Amilcar Cabral Today: Collective Memory and Contemporary Social Narratives in Guinea-Bissau (and beyond)

Abstract

Despite the seemingly universal acknowledgement of Cabral’s contribution to political thought and action, he was frequently omitted or erased from the state’s memorialization processes in Guinea-Bissau, one of his home countries. Nevertheless, this process is also countered by the ways in which Bissau-Guinean postcolonial generations have incorporated Cabral in their readings of the past and present in dispersed, fragmented but vivid ways. Based on participant and non-participant observation, and interviews with young adults from Guinea-Bissau, or Portuguese with Bissau-Guinean ascendency (between 24 and 31 years old) in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal, I explored ways of producing meanings about Cabral today. These contemporary narratives are obviously partly inherited from the narratives of those who experienced the colonial period and the liberation struggle, but they also mirror the new generation’s aspirations and desires for alternative modes of political organization, for material progress and full citizenship. Amílcar Cabral may still be considered as a significant hero of African and human liberation but remembering him as the founder and father of a nation also evokes a lost sense of unity and highlights the failures of later post-colonial politics stemming from a generalized feeling of abandonment by the state. He simultaneously serves as a source of inspiration for reinventing emancipation at the local level and as a transnational signifier.