Narrating the Past/Perpetuating Violence:
The Afterlives of Colonialism in Two Heritage Sites in Cape Verde and Portugal
Sofia Lovegrove
Student number: 12232483
MA Thesis in Heritage and Memory Studies Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Ihab Saloul Second Reader: Dr. Tamara van Kessel
Word Count: 26,027 22 December 2020
Cover photographs (from top left, clockwise): screenshot of The Garden by Vasco Araújo; the
Monument to the Discoveries in Lisbon (photo by the author, 2018); screenshot of Perpetual Circle by César Schofield Cardoso; the former concentration camp of Tarrafal (photo: Wim Reijnierse, 2020).
Acknowledgements
This thesis wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the support I received from many different sides. First of all, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor, Prof. Ihab Saloul, for his support and honest critique. Aware of my ambitions and trusting my abilities, he has encouraged me to challenge myself and to step out of my intellectual comfort zone from the moment I started the Masters programme, for which I am truly grateful. I am very grateful to Dr. Tamara van Kessel, my second reader and the coordinator of the programme, whose inquisitive mind and passion for learning and exchanging knowledge has inspired me throughout my studies. The many stimulating discussions we had throughout the programme and during my thesis process were invaluable. I would also like to thank my dear family and friends in the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK, who supported me with their encouraging words and actions, and with their confidence in me and my work. They endured my emotional and physical strain at times, and my occasional absences, aware of what this thesis (and the Masters programme) meant to me. A special shout out to my mum Stephanie, for pruning my English, and to my friend Zeno, who painstakingly read my early chapters and gave such valuable and sometimes harsh (but necessary!) critique. I am also grateful for the support of my colleague Veysel Yuce from DutchCulture, and his flexibility towards my several “holidays” to work on my thesis, not always at the most convenient of times, yet crucial for my research process. Being me, I could not go without mentioning my two cats, Noussa and Amadi, who, in times of pandemic and working from home, kept me company most of the way. Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank Tobias, whose endless patience and unconditional support made this thesis possible (again). To him, I dedicate this work.
Table of Contents
Introduction ... 5
Historical and Mnemonic Backgrounds ... 13
Cape Verde: (Re)covering colonial narratives of exceptionality ... 13
Portugal: Between changing and unchanging narratives of the past ... 15
The former incarceration site of Tarrafal: (Re)covering colonial narratives ... 18
Historical background: The lives of the incarceration site of Tarrafal ... 18
The Museum of Resistance: A transnational site of memory and collaboration ... 20
The “virtual tour” of Tarrafal: Showing victimhood, telling resistance ... 23
“Perpetual Cycle”: (Re)appearing memories, alternative realities ... 33
Conclusion ... 37
The Tropical Botanic Garden: Between re-emerging and aphasic memories ... 40
Historical background: The garden as a layered landscape of violence ... 40
From Colonial to “Tropical” Garden: Repressing memories of violence ... 45
“Garden with history": Showing the other in 1940, telling violence in 2020 ... 50
Conclusion ... 56
Conclusion: Narrating the past, perpetuating violence ... 60
Bibliography ... 64
Literature ... 64
White people believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Toni Morrison, Beloved
It annihilated my very thought processes to imagine how anyone could make a better world when you reproduced the very things that in this one cause so much pain and anxiety to so many, when you recreated the forms that were so reprehensible.
Introduction
I start this thesis with two epigraphs that reflect and connect several topics explored in my research. At the core of Toni Morrison’s quote is the idea of the hierarchical and violent contrast between white or light and black or dark, referring to the racial structures of power imposed by colonialism, a central topic of this thesis. I view the “jungle” as a metaphor for the allegedly uncivilised character of the colonised “other”, a perception that endures today in the contemporary othering and exclusion of dark bodies. Tsitsi Dangarembga’s words refer to the idea of imagination, in this case, the way the (colonial) past is imagined or perceived in the present. My thesis centres around contemporary practices of imagination or representation and how these, in Dangarembga’s words, can work to reproduce and recreate particular power structures and ways of knowing and doing that stem from the very past that is being imagined. The historical structures of power that worked to imposed difference during colonial times, reproduced today through contemporary practices of representation, are at the core of my research, and are particularly well reflected in Morrison’s and Dangarembga’s works.
Discussions about how countries remember their colonial pasts, and calls to change dominant narratives about these histories, have been growing in former European colonial powers.1 This shift -
developing around the 1990s and increasing exponentially in recent years (as seen in the recent Black Lives Matter protests)2 - has involved critical reflections and engagements with these pasts, based on a
realisation of the unequal power structures in which knowledge is produced, and of the impact of these pasts on the present in a myriad of forms (Allen, 2019; Modest, 2020; Van Huis, 2019). The way the colonial past has been dealt with in former colonised countries, on the other hand, seems to have followed different processes. Generally speaking, the immediate post-independence period was usually marked by a quest for self-representation and a rejection of colonial-era narratives (Marschall, 2008: 347-349). With time, however, narratives often shift, a process informed by when and how countries gained independence, by their particular experiences of colonialism, and by their continued (or not) relationship with the former colonial power (idem).
In this thesis, I explore and compare how two countries with long-lasting, deeply entangled yet unequal histories of colonialism - Portugal and Cape Verde - remember their colonial pasts today. In Portugal, a growing willingness to address the injustices of the colonial past and their contemporary
1 This, in turn, should be contextualised within a broader change in how (especially Western) societies relate to the past:
from a celebratory emphasis on past triumphs, to a reflective effort to come to terms with negative legacies of the past. This development, registered in the last few decades, has witnessed the increasing acknowledgement of painful and shameful events of countries’ histories, which has often involved turning places, sites and institutions connected to those histories into “heritage sites” and “memorial museums” (e.g. Ashworth, 2008; González-Ruibal & Hall, 2015; Logan & Reeves, 2009; Macdonald, 2016; Siyi, 2020; Sodaro, 2018).
2 A recent and visible example of this shift was the toppling and defacing of statues representing problematic narratives
about colonial figures and events during the Black Lives Matter protests that spread around the world in 2020, reignited by the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 in the United States (e.g. Bromwich, 2020). These protests have, in turn, stemmed from and reinforced the impetus for a further and deeper investigation of countries’ and cities’ involvement in colonialism
implications lives alongside a persistent narrative that sees this past in a Eurocentric and positive light, eliding its many histories of violence (Jerónimo, 2015: 33-39; Rosas, 2018: 9-12). In Cape Verde, during the period leading up to and following independence in 1975, an anti-colonial sentiment, marked by a distancing from Portugal, a cultural and political approximation to Africa, and the centrality of the liberation struggle, characterised dominant narratives about the past. However, since the 1990s and especially the 2000s, a move towards more neoliberal and Western-oriented politics has been accompanied by a cultural reconnection to Portugal (and Europe more generally) and a silencing of the country’s colonial past (Cardina & Rodrigues, 2020). In this thesis, I examine how the colonial past lives on today in both countries in the way in which it is remembered and represented at two heritage sites, with the aim of contributing to ongoing discussions about the need to recognise the colonial past as a central element of Western modernity and address its impact on the present (Cardina & Martins, 2018: 13).
