The mother of one of APEMIP’s delegation members, that accompanied me is this visit to Brazil, from where I write this article, that lady of respectable age, when knew that one of the stages of this journey was to be spent in city of S. Paulo, asked her son if it was possible for someone to miss a city where never has been.
This question, told me her son, had a ‘raison d’être’. That lady of respectable age, once yearned for a letter from some family members that had emigrated to S. Paulo, where were making fortune. In those days, to search for luck in Brazil, it was mandatory to receive a ‘call letter’, a key element of the Portuguese emigration that was theme of songs, as the one of the poet Luis Veiga Leitão, “leave your small horizons// and come with me, my brother and my friend//, come and see, at least//, the sea that I bring with me.”
Today, in Brazil, presiding an APEMIP’s delegation in this ‘immense Portugal’, in the words of another great speaking Portuguese poet – Chico Buarque da Holanda -, I’m coordinating the necessary efforts to create an International Confederation that gathers Real Estate Associations of Portuguese speaking countries, in a sustainable diplomatic and economic action taken without any fashionable rush or urgency.
Today, in Brazil, I rediscover new ‘call letters’ and I almost dare to answer that respectable age lady, telling her that is possible to miss a city she never went to.
I’m in a Brazil that in terms of global economy is the natural choice for the new Portuguese business class; in a Brazil where are still people who see Portugal as a muse of a ‘Fado’ or of a tropical destiny; in a Brazil where, in specialists point of view, the crisis rain didn’t cause big floods, that registers growing levels that double the world-wide average and that is one of the world biggest biofuels exporters.
With the tourists arrival for the 2014 World Championship and for the 2016 Olympic Games, you can surely find us here in Brazil, with the strength of who has already answered to a new ‘call letter’.
Luis Carvalho Lima
APEMIP’s National Board President
The original article was published on 6th February, in Diário de Notícias Newspaper