Portuguese Colonial Wars

Volume 1-Período de 1959 a 1973 De Cadete-Aluno, a partir de 1959, na Academia Militar e no Instituto Superior Técnico, ao regresso à Academia Militar, como Professor, em 1973. Incidência na comissão militar em Angola, de 1969 a 1971, com a Companhia de Engenharia 2580 Extracto do interior Diálogo com o Cor. Batalha, Inspector da Arma de Engenharia, em Santa Margarida e em Julho de1969, durante a formação da Companhia de Engenharia 2580. O Inspector chegou, viu o que queria ver, sem grandes insistências ou sobressaltos e, já no fim da manhã, viu o lema da Companhia inscrito no galhardete e leu-o "Rumos de Futuro" perguntando-me de seguida:-Então o que quer dizer este lema? O que é isto dos rumos do futuro? Eu respondi-lhe:-Bom, quer dizer que os de presente não levam a lado nenhum. Se não arranjamos uns diferentes para o futuro, não sei onde é que isto vai parar. Pareceu-me então que pretendeu de imediato verse livre daquela Companhia perigosa, pois deve ter tido a vaga sensação de poder parecer em conluio com o Inimigo, caso ali ficasse a debater aquele assunto.

Nos cancioneiros da guerra colonial portuguesa, o soldado e o país dizem as suas vivências de dor, angústia e perplexidade, matizadas, por vezes, de um patriotismo que é, acima de tudo, abnegação e resignação, mas também, nalguns momentos, contestação irónica e vontade de mudança. Para a comunidade em geral, a poesia era mais do que ideologia. Num mundo em ruínas, era uma das raras liberdades individuais e coletivas, um dos raros lugares de alguma pacificação e salvação. O Estado Novo, pelo contrário, exalta e promove a capacidade de sofrimento físico e espiritual do soldado português e do povo. A cosmovisão oficial tem de contaminar a experiência pessoal. Daí os discursos e as composições que cantam o heroísmo, o sacrifício e a morte em combate.

In the songbooks of Portuguese colonial war, the soldier and the people say their experiences of pain, anguish and perplexity, nuanced, sometimes a patriotism which is, above all, self-denial and resignation, but also, in some moments, ironic and contestation willingness to change. For them, poetry was more than ideology. In a world in ruins, was a rare individual and collective freedoms, one of the rare places in some peace and salvation. The New State, by contrast, celebrates and promotes the ability of physical and spiritual suffering of the soldier and the Portuguese people. The official worldview has to contaminate personal experience. Hence the speeches and the singing compositions heroism, sacrifice and death in combat.

Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die deutsch-portugiesischen Beziehungen zur Zeit des Krieges in Afrika. Die Analyse konzentriert sich auf die politische, militärische und wirtschaftliche Kooperation zwischen den Regierungen in Bonn und Lissabon und zeigt anhand der portugiesischen Kolonie Angola, welche fundamentale Bedeutung die deutsche Hilfe für Portugals Kolonialkrieg in Afrika hatte.

The violent decolonization of Portugal’s colonial empire in Africa was not fought on the battlefields of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea‑Bissau alone. An important part of the African liberation movements’ struggle was the search for political and material support, which they received from independent African countries, socialist states and numerous non‑state actors in the West. As part of a broader wave of internationalism, a solidarity movement in support of the liberation movements in Portugal’s African colonies emerged in West Germany as well. This was partially a response to the West German governments’ close cooperation with the Estado Novo regime (Salazar’s New State) in Lisbon. This article gives an overview of the development and participants of West Germany’s solidarity groups and their activities during the 1960s and early 1970s.