I do this by analysing the narratives (re)produced at two national heritage sites in Cape Verde and Portugal associated with episodes of colonial violence, given that due to its symbolic and frequently affective character, “heritage is often the tangible focal point and barometer of how ex-colonisers and ex-colonialists assess colonial spaces, artefacts and empire more generally” (Marschall, 2008: 348). The site in Cape Verde is the former incarceration site of Tarrafal, built in 1936 by the Estado Novo or New State, Portugal’s fascist-leaning dictatorship that lasted from 1933 to 1974, mainly under the rule of António de Oliveira Salazar. Initially created for Portuguese anti-fascists, it later received political prisoners linked to anti-colonial movements from Cape Verde, Angola and Guinea Bissau. Conservation and musealisation efforts have been taking place there since the late 1990s with the involvement of the Portuguese state, and today its Museum of Resistance is the most visited museum in Cape Verde (Lusa, 2020). The site in Portugal is the Tropical Botanic Garden of Belém, a former colonial garden, aimed at supporting agricultural and botanical research in Portugal’s African colonies in the twentieth century (Castela, 2010: 82). For a few months in 1940, it housed the Colonial Section of the Estado Novo’s Exposition of the Portuguese World, which included a display of human individuals from Portugal’s colonies (Sapega, 2008: 22). Today, this site is a public garden located in the so-called Monumental Area of Belém, a neighbourhood of Lisbon, and since 2019, it has been undergoing large-scale renovation. I examine the official narratives (re)produced at both these sites, and unofficial narratives engendered by artists who offer alternative readings about them and the memories they embody. My thesis is guided by the following question: how do memory narratives articulated in and about national heritage sites reflect the afterlives of colonialism in Cape Verde and in Portugal today?
My research lies at the intersection of cultural heritage and memory studies, since it explores the politics of cultural memory at work in two heritage sites. As Caitlin DeSilvey eloquently wrote,“we live in a world dense with things left behind by those who came before us, but we only single out some of these things for our attention and care”, because they are seen as “mnemonic devices” that allow us
to remember and recall aspects of the past for contemporary purposes (2017: 3). My thesis focuses on collective cultural memories, i.e., representations of past experiences articulated, represented and exchanged between people through cultural media (such as museums, heritage sites, films, etc.) (Rigney, 2005: 15). Both the garden and the former prison were singled out by governmental agencies for their mnemonic potential and categorised as “national heritage”.For that reason, they have been invested with a sense of collective memory, for which I view them as (re)producing official national narratives about the past. As Stuart Hall argued, drawing on Benedict Anderson’s idea of “imagined communities”, “national heritage” is a powerful source and vehicle of cultural meanings about the past that serve to bind the individual members of national communities under an allegedly shared national identity (Hall, 1999: 4-5). However, these narratives of national identity based on allegedly shared pasts are characterised by their selective and biased character, given the fact that they are often constructed to be, as Aleida Assmann puts it, “identity-enhancing and self-celebrating” (2014: 553).
The European colonial past, involving a great deal of violence towards non-Europeans, has often been downplayed or downright silenced in official narratives, because it does not fit (and even challenges) national self-celebrating narratives. For Hall, the problem with official narratives and national heritage that claims to be of and for everyone, is that its discursive articulation is intended for a perceived culturally homogenous society and therefore those who do not see themselves represented in these narratives are automatically excluded (1999: 6). Central to my thesis is thus the idea that what societies choose to remember collectively, through which media, by whom and for whom, plays a central role in constructing and reproducing notions of belonging and non-belonging. By examining official narratives (re)produced at national heritage sites I am able gain an insight into what and who is seen as belonging to the nation, and through which mnemonic devices. This is an urgent line of inquiry when focusing on Europe, given the changing and increasingly diverse character of postcolonial European societies which derives, to a great extent, from the colonial past itself (Buettner, 2016: 417-425). In former colonised nations, this is an equally important topic since official narratives are usually deeply connected to the colonial past and the decolonisation period (Marschall, 2008: 355-356). Miguel Cardina and Bruno Sena Martins describe collective memory practices in these contexts as somewhat contradicting, given the way anti-colonial struggles often informed the creation of imagined communities in the newly independent states, that stemmed from colonial rule (2019: 117). Furthermore, these societies are often characterised by a heterogenous population, as is the case of Cape Verde (Fiddian, 2000: 10), where one can assume an equally heterogenous engagement with the past exists.
I view the two heritage sites and the narratives produced in and about them as “afterlives” of the colonial past, a central concept in my research for allowing me to work through two interconnected
phenomena.3 First, the way things from past are brought back to life in the present through selective
heritage and memory practices, seen for instance in the acts of restoration, musealisation and interpretation. In this sense, both Tarrafal and the Tropical Botanic Garden represent remains of the past which were deemed important to preserve, thus allowing them to live on in the present. Secondly, and mainly, the manner in which the colonial past continues to inform practices of representation in the present, such as heritage and memory practices, which in turn stem from political and epistemological power structures inherited from these pasts. In Saidiya Hartman’s words, “[t]he past is neither inert nor given. The stories we tell about what happened then, the correspondences we discern between today and times past, and the ethical and political stakes of these stories redound in the present” (2007: 133).
My understanding of the enduring effects of colonialism is to a great extent informed by “decolonial” thinking or “decoloniality”, a school of thought that shares many similarities with postcolonial theory (Bhambra, 2014). Decoloniality emerged in what we now call Latin America as a critique of the self-proclaimed universality and superiority of Western knowledge and culture, an epistemic hegemony which is seen at the basis of and as reinforced by centuries of Western imperialism (Quijano, 2007). Aníbal Quijano articulated the concept of “coloniality of power” to describe the structures of control and power that emerged during the so-called modern period and that enabled the emergence of Western hegemony (2007: 168-178). These structures, according to Quijano, operate on the political, social and economic levels (the remit of geopolitics), and on the level of epistemology (the remit of knowledge production) (idem). They derive their legitimation from the narrative of modernity, characterised by ideas of progress and development, with Europe as its point of origination, and by celebrating Western civilisation’s alleged achievements while obscuring its “darker side”, i.e., coloniality (Mignolo, 2011: 2-3; Mignolo, 2018: 107). In other words, decolonial thinking argues that the contemporary (neoliberal) world order and power structures, as well as enduring ideas about the superiority of Western civilisation, justified and were reinforced by centuries of European colonialism. At the core of decoloniality is thus the idea that there is no modernity without coloniality, i.e., there is no modernity without colonial violence (Mignolo, 2018: 105-109). A central mission of decoloniality is to render visible the power structures inherent to the production of knowledge from a Western standpoint, through “a consideration of what that geopolitics enables to be known and how it is to be known” (Bhambra, 2014: 118). In my thesis, and through the concept of afterlife, I aim to grasp how
3 Many important works - both academic and literary - have addressed the ways in which the colonial past continues to live
on today in a myriad of forms, such as racism and social inequalities, both in former colonised and coloniser nations. I include here some works which have informed and inspired much of my thinking about the “afterlives” of colonialism: Buettner, E. (2016). Europe After Empire. Decolonization, Society, and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Coates, T.-H. (2015). Between the World and Me. London: The Text Publishing Company; Henriques, J. G. (2016). Racismo em Português. O Lado Esquecido do Colonialismo. Lisboa: Tinta-da-China; Hartman, S. (2007). Lose your Mother. A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. NY: Farrar, Straus and Girous; Mignolo, W. & Walsh, C. (2018). On Decoloniality. Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham & London: Duke University Press; Morrison, T. (2006). Beloved. NY: Everyman’s Library; and Wekker, G. (2016). White Innocence. Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
the colonial past endures in Portugal and Cape Verde, by exploring what kind of knowledges are perpetuated in the way these pasts are told or narrated, and by reflecting on the contemporary political and ethical stakes of this narration.
