ARE WE STILL AN OVERSEAS PROVINCE OF PORTUGAL? COMMEMORATIVE TOPONYMS AND THE COLONIAL PRESENCE IN THE CITY CENTRE OF KUITO, ANGOLA
Abstract
In the recent past, the world, with particular mention of the African continent, has witnessed a mass of protests, mostly by student movements. Among other things, they demanded the removal of colonial heritage from the spatial landscape as well as the decolonization of education. Nearly half a century after independence from the Portuguese colonial regime, the Angolan spatial landscape still celebrates the greatness of the so called heroes of the Portuguese civilization mission, whereas for many, the recognition of national historical figures remains an illusion. This article attempts to stir a debate, stemming from the sentiment that names of streets that constitute colonial cultural heritage and identity should be
de-commemorated in the Kuito city centre and elsewhere in Angola. This is because they offer direct exposure to unbearable psychological memories of the ruthless regime that tortured natives for centuries. We argue, that by preserving these names, we are directly or otherwise abettors of the colonial ́s tale that they were the ́heroes ́ of the African people who needed to be saved from their uncivilized modis vivendi. The paper
examines all the names surrounding the urban area of the city centre of the Kuito municipality and exposes the contributing role, if so, of each, in order to examine the impetus behind their preservation.
Keywords: colonial. commemorative toponyms. City of Kuito. Angola
References
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NUNES, A. L. P. A Sublevação da Baixa do Cassange. Revista Militar, v.2, n.10, p. 1177-1194, 2011.
PERALTA, E. and DOMINGOS, N. "Lisbon: reading the (post-) colonial city from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century." Urban History, v.46, n.2, p.246-265, 2019.
PIMENTA, F. T. O Estado Novo português e a reforma do Estado colonial em Angola: o comportamento político das elites brancas (1961-1962). Revista História UNESP, v. 33, n.2, 2014.
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SILVA, G. B. As revoltas na Baixa de Cassange e o direito à memória e história nas lutas de libertação de Angola:: entre o 04 de janeiro e o 15 de março de 1961. Cadernos do Tempo Presente, v. 12, n.02 p.13-33, 2021.
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SILVEIRA, A. A Baixa de Cassange: o prenúncio da luta armada. Revista Porto, v. 2, n.3, p.40-57, 2013.
SMITH, B. Cartographies of colonial commemoration: Critical Toponymy and Historical Geographies in Toronto. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (JCACS), v.15, n.2, p34-47, 2017.
STONE, G. Britain and the Angolan Revolt of 1961. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, v. 27, n.1, p.109-137, 1999.
ULUOCHA, O. Decolonizing place-names: Strategic imperative for preserving indigenous cartography in post-colonial Africa. African Journal of History and Culture, V.7, N.9, p.180-192, 2015.
WILLIAMS, C. The Destruction of black civilization: great issues of a race from 4500 B.C. Chicago: Third World Press, 1974.
AZARYAHU, M. The power of commemorative street names. Environment and planning D: Society and Space, v.14, n.3, 311-330, 1996.
BALL, J. Staging of memory: Monuments, commemoration, and the demarcation of Portuguese space in Colonial Angola. Journal of Southern African Studies, v.44, n.1, p.77-96, 2017.
BENDER, G.J. Angola under the Portuguese: the myth and the reality. Vol. 23. University of California Press, 1978.
BIGON, L. & NJOH, A. J. The toponymic Inscription Problematic in Urban Sub-Saharan Africa: From colonial to Postcolonial Times. Journal of Asian and African Studies, v.0, n.0, p.1-16, 2013.
CASAGRANDA, M. From Empire Avenue to Hiawatha Road:(Post) colonial naming practices in the Toronto street index. In Proceedings of the international conference on Onomastics “Name and Naming, v. 2, p.291-302, 2013.
CHETTY, S. and GINIO, R. "Commemoration, cult of the fallen (Africa)." 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 2015.
CHILD, P. and WILLIAMS, P. An Introduction to Post-colonial Theory. Abingdon: Routledge, 1997.
COMAROFF, J.L.& COMAROFF, J. Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa: Critical Perspectives. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
CORREIA, F. Tradição e Modernidade na Baixa do Cassanje, 1961. Diss., 2020.
COUCEIRO, H.P. "Angola: dois anos de governo, junho 1907-junho 1909." Lisboa: Edições Gama, 1948.
CRUZ, M.D.2007. Portugal Gigante: Nationalism, Motherland and Colonial encounters in Portuguese School Textbooks. Hbitus, Goiana, v.5, n.2, p.395-422, 2007.
De MATOS, P.F. Power and identity: The exhibition of human beings in the Portuguese great exhibitions. Identities, v.2, n.2, p. 202-218, 2014.
DIAS, J.R. Famine and disease in the history of Angola c. 1830–1930. The Journal of African History, v. 22, n.3, p. 349-378, 1981.
FREUDENTHAL, A. A Baixa de Cassanje: algodão e revolta. Revista Internacional de Estudos Africanos, n. 18, n.22, p. 245-283, 1995.
GOODMAN, E. Remembering Mzee: The making and re-making of “Kenyatta Day”, 1958-2010. In: MARK-THIESEN, C.; MIHATSCH, M.A.; Sikes, M.M. (eds.). The politics of historical Memory and commemoration in Africa. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2022.
HEINTZE, B. A lusofonia no interior da África Central na era pré-colonial. Um contributo para a sua história e compreensão na actualidade. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos, v. 7, n.8, p.179-207, 2005.
IGBOIN, B.O. 2011. Colonialism and African cultural values. African Journal of History and Culture, v.3, n.6, p. 96-103, 2011. Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/ajhc.
JACOB, B.M.O. A Toponímia de Luanda-Das Memórias coloniais às pós-coloniais. Dissertação de Mestrado em Estudos do Património. Universidade Aberta. Lisboa, 2011.
JERÓNIMO, M. B. & ROSSA, W. Heritage (s) of Portuguese Influence: History, Processes, and Aftereffects. Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies, v.36/37, p.7-23, 2022.
KEESE, A. Dos abusos às revoltas? Trabalho forçado, reformas portuguesas, política" tradicional" e religião na baixa de Cassange e no distrito do Congo (Angola), 1957-1961. Africana Studia, v. 7, 2020.
LAURINDO, M.K.S. Abordagem do Léxico Toponímico Municipal do Cuito da Província do Bié: Caso de Bairros, Comunas, Embalas e Aldeias. Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada na FCSH, Nova de Lisboa, 2015.
LIGHT, D. & YOUNG, C. The Politics of toponymic continuity: The limits of change and ongoing lives of street names. In: ROSE-REDWOOD, R.; ALDERMAN, D.; AZARYAHU, M. (eds). The Political life of Urban streetscapes: Naming, Politics and place. New York: Routledge, 2018. p.185-201.
MAHUMANE, J. J. & TEMBE, N. J. (2023). A Persistência ou o Uso Não Oficial de Topônimos Coloniais na Cidade de Maputo, Moçambique. Linha D'Água, v.36, n.1, p. 183-202, 2023.
MAMVURA, Z. PFUKWA, C. and MUTASA, D.E. Scale, street renaming and the continued visibility of colonial street names in Harare. Nomina Africana: Journal of African Onomastics, v.34, n.1, p.21-32, 2020.
MARSCHALL, S. Landscape of memory: commemorative monuments, memorials and public statuary in post-apartheid South Africa (Vol. 15). Leiden/Boston:Brill, 2010. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/18536.
MARTINHO, F.P. Marcello Caetano no (Jornal do) Brasil Repercussões da direita portuguesa na ditadura militar (1968-1974), 2019.
MENEZES, B.K. Colonial brands in the Toponymia of Angola case of the city of Benguela." Journal of Liberal Arts and Humanities 1.5 (2020): 82-89.
NDLETYANA, M. 2012. Changing place names in post-apartheid South Africa: accounting for the unevenness. Social Dynamics, v.38, n.1, p.87-103.
NJOH, A. J. Toponymic inscription as an instrument of power in Africa: The case of colonial and post-colonial Dakar and Nairobi. Journal of Asian and African Studies, v. 52, n.8, p.1174-1192, 2017.
NUNES, A. L. P. A Sublevação da Baixa do Cassange. Revista Militar, v.2, n.10, p. 1177-1194, 2011.
PERALTA, E. and DOMINGOS, N. "Lisbon: reading the (post-) colonial city from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century." Urban History, v.46, n.2, p.246-265, 2019.
PIMENTA, F. T. O Estado Novo português e a reforma do Estado colonial em Angola: o comportamento político das elites brancas (1961-1962). Revista História UNESP, v. 33, n.2, 2014.
PINTO, A.C. and JERÓNIMO,M.B. Ideologies of Exceptionality and the legacies of Empire in Portugal. 46th Annual ASPHS Conference. The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. March 19-22, 2015.
PORTO EDITORA – Bié na Infopédia [em linha]. Porto: Porto Editora. [consult. 2022-02-09 21:56:39]. Disponível em https://www.infopedia.pt/$bie.
SILVA, G. B. As revoltas na Baixa de Cassange e o direito à memória e história nas lutas de libertação de Angola:: entre o 04 de janeiro e o 15 de março de 1961. Cadernos do Tempo Presente, v. 12, n.02 p.13-33, 2021.
SIMPSON, D. Approaching the PIDE ‘From Below’: Petitions, Spontaneous Applications and Denunciation Letters to Salazar's Secret Police in 1964. Contemporary European History, v.30, n.3, p.398-413, 2020.
ROSE-REDWOOD, R. "Reclaim, Rename, Reoccupy": Decolonizing Place and the Reclaiming of PKOLS. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, v.15, n.1, 2016.
ROSE-REDWOOD, R. ALDERMAN, D. and AZARYAHU, M. "18 Contemporary issues and future horizons of critical urban toponymy." The political life of urban streetscapes: Naming, politics, and place, p.309- 319, 2017.
SILVEIRA, A. A Baixa de Cassange: o prenúncio da luta armada. Revista Porto, v. 2, n.3, p.40-57, 2013.
SMITH, B. Cartographies of colonial commemoration: Critical Toponymy and Historical Geographies in Toronto. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (JCACS), v.15, n.2, p34-47, 2017.
STONE, G. Britain and the Angolan Revolt of 1961. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, v. 27, n.1, p.109-137, 1999.
ULUOCHA, O. Decolonizing place-names: Strategic imperative for preserving indigenous cartography in post-colonial Africa. African Journal of History and Culture, V.7, N.9, p.180-192, 2015.
WILLIAMS, C. The Destruction of black civilization: great issues of a race from 4500 B.C. Chicago: Third World Press, 1974.
Published
02/12/2023
How to Cite
COSTA, Dinis Fernando; DANIEL, Hilton Fortuna.
ARE WE STILL AN OVERSEAS PROVINCE OF PORTUGAL? COMMEMORATIVE TOPONYMS AND THE COLONIAL PRESENCE IN THE CITY CENTRE OF KUITO, ANGOLA.
Mercator, Fortaleza, v. 22, dec. 2023.
ISSN 1984-2201.
Available at: <http://www.mercator.ufc.br/mercator/article/view/e22032>. Date accessed: 27 apr. 2024.
doi: https://doi.org/10.4215/rm2023.e22032.
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