“[…] We are soldiers, not politicians, united to ensure a dignified and fair end, in uniting the ideas of all our brothers, children of the same land, pitted against each other by a fascist-colonialist political regime. [...]
The Battalion of Commandos comprises the most experienced and well-trained African soldiers. The Battalion is an elite unit and a cornerstone for all African units, around which the remaining African force should unite [...]
We will not enter into dirty games with the ill-intentioned; they will be driven out should they try to create a climate of indecision, insecurity and distrust.
Immediate measures to be taken:
- Ensure our forces remain united at all times.
- Respect hierarchies to the greatest of discipline and mutual respect.
- Safeguard respect for our superiors and comrades.
- Intensify the training of all soldiers, strengthening a spirit of discipline and physical preparation.
- Punish any who disobey and those who break disciplinary rules.
- Abolish ethnic factors that could divide us.
We fear no one as long as we remain united, strong and disciplined, but we will respect all those who fought for the well-being and progress of the people.”
Esta é uma reportagem dividida
em quatro capítulos.
Se ainda não o fizeste,
começa por ler os anteriores.
This is a report divided
into four chapters.
If you haven’t already,
start from the beginning.
“They betrayed us,
that’s what”
As a child, lulled by the sound of the birds and the mysteries of the mangroves, Juldé Jaquité and his father used to roam the waters of the Cacine River, in the south of Guinea-Bissau. Together, aboard a wooden canoe, they would catch fish to sell at the market and to feed the whole family. After the “Spínola’s Coup” festivities ended, this childhood was a distant memory to Juldé— a past with no return. In the months following April 1974, he felt lost, tormented by his thoughts. Only cigarettes — one after another — seemed to bring him some peace.
Silence can invade in many forms: a river that flows without challenging the law of nature, the fear of someone holding their breath in hiding, a pent-up rage, accumulating year after year, denied a chance to explode. The army, the war, stole his youth from him. Could it be that, now, this limbo they called “peace” had come to rob him of his adult life too?
In September 1974, Juldé, an imposing man who the Portuguese Army made lance-corporal of the Commandos, left Bissau and fled to Senegal. He left full of uncertainty; he didn’t even really know why he wanted to disappear. He couldn’t get the night his wife’s ex-husband snuck over and knocked on his door to warn him out of his mind. “Juldé, leave Bissau and go to Senegal. I’m telling you this because you’ve been good to my children, I can’t betray you. I know the PAIGC [Party for the Independence of Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde] will kill all the Commandos, even the commissioned ones. You’ll all die.” Nearly 50 years later, Juldé swears he still remembers the minute details of this meeting:
“I told him I wasn’t going anywhere, that I had no reason to flee. He asked me not to tell anyone what he had told me, or they’d kill him. He got in his jeep and left. I sat down to smoke.”
Joaquim Boquindi Mané
Lance-corporal
Portuguese Guinean section of the African Commandos, 1st Company
“After the festivities came difficult times. They captured many Commandos, they said we were whites. Anyone who had fought on the whites’ side was punished. They called us colonizers, said that we had boasted about it and that, now, they were in charge. Many people said, ‘Leave us alone, the war is over now. The war made us enemies, but we are brothers now. Leave us alone.’”
On 8 October, the continental Commandos returned to Lisbon. Florindo Morais arrived in Bissau in June to replace Raul Folques as battalion leader. He remembers how, at the time, the African Commandos were still convinced that they would be the future “Colonels of Guinea-Bissau”. VIDEO
They believed the promises made to them, had faith in the hope these words had sown. Faith in a country that they hadn’t chosen, but for which they had sworn to die if necessary. The same country that now was preparing to leave them behind, abandoned to their fate, lost.
They refused to believe that the promises made by General Spínola — “the African Commandos will be the future leaders of Portuguese Guinea”, “Guinea for Guineans” — were nothing but empty words.
