“Colonial propaganda was increasingly raising the visibility of African combatants in the Portuguese Armed Forces and their heroic virtues, it publicly promoted and praised them on many occasions. The Portuguese press, in presenting African combatants as having the absolute confidence of the Armed Forces and the Portuguese State, and in characterizing them as disciplined, courageous, obedient soldiers, who demonstrated great dedication to their superiors, being loyal and showing solidarity with their colleagues in arms [...] renewed arguments to demand and legitimize African domination.”
Luís Nuno Rodrigues in the book "Spínola"
“No one will
understand
that name”
João Séco Mané only found out he was called João on his first day of school. His mother was still pregnant when she received the message from the colonial administration: “As soon as the child is born, your husband must come here to register them.”
Source:
“Sarmento Rodrigues, a Guiné e o luso-tropicalismo”, António E. Duarte Silva
He was born on a Wednesday, on 29 January 1948 in Nova Lamego (now the city of Gabu), in eastern Guinea-Bissau. At the time, the first winds of Portuguese development had started to blow across the then colony: roads were being built, bridges erected, and conversations about health, education and sanitation had begun.
As ordered, Bolom Mané went down to the civil registry to announce the birth of his son. He was received by a Portuguese official who, now well-versed in the process, started to complain—“this name won’t do, no one will understand it”—and quickly chose an alternative. João was the name luck bestowed on him; at home he was always just Séco Mané. This was the first of many rules that he would have to follow to be Portuguese.
João Séco Mané
Lance-corporal
Portuguese Guinean section
of the African Commandos,
1st Company
“My father told me this story. He told me that the registry stuff started practically at the same time as I was born. Nearly everyone in my generation has a Portuguese name. They got it into our heads that we had to change our name; they chose them, it was forced on us.”
Séco Mané was 15 when the Party for the Independence of Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) attacked the Tite barracks in January 1963. This event would go down in history as marking the beginning of the war in Portuguese Guinea. The conflict, which one side called the “War of Independence” and the other called the “Colonial War”, split his life in two. His father was detained in September 1965 by the International Police for State Defence (PIDE) – accused of conniving with the “terrorists”, allowing them to take food from the family vegetable plot; they took him to the island of Galinhas, an open-air prison, where they tortured and beat him. His mother, with four children in tow and another still in the womb, was taken to the bush by the PAIGC guerilla. Some on one side, others on the other, all hostages against their will. Séco Mané and his brother Boquindi Mané were stuck in the middle, forced to join the army. Now military, Boquindi had to be Joaquim. At the time, neither brother imagined that ten years would pass before they saw their mother or siblings again.
João Séco Mané
Lance-corporal
Portuguese Guinean section
of the African Commandos,
1st Company
“I should have joined the army in 1967, but so many things made me angry, I didn’t want to… They sent urgent calls for me to speak with them and published my name in that military census book. On 26 August 1970, they called me up for the military inspection: the doctors checked us over, naked as the day we were born and told us to pick some balls which would decide our future troop number. I picked number 590, which is still my number today.”
The indignation that João Séco Mané had not felt when he had his name forced on him was now sown and, as he entered adult life, became impossible to hide.
For the first half of the 20th century, the recruitment of Africans into the Portuguese Armed Forces was an ad hoc affair. However, as many territories began to break free from the European empires, Portugal knew that the same fate could come knocking on their door. It knew that, sooner or later, they would need more men in the army, and so imposed military conscription on the “indigenous”.
In order for Portugal to maintain control, it was necessary that those born in Africa followed the rules of the colonial project. To this end, the Portuguese government passed the Indigenous Statute in 1954. The document divided Guineans, Mozambicans and Angolans between the “non-civilized” and the “civilized” and allowed the latter to obtain Portuguese citizenship as long as they knew how to read and write, had sufficient income to cover the family’s needs and demonstrated good behaviour. http://link
A smoke and mirrors stunt that would keep the majority of black people from gaining citizenship until the end of the Portuguese Dictatorship in 1974. http://link
Source:
“African Troops in the Portuguese Colonial Army, 1961-1974:
Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique”, João Paulo Borges Coelho
The mission to colonize
The mission to colonize
Sources:
“Sarmento Rodrigues, a Guiné e o luso-tropicalismo”, António E. Duarte Silva
“O modo português de estar no mundo: o luso-tropicalismo e a ideologia colonial
portuguesa (1933-1961)”, Cláudia Castelo
Over the course of the Cold War, a growing wave of international pressure, led by both the Soviet Union and the United States, forced Portugal to grant self-determination to African peoples in the territories it occupied.
