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style="font-family:lato,helvetica neue,helvetica,arial,sans-serif">How
Africa’s National
Liberation Struggles
Brought Democracy to
Europe: The Seventeenth
Newsletter (2024)</span></span></span></strong>
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<div id="attachment_101675"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-101675" decoding="async"
fetchpriority="high"
class="size-full wp-image-101675 img-responsive mcRssImage"
src="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Maria-Helena-Vieira-de-Silva-Portugal-A-Poesia-Esta-Na-Rua-1974.jpg"
alt=""
srcset="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Maria-Helena-Vieira-de-Silva-Portugal-A-Poesia-Esta-Na-Rua-1974.jpg 638w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Maria-Helena-Vieira-de-Silva-Portugal-A-Poesia-Esta-Na-Rua-1974-228x300.jpg 228w"
sizes="(max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px"
style="max-width: 100%;width: 100%;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;"
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<p
id="caption-attachment-101675" class="wp-caption-text"
style="text-align: center;margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><small>Maria
Helena Vieira da Silva
(Portugal), <i>A
Poesia Está Na Rua I
</i>[Poetry Is out on
the Street I], 1974.</small></p>
</div>
</div>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Dear
friends,</p>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Greetings
from the desk of <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=2bfc4f0f2a&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">Tricontinental:
Institute for Social
Research</a>.</p>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Fifty
years ago, on 25 April 1974,
the people of Portugal took
to the streets of their
cities and towns in enormous
numbers to overthrow the
fascist dictatorship of the
Estado Novo (‘New State’),
formally established in
1926. Fascist Portugal – led
first by António de Oliveira
Salazar until 1968 and then
by Marcelo Caetano – was
welcomed into the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO) in 1949, the United
Nations in 1955, and the
Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development
in 1961 and signed a pact
with the European Economic
Community in 1972. The
United States and Europe
worked closely with the
Salazar and Caetano
governments, turning a blind
eye to their atrocities.</p>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Over
a decade ago, I visited
Lisbon’s <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=eee50bce57&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">Aljube
Museum – Resistance and
Freedom</a>, which was a
torture site for political
prisoners from 1928 to 1965.
During this time, tens of
thousands of trade
unionists, student
activists, communists, and
rebels of all kinds were
brought there to be
tortured, and many were
killed – often with great
cruelty. The ordinariness of
this brutality permeates the
hundreds of stories
preserved in the museum. For
instance, on 31 July 1958,
torturers took the welder
Raúl Alves from Aljube
Prison to the third floor of
the secret police’s
headquarters and threw him
to his death. Heloísa Ramos
Lins, the wife of Brazil’s
ambassador to Portugal at
the time, Álvaro Lins, drove
by at that moment, saw
Alves’ fatal fall, and told
her husband. When the
Brazilian embassy approached
the Portuguese Interior
Ministry to ask what had
happened, the Estado Novo
dictatorship <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=4e5d9cbcff&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">responded</a>,
‘There is no reason to be so
shocked. It is merely an
unimportant communist’.</p>
<div
class="single-post--content--media-block single-post--content--image"
style="text-align:center; margin:3em 0;">
<div id="attachment_101685"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-101685" decoding="async"
class="size-full wp-image-101685 img-responsive mcRssImage"
src="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Peasants-in-Beja-demanding-agrarian-reform.jpg"
alt=""
srcset="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Peasants-in-Beja-demanding-agrarian-reform.jpg 950w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Peasants-in-Beja-demanding-agrarian-reform-300x219.jpg 300w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Peasants-in-Beja-demanding-agrarian-reform-768x560.jpg 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 950px) 100vw, 950px"
style="max-width: 100%;width: 100%;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;"
moz-do-not-send="true"
width="950" border="0">
<p
id="caption-attachment-101685" class="wp-caption-text"
style="text-align: center;margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><small>John
Green (England), <i>Peasants
in Beja Demanding
Agrarian Reform</i>,
1974.</small></p>
</div>
</div>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">It
was ‘unimportant communists’
like Raúl Alves who
initiated the revolution of
25 April, which built on a <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=00a38ab21c&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">wave</a>
of workers’ actions across
1973, beginning with the
airport workers in Lisbon
and then spreading to
textile workers’ strikes in
Braga and Covilha,
engineering workers’ strikes
in Aveiro and Porto, and
glass workers’ strike in
Marinha Grande.</p>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Around
this time, the dictator
Caetano read <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=8b8ae1ff9d&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true"><i>Portugal
and the Future</i></a>,
written by General António
de Spínola who was trained
by commanders of the fascist
General Francisco Franco
during the Spanish Civil
War, led a military campaign
in Angola, and was formerly
the Estado Novo’s governor
in Guinea-Bissau. Spínola’s
book argued that Portugal
should end its colonial
occupation since it was
losing its grip on
Portuguese-controlled
Africa. In his memoirs,
Caetano <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=4dfc917b37&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">wrote</a>
that when he finished the
book, he understood ‘that
the military coup, which I
could sense had been coming,
was now inevitable’.</p>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">What
Caetano did not foresee was
the unity between workers
and soldiers (who themselves
were part of the working
class) that burst through in
April 1974. The soldiers
were fed up with the
colonial wars, which
– despite the great
brutality of the Estado Novo
– had failed to quell the
ambitions of the people of
Angola, Cape Verde,
Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique,
and São Tomé and Príncipe.