My research is based on visual and textual narrative analysis, an approach that draws on insights from different disciplines and sub-disciplines, such as decoloniality, narrative theory, which in turn derives from literary studies (Bal, 2002: 11), and cultural studies. Informed by literary theory, I consider questions of presentation - who speaks, who speaks what language, who speaks with what authority, who speaks to and for whom - in order to examine the effect of the narrative (Culler, 2011: 88). I view narrative as a form of representation, for which I draw on Stuart Hall’s understanding that representation “refers to the practice of producing and circulating meaning through language” (2003: 1). Language is itself a system of representation that, through signs and symbols (written word, images, objects, etc.), allows humans to construct meanings and transmit them to others (idem). The language I examine to understand the narratives produced in and about the garden and the former prison focuses mainly on texts presented on signboards (located in situ and on digital and online media of communication), images and exhibited objects (such as photographs and maps) and artworks, and on the relation between these forms of representation and the physical space in which they are located. To produce narratives and to discursively attach them to certain objects, is thus a way of representing the past and attributing meanings to it and the objects that past is seen to embody in a rather authoritative way. These narratives, central to the practices of heritage and memory, are important because they help articulate notions of collective identities, and consequently, ideas of belonging and non-belonging.
This thesis follows a comparative approach that operates on several levels. First, I compare the contexts of the former coloniser and one of its former colonies, where colonialism was experienced and is remembered differently. Through this comparison, I aim to counter the tendency that grew since 1975 whereby the entangled histories of Portugal and its former colonies have resisted comparison, thus disabling what might become a deeper understanding of these pasts (Cardina & Martins, 2019: 130). Secondly, I compare the narratives produced at two heritage sites that embody different forms of violence and fulfil contrasting contemporary functions (González-Ruibal & Hall, 2015: 150). Whereas Tarrafal was created for and witnessed overt political and physical forms of violence that are still visible in its material remains, the garden existed before it became associated with violent practices, which were characterised by their subtle character, leaving no explicit traces. Today, the former prison is a musealised site aimed at transmitting memories of the past, whereas the second site is a public garden, used mainly for leisure activities and scientific research. With this comparison, I consider the extent to which the character of these sites and of the violence they were implicated in play a role in the narratives constructed. Thirdly, although I focus mainly on official narratives, I will contrast these with unofficial narratives. This difference is loosely informed by Rodney Harrison’s distinction between official and unofficial heritage (2013). The former refer to those narratives (re)produced through professional and state sanctioned heritage and remembrance practices (conservation, memorialisation, etc.) within
institutions (such as museums) and in the public sphere (commemorations, street names, etc.). While official heritage narratives often stem from legislation, such as National Heritage charters, unofficial or alternative narratives are located outside the official or dominant narrative, and are not recognised by particular legislation (Harrison, 2013: 14).
Unofficial narratives frequently work to contest the totalising claims of official narratives, and are often driven by marginalised or new groups in society, whose demands for (narrative) change are intertwined with claims for recognition (Van Huis et al., 2019: 5), leading to a “democratisation” of dominant narratives (Hall, 1999: 7). Ann Rigney argues that public remembrance shifts in line with social frameworks within which historical identity is conceived, since “the sense of sharing memories, of having a past in common, is arguably a precondition for the emergence of such groups in the first place” (2005: 23). In the case of postcolonial European countries, for instance, ethnic minorities from former colonies and their descendants, Europeans who once lived in former colonies and veterans of the decolonisation-era conflicts are often particularly vocal about the need to change official narratives (Buettner, 2016: 424). Hence “the identification of new groups seems to go hand in glove with the production of ‘counter-memory’ that challenges dominant views of the past”, and bring new memories into circulation (Rigney, 2005: 23-24).
The creation of counter-memories is, however, not exclusively the remit of “new groups”, nor is it a European-specific phenomenon, and can occur in the context of an increasing critique of European Enlightenment’s idea of “universal knowledge” (i.e., the totalising claim to single knowledge), alongside a “rising cultural relativism which is part of the growing de-centring of the West and western-oriented or Eurocentric grand-narratives” (Hall, 1999: 7). For Hall, these two developments mark a significant change in the way Western and non-Western societies relate to “heritage” and the past more generally. This contesting, decentring and delinking from Western narratives and epistemologies, and an engagement in critically “re-constituting” different forms of knowledge and practices are central to decoloniality (Mignolo, 2018: 120-121). I argue thus that narratives that contest and offer ways of thinking and doing otherwise, should be seen as deriving from and feeding into decolonial practices that aim to contest Western epistemologies’ claims to truth. Heritage sites connected to historical violence often bring up feelings of pain and/or shame and mean different things for different people, depending on how individuals and groups relate to those histories, for that reason, they often reveal dissonances regarding the narratives they (re)produce (Logan & Reeves, 2009: 3).4 By comparing
official and unofficial narratives, I aim to examine these dissonances and thus the differing ways in which particular pasts are remembered in the Cape Verdean and Portuguese societies today.
My research is necessarily delimited by choices made regarding the methodology, as presented above, and the scope of analysis, based on two case studies and particular sources. Firstly, my research
4 “Dissonance”, to follow Graham, Ashworth and Turnbridge’s well-known definition, refers to a condition of “discordance
or lack of agreement and consistency as to the meaning of heritage” or, I would add, representations of the past (2002: 24), since “all heritage by being someone’s, must disinherit someone else” (idem: 240).
centres around an understanding of heritage that stems from Western genealogies of thought (Harrison, 2013: 23). “[A]lthough we can probably assume all human societies have some form of relationship with objects, places and practices to which they attribute significance in terms of understanding the past and its relationship with the present” (idem), in focusing on (national) heritage, I do not examine other forms and locations of engagement with the past that are equally or perhaps more relevant in a non-European society such as Cape Verde. Nonetheless, given the focus of my research on the afterlives of colonialism, a Western-informed approach to engaging with the past seems to me a relevant choice. Secondly, in giving primacy to official narrative production, my examinations of unofficial narratives are less extensive, focusing on two examples of alternative representations of the histories and memories these sites embody. Thirdly, by focusing on the narratives produced by particular actors and through specific cultural media, my research excludes a consideration for the readers or viewers of these narratives, as well as a more in-depth exploration of the affective hold of material culture, and posthumanist theories developed within the “material turn” in the humanities (e.g. Ireland & Lydon, 2016).
