Portugal’s journey, from a minor colonising power to a member of the European Union, transformed its sense of national belonging and citizenship. African colonial possessions, which under the Salazar-Caetano regime had been formally incorporated into the nation as a ruse to offset international criticism of Portugal’s prolonged imperialism, were later disavowed, along with those Africans who had become Portuguese citizens under the earlier arrangement. As a result, Portugal has failed to recognise the existence within its borders of a black community, its history and its exclusion, which continues to the present day.
See A. Sivanandan , ‘Race, class and the state: the black experience in Britain’, Race & Class (Vol. 17, no. 4, Spring 1976).
2.
On discrimination against Brazilians in Portugal, see I. Machado and J. Renno, Ja vi esse Filme...: estereotipos no cotidiano de imigrantes Brasileiros no Porto (mimeo, date unknown); G. A. P. D. Santos, Sabia imaginaçá em Portugal: imigrantes Brasileiros e a imaginaoção da naçaão na diaspora (Monografia de Conclusão de Curso, Centro de Estudos de Migranações Internacionais, UNICAMP, 1996).
3.
Y.Leonard, ‘A Ideia Colonial, Olhares Cruzados’, in F. Bethencourt and K. Chaudhuri (eds), História da Expansão Portugueêsa, Vol. 4 (Navarra, Temas e Debates, 2000), p. 524.
4.
V. M. Godinho, Estrutura da Antiga Sociedade Portuguesa (Lisbon, Arcadia, 1977), p. 20.
5.
J. R. Tinhorão, Os Negros em Portugal: uma presença silenciosa (Lisbon, Caminho, 1988), pp. 80, 82.
6.
A. C. Saunders , A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441- 1555 ( Cambridge, Cambridge University Press , 1982), p. xi.
7.
D. Lahon, O Negro no Coração do Impe ério (Lisbon, Luviprint, 1999), p. 51.
8.
M. Eaton , ‘Foreign residents and illegal immigrants: os negros em Portugal’, Ethnic and Racial Studies (Vol. 16, no. 3, July 1993), p. 546.
9.
Tinhorao, op. cit.
10.
M. Baganha and P. Gois, ‘Migracoes internacionais de e para Portugal: o que sabemos e para onde vamos?’, Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais (No. 52/53, 1999), pp. 229-71.
11.
Although, in overall terms, Portugal has a foreign population of less than 4 per cent, which is below the European average, almost 60 per cent of all legal foreign residents are concentrated in Lisbon’s metropolitan area, giving them strong visibility.
12.
F. L. Machado, ‘Luso-Africanos em Portugal: nas margens da etnicidade’, Sociologia: Problemas e Práticas (No. 16, 1994), p. 115.
13.
R. P. Pires, ‘Mudancas na imigracao’, Sociologia: Problemas e Práticas (No. 39, 2002), pp. 151-66; Baganha and Gois, op. cit.
14.
‘A silent presence’ is the subtitle of Tinhorao’s book on the subject.
15.
M. Margarida Marques , J. Mapril and N. Dias , Immigrants, Associations and Their Elites: building a new field of interest representation, unpublished paper ( Lisbon , 2003).
16.
C. Castelo, O Modo Português de Estar no Mundo (Porto, Afrontamento, 1999), p. 58.
17.
Ibid.
18.
G. Freyre, O Mundo que o Português Criou (Lisbon, Livros do Brasil, 1951), p. 39, my translation.
19.
Léonard, op. cit., p. 522.
20.
The construction at the city limits of the Oriente-Complex, host to the EXPO 1998, symbolises this new self-image. Whereas every corner of Lisbon’s city centre reminds the visitor of its colonial importance, Oriente offers a modern counterpoint, with its futuristic design and landscaping. The same is true of the two modern bridges over the Tagus River, both of which are characterised by the prevalence of Bauhaus aesthetics and functionalism. Younger generations of Lisboetas seem much closer to Europe than their parents and grandparents and Europe serves as a frame of reference much more frequently than Brazil, Angola or Mozambique.
21.
Racial projects ‘connect what race means in a particular discursive practice and the ways in which both social structures and everyday experiences are racially organized, based upon that meaning’, M. Omi and H. Winant , Racial Formation in the United States: from the 1960s to the 1990s ( New York, Routledge , 1994), p. 56.
22.
Quoted in Leonard, op. cit., p. 36, my translation.
23.
I. C. Henriques, ‘A sociedade colonial em Africa: ideologias, hierarquias, quotidianos’, in F. Bethencourt and K. Chaudhuri (eds), História da Expansão Portuguêsa, Vol. 5 (Navarra, Temas e Debates, 2000), p. 225.
24.
Léonard, op. cit., p. 48.
25.
=25 Henriques, op. cit.
26.
Leonard, op. cit., p. 548.
27.
Henriques, op. cit., 266ff.
28.
Leonard, op. cit., p. 540.
29.
Ibid. ‘Indirect rule’ refers to the practice of dividing colonial subjects into different groups and co-opting some by giving them privileges. From 1850, when ‘indirect rule’ became the official doctrine of British colonialism, traditional royal families were invested with colonial administrative power. The alternative Portuguese system, which used lighter-skinned mulattos from Cape Verde and Indians from Goa, Diu and Damao as colonial administrators in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea, was no less perverse.
30.
Castelo, op. cit.
31.
It is noticeable that the studies of blacks in Portugal that do exist have been produced by Brazilian, American and French scholars, in particular by Charles Boxer, Martin Eaton, Jose Tinhorao, Didier Lahon, Yves Léonard, and A.C. Saunders.
32.
T. Fradique, Culture Is in the House: o rap em Portugal. a retoria da tolerancia e as politicas de definição de produtos Culturais (masters thesis in Anthropology, ISCTE, 1998).
33.
Interview conducted on 10 June 2003 in Lisbon, my translation.
34.
Fradique, op. cit., speaks of an ‘explosion of rap music’ in Lisbon between 1994 and 1998. My own observation was that African-American-inspired clothing styles and music were prominent among black Portuguese youth.
