Interviews with Constâncio Pinto

From 1975 to 1990s, before fax existed, what we used for communication purposes is just by mouth, letters, couriers. And for us, it was safe, too. For safety reason, we pass on letters from one to another. But of course, it takes time. And right after the fax machine came up, we tried to maximize our communication by using faxes.

I still have – I have a story about the fax thing. I never knew that there is something like that, a fax. A friend of mine, one day we were sitting, talking. And he came up to me and said, “You know, I just found out something. And this thing is just like a magic.” I had no idea what was it. He said, “You know, you just put a piece of paper into it, and the other guy on the other end of the world receive what you are sending.” So to me it was a magic thing. So why it is possible? And it turns out to be a fax machine.

And in Timor it’s not – not everybody has access to fax. The only place that you can go was the post office. So we have to make allies with people in the postal office. Put our people there, so they can send information out by night. But later on, then we have some churches has access to fax, and we use their fax.

And then we have the email. Email, it was a fantastic thing. So the moment things happen in Timor, in seconds or in minutes, we got information. And information is not only to one person, but it’s to the entire world. So that was a big leap in our ways of communication between our people in Timor-Leste and the diplomatic front. Because our resistance was divided into three fronts: the armed resistance, the underground resistance, and a diplomatic front. So in 1990s, after we had this email, we sent information quickly.

And also the telephone, the telephone was very useful at that time. Some people have access. Those who had money, they can have a phone at home and make phone calls at night. So that was how we communicate. But communication was very important for any movement, I think.

Constâncio Pinto is the ambassador of East Timor to the United States. Still a child when the Indonesian military occupied the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975, he fled to the mountains with his parents. The family remained in hiding for several years before returning to Dili, the capital, where Pinto attended high school and college. While still in school, Pinto became a leader of the underground movement for self-determination. In 1991 he was arrested, detained, and tortured for several days. The military authorities released him on the condition that he serve as an informant, but instead he escaped from Timor and eventually from Indonesia. After his escape, Ambassador Pinto studied at Brown University and served as the Timorese self-determination movement’s representative in the United States. He developed close working relationships with members of Congress and other U.S. human rights advocates and, when Timor achieved independence in 2002, he became a diplomat. He was appointed ambassador in 2009.