Sources:
“Spínola”, Luís Nuno Rodrigues
“Fim do Império – últimos meses de vida do Batalhão de Comandos da Guiné”, Florindo Morais, Mama Sume Magazine, n.º83
When the ceasefire was declared between the Portuguese Army and the PAIGC guerrilla, the African Commandos companies contained “some prestigious leaders”, with “significant military strength”. Therefore, they represented an “unknown to all the political forces interested in the Bissau-Guinean decolonialization process”, as described in the Portuguese Armed Forces summary of reports from August and September 1974.
In the view of the Portuguese government, an alliance between the Commandos and the PAIGC could hasten the Portuguese Army’s withdrawal, forcing the country to accept unfavourable conditions during the negotiations. In the view of the PAIGC, a possible alliance between the African Commandos and the opposing political forces represented a threat they wanted to avoid. Caught in the middle, were the men who swore they were “soldiers, not politicians”.
Glória Alves
2nd Commander of the Battalion of Portuguese Guinean Commandos after April 1974
“I was used to real fire, I never got used to smoke and mirrors. It was uncertainty. If I were to choose a word to describe those times, it was uncertainty. I never knew when they could come for me at home and put me up against a wall.”
Around this time, Juldé heard about a list collating the names of all those who wanted to go to Portugal. He went down to the 2nd Commander of the Commandos Battalion’s Office, determined to leave the only land he had ever known. This was the price he was willing to pay for his life. Glória Alves reassured him, “don’t worry, we are still collating the names of people who want to leave”.
Between May and August 1974, while negotiations between the Portuguese and the PAIGC to agree on the transfer of powers were underway, the “Commandos problem” was singled out as a key sticking point countless times.
During this time, the three companies remained armed. Only after 19 August, did they agree to hand over their belt, their boots, the uniform, badge and weapons. In return, the governor, Carlos Fabião offered them an advance of four months’ salary, telling them that they should report for duty to Quartel de Brá in Bissau on 1 January, 1975 at 8 am.
“They told us that we would be back to work in January… They betrayed us. There’s no other word for it,” Juldé states. “Betrayal” is the word that the Portuguese Guinean section of the African Commandos use time and again to describe what happened. After all this time, many still have the piece of paper, now yellowed and ragged with age — their proof of what happened.
Timeline of the negotiations
Timeline of the negotiations
Timeline of the negotiations
Timeline of the negotiations
Timeline of the negotiations
Bubacar Djaló
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section of the African Commandos, 2nd Company
“I know that some people were collecting names to mobilize men to oppose the new regime. They said they had weapons and they needed specialists from the Commandos, but I never saw those weapons. They contacted me when I was in Mansoa, but I wasn’t interested. They said that there were a group of PAIGC officers who wanted to revolt and who needed men to help them. They had a list of the mobilized men’s names. The list of names was collected by PAIGC members and some African Commandos officers. That was when the detentions started: anyone with their name on that piece of paper — their days were numbered and they knew it… There was discord within the PAIGC from the very beginning.”
Lamine Camará
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section of the African Commandos, 2nd Company
“The Portuguese Revolution on 25 April happened, but we didn’t know what it meant. Afterwards came the negotiations between the PAIGC and the Government… We were all supposed to go to Portugal, but our own superiors sold us out in those negotiations. The war was over, we should have come together, but it didn’t turn out like that. The PAIGC was on one side, they fought for the well-being of Guinea-Bissau; we fought for the well-being of the colonialists. I took all my documents into the bathroom, I flushed them away… They performed raids, knocked at the door, opened it, looked around, and if they saw you were a Commando, they took you away. If you were unlucky, they killed you; if you were lucky, you got out. We handed everything over to the Portuguese Army: socks, pants, uniform, boots, beret. They took everything. What else could they want from me?”
The Battalion’s 2nd Commander, Glória Alves, says that the African Commandos themselves took their names off the list to go to Portugal. Florindo Morais, 1st Commander of the group, confirms this. Despite that, neither of the two responsible can say for certain how it all happened. Did all these people with their name on the list really change their minds? Was anyone forcing this decision? What would have made these soldiers change their minds about wanting to go to Portugal? These questions remain unanswered. Even so, Florindo Morais makes an attempt to explain: “At the time, I came to Lisbon and I spoke with Almeida Bruno [major and 1st Commander of the Battalion of Portuguese Guinean Commandos] at Belem Palace. He told me to bring whomever I wanted. When I got back to Guinea, I told Glória Alves to open a list for those who wanted to sign up. A whole bunch of them did, but, at some point, General Fabião made a move: as the 1974 budget was approved, he offered Commandos their salaries to the end of the year up front, and they accepted release from active service then.”
Juldé Jaquité doesn’t know who “betrayed” him in this process, but he assures that “someone did”. He swears blind that he put his name down to leave for Portugal and that he never withdrew from the list. Bodies, formerly bursting with joy in celebration, slowly started to stiffen. A climate of tension replaced the euphoria, a buzzing cloud started to circulate and spread everywhere.
In September 1974, Portugal recognized Guinea-Bissau’s independence and withdrew from its territory two months later. Juldé Jaquité’s flight had only just begun. He would only catch the plane that took him from Dakar to Lisbon in 1981, five years after having managed to cross the northern Guinean border with Senegal. He survived; he still doesn’t know quite how. “It was luck, it was God” he says.
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“They broke me
in prison”
After the Armed Forces released him from active duty, Mário Sani started work as a taxi driver in Bissau. He remembers being happy on 25 April and when the Portuguese left: “Independence had arrived! I was free!”. Until 1976, his life was home to work, work to home. He knew that the more he kept his head down, the more likely he would be to escape prison, or escape being disappeared, like had happened to other Commandos, his colleagues. One day, fearing that his days were numbered, he decided to flee to Bafatá, a city in the east of Guinea-Bissau. He wanted to cross the border to Senegal.
“They got me on a Wednesday, around five thirty in the afternoon and brought me back. They asked me if I had been in the Commandos, I said yes. They took my shirt, pulled off my trousers, left me naked as the day I was born. They tied my hands behind my back and left me inside the bunker. They trampled me, smashed all my teeth, kicked me, tied me up with a rope as if they were hanging a dead animal. They broke me in prison. When they untied me, I was paralyzed—I couldn’t hold out my arms, I couldn’t walk. I was detained in Bissau for six months, then they took me to Caraxe.”
Caraxe is one of the Bijagós archipelago islands, used as an open-air prison. Mário was there until 1979, when a Cuban doctor helped him to escape.
Mário Sani
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section of the African Commandos, 1st Company
“I came back, uncertain. My younger brother told me I had nothing to worry about anymore and when I returned, I saw he was right. That photo on the wall… I look at it and remember the life I had. It’s sad. No one offers help. No one. I have no money, I’m ill. I’m here in the hope that one day Portugal will help me… But they won’t, I already gave up on that. If I were well, I’d work. But I can’t, I find it hard to walk, my hip is worn out. I can’t even lift a 10 kilo bucket, I’m so weak. I can’t.”
Since then he has never stopped running. Senegal, French Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, the African Commandos 1st Company soldier says he has travelled the whole of Western Africa, always on the run. He tells his story sat on the porch of the house where he was born in the city of Mansoa, his body withered. He is now a shadow of the young man in the photo hung on the living room wall – strong and with sharp eyes that hold the gaze of anyone who passes by. Mário only returned to Guinea-Bissau on 6 April 2006. His only son was 31 and the woman he had married over thirty years previously had another family.
Since then, he has lived alone in a house filled with two chairs, a mattress on the floor, and a photograph of his past youth. His voice breaks when he remembers that time: “How was I ever like that?”. Today, he has only one hope in life: “to return” to Portugal to be recognized as a soldier of the Army and to get the medical treatment he needs. He uses the word “return” because this was the country he was born into, despite never having stepped foot in Europe.
The Algerian Agreement was signed on 30 August 1974 and the transfer of powers from the Portuguese Government to the PAIGC was made official. The document guaranteed the reintegration of the “African forces” into civilian life in the new Guinea-Bissau, and states the responsibility of the Portuguese state to pay death in action, disability and retirement pensions of all those who fought in the Army. On 7 September of the same year, the Battalion of Commandos was deactivated and extinct. On 19 October 1974, the last members of the Portuguese delegation left Bissau.
