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Colonial War/Liberation Struggle in Guinea Bissau: From Personal Photographs to Public Silences

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Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa, 1860–1975

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies ((CIPCSS))

Abstract

A colonial war/liberation struggle took place in Guinea-Bissau between 1963 and 1974. Aiming to spread antagonized political messages both part of the conflict had documented, through photographs, their military and paramilitary activities. Focusing exclusively in Guinean military, this chapter considers the photographs collected from combatants who fought on the Guinean liberation movement and African combatants who belonged to the Portuguese Armed Forces as the objects of a memory elicitation exercise. Juxtaposing photographs with personal recollections, it will be intended to deepen the discussion on some hidden transcripts from the public discourse on this war and how they were articulated by the local and international actors who had intervened in this.

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Notes

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  3. 3.

    A relevant example is the television program A Guerra [The War], directed by Joaquim Furtado, between 2008 and 2014, for the main Portuguese public channel (RTP).

  4. 4.

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  13. 13.

    Amílcar Cabral, Príncipios Do Partido (Bissau: PAIGC/ Secretariado Geral s/d), 48; my translation.

  14. 14.

    Peter Karibe Mendy, “Portugal’s Civilizing Mission in Colonial Guinea-Bissau: Rhetoric and Reality,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 36, no. 1 (2003): 52; Julião Soares de Sousa, Amílcar Cabral. Vida E Morte De Um Revolucionário Africano (Lisboa: Nova Vega, 2011), 372.

  15. 15.

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  16. 16.

    Luís Cabral, Crónica Da Libertação (Lisboa: O Jornal, 1984), 46; Aristides Pereira, O Meu Testemunho: Uma Luta, Um Partido, Dois Países (Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2003), 86.

  17. 17.

    Mustafah Dhada, Warriors at Work: How Guinea Was Really Set Free (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1993), 131; Amado, Guerra Colonial E Guerra De Libertação Nacional. O Caso Da Guiné-Bissau., 153; Sousa, Amílcar Cabral. Vida E Morte De Um Revolucionário Africano, 184.

  18. 18.

    Amílcar Cabral, Unidade E Luta (Lisboa: Seara Nova, 1976).

  19. 19.

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  20. 20.

    Ângela Benoliel Coutinho, Os Dirigentes Do Paigc: Da Fundação À Rutura: 1956–1980 (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2017), 23; Sousa, “O Fenómeno Tribal, O Tribalismo E a Construção Da Identidade Nacional No Discurso De Amílcar Cabral,” 148; Marina Padrão Temudo, “From ‘People’s Struggle’to ‘This War of Today’: Entanglements of Peace and Conflict in Guinea-Bissau,” Africa 78, no. 2 (2008).

  21. 21.

    Patrick Chabal, Amílcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 28–29; Dhada, Warriors at Work: How Guinea Was Really Set Free, 55; Oleg Konstantinovich Ignatiev, Três Tiros Da Pide: Quem, Porque E Como, Mataram Amílcar Cabral (Lisboa: Prelo, 1975), 52; Lars Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau a Study of Political Mobilization (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1974), 201–07.

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  23. 23.

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  24. 24.

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  25. 25.

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  26. 26.

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  27. 27.

    José Pedro Castanheira, Quem Mandou Matar Amílcar Cabral? (Lisboa: Relógio D’Água., 1995), 277–78; Sousa, Amílcar Cabral. Vida E Morte De Um Revolucionário Africano, 517.

  28. 28.

    Author’s interview with Francisca Pereira, 14 March 2013, Bissau.

  29. 29.

    Common cap in West Africa. It became quite popular in the iconography of the liberation struggle since Amílcar Cabral, as well as other PAIGC leaders, used it frequently.

  30. 30.

    Author’s interview with Maria Augusta Furtado, 10 March 2013, Bissau.

  31. 31.

    Author’s Interview with Manecas dos Santos, 24 March 2013, Bissau.

  32. 32.

    Author’s Interview with Xico Bá, 12 March 2013, Bissau.

  33. 33.

    Chabal, Amílcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, 90; Silva, A Independência Da Guiné-Bissau E a Descolonização Portuguesa: Estudo De História, Direito E Política, 85.

  34. 34.

    Author’s Interview with Manecas dos Santos, 24 March 2013, Bissau.

  35. 35.

    Author’s Interview with Ana Maria Soares, 10 March 2013, Bissau.

  36. 36.

    Stephanie Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979); Aliou Ly, “Revisiting the Guinea-Bissau Liberation War: Paigc, Udemu and the Question of Women’s Emancipation, 1963–74,” Portuguese Journal of Social Science 14, no. 3 (2015); Patrícia Godinho Gomes, “O Estado Da Arte Dos Estudos De Gênero Na Guiné-Bissau: Uma Abordagem Preliminar,” Outros Tempos–Pesquisa em Foco-História 12, no. 19 (2015).

  37. 37.

    Rosemary Galli, “Amílcar Cabral and Rural Transformation in Guinea-Bissau: A Preliminary Critique,” Rural Africana 25 (1986); Marina Padrão Temudo, “Western Beliefs and Local Myths: A Case Study on the Interface Bewteen Farmers, Ngos and the State in Guinea-Bissau Rural Development Interventions,” in Bewteen a Rock and a Hard Place: African Ngos, Donors and the State, ed. Jim Igoe & Tim Kelsall (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2005); “From ‘People’s Struggle’to ‘This War of Today’: Entanglements of Peace and Conflict in Guinea-Bissau”; Philip Havik, “Virtual Nations and Failed States: Making Sense of the Labyrinth,” in Sure Road? Nationalism in Angola, Guiniea-Bissau and Mozambique, ed. Eric Morier-Genoud (Leiden, London: Brill, 2012).