In this climate, the Portuguese state invested a large amount of effort developing an ideological narrative that projected an image of an inclusive empire. In parallel, the Portuguese State revoked the Colonial Act and enacted a legal and political reversal that culminated, in 1961, in the end of the Indigenous Statute. Since then, all those born in the overseas provinces would be able to register themselves as Portuguese citizens.
The mission to colonize
Colonial Act [1930 -1951]
This is the first constitutional document of the Estado Novo.
It applies to all Portuguese territories outside Europe and defines the African colonies and their governance as part of Portugal.
It distinguishes the black population of Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea as “assimilated” or “not assimilated”.
The mission to colonize
Overseas territories organic law [1953]
The term “assimilated” is removed.
The colonies are now called overseas provinces.
Overseas provinces are given administrative and financial autonomy.
The Colonies Ministry is renamed the Overseas Provinces Ministry.
Portuguese Guinea is renamed the Overseas Province of Guinea.
The mission to colonize
Indigenous Statute [1954]
Defines the rights and obligations of the population in Portuguese colonies.
Maintains a distinction between “civilized” and “uncivilized” black people.
“Civilized” black people are now able to access Portuguese citizenship.
The mission to colonize
Decree-Law No. 43893 [1961]
Revokes the Indigenous Statute and abandons the distinction between “civilized” and “uncivilized” black people.
Recognizes the “local customs and uses” of the overseas provinces.
Joaquim Boquindi Mané
Lance-corporal
Portuguese Guinean section
of the African Commandos,
1st Company
“The PAIGC was in the bush and we joined the Portuguese, we were the children who were forced into the army. Us, the blacks, had to do three years. The whites did two years and then got out. And if they gave us a stripe, we had to stay five years.”
Obligatory military service
Obligatory military service
From 1937 it was obligatory for all men born in or naturalized to continental Portugal to perform military service. In the cases of the Portuguese from overseas territories, this obligation was imposed from 1953. From that date, Portuguese men aged 18 or over who were born in Africa were forced to join the Portuguese Armed Forces.
Obligatory military service
Law on the recruitment and military service in continental Portugal (1937)
Obligatory military service
Law on recruitment and military service in Portuguese overseas provinces (1953)
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“When you are born
into someone’s care,
you believe everything
this person says, right?”
Unlike Angola and Mozambique, where many Portuguese sought refuge, fleeing the misery and narrowmindedness of the Salazar dictatorship in continental Portugal, Portuguese Guinea was not a settlement colony, and was always considered a less important territory. Only in the 1960s, with the posting of troops for the war, did Guineans start to have contact with white Portuguese en masse. http://link
Up to then, Cape Verdean state workers were the principal face of the tyrannical state. It was they who enacted the corporal punishments and enforced the payment of taxes, sent by the regime to enforce the empire’s plans.
Sources:
“História da Guiné: portugueses e africanos na Senegâmbia (1841–1936)”,
René Pélissier
“A formação da elite política na Guiné-Bissau”, Carlos Cardoso
The colony of another colony
The colony of another colony
Sources:
“O meu testemunho: uma luta, um partido, dois países”,
Aristides Pereira
“A formação da elite política na Guiné-Bissau”,
Carlos Cardoso
From the beginning of the 1400s and for more than three centuries, Portuguese involvement on the western coast of Africa was limited to commercial activities, of which the trafficking of enslaved people was a large part. To 1879, the territory now known as Guinea-Bissau was called “Guinea of Cape Verde” and was governed from the archipelago, with the vast majority of state workers who represented Portugal being Cape Verdeans.
The colony of another colony
Galé Jaló
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section
of the African Commandos,
3rd Company
“I met Cabral when he was mapping Guinea [agricultural census], he lived here in Quebo. He had a three-wheeled motorbike, we chased after him on our bikes. What happened before he went to the bush, I don’t know, I just heard that the war had started. I really didn’t know what Cabral’s objective was. I couldn’t read, at the time I was a marabout’s apprentice, I didn’t go to school. We didn’t know what was going to happen: what you don’t see, you don’t know.”
When, in 1952, Amílcar Cabral, who would in time become the leader for Guinean and Cape Verdean independence, returned to Portuguese Guinea—this time as an official for the Overseas Provinces Ministry—, 20 years had passed since he had stepped foot on the land of his birth. Twenty years since his whole family had moved from Bafatá, where his father Juvenal Cabral worked as a teacher, to the isle of Santiago, in Cape Verde, where he was originally from.