The advances made by the
African Party for the
Independence of
Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde
(<a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=0a48ba2658&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">PAIGC</a>),
Front for the Liberation of
Mozambique (FRELIMO), and
People’s Movement for the
Liberation of Angola (MPLA)
were considerable, with
Portugal’s army losing more
soldiers than at any time
since the eighteenth
century. Several of these
formations received
assistance from the USSR and
East Germany (DDR), but it
was through their own
strength and initiative that
they ultimately won the
battles against colonialism
(as our colleagues at the
International Research
Centre on the DDR have <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=efb97d6d5f&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">documented</a>).</p>
<div
class="single-post--content--media-block single-post--content--image"
style="text-align:center; margin:3em 0;">
<div id="attachment_101695"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-101695" decoding="async"
class="size-full wp-image-101695 img-responsive mcRssImage"
src="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mario-Macilau-Mozambique-Bending-reality-from-The-Profit-Corner-series-2016.jpg"
alt=""
srcset="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mario-Macilau-Mozambique-Bending-reality-from-The-Profit-Corner-series-2016.jpg 950w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mario-Macilau-Mozambique-Bending-reality-from-The-Profit-Corner-series-2016-300x200.jpg 300w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mario-Macilau-Mozambique-Bending-reality-from-The-Profit-Corner-series-2016-768x513.jpg 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 950px) 100vw, 950px"
style="max-width: 100%;width: 100%;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;"
moz-do-not-send="true"
width="950" border="0">
<p
id="caption-attachment-101695" class="wp-caption-text"
style="text-align: center;margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><small>Mário
Macilau (Mozambique),
<i>Bending Reality:
Untitled (2)</i>,
from The Profit Corner
series, 2016.</small></p>
</div>
</div>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">On
9 September 1973, soldiers
who had been sent to
Guinea-Bissau met in
Portugal to form the Armed
Forces Movement (MFA). In
March 1974, the MFA approved
its programme <i>Democracy,
Development, and
Decolonisation</i>,
drafted by the Marxist
soldier Ernesto Melo
Antunes. When the revolution
erupted in April, Antunes <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=4a8a7d38c6&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">explained</a>,
‘A few hours after the start
of the coup, on the same
day, the mass movement
began. This immediately
transformed it into a
revolution. When I wrote the
programme of the MFA, I had
not predicted this, but the
fact that it happened showed
that the military was in
tune with the Portuguese
people’. When Antunes said
the ‘military’, he meant the
soldiers, because those who
formed the MFA were not more
senior than captains and
remained rooted in the
working class from which
they had come.</p>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">In
December 1960, the United
Nations General Assembly <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=dfedf60fd8&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">proclaimed</a>
the ‘necessity of bringing
to a speedy and
unconditional end
colonialism in all its forms
and manifestation’. This
position was rejected by the
Estado Novo regime. On 3
August 1959, Portuguese
colonial soldiers fired on
sailors and dockworkers at
Pidjiguiti at the Port of
Bissau, killing over fifty
people. On 16 June 1960, in
the town of Mueda
(Mozambique), the Estado
Novo colonialists fired on a
small, unarmed demonstration
of national liberation
advocates who had been
invited by the district
administrator to present
their views. It is still not
known how many people were
killed. Then, on 4 January
1961, a strike at Baixa do
Cassange (Angola) was met
with Portuguese repression,
killing somewhere between
1,000 and 10,000 Angolans.
These three incidents showed
that the Portuguese
colonialists were unwilling
to tolerate any civic
movement for independence.