A PARTIR DE DOIS TEXTOS, UM DE MILITARES DO EXÉRCITO COLONIAL PORTUGUÊS E O OUTRO DE MILITANTES/GUERILHEIROS DA FRELIMO, NOTA -SE A TENSÃO ENTRE AS NARRATIVAS E MODELOS DO ESTADO E AS APROPRIAÇÕES DOS SUJEITOS QUE SUBVERTEM A ORDEM ESTABELECIDA. NOS DOIS CASOS SEREMOS CONFRONTADOS COM A IRRUPÇÃO DE DESVIOS NUM TECIDO SOCIAL E ESTÉTICO QUE SE CONSIDERAVA HOMOGÉNEO E SEM FALHAS. TEREMOS ASSIM UM PROCESO POLÍTICO ONDE SE VÊM CRUZAR TRÊS DIMENSÕES INTERLIGADAS ENTRE SI: A ANTROPOLÓGICA (CONHECIMENTO-DESCONHECIMENTO DO OUTRO), A SÓCIO-AFETIVA (IDENTIFICAÇÃO-DESIDENTIFICAÇÃO, CRIAÇÃO-RUPTURA DE LAÇOS DE PERTENÇA A UMA COMUNIDADE) E A ESTÉTICA (DINÂMICAS PERFORMATIVAS DE APROPRIAÇÃO, RESCRITA PARÓDICA).

In: (Re)imagining African Independence : Film, Visual Arts and the Fall of the Portuguese Empire / Eds. Piçarra, Maria do Carmo; Castro, Teresa. Oxford : Peter Lang, 2017. (Reconfiguring Identities in the Portuguese-Speaking World ; 8). 87-107. ISBN 978-1-78707-318-0

Havia indícios de que se preparava um levantamento, mas ninguém esperava tamanha violência. Os relatos de uma sublevação de cariz tribal dão conta de barbaridades indescritíveis. O “15 de Março” prolonga-se até Outubro, já depois do “rapidamente e em força” proclamado por Salazar

KEY WORDS: Music and war morality; Combat Moral; Psychological Action; Music and memory; Music as world connection; Portuguese Colonial War; War of Africa; Cabinda 1970-1974
Between 1970 and 1974 the music was used experimentally in the psychological action of the Portuguese Colonial War in the Enclave of Cabinda, north of Angola, as a way to stimulate the morale of the troops. The present ethnomusicological study stems from the analysis of interviews with a group of ex-combatants selected from a battalion of the Portuguese army and official military and civil documents related to this period in Cabinda: reports and letters from government and military personnel, films, photos and phonograms among others, support the analysis developed. The field work carried out between 2012 and 2014 paid attention to the way in which memory acted in the reconstruction of information about past experiences in the group in question. From the ex-combatants selected, the diversity of patents and functions, from furriel to lieutenant-general, from the head of the inaugural service of psychological action to the operation of radio communications, through entertainment and animation, ensures in this study a view considered very representative in this research. Future studies will be able to gather in the information presented here, original, that thus becomes available for the development of a field of investigation that is only still in initial stage.

This book explores the lived memory of the Portuguese colonial war (1961-1974) through the analysis of thirty-six oral history interviews with ex-combatants of this conflict. The meanings that the combatants attributed to their war experiences then and now are the book’s analytical focus. This project seeks to answer the following questions: how has the public memory of this colonial conflict developed in Portugal from 1974 to approximately 2010? what issues does an oral historian encounter when conducting interviews with veterans on a past that remains traumatic for many? what were – and are – the most significant aspects of the war experience and its aftermath for the veterans? how do the veterans perceive their group identity and their historical situation? and what innovative perspectives does oral history offer to the historiography of the Portuguese colonial war?

Keywords:

Explore public memory after war
Provides a methodological approach to interviewing war combatants
Explores war trauma in history and memory, analyzing discrepancies between recollection and records

This article focuses on two letters written by Farallahi (Farelay in Portuguese sources), the leader of the resistance against the Portuguese military campaigns of the ‘effective occupation’ at the end of the nineteenth century. The letters were found at the Mozambique Historical Archives in Maputo, and were written in KiSwahili language using Arabic script They allow us “to hear the voice” of Farallahi in the first person and reflect two periods in his life as a person and a leader of the resistance: the first dated 1894 illustrates his firmness and high socio-economic standing before the ‘effective occupation’ when he still imposed his power and will both on Africans and the Portuguese; the second letter, dated 1900, shows the decrease of his power as a result of Portuguese domination and expansion, whereby Farallahi is forced to plead for the release of his wife captured by the Portuguese in the town of Antonio Ennes (also known as Parapato, the current city of Angoche).