Aristides Pereira
Leader of the PAIGC after the death of Amílcar Cabral
“In Bissau, at 6pm, there was this whistle to remind native workers carrying out any job in the city that they had to leave the area. (…) And we, the others, also black, were considered civilized. There was this distinction that was created by the colonialist power. If we look at it this way, however we feel, any Guinean had to see me as a guy who sold out to the colonial power because I was in the whites’ area. And only after being there, only after a long time, only really after the beginnings of the emancipatory movements in former colonies, did indigenous Guineans get a shot at becoming “civilized”, because that possibility didn’t exist before. Bissau was just the Amura fort and those little houses that today surround old Bissau. The rest was Chão de Papel, called the indigenous area at the time.”
"O meu testemunho: uma luta, um partido, dois países", Aristides Pereira
Amílcar Cabral was, for this reason, a stranger to the majority of Guineans when the PAIGC announced the beginning of the armed conflict and made the union between Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea a starting condition in the struggle for the self-determination of their peoples.
Sources:
“Amílcar Cabral, ensaio de biografia política”, Mário de Andrade
“Unidade e luta II: a prática revolucionária”, Amílcar Cabral
Like tightrope walkers on the high wire, Guineans tried to keep their balance at the epicentre of the crossfire. The side on which they fell depended more on where they were pushed than any political or ideological choice. Luck guided their destinies, and survival depended, to a large extent, on the resignation with which they accepted this fate. The line that separated the two sides was porous.
The path to the struggle for independence
The path to the struggle for independence
Sources:
“Guiné-Bissau: a causa do nacionalismo e a fundação do PAIGC” e “Sarmento Rodrigues, a Guiné e o luso-tropicalismo”,
António E. Duarte Rodrigues
“3 de agosto de 1959: Massacre de Pidjiguiti, Bissau”, Sílvia Roque
In the 1950s, there was an apparent acceptance of the colonial presence in Portuguese Guinea. The first signs of political and social upheaval came with the creation of the Guinean Socialist Party, in 1947, and of the Movement for the National Independence of Guinea (MING), in 1955. But the event that most clearly signalled the desire for freedom from the colonial regime wouldn’t happen until a decade later: on 3 August 1959, the workers of Pindjiguiti Port, in Bissau, held a strike to demand better wages. The Portuguese administration repressed the action, which culminated in 50 deaths and nearly 100 injured.
The path to the struggle for independence
Source:
“Da embriologia nacionalista à guerra de libertação na Guiné-Bissau”, Leopoldo Amado
The facade of apparent calm was forever threatened and various groups started to demand independence in Portuguese Guinea, or its integration into the Lusophone community. In 1961, when Amílcar Cabral formerly registered the PAIGC (originally called the Guinean and Cape Verdean Liberation Front – PAI), there were already at least nine political organizations fighting Portuguese colonialism in the territory. Among the leaders was François Mendy, of the Guinean Liberation Movement (MLG), who wanted independence for Guineans and accused supporters of the Cabral party of wanting to control them.
The path to the struggle for independence
Sources:
“Unidade e luta I: a arma da teoria” e “Unidade e luta II: a práctica revolucionária”,
Amílcar Cabral
Amílcar Cabral only saw the reality of the Guinean people up close when the Colonial State hired him as an agronomy engineer, to undertake the first agricultural census in Portuguese Guinea. He met people subjected “to the most violent exploitation of man by man”, “subject to the most monstrous national, social and cultural oppression”, “victims of a barbarous military and political repression”, which motivated the struggle that he would end up leading.
To do this, he sought out international support and, in the 1950s and 1960s, started on a true quest to denounce colonialism, which culminated in the United Nations refusing to recognize the overseas territories as part of the Portuguese nation, and applying a series of resolutions that condemned Portugal’s actions.
The path to the struggle for independence
Sources:
“O meu testemunho: uma luta, um partido, dois países”,
Aristides Pereira
“Africa’s quiet war: Portuguese Guinea”,
William Zartman
Only on 3 August 1961, pressured by the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA)—who considered recognizing MLG actions in the North of Portuguese Guinea as the beginning of the armed struggle—, did Amílcar Cabral add the “move to direct action” to their political activities. However, the start of the armed struggle wasn’t consolidated until January 1963, with the attack on the Tite barracks. “The most immediate threat to Portuguese colonialism in Africa” was now palpable.
