Abstract
This chapter expands upon the study of the symbolic functions of national heroes to consider the role of contemporary public figures and popular leaders in imaginings of nationhood and identity. It incorporates theories of charismatic leadership to analyse how popular leaders can become hero-figures by adapting their visual and discursive self-presentation to nationalist narratives, in order to be incorporated into popular imaginings as the personification of the national character. The chapter analyses the ways in which Xanana Gusmão, former Commander in Chief of the resistance movement and one of the most popular public figures in Timor-Leste, presents himself to the national community. By analysing the ways in which he is symbolically represented, it is possible to see how the symbolic capital he acquired from his role in the liberation struggle is drawn upon to legitimise his current position in national politics. Further, the case study of Xanana Gusmão affords insight into how a social hierarchy has been established in post-independence Timor-Leste, based on contributions to the liberation struggle, and how symbolic capital has remained in the hands of a select few resistance-era leaders since the return to independence.
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Notes
- 1.
‘A frente armada foi protagonizada pelas gloriosas Forças Armadas de Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste (FALINTIL), cuja gesta histórica cabe exalter’. Translation my own.
- 2.
The ‘veterans issue’ originating in disputes over state pensions and monetary compensation for their role in the struggle should be noted. For an overview, see ICG (2011).
- 3.
In 1981, Gusmão was elected the National Political Commissar, the president of the CRRN (the umbrella group for all factions of the resistance), and Commander in Chief of the Falintil (see Niner 2001, p. 20).
- 4.
It is noteworthy that Fanon critiques such leaders post-independence; ‘The leader pacifies the people […] he uses every means to put them [the national community] to sleep, and three or four times a year asks them to remember the colonial period and to look back on the long way they have come since then’ (Fanon 1965, pp. 135–36).
- 5.
Since he retired from the premiership in 2015 he has remained in charge of the party and continues to influence national politics, the most notable recent example being his key role in negotiating the signing of a maritime treaty between Timor-Leste and Australia over oil and gas reserve in the Timor Gap.
- 6.
For example in 2009, after a professional relationship fraught with tension, the then Deputy Prime Minister, Mário Carrascalão resigned from his position in Gusmão’s AMP-coalition government. Carrascalão stated that Xanana had made himself unavailable for standard consultation meetings, had ‘screamed’ at him during a meeting, and listed twenty-nine instances of corruption and bad governance (Shoesmith 2011b, p. 327). The charges were never taken further and Xanana continued in his premiership until he retired in 2015.
- 7.
This idea is aided by the fact that Xanana, like many other Falintil guerrillas, changed his name; common in other post-colonial states, the East Timorese warriors rejected their Portuguese names (for Xanana, this was José Alexandreu) in favour of their indigenous names (Kay Rala) as a sign of direct descent from the aswain warriors of old (Niner 2007, p. 113).
- 8.
For an outline of the history of the party and its ideological standpoint, see Shoesmith (2011a, pp. 21–23).
- 9.
See Chapter 6 for a fuller discussion of this.
- 10.
This issue of youth identification and the generation gap in post-independence Timor-Leste is discussed in further detail in Chapter 7.
- 11.
‘The young generation expresses its nationalist pride and sense of nation through the painting of murals with symbols of the resistance and images of its leaders. The artists make use of revolutionary iconography, using the images of Che Guevara […]. Some of the Falintil guerrillas, like Xanana Gusmão […] are represented with a similar appearance to global revolutionary icons’. This translation and all others in this chapter are my own.
- 12.
Examples of these messages, including the annual New Year’s addresses, can be found in Xanana Gusmão’s autobiography (see Gusmão 2000).
- 13.
The peaceful ideals and rhetoric shared by Xanana Gusmão and Nelson Mandela were highlighted by the international media by a meeting between the two in July 1997. After this meeting between the two leaders, it was reported that then-President Mandela viewed Xanana Gusmão as ‘one of the most impressive people he had ever met’ (Cristalis 2002, p. 105).
- 14.
Marcus Einfeld is an Australian former Federal Court Judge, and was an active advocate and supporter of the East Timorese pro-independence movement during the occupation.
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Arthur, C.E. (2019). ‘Big Brother Xanana’: The Cult of Personality and the Creation of a Contemporary National Hero. In: Political Symbols and National Identity in Timor-Leste. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98782-8_5
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