The monumentalization of the Portuguese Colonial War: Commemorating the soldier’s efforts amid the persistence of imperial imaginaries

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the monumentalization of the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974) and explores the dynamics that sustain its growth recently, while other symbols and forms of public memorialization associated with the colonial past have increasingly been called into question and contested, nationally and internationally. Through the semiotic and epigraphic analysis of monuments, observational visits and interviews with some of the people who put them up, the main representational dynamics of the approximately 415 monuments in Portugal are identified. The article examines the (under)-representation in black troops of the Portuguese Army, the boom in monument construction (over 350) from the year 2000 onward and the maintenance (and reinforcement from 2010 onward) of messages and visual narratives projecting a sort of imperial imaginary. This work shows how the vernacular remembering and the public memory of the conflict and the colonial past are reflected on the monuments’ representations and images.