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Um trabalho DIVERGENTE

A work by DIVERGENTE

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This is a report divided into four chapters, which is the result
of an investigation that ran from 2016 to 2021.

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During the colonial war, Portugal recruited one million four

hundred thousand people to fight in its territories of Mozambique,

Angola and Guinea.

One third of these soldiers were African,

the majority of whom were black.

Portuguese Guinea was the only one of the three colonies to have

special troops comprised solely of black Africans. It was also the

territory where these men suffered the worst persecution after

1974. At the time, African commandos became the target of

persecution, imprisonment and executions.

Portugal only managed to remain in Africa until 1974 because thousands of Africans were drafted into the Army. The colonial State pushed these men into the army, at the same time as luring them in with promises of a better life.

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The Guinean section of Companies of African Commandos started to form in 1970. These companies were the only elite troop of the Portuguese Army entirely composed of black soldiers. Men who took the lead in the most difficult operations and in whom the military chiefs trusted blindly.

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After the Portuguese revolution on 25 April 1974, the Portuguese Guinean section of the African Commandos were the main victims of a boiling pot of political and social tensions. Portugal left them behind. The PAIGC saw them as a threat, accused them of treason and hunted them down, often killing them.

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When Salazar’s dictatorship ended, Portugal exited its occupied territories in Africa and stopped presenting itself as a multiracial nation. Nearly 50 years later, Africans who fought in the Portuguese Army are still fighting for their rights: they want their Portuguese nationality reinstated and demand that the State pay their death in action, retirement and disability pensions.

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