It was the Estado Novo that
imposed the armed struggle
on these parts of Africa,
moving the PAIGC, MPLA, and
FRELIMO to take up guns.</p>
<div
class="single-post--content--media-block single-post--content--image"
style="text-align:center; margin:3em 0;">
<div id="attachment_101705"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-101705" decoding="async"
loading="lazy"
class="size-full wp-image-101705 img-responsive mcRssImage"
src="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Nefwani-Junior-Angola-E-Urgente-Voltar-2021.jpg"
alt=""
srcset="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Nefwani-Junior-Angola-E-Urgente-Voltar-2021.jpg 800w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Nefwani-Junior-Angola-E-Urgente-Voltar-2021-250x300.jpg 250w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Nefwani-Junior-Angola-E-Urgente-Voltar-2021-768x922.jpg 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px"
style="max-width: 100%;width: 100%;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;"
moz-do-not-send="true"
width="800" border="0">
<p
id="caption-attachment-101705" class="wp-caption-text"
style="text-align: center;margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><small>Nefwani
Junior (Angola), <i>É
Urgente (Voltar) </i>[It’s
Urgent (to Return)],
2021.</small></p>
</div>
</div>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Agostinho
Neto (1922–1979) was a
communist poet, a leader of
the MPLA, and the first
president of independent
Angola. In a poem called
‘Massacre of São Tomé’, Neto
captured the feeling of the
revolts against Portuguese
colonialism:</p>
<blockquote
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">It
was then that in eyes on
fire<br>
now with blood, now with
life, now with death,<br>
we buried our dead
victoriously<br>
and on the graves
recognised<br>
the reason for these men’s
sacrifice<br>
for love,<br>
and for harmony,<br>
and for our freedom<br>
even while facing death,
through the force of time<br>
in blood-stained waters<br>
even in the small defeats
that accumulate towards
victory</p>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Within
us<br>
the green land of São Tomé<br>
will also be the island of
love.</p>
</blockquote>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">That
island of love was not just
to be built across Africa,
from Praia to Luanda, but
also across Portugal. On 25
April 1974, Celeste Caeiro,
a forty-year-old waitress,
was working at a
self-service restaurant
called Sir in the Franjinhas
building on Braancamp Street
in Lisbon. Since it was the
restaurant’s one-year
anniversary, the owner
decided to hand out red
carnations to the customers.
When Celeste told him about
the revolution, he decided
to shut down Sir for the
day, give employees the
carnations, and encourage
the employees to take the
carnations home. Instead,
Celeste headed to the city
centre, where events were
unfolding. On the way, some
soldiers asked her for a
cigarette, but instead, she
put a few carnations into
the barrels of their guns.
This caught on, and the
florists of Baixa decided to
give away their in-season
red carnations to be the
emblem of the revolution.
That is why the 1974
revolution was called the
Carnation Revolution, a
revolution of flowers
against guns.</p>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Portugal’s
social revolution of
1974–1975 swept large
majorities of people into a
new sensibility, but the
state refused to capitulate.
It inaugurated the Third
Republic, whose presidents
all came from the ranks of
the military and the
National Salvation Junta:
António de Spínola
(April–September 1974),
Francisco da Costa Gomes
(September 1974–July 1976),
and António Ramalho Eanes
(July 1976–March 1986).
These were not men from the
ranks, but the old generals.
Nonetheless, they were
eventually forced to
surrender the old structures
of Estado Novo colonialism
and withdraw from their
colonies in Africa.</p>
<div
class="single-post--content--media-block single-post--content--image"
style="text-align:center; margin:3em 0;">
<div id="attachment_101715"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-101715" decoding="async"
loading="lazy"
class="size-full wp-image-101715 img-responsive mcRssImage"
src="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bertina-Lopes-Mozambique-Omenagem-a-Amilcar-Cabral-1973.jpg"
alt=""
srcset="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bertina-Lopes-Mozambique-Omenagem-a-Amilcar-Cabral-1973.jpg 950w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bertina-Lopes-Mozambique-Omenagem-a-Amilcar-Cabral-1973-300x224.jpg 300w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bertina-Lopes-Mozambique-Omenagem-a-Amilcar-Cabral-1973-768x573.jpg 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 950px) 100vw, 950px"
style="max-width: 100%;width: 100%;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;"
moz-do-not-send="true"
width="950" border="0">
<p
id="caption-attachment-101715" class="wp-caption-text"
style="text-align: center;margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><small>Bertina
Lopes (Mozambique), <i>Omenagem
a Amílcar Cabral </i>[Tribute
to Amílcar Cabral],
1973.</small></p>
</div>
</div>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Amílcar
Cabral (1924–1973), who was
born one hundred years ago
this September and who did
more than many to build the
African formations against
Estado Novo colonialism, did
not live to see the
independence of Portugal’s
African colonies. At the
1966 Tricontinental
conference in Havana, Cuba,
Cabral warned that it was
not enough to get rid of the
old regime, and that even
more difficult than
overthrowing the regime
itself would be to build the
new world out of the old,
from Portugal to Angola,
Cape Verde to Guinea-Bissau,
Mozambique to São Tomé and
Príncipe. The main struggle
after decolonisation, Cabral
<a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=801ab467f9&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">said</a>,
is the ‘struggle against our
own weaknesses’. This
‘battle against ourselves’,
he continued, ‘is the most
difficult of all’ because it
is a battle against the
‘internal contradictions’ of
our societies, the poverty
borne of colonialism, and
the wretched hierarchies in
our complex cultural
formations.</p>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Led
by people like Cabral,
liberation struggles in
Africa not only won
independence in their own
countries; they also
defeated Estado Novo
colonialism and helped bring
democracy to Europe. But
that was not the end of the
struggle. It opened new
contradictions, many of
which linger today in
different forms. As Cabral
often said as the closing
words to his speeches, <i>a
luta continua</i>. The
struggle continues.</p>
<p
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Warmly,</p>
<p
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