The path to the struggle for independence
Source:
“Da embriologia nacionalista à guerra de libertação na Guiné-Bissau”,
Leopoldo Amado
The PAIGC strategy was, to the end, that of a guerrilla war influenced by the theories of other revolutionary wars, with troops based in bordering countries and at points within the Portuguese Guinean territory that were inaccessible to the Portuguese army.
The path to the struggle for independence
Sources:
“A formação da elite política na Guiné-Bissau”,
Carlos Cardoso
“O fazedor de utopias: uma biografia de Amílcar Cabral”,
António Tomás
With support from Sékou Touré, the leader of the independence movement in French Guinea, who would go on to rule the country as a dictator until 1984, all the PAIGC action was organized from the party offices in the capital Conakry. It was there, above all, that the barracks of Cape Verdeans who made up the decision-making leadership were located. By contrast on the battlefield, the guerrillas were nearly all Guineans. The struggle’s elite recruited their members from the lowest echelons of colonial society.
The former thought up the war, the latter fought it.
António de Spínola
Governor-General of Portuguese Guinea
“Regarding the situation on the field, it can be said that excluding the general population from guerrilla activities weakened and destabilized the movement. At the time we were ready to start using politics as a continuation of the war through other means. So we pushed the PAIGC into a position to force it to negotiate.”
In 1968, the father of Séco and Boquindi Mané was still captive when António de Spínola, shortly after having been named Governor-General of Portuguese Guinea, ordered the liberation of prisoners in Tarrafal (Cape Verde) and the island of Galinhas (Portuguese Guinea). The monocle-bearing general, who had also made a name for himself as the commander of the Cavalry Battalion number 345 in Angola, brought with him a desire for change and presented himself as the antidote of his predecessor, Arnaldo Schulz: he replaced the defensive strategy of repression and indiscriminate bombings with one of winning over the people, promising them better health, education, infrastructure and security. He wanted Guineans to cease to identify with the liberation movement cause and, to do this, promised them well-being and better living conditions. He called this plan, “For a better Guinea”, while Amílcar Cabral called it the policy of “smiles and blood”.
Sources:
“Spínola”, Luís Nuno Rodrigues
“Guerra Colonial”, Aniceto Afonso e Carlos de Matos Gomes
Mário Umarú Sani
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section
of the African Commandos,
1st Company
“He always knew what to say, he gave us courage during military training. We didn’t know we were being tricked, we were being mobilized. When you are born into someone’s care, you believe everything they say, right? We didn’t know the aims of the war, we just thought that the PAIGC was the aggressor. I only came to understand after independence.”
Mário Umarú Sani describes in detail the moment he saw Spínola for the first time. He had just injured his leg when the Governor came to visit the hospital. He told him to be brave, to defend the land, the flag; he even squeezed his hand—the same hand that, years later, would have its nails ripped from it as punishment for serving Portugal. Mário remembers a “great man” and a “politician with a great mind”. The governor and head of the Armed Forces supported a psychological war using propaganda, praising the “winning over of souls”, not through physical coercion but through persuasion.
Áreas controladas pelo PAIGC
Areas controlled by the PAIGC
The PAIGC already held more than half of the territory when Spínola was forced to lay his trust in the African troops and grant them more important roles in the army. These men were the glimmer Spínola found to counter the guerrilla group led by Amílcar Cabral, which was better prepared than he had foreseen, as well as to counter growing public opposition to the war—a population fed up with seeing children, husbands and parents killed far away. http://link
Between 1961 and 1973, the number of Africans within the Portuguese Armed Forces in Guinea rose from 4,736 to 32,035 men, troops’ wages were increased, training was strengthened and the combat units were reorganized. http://link
Source:
“Portugal e o Futuro”, António de Spínola
Luís Hernâni Quecói Turé
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section
of the African Commandos,
2nd Company
“If you had your uniform on, your weapon, they didn’t say you were with bad people, that you supported the PAIGC or that you were this or that.”
Aged just seven years, Luís Hernani Quecói Turé was taken to the militia and, like so many others, became part of the self-defence machinery of the city of Farim, where he lived. He was scared, of course, he was a child; but to refuse a State order was not an option he could even consider. After this he always fought on the side of Portugal. The day he swore on the flag, an oath for which he would later be treated like an animal and have his teeth pulled out, Quecói Turé met António de Spínola and confirms that one of his concerns was to protect people from the violence of war: “he didn’t want us to abuse anyone, to hurt the population, particularly children. If he saw you humiliating anyone, you’d get into trouble.”
