Social movements in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: Dialogues, legacies, and reinterpretations of Cabral’s thoughts on culture

Abstract

Amílcar Cabral’s statement that “the liberation struggle is, first and foremost, an act of culture” has been a structuring element in the construction of narratives, forms of organization and mobilization of social collectives for the transformation of Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean societies. However, there is a notorious absence and/or lack of formal endogenous processes of Cabralist education that have in the assumptions of culture an important catalyzing source of artivist production. This article, which is based on ethnographic and collaborative research conducted over the last decade in these two countries, aims to rescue Cabralist ideals within new forms of expressive socio-cultural intervention within a framework of participatory and counter-colonial democracy. It will seek to understand how the processes of claiming and recreating spaces for active and full citizenship have constituted entities capable of revolutionizing both societies.