Re: [GRN] Vasco da Gama

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 12:56:41 -0800

Alberto, I just saw your post. For your information I lived for four years in Angola, two of which out of the army. Besides, in the army in Angola my unit was made up of Angolan soldiers, and as an officer I had the opportunity of dealing and talking to them in a way which told me much about what they thought and how they felt. And those soldiers weren't volunteer or mercenary, they were conscript soldiers doing their military service, just like me. I assure you that, contrarily to you, I know what I am talking about when I talk of Angola.
 
Best regards
 
Nuno
 
 
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2026 at 12:15 PM
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [GRN] Vasco da Gama

 

 

Very well said, Cliff Pereira .

 

 How can someone who only spent two years in Angola doing military service know what happened in that colony? Where is the rigor?

 

They weren't born there, they didn't live with the natives to see and hear their complaints and miseries. Does nationalism count for more than the excruciating pain of the natives?

 

Many retornados talk about the fortunes they had in Africa and don't say what they didn't have when they disembarked poor from underdeveloped Portugal thanks to Salazar.
Alberto



 

----- Mensagem de Cliff Pereira <> ---------
Data: Wed, 14 Jan 2026 09:54:49 +0000
De: Cliff Pereira <>
Assunto: Re: [GRN] Vasco da Gama
Para:
 
Dear Nuno, your perspective is one of many, there are perspectives of those colonised, those colonising and those who were dragged into the colonising process. None of these perspectives is entirely valid and none are entirely invalid.
Alberto mentions that Angola and Mozambique’s borders were not drawn up by Africans, they were drawn up in Berlin and divided African peoples. The Bakongo, Batshokwe, Ovambo, Makua and others were split - hardly a process of unification. This is more a process of divide and (separate) rule.
 
I have listened to the perspectives of Portuguese ex-military and the colonised in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde and São Tomé (as well as Timor-Leste, Goa and Macau). What strikes me is that many of the military people who were often at the front-line portray empathy with the people they were sent to fight and the thousands of non-partisan people who were caught up in the wars. But the wives of the military who lived in compounds and nice suburbs with their "small army” of servants have nothing but hate for the colonised. Even today one ex-military wife mentioned “we had such lovely swimming pools, now look at Bissau?”. The fact that she had a pool while most of the country had no safe running water reflects the inequality that all European colonialism produced. Clearly colonialism was about maintaining a certain status, or hierarchy of dominance.
 
Our (includes Goans) passports divided us into “assimildo” or “não-assimilado”. One offered benefits to employment and housing, etc. the other did not. Social mobility was strictly controlled. But that ex-military wife would have had little or no idea of this mechanism and probably cared little. 
 
Meanwhile the cotton from the colonies supported the textile industry of Portugal - not the cotton producers. 
 
You are right, that we should look forward, but we are not on the same page when looking back and that is the stumbling block. 
Clifford Pereira.
 
From: 'Nuno Cardoso da Silva' via Goa-Research-Net <[email protected]>
Date: Tuesday, 13 January 2026 at 1:09 AM
Subject: Re: [GRN] Vasco da Gama
 
Having served in the Portuguese army in Angola from 1966 to 1968 I might be suspect of sympathizing with Portuguese colonialism, particularly as I never witnessed Angolan people being abused or mistreated by either the Portuguese administration or by any Portuguese settlers in Angola. But in fact I - and most Portuguese people - consider that colonialism is on principle a bad thing, and we should have never tried to occupy those countries and try to impose our way of life on them. But having said that I believe that most peoples colonized by us, in the end benefitted more from our presence than were harmed by it. For instance, if we take Angola, what we see there is a strong feeling of national identity, a lack of tribalism or religious conflict, which is mostly due to their now having a common language which unites them, and a common cultural matrix which has helped them overcome any original differences among tribes, which would have prevented them being a coese people. Without us there would now be at least some four or five different countries on what is Angola, or some of the local tribes would have been exploited and dominated by stronger tribes. Yes, historically we have comitted some crimes, but which country - no matter how sovereign - has not often comitted crimes against their own people? Can we forget that most African slaves were delivered to slavers by their own people? For money. And historically, weren't we all colonized? The Celts and Iberian natives in Iberia were colonized by Fenicians and by Romans, as well as by Muslim Berber tribes from North Africa. Without them we woukldn't speak the languages we speak, and our values and judicial system might have been very different. Did we lose anything with it? Nothing essential, I'm sure, and we gained a lot from those dominant powers. Time to look to the future, and not to the past.
 
Cumprimentos
 
Nuno Cardoso da Silva
 
 
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2026 at 7:24 PM
Subject: Re: [GRN] Vasco da Gama
To conclude this debate about foreign invasions from distant lands, whether by capitalists or communists, just a few lines:
The partition of Africa in Berlin, formalized at the Berlin Conference (1884-1885), was the process by which European powers, without African presence, drew arbitrary borders to colonize the continent, regulating the division and territorial occupation, establishing principles such as "effective occupation," and consolidating colonial exploitation with lasting consequences for African nations.
 
The communist Stalin colonized parts of Eastern Europe. Portuguese communists never contested this.
 
Those defeated and expelled from the colonies will always defend the theses advocated by the dictator Salazar or Stalin.
 
To understand better, it is good to read the book by the Angolan writer Nito Alves Vandunas, "The Prominence of Mercenaries in Mass Graves, ( Proeminência dos mercenários nas valas comuns" published in Luanda by Elivulu house (1977) . It tells the story of foreign assassins who came from Lisbon to kill Angolan leaders.
Alberto
Cumprimentos
 
 
 
 
 

 

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