Besides methodological and theoretical delimitations, and as Farhana Sultana argues, it is essential to be aware of one’s positionality, since it moulds one’s interpretations and the knowledge produced in the act of researching and writing (2007). While I attempt to do so throughout my research, it would be false to state that my condition as a white, female, and relatively privileged European, my experiences and Western-oriented worldviews, and the emotions that the topics addressed in this thesis conjure in me, did not influence my analysis and ultimately, my arguments. Furthermore, my research was partly limited by the difficulty to access sources by Cape Verdean scholars, and one of my objects of analysis, given the travel restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Added to my more extensive knowledge of the Portuguese context, these constraints certainly had an impact on my analysis of the Cape Verdean context. Given these delimitations, I would like to emphasise that this thesis represents but one possible reading of the issues, objects and contexts examined.
This thesis is structured into three main chapters and a conclusion that brings back and further reflects on the main arguments put forward in previous chapters. The first chapter examines the development of memory traditions in Cape Verde and Portugal about their (colonial) pasts since 1974, the year that marked the end of Portuguese colonialism and of the Estado Novo regime, and how these have changed (or not) over time. This chapter identifies and explains the contrasting ways in which mnemonic traditions have developed in both countries, and serves as a background against which my reflections and the arguments I put forward in the following two chapters should be understood. The second and third chapters constitute the main part of this thesis, wherein I examine the narratives produced respectively in the former prison of Tarrafal in Cape Verde and in the Tropical Botanic Garden in Belém, Portugal. In both chapters, I start with a brief historical background about these two sites, while elucidating why I perceive them as sites of colonial violence. Throughout both chapters, and
given the comparative nature of my thesis, I reflect on how these sites, and the narratives produced in and about them, differ (or not) and why that might be the case.
The second chapter focuses on Tarrafal, which I view as a transnational memorial site museum. In this chapter, I introduce the analytical concept of the “epistemic authority” (Bal, 1996), central to my narrative analysis in this and the following chapter. Today this site is simultaneously the Museum of Resistance and the national heritage site of the (ex-)Concentration Camp of Tarrafal (IPC, 2020a). I analyse the official narratives produced by the National Institute of Cultural Heritage, as seen in its musealisation efforts. Considering I was unable to visit the site in person, I focus my analysis mainly on a virtual tour created by this institute in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic to allow the site to be visited from a distance. As I will argue in this chapter, the current two official names of Tarrafal point to the dominant official narratives imposed on the site today - resistance and victimhood. As an unofficial narrative, I examine the video artwork Perpetual Cycle, created by Cape Verdean artist César Schofield Cardoso and exhibited at Tarrafal in 2017. My examination of these two objects, a virtual tour and an artwork, reveal that the official narratives are ridden with dissonances which involve the reproduction of colonial-era epistemologies.
The third chapter focuses on the Tropical Botanic Garden, which I view as a layered landscape of violence. I analyse the dominant narrative articulated through the recent and ongoing renovation project, and more specifically through the new online and on site signboard system, developed by the National Museum of History and Science (MUHNAC), the official entity responsible for managing the site. The artwork The Garden, created in 2005 by Portuguese artist Vasco Araújo, and exhibited in different locations in Portugal (Araújo, 2016) constitutes the object through which I explore other possible readings of the meaning of this site today. Contrasting with my analysis of Tarrafal, I argue that the official narratives produced at this site are characterised by contrasting and to some extent contradicting approaches to engaging with the colonial histories of violence this site is implicated in.
Taken together, my analysis of two tangible sites and the official and unofficial narratives produced about the pasts that created them, represents an attempt to explore the afterlives of colonialism at work in cultural heritage and memory practices in Portugal and Cape Verde today. With my research, I hope to contribute to scholarly and public discussions about the need to recognise the colonial past as a central element of Western modernity, which continues to inform ways of doing, thinking and being, not only in Europe but also in former colonised spaces. In bringing together not only a former colonial power but also a former colonial context, I emphasise the ubiquitousness of the afterlives of colonialism today.
Historical and Mnemonic Backgrounds
Cape Verde: (Re)covering colonial narratives of exceptionality
The history of Cape Verde is deeply entangled with Portugal’s colonial project, since the ten islands that make up the island nation were uninhabited until mid-fifteenth century when the Portuguese settled them (Sarmento, 2009: 525-526). Its population derives from a mix of Europeans and Africans from the Guinea Coast, brought to the islands as enslaved people (Andrade, 2002: 264-265). With limited natural resources and a semi-arid climate, the importance of Cape Verde stemmed from its geographic location, which the Portuguese made use of as a “base of invasion and of dispossession of the African continent”, and as a key site for the transatlantic trade in enslaved people (Lima, 2020). From the seventeenth century onwards, this trade shifted towards present-day Guinea Bissau, causing Cape Verde to lose its strategic position and to the white elites to leave. This enabled some of those born on the islands, (allegedly) culturally and racially closer to the Portuguese, to occupy positions in the administration of the islands, leading to the emergence of a “Creole” elite and a system of racial hierarchy whereby a lighter skin colour placed individuals on a higher rank. These Cape Verdeans were also often assigned intermediary roles as administrators in other colonies (Henriques, 2016: 106). This racial differentiation was reinforced under the Estado Novo, during which Cape Verdeans were not subjected to the “Indigenous Statute” that was imposed on the populations of Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique (Cardina & Rodrigues, 2020: 10, footnote 2). This colonial history dictated the development of a narrative - which endures today - whereby Cape Verdeans, particularly the lighter-skinned elite, tend to see themselves as “special” kinds of Africans, for their cultural and racial proximity to Europe. For some, however, the lighter skin of many Cape Verdeans, constitutes a reminder of the violent impact of colonialism on the country (Rodrigues, 2016: 107).
The independence of Cape Verde on 5 July 1975 is intertwined with the history of the Portuguese Estado Novo: this regime ended on 25 April 1974 with a coup d’état in Lisbon (known as the Carnation Revolution), following more than ten years of colonial/liberation wars in the African colonies. Known in Portugal as the “colonial war” or wars,5 the conflict that took place between 1961
and 1974 in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau, and affecting also many Cape Verdeans, is known in these countries as “liberation struggles” or “war of independence” (Cardina & Martins, 2018: 16). In the years preluding and following independence, a narrative of heroic national resistance developed in Cape Verde, and political legitimacy and symbolic recognition were granted to those who participated in the liberation struggle, with the anti-colonial leader Amílcar Cabral as the key figure
(Cardina & Rodrigues, 2020: 3).6 The memories of the fight against the Portuguese became central in
the articulation of narratives of nation formation and national identity, and of “the return of Cape Verde to ‘Africa’, which would materialize through a project of binational unity with Guinea-Bissau” (idem). The PAIGC (African party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), that ruled both countries until 1980, promoted a “re-Africanization” as a means of social and cultural emancipation and as political tool (Nolasco, 2019: 96). As Sabine Marschall has shown, this seizing of self-representation and move away from the former coloniser is common in many formerly colonised countries after independence (2008: 347).
