Colonialism and Colonialities in the Cape Verde Islands

• In Event: Colonialities of Being: Speaking Our Voices

Abstract

Colonial dynamics have produced similar atrocious consequences all over the colonized and the colonial world. As Freire (2000) insightfully argued, the oppressor is also systematically oppressed by its oppressor impulses.
The Portuguese colonial momentum in Cape Verde was no different from the other colonial structures in Africa, South America and/or Asia, as one can notice from the historical metamorphoses of Cape Verde as one of the ‘former’ eight Portuguese colonies, such as Angola, Brazil, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Macau, Mozambique, and S. Tome & Principe. The world that the Portuguese created was not ephemeral work and the marks of his passing were indelible. In fact the colonial archeology is still very much alive today in new nations, such as Cape Verde.
Paradoxically or should one say shockingly even though colonialism is defended as long gone (Quijano, 2000), the truth of the matter is that its consequences and practices are still alive and framing the commonsensical commonsense of both so called former colonized and former colonial nations. In this context, organic intellectuals from the decolonial and southern platforms argue for the need to understand this mutant beast within what they suggest as ‘coloniality’ or better said, colonialities.
This study attempts to suggest a possible road map to examine the Portuguese colonialism in Cape Verde within the framework of what decolonial and southern theorists such as Mignolo, Quijano, Sousa Santos, call coloniality or colonialities. In order to do this I (a) examine the processes of Portuguese colonialism in Cape Verde drawing from anti-colonial intellectuals to help us understand the nexus ‘colonialism-colonialities’, (b) interpret such colonial momentum within the framework of the different colonialities as suggested by decolonial intellectuals. In this context, (c)‘read’ the post-colonial Cape Verdean realities within the lenses of the four colonialities.
My theoretical framework relies on (des)encounters of critical – post-structural and anti-colonial and de-colonial theories to understand the object of my study: to examine the Portuguese colonialism in Cape Verde within the framework of what decolonial and southern theorists such as Mignolo, Quijano, Sousa Santos, call coloniality or colonialities.
In this context, I will start my theoretical framework by unveiling the Portuguese colonial period in Cape Verde by heavily relying in works of both critical – post-structural and anti-colonial scholars. Approaches designed by Fanon, Cabral, Bhabha, Said, hooks, Anzaldua, Bartolome, Macedo, Freire, Darder, etc. This theoretical avenue is crucial to understand not only the very symptoms of the colonial-colonized dialogism in Cape Verde, in issues such as language, culture, identity, spirituality, but also the limits and potentialities of such apparatuses.

Author

• Soraya Isabel De Barros, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth