RuralDEcol
Rural Decolonization: The Portuguese Revolution and the Liberation of Villagization Camps in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau, 1974-75
50 years after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, and despite a rich literature about the Colonial War, very few Portuguese citizens know today that the Portuguese Army forcibly displaced two million agriculturalists to villagization camps in rural areas of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. RuralDecol proposes to redress this situation, so that the Portuguese people better understand their history, and in particular that the military coup of April 25, 1974 also brought the removal of the barbed wire that often surrounded the thousands of villagization camps, and liberated people to gradually start transforming the former camps, according to their own aspirations, into the many thriving villages and towns that exist today.
Simultaneously, many Portuguese soldiers were also freed from war, and left the new villages that they surveilled in Africa to return to their country, often also to rural villages. RuralDecol aims at contributing to an understanding of the lived experience of decolonization in rural Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau in the period between the military coup of April 25 in Portugal and the political independence of the three countries in 1974 and 1975. In particular, RuralDecol focuses on the spatial experience of liberation of the 2 million agriculturalists that lived under conditions of military villagization in the three countries, encompassing both transformations in the built environment and in social space.
Although research in architectural history and proximate fields has started addressing the neglected history of wartime villagization camps after 1961, very little is known about the moment of liberation and the beginning of decolonization, and how 2 million Guineans, Angolans, and Mozambicans started transforming their own lives and built environments as the Portuguese soldiers and colonial administrators left for Europe. RuralDecol will foreground interviews with retired military in Portugal, as well as with elders in rural Africa.
The project hypothesizes that the spatial dimension of rural decolonizations can be understood as a silent process of political transformation, neglected within the framework of a militarization of memory. The project will share online with the general public a map created in GIS locating the memories of former soldiers and peasants. Furthermore, a graphic novel inspired by the interviews carried out, and focusing on the affective dimension of rural decolonization, will be created by a Portuguese artist. Printed copies of this graphic novel will be delivered to all public high schools in Portugal. As there are no sources other than the testimonies of those who lived through rural decolonization, it is urgent to remember now the liberation of the villagization camps in Africa during the Portuguese Revolution.