Official memory practices, however, started changing in the 1990s: in 1991, the first multiparty elections took place, leading to a political transition towards a more neoliberal philosophy on the part of the new governmental elites (Cardina & Rodrigues: 2020: 4). This political and economic shift was accompanied by the emergence of a discourse founded on the concept of “crioulidade” (creoleness), which, reproducing colonial-era discourses of racial hierarchy, operated as a mechanism towards upward mobility and the whitening of Cape Verde’s elite (Nolasco, 2019: 95-97). The gradual (re)approximation to Europe manifested itself on the level of representation, whereby the neoliberal, creole elites actively fostered the disqualification of the liberation struggle as the “origins narrative” and gradually erased the centrality of anticolonial heritage and the cultural connection to Africa. The narrative of resistance continues to be regarded as part of national heritage given the international recognition it has received, and since the elites now in power derived their symbolic capital to some extent from this struggle. However, it has become side-lined in favour of a Western-oriented narrative that highlights cultural and historical continuities with the colonial past. This was made particularly evident by the change of national symbols (such as the national anthem) and the return of statues and street names representing colonial-era figures (Cardina & Rodrigues: 2020: 5-10).
These political/economic and corresponding mnemonic shifts have been working to “reconfigure the place of Cape Verde in the world, but also with(in) itself” (Cardina & Rodrigues, 2020: 10) in the context of a rise of tourism and the expansion of markets (Nolasco, 2019: 96). These developments coincide (at least chronologically) with political developments that started in the mid-1980s in Portugal, whereby a great deal of diplomatic effort was put in motion to set up a forum of Portuguese-speaking nations, in the hope it could serve as a vehicle for the diffusion of Portuguese influence. The result of these efforts to create a kind of “geolinguistic empire”, to borrow Pedro Aires Oliveira’s term, resulted in the creation of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CLPL) in 1996 (2017: 16), still active today. Given the structural and economic weakness of the former metropole, according to Oliveira, this could hardly be characterised as a “neocolonial” initiative. Nonetheless, it has managed to support Portugal’s postcolonial reapproximation to its former colonies,
6 Although Cape Verde was not one of the “battle grounds” of the colonial/liberation wars, many Cape Verdeans were
particularly in Africa (idem). Cape Verde, perhaps unsurprisingly, was one of the founding members (CPLP, 2020).
This turn to an “anti-anticolonial” discourse has dominated especially since the 2000s, when the colonial discourse of Cape Verdean exceptionality gained fresh new impetus with a reinvigorated emphasis on the 1930s Claridade movement and aspects of Cape Verdean identity that were seen as deriving from a cultural and historical connection to Portugal, encapsulated in the idea of crioulidade (Cardina & Rodrigues, 2020: 5-10). The Claridade movement “sought to find its roots in a crioulidade, which it considered to be the essence of “Cape Verdeanity” and in which the African is diluted in the European, thereby mitigating the violence that produced this racial mixing as a result of the forced relationship between white colonists and their slaves” (Nolasco, 2019: 97). This development has been working to elide centuries-old histories of colonial violence, while legitimising and normalising the system of racial hierarchy inherited from colonialism that endures today (Rodrigues, 2016: 114-116). This political and epistemological approximation to Portugal and the West in general, is increasingly criticised for the way it denies the violence of colonialism upon which the alleged creole identity of Cape Verde is was based (Lima, 2020.). In a recent article, Alexssandro Robalo describes what is institutionally and discursively happening in Cape Verde today as a “whitewashing” of the country’s history, memory, imagination, tangible and intangible heritage, whereby the memory of slavery and colonialism are silenced by the political and intellectual elite in an attempt to prevent them from negatively affecting the country’s relationship with Portugal and Europe more generally (Robalo, 2020).
Portugal: Between changing and unchanging narratives of the past
The Portuguese colonial project was one of the longest and most problematic: one but needs to think of country’s leading role in Transatlantic slavery; of the violent “campaigns of pacification” that led to the effective occupation of the former colonies at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century; and of the widespread use of forced labour until 1974 (Jerónimo, 2015: 33-39). However, and as many have argued, the dominant and official narrative in Portugal about national identity and the past is characterised by its Eurocentrism and a denial of colonial violence (e.g., Rosas, 2018: 9-12; Buettner, 2016: 190-191). According to Cardina and Martins, there are several factors related to the specificities of the Portuguese colonial project and the circumstances which led to its end which together help understand the politics of silence at work in Portugal.
First, the narrative of the “Discoveries”, i.e., the maritime explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which led the Portuguese to “discover” parts of the world (Cardina & Martins, 2019: 118-119), has for long been at the core of Portuguese collective identity, and was significantly reinforced by the Estado Novo (Sapega, 2008). Secondly, the development of the ideology of “lusotropicalism” (Portuguese tropicalism) in the twentieth century, which defined Portuguese
colonisation as something more benign when compared to the colonialism of other European powers. This ideology, which became the almost official narrative of the Estado Novo, was used to describe an allegedly innate and specifically Portuguese predisposition to colour-blindness and “miscegenation” in the “tropics” (Cardina & Martins, 2019: 119-120).7 Thirdly, the Estado Novo received relatively limited
opposition in Portugal regarding its colonial rule. Rather, opposition was relatively late and was mostly to the colonial/liberation wars rather than to colonialism itself (idem: 120). Fourth, the colonial war and its significant impact was, while it was happening, concealed in Portugal by the regime: for instance, the arrival of dead and wounded soldiers was hidden from the public, contributing to a lack of knowledge and/or interest amongst populations even after 1974 (idem: 121). Fifth, the process that established democracy in Portugal was deeply intertwined with the colonial war, since the group of military men (known as the Armed Forces Movement) who led the Carnation Revolution in 1974 were former soldiers of the Forças Armadas (Armed Forces) fighting in the colonies. This had a significant impact on public debate: “the fact that the democratic and postcolonial political order was founded with a very strong contribution from the army, necessarily immersed in many of the unspeakable events of the war” meant there was little will to condemn the war after 1974 (idem: 122, my translation). Sixth, thousands of Portuguese living in the African colonies (mainly Angola and Mozambique) were forced to return to Portugal (becoming known as “retornados” or returnees), and the way the government prioritised their re-integration and the negative impact of their return on Portuguese society, contributed to a sustained unwillingness to critically address the war and colonialism itself (idem). Finally, the fact that the war took place far away from Portugal also had an impact on the way in which this event was remembered (idem: 122-123).