As soon as there were signs the war was coming to a close, Luís Hernâni Quecói Turé returned to Farim, where he was born, to work the land. “If I stayed twiddling my thumbs, what would I eat?”, he asked himself. He hadn’t done anything wrong, he hadn’t committed any crime, he thought. Which is why he never thought to flee. Having fought on the losing side didn’t matter to him.
Luís Hernâni Quecói Turé
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section of the African Commandos, 2nd Company
“Yes, we lost the war. Was I happy? I was, because I didn’t lose an eye, my arms, or my legs. I went in whole and came out whole, which is amazing really. But weapons don’t end a war, only a pen can do that.”
One day, a man came over and asked him for help painting a car—“it was 7 March, I’ve forgotten the year”. As soon as he got in the vehicle, soldiers appeared and took him to prison, where he stayed for four days. Afterwards, they left him in a stone bunker and shut him in there for a year. They asked him who had mobilized him, if he was going to flee to Senegal, if he was in contact with other Commandos. He said “no” to everything. “Truthfully, I didn’t know anything. I had never thought of fleeing and leaving my mother and son behind, I couldn’t do that.”
Mamadu Camará
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section of the African Commandos, 1st Company
“The Commandos had to run. Those who weren’t caught, went to Senegal. If not, they caught us and killed us. I stayed driving taxis in Bissau. One day, I was at the Bandim market and someone said, ‘Burn his hair!’ They were going to burn all my hair. At the time I didn’t cut it, it was long and big. I stayed calm, I just let things wash over me. I knew that if I responded, I’d be the one to suffer. So I kept quiet. I put up with it because I had a family, a wife, children…”
Quecói Turé has scars from these months in captivity — from when they stubbed out cigarettes on his body — and the memory of the moment when he had to dig the hole in which they were going to bury him alive: “I finished the hole and stood in it. At the end of the afternoon, when it got dark, they said, ‘You can go home’.” He still doesn’t know why they let him go. With no rational explanation as to why, he looks to something beyond that: “It was God, it could only have been God”.
Lamarama Djaló
Lance-corporal
Portuguese Guinean section of the African Commandos, 2nd Company
“When we found out the war was over, we were happy, we all hugged like brothers. After 25 April, we were released from active duty and returned to our birth place, now the Republic of Guinea Bissau. Everyone who remained was Bissau-Guinean. We changed our ID card—from Portuguese to Guinean citizen—and everyone handed over their weapons. Only luck or God saved me from execution by firing squad. People were persecuted, I learned to identify the PAIGC, to recognize them.
Mamadu Camará
Soldier
Portuguese Guinean section of the African Commandos, 1st Company
“Those who only had experience in the guerrilla didn’t know what to do with a country, they don’t understand the administration. This is what caused us problems. They came and executed all the old Commando troops. It was a big mistake, they could have used these people for training. The PAIGC came from outside, they didn’t know how things worked here.”
The Commandos didn’t know they were accepting a radical break with the Portuguese Army when, in August, they accepted the advance of four months’ salary. The leave agreement they signed said that they should report to the barracks in January 1975 — which they did, but no one was there to receive them. Outraged, many Portuguese soldiers gathered outside the Portuguese Embassy in Bissau. “I knew, but I didn’t go. Why waste money going to Bissau? Better to buy some fish and eat it at home”, says Galé Jaló, soldier from the 1st Company. Lamine Camará, soldier from the 2nd Company, remembers the events as “brutal”: “They deployed police and troops to get rid of us. They beat us right in front of the embassy.” Months later, the summary executions started.
What is known for certain is that at least 54 African Commandos, the majority Lieutenants, Sergeants, Lance-Corporals and Second Lieutenants many of them commissioned, were murdered in the bush in Cumeré, Portogole, Mansoa and Bambadinca, up to 1979. However, the stories heard all over Guinea-Bissau indicate a much higher number. Today, many people know of mass graves where the bodies of sepoys, village leaders and soldiers from various companies of the Portuguese Army were buried.
Sources:
“Guerra, paz e fuzilamento dos guerreiros”, Manuel Amaro Bernardo
Documents from the personal archive of Raul Folques, Colonel from the portuguese Army
Traitors crushed
Traitors crushed
In the aftermath of the coup attempt headed by António de Spínola on 11 March 1975, the Bissau Guinean newspaper Nô Pintcha headlines read “Traitors and enemies of the people crushed”. It reported a “sinister conspiration” that planned “acts of terrorism” and aimed to “physically annihilate” elements of the PAIGC. It also reported the detention of eight African commandos: Zacarias Saiegh, Adramane Cisseko, Justo Nascimento, Tomás Camará, Sicre Marques Vieira, Aliu Queta and Paulo Rodrigues. We now know that Paulo Rodrigues was the only one of those eight not to be executed.
Traitors crushed
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“I couldn’t be scared,
because my husband
was there”
Malam Samá left Bissau like Quecói Turé and returned to Farim. Captured on the same day, both of them were taken to an underground bunker where they tell stories of beatings, torture and of men killed by asphyxiation. At the time, Malam’s wife was pregnant with their first child. They had married when the “war was still raging” and, despite the marriage having been a family-arranged union, Aminata Sani remembers having liked “her man” from the first time she saw him. “When I saw him, I liked what I saw. Now he’s old, but he was a looker in his time.”
Shortly after their baby’s birth, Aminata took him to the prison so that father and son could see, touch, smell each other… Malam held the boy in his arms and just stayed there for a long time. The possibility that the guards could stop her from entering never scared her. She always stood up to the police when necessary: “Man and wife are family. I couldn’t be scared, because my husband was there. They caught lots of Commandos, I thought they might kill him, but God helped him.” The stubbornness and sharp wit that run through Aminata’s veins immediately reveal themselves in her words. Today, just like she was forty years ago, she is a strong woman.
At around 10 am on a day and year that neither remember, Malam was freed. He spent six months in the prison, accused of belonging to the Front for the Independence of Guinea (FLING), a Guinean independence movement founded in Dakar in 1962 which, during the struggle for independence, supposedly had plans to occupy PAIGC bases and take the lead in the war. Aminata was washing clothes, leaning over a wash basin, when they said to her, “Here is your husband”. She couldn’t believe it. Malam still swears that, at the time, “I’d never even heard of the FLING”. There were men, such as Quecói Turé, who were left “totally ruined”, but he, “thanks to God”, escaped lightly. Just like when he was in the bush, he believes that it was the charm his father made for him and the food his wife brought to him in prison every day that brought him luck.
Source:
“Da embriologia nacionalista à guerra de libertação na Guiné-Bissau”, Leopoldo Amado
The African Commandos were the main victims of a boiling pot of political and social tensions at the end of the war. During the presidency of Luís Cabral, those considered traitors and enemies were targets of a purge: imprisoned and tortured, many were subject to summary executions. “The detentions started on 12 March 1975; a rumour was spread about FLING attempting a coup d’etat in Guinea Bissau and they detained all the commandos”, says Florindo Morais. The PAIGC also claimed that the African Commandos supported the attempted coup led by António de Spínola in Portugal on 11 March 1975, which was never substantiated.
“(…) I still believe that the PAIGC took advantage of the situation surrounding the 11 March 1975 to give them a pretext to go ahead with the executions (…) On 11 March, I was already in Lisbon and one of the PAIGC leaders called me from Bissau. He called to tell me that the 11 March coup originated in Guinea, that a number of people had been caught. I asked what this was about, what it meant, etc. and he just told me they were investigating… In the meantime, we entered the period known as the ‘Verão Quente’ [‘hot Summer’] and I, being here in the thick of it, didn’t pay as much attention to Guinea Bissau as I should have done… And I found out much later that they had executed a lot of them…” Carlos Fabião, Portuguese Guinea Governor from May to October 1974 says in an interview.