When he accepted the role of governor, António de Spínola demanded an increase to the PIDE budget in Portuguese Guinea, which had been operating there since 1957.
He thought that having informers infiltrated at the heart of populations was essential, and the repressive nature of political police activities intensified greatly during his governance.
Source:
“Spínola”, Luís Nuno Rodrigues
So being colonized and waging war from the heart of the colonial army was far from being a free and voluntary choice: saying “no” meant you would be persecuted.
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“Back when
I was tricked,
my only job
was to play football”
Luís Sambu
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section
of the African Commandos,
1st Company
“I was a footballer, left winger for the Balantas team, we played against Benfica, Sporting, UDIB (International Sporting Union of Bissau), Canchungo… I played nearly up to the time I went to war. In the military, I had to stop football. When I was tricked, my job was as a footballer–to run 100 metres, keep physically fit. Spínola arrived in Portuguese Guinea before I joined the troops, it was him who created the African Commandos. The Portuguese on their own couldn’t do it anymore, they pitted blacks against blacks so the whites could stop fighting.”
Umarú Sani and Quecói Turé formed part of the group of more than 550 men who, between 1970 and 1974, constituted the three companies of Portuguese Guinea African commandos. One troop that became the first elite group in the history of the Portuguese Armed Forces comprised solely of black men. Sani was 21, Ture only 14 when they started to train to be commandos. Luís Sambu was also forced to join when, at 19 years, his life was a one-two between work and football. He wanted to be a professional player, but this dream was ripped from him – as “I was tough and strong” he was chosen for the troop.
Serifo Djau
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section
of the African Commandos,
2nd Company
“During military training, they would say to us, ‘Those who want to join the Commandos, raise your hand.’ After having sworn to protect the homeland, you started to receive word from the Commandos, the emblem, the beret and the dagger. But some did not complete the training, they were removed because of breathing or cough problems. A commando was hot blooded, but was always cold.”
Fernando Cabral
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section
of the African Commandos,
1st Company
“When I was called up, whether I wanted to or not, at that time, I had to go. The law said so. Some asked to join the Commandos, but not everyone. After finishing training, they asked who wanted to be a commando. I, at least, didn’t raise my hand. I wanted to be a civilian, I didn’t want to dedicate my life to war.”
The Commando uniform was a shield that protected these men from poverty, the difficulty of work in the fields, from exclusion… Even those who were forced, do not deny that they quickly got used to the privileges they received, in comparison with the majority of the black population. The steady income meant they could put food on the table, start to build a house, acquire belongings that would otherwise be beyond their reach. Spínola grew their sense of worth, made them believe that they were important, convinced them that they would be the future leaders of Portuguese Guinea, those who would govern the country after the defeat of the PAIGC. In an act of redemption, he also dedicated special words to the African Commandos before leaving Portuguese Guinea in August 1973:
“And while my words go out to everyone, no matter where you are from or what rank you fill, I am speaking especially to the European and African soldiers and sailors (…) I also speak to the Africans who finally found the path to true independence in justice, human dignity and worth, for which reason they decided to take up arms. And among you, I wish to single out the “African Commandos” who have been bathed in glory for defending the Portuguese “ground” of Guinea and its martyred inhabitants. I hope that your spirit will not falter in the struggle to build a fraternal Luso-African community, that will be built on the recognition by Guineans of their dignity as men and pride of their status as free citizens.”
António de Spínola
Source:
“Por uma portugalidade renovada”, António de Spínola
Portugal only clung to its presence in Africa until 1974 because it created a regular army that allowed the continental Portuguese troops to be replaced by local soldiers. At a time in which the Organization of the United Nations had already recognized the right to self-determination, these men helped the empire to convey an image of an integrated, multiracial nation—the face of “good colonialism” that permeates school textbooks even today.
The coercive and manipulative nature of the colonial regime pushed the Portuguese Guinea African Commandos into war. The promises made by António de Spínola led them to fight against those who fought to gain equal rights for these people.
In most cases, the Guineans within the Portuguese Armed Forces did not make an ideological choice—rather they were pushed there by circumstances and, to an extent, recognition. But the sweetness of the “sugar” that enticed them like bees would end up, years later, as the blood flowing over their bodies.
Por graficamente não ser possível a identificação individual de cada uma das imagens, enumeramos aqui a sua origem e cota.
As it is not possible to individually identify each of the images within the body of the work, we specify here , in order of appearance, the origin of each image and its reference number.
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