nativos. They were bottom-washing with mugs, but the Portuguese were no less bottom-washing with mugs, because toilet paper did not exist then. Even Romans and Roman soldiers were bottom-washing people. Water flowed in the public toilets of the Roman Empire. We need to check the use of the word caneco in a pejorative sense on a time scale, not early but late Portuguese rule, when enough mestico were around to create a discriminatory grouping with the caneco habit. And so on.
William Robert Da Silva

albe...@sapo.pt

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Jun 6, 2024, 7:59:27 AMJun 6
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Mestiços,  also called, mulatos ou descendentes , etc. were racist towards the natives (browns).The Portuguese invented the expression mestiço. The mestiço said that Konkani was the language of the servants (concani era a língua dos criados). There was a sort of hierarchy in colonial Goa: 1st white settlers, 2nd mestiços, 3rd Christians and 4th Hindus.

 Alberto

 

----- Mensagem de John de Figueiredo <john...@sbcglobal.net> ---------
Data: Wed, 5 Jun 2024 20:03:33 -0400
De: John de Figueiredo <john...@sbcglobal.net>
Assunto: Re: [GRN] Caneco does anyone know what this translates to

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