Sources:
“Ordem para matar: dos fuzilamentos ao caso das bombas da embaixada da Guiné”, Queba Sambu
“Do fundo da revolução”, Maria João Avillez
Helena is still tormented by the memory of the day the colleagues of her husband, Paulo Rodrigues, piled into their backyard: “I cooked for all of them: they ate, drank and each went home. That same day, in the early hours, they caught us all here in Bissau. No one got away, they are all dead. At the time, I thought that I would end up a widow.”
Luís Cabral
First president of Guinea-Bissau
“[The executions] were isolated events. The death penalty existed in military law, so they would never have happened because of resentment or whims. I can only commend the work of my colleagues in Military Justice. They accomplished their mission without committing abuses, I have no doubt. That is why we had no civil wars, like they did in Mozambique and Angola. The Portuguese Commandos committed incalculable crimes in the areas that we had freed. They killed pregnant women and cut them open to punish the people (…) If he [Nino Vieira] knew where they [the mass graves] were, it was because he had been a part of it. I never knew about any mass graves. Nino needed to invent a reason as to why he betrayed the aims of our fight. People tell all sorts of lies to justify betrayal.”
Book "Guerra, paz e fuzilamento dos guerreiros", Manuel aAmaro Bernardo
Paulo, commissioned sergeant of the African Commandos, 1st Company, was imprisoned a week after this episode. He is the only commissioned officer of the African Commandos alive today. He married his wife in 2018: “He needed the marriage papers to request his military retirement and to get medical treatment in Portugal. He is there now.” Helena is thin and has a weak voice, a body worn by age and the burden of caring for a family on her own. Today, she only speaks to her husband by phone. Deep down, she knows it is unlikely that they will see each other again.
In 1980, Nino Vieira led the coup known as the “Movimento Reajustador” [Readjustment Movement], which definitively separated Guinea-Bissau from Cape Verde. “Nino Vieira, who had been the president of the PAIGC National Popular Assembly during the struggle for independence, and prime minister of Guinea-Bissau from 1978-1980, now was demanding a Guinea for Bissau-Guineans and the authenticity of their culture.
Source:
“Dos sonhos e das imagens: a Guerra de Libertação na Guiné-Bissau”, Catarina Laranjeiro
Pedro Pires
PAIGC Commander on the Southern Front between 1969 and 1974 and president of Cape Verde between 2001 and 2011
“There were enormous conflicts. How would it be possible to integrate people who had always opposed [the PAIGC] into the rest of the army? Any integration into the Armed Forces was very risky. Post-war processes are complicated, it is hard for us to fully understand them. There are many aspects: physical, financial and also psychological. What are people thinking? What are they suspicious of? The ghosts, the nightmares… From my perspective, we must recognize that they are very complicated phenomena, situations to manage. Were we capable of understanding this at the time? I don’t think so. We were in over our heads, as anyone would be.”
Juldé Jaquité is clear in his accusations, “To take power, Nino claimed to know nothing of what had happened. But how could he not have known about the executions? He knew… he was in the PAIGC for 10 years”.
New faces governed, but the climate of veiled violence remained. Arbitrary imprisonment, persecution and executions were now used to annihilate those considered opponents to the new leader.
Portugal’s exit from the territories it exploited in Africa took place over a period of just over a year, in a process that is called “decolonialization” in Europe and “liberation” in Africa. Guinea-Bissau was the first country to be recognized as independent by Portugal, on 24 September 1974. In Mozambique this only happened on 25 June 1975 and in Angola on 11 November 1975.
The noise of the festivities celebrating the end of the war was soon replaced by a silent echo of fear and abandonment. “The Portuguese have the names of all the conscripted soldiers, they should call all those who are living and remained in Guinea. We would be grateful for common sense, for Portugal to recognize the Africans who gave their lives to defend the interests of the homeland. People who were imprisoned and mutilated. People who are old, tired and have nothing.” These words come from the mouth of Lamarama Djaló, lance-corporal of the Commandos, 2nd Company, but this angry cry is one that all these soldiers voice in unison. It seems that only death, creeping slowly, will be able to silence these old men.
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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