Rui Machete in Washington

During his first official visit to the United States, Rui Machete, the Portuguese Foreign Minister joined the American Secretary of State, John Kerry, in reaffirming the enduring friendship between our two countries.

Read their remarks before the meeting and watch the video.

John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry (Maria Teresa Thierstein Simões Ferreira) was born in Mozambique in 1938. Her parents were Portuguese. She married John Heinz III (the heir of The Heinz company) who died in a plane crash in 1991.They were both republicans.

In 1995 she married again with the former democratic senator John Kerry.

I heard Mrs. Kerry speak Portuguese fluently in Massachusetts in 2002 during O´Brien’s electoral campaign for the position of governor (at the time, the republican candidate, Mitt Romney, won the elections).

Two years later, Teresa Kerry also participated in her husband’s campaign for the Presidency of the United States (again a republican won the election: George W. Bush). Curiously, whenever the occasion for her to speak in Portuguese arises, such as in areas where the Portuguese community is large, she helps her husband and talks to locals. Unfortunately, though, she never, herself, assumes to be Portuguese and, perhaps, has some sort of prejudice against her origins. It’s a pity…

With that in mind, I was rather surprised when her husband said he was familiar with Portuguese at home, whilst the Portuguese Foreign Minister visited Washington...