Amílcar Cabral - Peter Karibe Mendy Ohio Short Histories of Africa

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he can return, the hero dies at sea during a naval battle. As noted by Chabal, the theme of this “poem of adolescence,” as Cabral later characterized it, was not uncommon, being “representative of Cape Verde’s sense of isolation from the rest of the world and the need to escape from this insular hell by seeking liberation outside.”21 In the second story, written during his final high school year but published five years later under the pseudonym Arlindo António when he was in the last year of his university studies in Lisbon, Cabral decries the evils of war and injustice, hatred and hardships, yet optimistically embraces a future with better prospects for a son he desires. Mário de Andrade notes that this essay represents “the first philosophical reflection of Amílcar” in which, with his desire for a son, he plans to reshape the future.22

      While the poets and prose writers of Claridade were cultural nativists whose affirmation of Caboverdianidade did not challenge the fundamental premises of Portuguese colonialism, they were nevertheless not totally oblivious to developments in the rest of the African continent. For example, a poem by António da Silva Ramos titled “Abyssinia,” which became a morna expressing outrage against the invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935 by Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, reveals a rare Pan-African solidarity that urged Negusa Nagast (Amharic for “king of kings”; emperor) Haile Selassie, to defend his kingdom, “which is rightfully yours.”23

      The Claridade movement was later overshadowed by the radical Certeza generation of younger writers and poets who focused on the linkages between the dire conditions of the archipelago and its status as a colony, as well as the historical and cultural links between the islands and the adjacent African mainland. Thus, these literati sowed the seeds for the germination of political consciousness that would lead to nationalist activism. The few issues of the journal Certeza that first appeared in 1944 contained poems and prose whose messages were deemed sufficiently subversive by the vigilant International and State Defense Police (PIDE) to ban the publication a year or so later, even though the authors were not yet calling for the overthrow of the colonial status quo.

      Although Cabral admired the Claridade and Certeza poets and writers, having recognized their critical role in the emergence of an archipelago-centric literature, he nevertheless criticized them for their limited vision. In a penetrating analysis of Cabo Verdean poetry written in 1952, he pointed out that the messages of the poets and writers had to transcend both “resignation” and “hope” and insisted that “insularity and droughts cannot justify endless stagnation.” He further urged that “the escapist dream, the desire to leave, cannot remain the only theme,” that a different dream should “no longer be a desire to depart but to create a new land inside our land.”24 It was a clarion call for profound transformational change. His radical political consciousness had crystallized in Portugal during the seven years he spent there as a student and a trained agronomist.

      Cabral completed high school at the top of his class in 1944. His journey to Portugal occurred a year later, after he and his family moved back to Praia, where he obtained employment as a clerk in the government printing office. He successfully applied for a scholarship from the House of Students of the Empire (CEI) to study agronomy in Portugal.

       3

       Mãe Patria

       Higher Education and Political Militancy in Portugal, 1945–52

      Early in November 1945, Cabral disembarked in Lisbon, capital of the mãe patria (motherland), about a month after his classes had begun at the Higher Institute of Agronomy (ISA) of the Technical University of Lisbon. The late arrival was due to bureaucratic delays in processing his travel documents. The institute had admitted 220 applicants comprising twenty females and two hundred males, including Cabral, the only African student. The five-year course in agronomy was so rigorous and intensive that only twenty-five students proceeded to the third year; among them were Cabral and a female Portuguese student, Maria Helena de Ataíde Vilhena Rodrigues, his future wife.

      Cabral excelled in his studies at the ISA, earning top grades in all his subjects and gaining respect and admiration not only from his peers and professors but also from the rector of the institute, who asked him to tutor his children. Yet, notwithstanding his demonstrated intelligence, he remained humble and approachable. His whole university experience enabled him to refine his engaging personality and spirit of tolerance, which enhanced his organizational skills.

      Besides his academic and professional training, the historical, political, and sociocultural contexts of Portugal and the dynamic background of the wider world provided the substance for young Cabral’s formation of a critical consciousness. This would bring about the fundamental transformations he had to undergo for his self-liberation—profound changes that would serve as a prerequisite for his commitment to struggle for the liberation of his fellow colonized Africans in “Portuguese Africa.”

      When Cabral started his studies in Portugal, the twelve-year-old Estado Novo regime was still struggling to consolidate its imperial fiat. The fascist dictatorship was established in 1933 to arrest Portugal’s decades-old economic decline, a state of affairs aggravated by political upheavals epitomized by the overthrowing of the monarchy, which was preceded by the assassination of King Carlos I and his heir-apparent Prince Luís Filipe on 1 February 1908. This bloody event was followed by the short and ineffectual reign of the assassinated monarch’s second son, Manuel II, and the establishment of a precarious liberal republic on 5 October 1910, which was ushered in by a violent coup d’état that claimed over fifty lives. Portugal became the third country in Europe with a republican constitution, after France and Switzerland. However, during the sixteen years of republican statehood, the country had political instability second to none in Western Europe: scores of political killings, numerous actual and attempted military coups d’état, several civil wars, eight presidents (with only one completing his constitutional term of office), thirty-eight prime ministers, and forty-five governments that lasted, on average, four months.

      Having established her present-day borders in 1149 with the final expulsion of the Moslem conquerors who dominated much of the Iberian Peninsula since 711, and having defeated the huge Castilian invading army in the defining battle of Aljubarrota in 1385, Portugal became a powerful unified nation characterized by strong centralized government, political stability, and sociocultural homogeneity. Nationalist pride, bolstered by scientific knowledge and the innovations of the Renaissance, enabled the country to embark on “voyages of discovery” under the visionary leadership of Prince Henry “the Navigator” that had profound impacts around the world. Its vast seaborne empire in Africa, Asia, and South America briefly made the fiercely nationalistic nation the richest country in Europe and the first superpower of modern times. The strong Portuguese nationalism and patriotic fervor demonstrated throughout the centuries were celebrated in literature and folklore and taught in colonial schools as part of the process of “civilizing” the colonized. Yet it did not dawn on the Portuguese colonizers that their unrelenting determination to be free and independent could also be an inspiration to their colonial subjects, like Cabral, to stubbornly seek their own freedom and independence.

      Increased fiscal and economic stability under Salazar as minister of finance (1926 and 1928–32) and prime minister (1932–68) enabled the significant improvement of Portugal’s physical and social infrastructure, including the establishment of the Technical University of Lisbon in 1930. The science- and technology-based university and its agronomy school were created to address the needs of a predominantly agricultural country and its colonies, endowed with valuable natural resources. It was thus the most unlikely place to produce future political leaders, let alone radical anticolonial activists. Cabral would embrace the vision and mission of the institution but defy the expectation of political conformity.

      Already well-steeped in Portuguese history, literature, and culture from his primary and high school education in Cabo Verde, with excellent oral and written command of the “language of Camões,”1 Cabral arrived with a strong self-esteem that enabled him to withstand the preconceptions and prejudices of his white colleagues and professors, in spite of being legally “Portuguese.” Thus, from the onset, Cabral felt at ease with himself

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