Although silence dominates dominant narratives in Portugal about the colonial past and the colonial war, since the 1990s, and increasingly since the 2000s, artists, writers, scholars, and others have been critically addressing these histories, and particularly the colonial war (Allen, 2019; Cardina & Martins, 2019: 124).8 According to Irène dos Santos, from the 2010s onwards, memory seems to
have become a public issue in Portugal. Dos Santos argues that the post-1974 generation has been
7 The development of the ideology of “lusotropicalism” to interpret Portuguese colonialism, was developed by the Brazilian
sociologist Gilberto Freyre. This narrative characterised the Portuguese as being colour-blind, with an innate capacity to mix with others cultures and adapt. It was a narrative that was strongly embraced by the regime and Portuguese elites in the 1950s, and it had a very visible expression in popular culture in the last decades of the dictatorship. Furthermore, this perspective was used internationally by the Portuguese authorities to legitimise colonialism and to resist international pressure towards granting independence to the colonies (Cardina & Martins, 2019: 119). Although this ideology does not manifest itself explicitly today, the idea of Portugal’s “historical exceptionality” is very much alive and fuels forms of “banal nationalism” (Billig, 1995) through discursive and representational mechanisms that elide the violence of the colonial past and the colonial/liberation wars (Cardina & Martins, 2019: 119-120).
8 For instance, the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra has been carrying out several original
research projects that focus on the memories of Portugal’s colonial wars (and other European colonial histories). An example is the ongoing project “Memoirs. Children Of Empires and European Postmemories”. Outside academia, documentaries and biographic accounts for more or less broad publics have been proliferating about the colonial war. The website of the Bloco de Esquerda (Left Block) political party recently compiled a list of films, documentaries and literature on the Colonial Wars that demonstrates this proliferation (Carneiro, 2019).
claiming and demanding “a new relationship of Portuguese society with its recent past”, revealing a change in the meaning and the use of memory towards “a category of social and political practice mobilised by the individuals and groups we observe” in society (2019: 2). Hélia Santos adds that, in the past four or five years, the creation of a number of associations of young people of colour, such as Djass (Association of Afrodescendants) in 2016 and INMUNE (Institute of the Black Woman in Portugal) in 2018, have been creating space within the dominantly white public sphere and demanding that Portuguese society reflects on its narratives about the past and national identity (idem). The epitome of this development can be seen as Djass’ project to build a memorial to the victims of slavery, which won the Municipality of Lisbon’s Participative Budget competition in 2017/2018. Its construction was planned for this year, but has been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic (Djass, 2019).
The former incarceration site of Tarrafal: (Re)covering colonial narratives
Historical background: The lives of the incarceration site of Tarrafal
In this chapter, I answer the first part of my research question: how do memory narratives articulated in and about Tarrafal reflect the afterlives of colonialism in Cape Verde today? To do this, I examine the official narratives produced at the former incarceration site, articulated and transmitted through a virtual tour of the Museum of Resistance created this year. Considering that “museums, monuments, archives, and the concept of conserving heritage for its intrinsic values and as ideologically motivated public-memory practice were introduced to Africa through colonialism” (Marschall, 2008: 356), the act of transforming this former colonial prison into a National Heritage site and a museum can be seen as an afterlife of colonialism, for the way it applies Western epistemologies and practices to engagements with the past. In this chapter, I examine closely how the official narratives produced at this site through these conservation and musealisation practices might further reflect the enduring effects of colonialism in present-day Cape Verde.
I view Tarrafal as a transnational memorial site museum, since it constitutes a musealised space located inside a historical site of violence, and because the memories articulated there speak to social groups and are informed by frames of remembrance and mnemonic traditions located beyond the borders of the nation-state. I argue that the official narrative produced at Tarrafal, characterised by the dominance of the resistance and victimhood tropes, is ridden with silences and dissonances, and involves the reproduction of colonial-era epistemologies which stem mainly from its location in Cape Verde and from the transnational collaborative efforts (namely the involvement of the Portuguese government) to preserve particular memories that this site is seen to embody. Furthermore, I examine an alternative reading of the meanings of this site through the artwork of Cape Verdean artist César Schofield Cardoso, exhibited inside Tarrafal in 2017. Cardoso’s Perpetual Cycle, in critically engaging with the official narrative produced there and broader contemporary representations of history and identity in Cape Verde, while offering other narrative possibilities, adds important layers to my understanding of the ways in which the country’s colonial past lives on in Tarrafal (and the country) today.
Tarrafal is located near Chão Bom, on the island of Santiago and it had three phases of use. It was created in 1936 by the Estado Novo as a “penal colony”, for Portuguese political prisoners, in the context of the regime’s first major repression wave in Portugal (Caldeira et al., 2016: 83).9 This
9 Although it was created as a “penal colony”, many authors writing about its first phase seem to more frequently use the
term “concentration camp” (e.g. Brito, 2018). This might be because archival materials use both “penal colony” and “concentration camp” to refer to this former prison, however, further research would be required for me to fully understand the choices behind these terminologies. I opt for the term (former) “incarceration site” or “prison” to distance myself from the potential connotations of particular designations.
authoritarian regime imprisoned opposition in Portugal and its colonies, in prisons often administrated by the state police, created in 1933 as PVDE (Surveillance and State Defence Police), and after 1945 renamed as PIDE (International and State Defence Police), which came to be infamously known for its secret police services (Mateus, 2004: 23-24). During its first phase of use, however, Tarrafal seems to have been run by the Ministry of Justice (Caldeira, 2010: 34). Tarrafal is known as the “camp of slow death”, in reference to the poor medical care and living conditions, which were enforced as punishment (Caldeira et al., 2016: 82-89). By 1954, when it was forced to close due to mounting international pressure, 340 Portuguese political prisoners had done time at Tarrafal (Lopes, 2012: 13) and 32 passed away (Rosas, 2018: 67). According to Alfredo Caldeira, Tarrafal also received a few Spanish men who fought in the Civil War against Franco (2010: 25).
The PIDE was formally established in the Portuguese African colonies in 1957, due to the growing threat of decolonisation, evident in the anti-colonial sentiment that was spreading across the colonies (Mateus, 2011: 27-29). The few studies available about the PIDE in this context show that it was even more violent than in Portugal, often resorting to torture and forced labour (Mateus, 2011: 107; Rosas, 2018: 55-60).10 Furthermore, it was an important element of the colonial system, providing
information to the Portuguese Armed Forces during the colonial/liberation wars. It was in this context that Tarrafal reopened in 1961 as the Labour Camp of Chão Bom to imprison those accused of having connections to anti-colonial liberation movements (Brito, 2018: 279). 107 Angolans, 109 Guineans and 20 Cape Verdeans went through this camp until it closed in May 1974, when the prisoners were released. Four men (from Angola and Guinea Bissau) passed away during this phase (Brito, 2018: 280), but as Cape Verdean historian José Vicente Lopes has pointed out, all prisoners, from the first and second phases, suffered significant health and mental problems due to poor living conditions and violent treatment, which endured long after their imprisonment (2012: 205). According to Fernando Rosas, Tarrafal, the Estado Novo prison that received the most international attention for its cruelty, was in fact an “upgrade” in relation to the violence that took place in the many other colonial prisons, as well as informal sites of imprisonment, torture and forced labour, located across Portugal’s twentieth century colonial domains in Africa and Asia (2018: 67).
A third, lesser-known period of use took place between May 1974 and July 1975. According to Lopes, the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 triggered a heated dispute between the PAIGC and its local opponents, the UPICV11 and the UDC,12 to take control of the country (2012: 183). Whereas
the PAIGC aimed at immediate independence and political unity with Guinea Bissau, other groups hoped to maintain some connection to Portugal, and were generally against the PAIGC’s communist
10 The work of the PIDE in the former Portuguese colonies in Africa is still a largely unexplored topic, an important
exception being the study of Dalila Mateus (Rosas, 2018: 55). The topic of colonial incarceration is an equally understudied topic in the context of the Portuguese former colonies (Havik, 2019).