  38. 38.

    Author’s Interview with Mary and Arlette Fidelis de Almada, 26 March 2013, Bissau.

  39. 39.

    This private audience with Pope Paul VI, which lasted less than ten minutes on 1st July 1970, caused a serious political crisis between Portugal and the Vatican. This political event allowed the liberation movement to acquire public acknowledgement and, consequently, it contributed to the isolation of Portugal, internationally.

  40. 40.

    Author’s Interview with Francisca Pereira, 14 March 2013, Bissau.

  41. 41.

    Author’s Interview with Francisca Pereira, 21 March 2013, Bissau.

  42. 42.

    Author’s Interview with Armando Ramos, 17 March 2013, Bissau.

  43. 43.

    Alessandro Portelli, Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories, The: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Suny Press, 2010).

  44. 44.

    Homi K Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Routledge, 2012); Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Harvard University Press, 1993); Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race (Routledge, 2013); Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage, 1997).

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    Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Maria Paula Meneses and Bruno Sena Martins, “Introdução: O Exercício Alcora No Jogo Das Alianças Secretas,” As guerras de libertação e os sonhos coloniais: alianças secretas, mapas imaginados (2013).

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    Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 4.

  48. 48.

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  49. 49.

    Amílcar Cabral, Análise De Alguns Tipos De Resistência, ed. Colecção de leste a oeste (Lisboa: Seara Nova, 1975), 21–22.

  50. 50.

    Inês Galvão and Catarina Laranjeiro, “Gender Struggle in Guinea-Bissau: Women’s Participation on and Off the Liberation Record,” in Resistance and Colonialism—Insurgent Peoples in World History, ed. Nuno Domingos, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, and Ricardo Roque (Cambridge: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

  51. 51.

    Amílcar Cabral, “Libertação Nacional E Cultura,” in Malhas Que Os Impérios Tecem, ed. Manuela Ribeiro Sanches (Lisboa: Edições 70, 2011), 373; Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau, 150.

  52. 52.

    Inês Galvão and Catarina Laranjeiro, “Gender Struggle in Guinea-Bissau: Women’s Participation on and Off the Liberation Record,” in Resistance and Colonialism: Insurgent Peoples in World History, ed. Nuno Domingos, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, and Ricardo Roque (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan., unpublished); Galvão and Laranjeiro, “Gender Struggle in Guinea-Bissau: Women’s Participation on and Off the Liberation Record.”

  53. 53.

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  54. 54.

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  55. 55.

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  56. 56.

    Author’s Interview with Manecas dos Santos, 24 March 2013, Bissau.

  57. 57.

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  58. 58.

    Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 20.

  59. 59.

    About the Rádio de Libertação to see the film Mouth Cannon (2017) by Ângelo Lopes.

  60. 60.

    Rodrigues, “Antigos Combatentes Africanos Das Forças Armadas Portuguesas: A Guerra Colonial Como Território De (Re) Conciliação,” 174.; Queba Sambu, Ordem para Matar. Dos Fuzilamentos ao Caso das Bombas na da Embaixada da Guiné (Lisboa, Edições Referendo: 1989); Manuel Amaro Bernardo, Guerra, Paz e Fuzilamentos dos Guerreiros; Guiné 1970–1980 (Lisboa, Prefácio: 2013).

  61. 61.

    Author’s Interview with Abdulai Djaló, 12 January 2013, Lisbon.

  62. 62.

    Author’s Interview with Abdulai Djaló, 12 January 2013, Lisbon.

  63. 63.

    Borges Coelho, “African Troops in the Portuguese Colonial Army, 1961–1974: Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique,” 140; John P Cann, Contra-Subversão Em África: Como Os Portugueses Fizeram a Guerra Em África 1961–1974 (Lisboa: Prefácio, 2005), 127; Gomes, “A AfricanizaçãO Na Guerra Colonial E as Suas Sequelas. Tropas Locais–Os VilõEs Nos Ventos Da HistóRia,” 131.

  64. 64.

    Author’s Interview with the Portuguese military attaché in Guinea-Bissau, 22 October 2015.

  65. 65.

    Author’s Interview with José Medina 16 March 2013, Bissau.

  66. 66.

    Author’s Interview with Alberto Gomes 18 March 2013, Bissau.

  67. 67.

    António de Araújo and António Duarte Silva. “O uso de NAPALM na Guerra Colonial-quatro documentos.” Relações Internacionais, 22 (2009), 121–139.

  68. 68.

    Carlos de Matos Gomes, “Operação Mar Verde (1970)” in As Voltas do Passado: A Guerra Colonial e as Lutas de Libertação, ed. Miguel Cardina & Bruno Sena Martins (Lisboa, Tinta-da-China, 2018), 205–210.

Acknowledgements

I want to express my gratitude to all former combatants who shared their personal photographs and memories with me in Bissau and in Lisbon. I am also thankful to some scholars with whom I have discussed several ideas combined on this paper: António Sousa Ribeiro, Daniel Barroca, Inês Galvão, Luís Bernardo, and Sofia da Palma Rodrigues. This research benefited from my participation in the project Amilcar Cabral, from political history to the politics of memory (PTDC/EPH-HIS/6964/5214).

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  1. Instituto de História Contemporânea, NOVA-FCSH, Lisboa, Portugal

    Catarina Laranjeiro

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  1. Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Filipa Lowndes Vicente

  2. Art History Institute (NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST), Lisbon, Portugal

    Afonso Dias Ramos

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Laranjeiro, C. (2023). Colonial War/Liberation Struggle in Guinea Bissau: From Personal Photographs to Public Silences. In: Vicente, F.L., Ramos, A.D. (eds) Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa, 1860–1975. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27795-5_13

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