Because of Today

In Guinea-Bissau, forty years after the war, those who joined the liberation movement and those who fought in the colonial army expose a multiplicity of discourses and irreconcilable memories. Today they have in common claiming themselves as the forgotten losers, the disillusionment with the initial expectations of independence and attributing the underdevelopment of Guinea-Bissau to the legacy of war. In this context, the collective memory of this war and this struggle is transformed in order to dovetail and not disturb the contemporary political history. However, the hatred accumulated during the years of colonial domination became even deeper, what came to complicate the whole process of decolonization having consequences still today in societies of former colonies and in Portugal.

Catarina Laranjeiro

Catarina Laranjeiro is a PhD candidate at Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra. She holds a degree in Social Psychology from the University of Lisbon, a post-graduation course in Digital Visual Culture by ISCTE-IUL, and a Master’s of Visual Anthropology at the Free University of Berlin