The Island Where Tricontinentalism Ended: Ondjaki’s Sonhos Azuis Pelas Esquinas

• In Event: The Tricontinental Legacy: A Retrospective on Global Revolution

Abstract

The Tricontinentalist heritage persists in writers who grew up under Tricontinentalism. Ondjaki, born in Angola in 1977, charts Cuban-Angolan collaboration, as perceived by Luanda schoolchildren, in his novels Bom dia camaradas (2001) and AnóDezanove e o Segredo do Soviético (2008). The former book idealizes Cuban internacionalistas; the latter work creates a complex vision in which the non-socialist world intrudes through popular culture, and, though the helpful Cubans are contrasted with the dogmatic Soviets, ultimately young Angolans must find their own path.

Under Tricontinentalism, the assertion of international harmony presupposes harmony within each revolutionary regime. References to authoritarian aspects of Angola’s MPLA are coded or ironized in the two books mentioned above. Globalization, which supplants the Marxist “national liberation” paradigm with a liberal human rights framework, flushes out the authoritarianism of the once-idealized past. My presentation will explore this dynamic in Ondjaki’s most recent work, Sonhos azuis pelas esquinas (2014). Significantly, the author’s first work set outside Angola is also the first to broach the question of MPLA authoritarianism. Each story takes place in a different international city; the final story, “Mussulo,” set on an island near Luanda where MPLA cadres vacationed, fictionalizes an incident where the author’s mother was arrested for treason. I will analyze the emergence of this story as the culmination of liberal globalization’s distancing of later generations from the national liberation paradigm, interpreting it as one of the ends of Tricontinentalism.

Author

• Stephen Henighan, University of Guelph