11 Union for the Independence of Cape Verde. 12
stance. The PAIGC, however, was the political group that amassed more popular support, due to its success during the conflict against Portugal, and the popularity of Amílcar Cabral. These rivalries led the PAIGC to reopen Tarrafal in December 1974 to imprison its opponents, those suspected of having been involved with the Estado Novo and those opposed to independence. This imprisonment at Tarrafal and other locations was supported by the Portuguese transitional forces, and often took place in dubious circumstances (idem). Oliveira argues that even in Cape Verde, which didn’t directly witness armed conflict, “treatment dispensed to dissidents suspected of having “collaborated” with the colonial regime was harsh” (2017: 4). Most of the prisoners were released from Tarrafal by May 1975, and in July the prison closed permanently and the buildings were used for some time for other purposes, such as a centre for military instruction (Lopes, 2012: 186, 193).
According to Cardoso, the period between 1974 and 1979 represents a difficult time in the history of the country, due to political instability and partial resistance to independence, which led to violence against those regarded as enemies by the PAIGC (Anjos, 2020). Many of those involved are still alive today, contributing, according to Cardoso, to a “black hole” or a generalised amnesia regarding this period and the third phase of use of Tarrafal. Since 2000, this former prison has received increasing attention for the painful memories it embodies. Today it is the Museum of Resistance, inaugurated in 2000, and the heritage site of the (ex-)Concentration Camp of Tarrafal (IPC, 2020a). Cardoso’s views add layers to the afterlives of sites such as Tarrafal, shedding light on the selective remembering and convenient forgetting of particular episodes of violence connected to this site, and on how narratives about the past can be (mis)used by various actors in moments of power change.
The Museum of Resistance: A transnational site of memory and collaboration
Regarding the first meaning of the concept of afterlife of colonialism, the former incarceration site has been brought back to life particularly since the 2000s, through several stages of musealisation and restoration work. In 2004, Tarrafal was added to UNESCO’s Tentative List of World Heritage Sites as the (ex-)Concentration Camp of Tarrafal (Sarmento, 2009: 533). In 2006, it was recognised by the Cape Verdean government as National Heritage (Lusa, 2006), managed by the Institute of Cultural Heritage (or IPC). The IPC is a governmental agency in charge of “identifying, inventorying, researching, safeguarding, defending and disseminating the values of culture, the tangible and intangible heritage stock of the Cape Verdean people” (IPC, 2020c, my translation). As a World Heritage contender, and given the universal claim of the Convention (Smith, 2006: 99), the Cape Verdean government claims that this is a site of relevance to all.13 As a National Heritage site, the IPC implies that Tarrafal is a site
13 By using the terms “World Heritage” and “Outstanding Universal Value”, the UNESCO World Heritage convention
implies that there is such a thing as a common understanding of what heritage is, and that there is such a thing as a heritage that belongs to and is valued by everyone. Its claim to “universality” is one of the main critiques towards the Convention which, as Laurajane Smith argues, is deeply rooted in the European cultural and intellectual tradition (2006: 99).
of importance for and as representing all Cape Verdeans. These claims, and their social and political stakes, are examined in detail below.
My analysis focuses mainly on what can be seen at the site since 2016, the latest musealisation phase. Due to the impact of Covid-19, museums and heritage sites around the world were forced to close and many offer(ed) virtual tours to their visitors (e.g. Feinstein, 2020). In this context, the IPC developed an online tour of Tarrafal through the Momento360 platform, consisting essentially of a series of 360-degree photographs, with small windows with information and additional photographs that allow the viewer to have access to selected details (Momento360, 2020). Not having been able to visit the site, this initiative constitutes the main object through which I examine the official narratives produced at Tarrafal. As a selection based on the selective official narrative presented at the site itself, the virtual tour sheds light on what are considered the most important stories to tell and objects to show. Because much of the museum display is missing from this virtual tour, however, I partly disobey it by making use of Google Maps photographs taken by visitors in 2019 and 2020, and information shared by a personal contact who visited Tarrafal in early 2020.
The site consists of a large rectangular wall, inside which are located several original buildings (Sarmento, 2009: 533) (fig. 1). The heritage site/museum is accessed through a gated entrance, on payment of a small entrance fee (IPC, 2020a). The prison complex used to encompass other buildings and support structures outside these walls, such as the residences for the chief and the guards. According to Patti Anahory, after the closure of Tarrafal as a prison, these structures were ceded to locals as living spaces, and although intended as temporary, neglect by the authorities means they are still living there today. However, they do not seem to be involved (nor taken into consideration) regarding the work to preserve and musealise this site (Anjos, 2020).
Figure 1. An aerial view of the former incarceration site of Tarrafal (source: Google Maps, https://goo.gl/maps/ED4PMqUQgdQ3jKNh7).
The Museum of Resistance underwent three phases of work. The first was inaugurated in 2000 with the support of the Portuguese government, and included one exhibition room, where visitors could find information about the 1936-1954 phase of Tarrafal (Sarmento, 2009: 534). This first phase, and particularly the Portuguese involvement, seems to have set the tone for the further development of the official narratives in the following years. Indeed, in 2007, the Portuguese government announced it would again provide financial support to renovate Tarrafal and improve its museum, in an effort to contribute to the preservation of the “memory of resistance” (Sarmento, 2009: 535). The second phase of the museum was inaugurated in 2009, in the context of an international symposium that was organised at Tarrafal, funded by the Cape Verdean government, and Portuguese and Cape Verdean foundations.14 According to the IPC, this second phase involved the creation of an additional exhibition
space about the second phase of use of Tarrafal, which seems to correspond to what can be seen at the site today. The third phase of work on the museum, completed in 2016, seems to have involved only the creation of a circuit that guides visitors around the site (IPC, 2020a).
Tarrafal has been studied by many researchers, especially Portuguese and Cape Verdean historians (see, for instance, Carneiro, 2020). The memory of those imprisoned there has been, to borrow Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney’s concepts (2009), mediated and remediated across time, space, and a multitude of cultural media (documentaries, exhibitions, memorials, etc.), especially in Portugal, Cape Verde and Angola (Brito, 2018: 279-282). It has thus become something akin to Pierre Nora’s concept of “site of memory”, i.e. a relatively stable point of reference for individuals and communities recalling a shared past (Erll & Rigney, 2009: 1). Given that it represents a point of reference for individuals and communities across borders, and because it integrates mnemonic traditions to be found elsewhere, Tarrafal could be seen as a site of “transnational memory”. According to Chiara de Cesari and Ann Rigney, this concept captures the way memories that refer to particular locations circulate across national borders, for their resonance in different contexts. This analytical framework encourages the study of collective remembrance beyond the scope of the nation-state, to capture the multi-layered, multi-sited and multi-directional dynamics of memory (2014: 4). Because my object of analysis is the physical site of Tarrafal, I examine how the narratives articulated here have been informed and influenced by memory traditions and narratives located elsewhere, in and outside Cape Verde.
That the memories Tarrafal embodies are relevant and have circulated transnationally can be seen in the collaborative efforts to preserve and present this site to the public. Besides supporting the creation and development of the museum, in 2019, Portugal announced it would support Cape Verde’s application to UNESCO’s World Heritage List (Lusa, 19 November 2019), following Angola (Angob,
14 Namely, the Mário Soares Foundation and the Amílcar Cabral Foundation (Portuguese and Cape Verdean foundations
named after two prominent symbols of fascist and colonial resistance respectively). This symposium took place on the 35th
anniversary of the liberation of the African prisoners in 1974, and it counted with the attendance of “survivors” of the camp from Cape Verde, Angola and Guinea Bissau, as well as one Portuguese survivor, historians, and representatives of different political groups and civic movements (Caldeira, 2010: 5).
2018), and including also cooperation with Mozambique and Guinea Bissau (Governo de Cabo Verde, 2020). Restoration of the site’s physical structures is currently underway, carried out by the Portuguese company Vilancelos (Lusa, 17 September 2020). João Sarmento argues that the involvement of the Portuguese government in the preservation of the memory of resistance in Tarrafal in the 2000s was out of tune with the approach “at home” to these memories. In Portugal, an activist group named Do Not Erase Memory was created in 2005 following acts of protests against the erasure of the memory of resistance against the Estado Novo, through the conversion of places and buildings in Lisbon and Porto to new purposes (Sarmento, 2009: 535). It was only through the efforts of this and other civic groups that these memories started emerging and being preserved, eventually contributing to the creation in 2015 of the Museum of Aljube - Resistance and Freedom, inside a former prison in Lisbon (Caldeira et al., 2016: 5), and after 2017, of a second Museum of Resistance inside the Fortress of Peniche (Museu Nacional Resistência e Liberdade, 2020). The contrast between the way the Portuguese government approached the memory of resistance in Cape Verde and at home seems to indicate that its involvement in Tarrafal was motivated by factors beyond a mere concern for the preservation of memory. Furthermore, chronologically speaking, the collaborations at Tarrafal coincide with the shift in Cape Verde towards a (political, economic and cultural) re-approximation to Portugal, as well as with the first few years of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries, created by Portugal in 1996. As several scholars have observed, the use of heritage to cultivate relationships between countries, stimulated by different interests (be they diplomatic, economic, cultural, political or other) is a common occurrence (Kersel & Luke, 2015), and it seems to be the case also at Tarrafal.
The “virtual tour” of Tarrafal: Showing victimhood, telling resistance
I argue that the acts of creating a display and presenting information about the past, based on existing material remains, represent a claim to truth with political and social implications. My arguments draw on the work of Amy Sodaro (2018) and Patrizia Violi (2012) on memorial museums and Mieke Bal’s concept of “epistemic authority” (1996). The Museum of Resistance of Tarrafal should be seen as a “memorial museum” for the way it focusses on past violence and human rights abuses (Sodaro, 2018). According to Sodaro, these types of museums are part of a relatively new approach to remembering and teaching the past (addressed in the Introduction), and the growing “trend” of “dark tourism”,15 seen in
the increasing number of concentration camps and prisons that have become tourism sites and “places of consumption” in recent years (2018: 3, 531-532). This too seems to be the case in Tarrafal: considering its history, several Cape Verdean ministers of Culture have advocated turning Tarrafal into a “space of education” (RTC, 2015) and an “international site of dialogue for peace” (Lusa, 2 March
15 “Dark tourism” follows the seminal work on this topic by J. John Lennon and Malcolm Foley written in 2000 with the title
2020). Violi makes a distinction between memorial museums created from scratch and those created on actual sites of trauma, which she terms “trauma site museums”, the latter being the case of Tarrafal. According to the author, “trauma sites exist factually as material testimonies of the violence and horror that took place there”, and the fact of their existence (much like all heritage sites) “implies a precise choice on the part of post-conflict societies regarding which traces of the past ought to be preserved” (2012: 37-38). Besides dealing with memories of violence, sites such as Tarrafal stand as tangible evidence of that violence which, in turn, serves to legitimise the representations of said violence. Working through this particular concept of museum allows me to draw meanings about the site from connections made between particular representations and the existing material remains.
To understand how these connections operate, I draw on Mieke Bal’s idea of the “epistemic authority”. Bal argues that the act of exhibiting functions as a discursive mechanism that says “look” (at an object), “that’s how it is” (1996: 2-3). If the “look” element of a display involves the presence of an exposed object, the “that’s how it is” aspect implies the authority of the person who knows and tells, with the objects working to reaffirm this discursive authority. This gesture is what Ball has called an act of epistemic authority (idem). Thinking of displays in these terms reveals the discursive character of museums and heritage sites, a discourse which Bal characterises as “affirmative, demonstrative, and authoritative” (idem). Although these spaces necessarily (re)produce selective narratives, it is the invisibility of the epistemic authority that reveals one of the greatest powers and dangers of exhibition spaces, i.e., their claims of truth (idem). These claims, as I argued above, have implications for the way that, in establishing what to tell, they establish who to represent. Considering Tarrafal as a national heritage site, I examine who belongs to the “Cape Verdean people”, and as a transnational memory site, I explore how this site intersects with frames of remembrance beyond the nation-state.
Figure 2. Screenshot of Momento360 - Museum of Resistance, showing the first 360-degree photograph (source: Momento360, 2020).
Having dissected the theoretical framework, I now turn to the virtual tour, which starts in front of the entrance to Tarrafal (fig. 2, above). The first information shared by the tour’s epistemic authority frames the history of the site between 1936 and 1974, during which it first received “340 antifascists”, and later around “230 anticolonialists”. It states that “the Tarrafal Concentration Camp represents a symbol of resistance against the regime of Salazar, and a site of painful memory”, and that this is “a site of memory and knowledge about the anti-fascist fight and the independence of the Portuguese colonies in Africa”. Google Maps photographs show that the information plaque on site presents essentially the same information, but emphasises the violent and fascist character of Estado Novo, by likening it to other European twentieth century fascist regimes, particularly Nazi Germany (fig. 3).
L to R: Figure 3: Information plaque at the entrance to the site (photo: Rui Semitela Morais, March 2019, Google Maps). Figure 4: Screenshot of Momento360 - Museum of Resistance (source: Momento360, 2020).
The information presented at the entrance - virtually and in situ - ignores the (meanings of the) experiences of others who went through Tarrafal, such as Cape Verdeans imprisoned there during the second phase due to petty crime, or individuals from other contexts (such as Spain, Poland or Timor) (Lopes, 2012: 13, 115), by choosing not to represent them. Furthermore, by framing the history of this site between 1936 and 1974, the narrative transmits the idea that the Portuguese were the trailblazers of resistance. Yet resistance in Cape Verde and other former colonies against colonialism occurred well before the 1960s, and even before the Estado Novo (Oliveira, 2017: 4): take, for instance, the
