PART II CASE-STUDY: GUINEA-BISSAU
6. Migration and development in Guinea-Bissau: a macro-level overview
6.1.1 Portugal’s ‘backward colonialism’ and the independence struggle
Portugal’s earliest contacts with the territory that was to become Guinea-Bissau date back to the 15th century and led to the gradual creation of a series of trading outposts along the Western coast of the African continent (Newitt 1981; Pélissier 1989; Nafafé 2007). By far the main ‘commodity’ sought by the Portuguese traders under the aegis of the king consisted of slaves, in the context of the infamous transatlantic trade that span the 16th to 19th centuries. Inland incursions by the Portuguese were limited: the slave trade mainly took place in the aforementioned coastal outposts and relied on the purchase of slaves from local kingships, typically in exchange for basic manufactures brought over from Europe. Despite the formal abolition of the slave trade in the early 19th Century (Pélissier 1989(I):42), the export of slaves by the Portuguese from the area of present-day Guinea- Bissau persisted until late in that century, and was only gradually superseded by palm and coconut oil, groundnuts (from 1840-50 onwards) and rubber (from 1890 onwards) (Galli and Jones 1987:17-22).
By the turn of the 19th to 20th Centuries and the onset of colonialism proper, Portugal’s fragility as a metropolis, and the growing competition it faced from more advanced European powers, were apparent: out of seven trading companies operating in the area at the time, only one was Portuguese, and not more than 18% of Portuguese Guinea’s foreign trade between 1908 and 1913 originated in or was destined for Portugal (PAIGC 1974:98). Portugal had secured de jure colonial control over Portuguese Guinea as of the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, however, and in 1927 (in the wake of the 1926 right-wing coup in Portugal) used it to enforce a strict trade regime to the detriment of other European trading companies, in an attempt to confer a monopoly on trade with Portuguese Guinea to the Portuguese financial bourgeoisie42. However, as a consequence of Portugal’s economic backwardness, colonial mercantile reliance on Portuguese Guinea as an outlet for metropolitan manufactures and industrial goods differed substantially from that of other colonial powers: as late as the 1930s, up to 70% of Portuguese Guinea’s imports still originated in third countries, and even by 1960 the figure was still 45% (id ibid:98).
42 Particularly the industrial and financial group Companhia União Fabril (CUF), represented in Guinea-Bissau by its affiliate Casa Gouveia (Forrest 1992:25).
132 Portugal’s backward character as a colonial power did not prevent it from seeking to enforce such typical colonial measures as hut and consumption taxes (the former from 1903 onwards), the recruitment of forced labour, and, especially, the imposition of mandatory crops (mainly groundnuts) (Pélissier 1989 (II):113; Galli 1995:64). Neither did it prevent it from undertaking brutal punitive and ‘pacification’ expeditions, despite – or because of – the relatively poor reach of the colonial administration, which, in its initial stages, largely relied on local chieftains for the purpose of tax collection (Forrest 1992:16- 19). What it did prevent it from undertaking was the actual development of Portuguese Guinea, even in the subordinate forms practiced in other African colonies (Galli 1995:52)
Portuguese Guinea suffered from widespread neglect on the part of the metropolis.
Although it was subject to mercantile exploitation, it did not experience the emergence of either any relevant local manufacturing or of a generalised plantation economy.
Throughout the colonial era, the export of metropolitan capital to the colony was minimal:
by 1960, the industrial fabric was limited to “two small oil-producing facilities, three rice- hulling plants, one paper-paste plant, one rubber-processing workshop, and five small wood-cutting facilities” (PAIGC 1974:127). Access by the autochthonous population to health and education was also extremely limited (Cabral 2008). The extremely backward level of infrastructural development at the time of independence is also telling: by 1974, there were no railways, the only paved road stretched for only 60km and the country’s harbour infrastructure was very rudimentary and largely limited to Bissau (PAIGC 1974:
128). In addition to the lack of investment and capital export, motivated by the semi- peripheral and economically backward character of the metropolis itself, the backward character of Portuguese colonialism additionally took the form of a paternalistic attitude towards “indigenous” labour and the systematic undermining of the possibility of endogenous accumulation, through attempts to eliminate small local traders, as well as land and labour laws that reflected the (corporatist) populist ideology of the colonial administration (Galli 1995:52-53)
Economic, political and cultural repression by a racist and repressive regime, alongside the general absence of any improvement in living standards, led to popular resistance from a very early stage. However, it was only after World War II, as repression intensified and the drive towards independence across the African continent began to gather momentum, that this resistance crystallised into a broad-based national liberation movement – the African Party for the Liberation of Guinea and Cape Verde, or PAIGC, which was created in 1956 and straddled the two eponymous colonies (Davidson 1969:31;
133 Forrest 1992:31-32). Amílcar Cabral, who founded and led the PAIGC throughout most of the independence struggle, would, prior to his assassination in 1973, become a particularly well-known and respected figure in the context of Third World liberation and pan- Africanism, and his reputation as an intellectual and independence leader spread throughout the world (Chabal 1983).
A decisive moment for the liberation movement came in 1959, with the massacre in Guinea-Bissau’s Pidjiguiti harbour of 50 workers who had gone on strike for higher wages.
Reacting to this massacre, the recently-formed PAIGC committed itself to the pursuit of armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism (Davidson 1969:31-32). Thus, after a couple of years of preparation, 1961 saw the beginning of direct action (sabotage and attacks on colonial facilities), followed in 1963 by overt warfare with support from China and the Eastern Bloc countries (Davidson 1969:36; PAIGC 1974:148). The war was particularly protracted, lasting from 1963 until the Portuguese democratic revolution in 1974, and hard:
the Bissau-Guinean theatre of operations is often described as the hardest of the three in which the Portuguese colonial war was fought, involving the largest relative number of casualties for the colonial army43.
Although the war eventually came to an end by virtue of the overthrow of the dictatorship in Portugal in April 1974, rather than as a consequence of any decisive military victory by the PAIGC, its last few years had seen the latter gain the upper hand. In 24 September 1973, the PAIGC indeed declared independence unilaterally in Madina do Boé, despite not yet being in full control of the territory. Moreover, the increasing hardship and futility of the war in Guinea-Bissau as perceived by many Portuguese combatants in this front are often argued to have been determinant for the role subsequently played by the military as of the 1974 Revolution in Portugal44.
As the PAIGC gained and consolidated control over increasing portions of the territory of Guinea-Bissau, it began to undertake the political and economic administration of the liberated areas, which included the setting up and daily running of schools, healthcare facilities and a network of ‘People’s Stores’, where local producers sold their produce and bought other agricultural products as well as a limited range of consumer
43 Cf. the television series “A Guerra” (RTP-Portugal, 2007-2010), in Portuguese, which contains a wealth of details, analysis and first-hand accounts of the military and political events that marked the Portuguese colonial war of 1961-1974, known to Bissau-Guineans as the independence struggle (available online at :
http://www.macua1.org/guerrajf/aguerra.html; accessed April 12, 2011).
44 See previous footnote.
134 goods (Davidson 1969). Following the country’s full independence in 1973-1974, this centralised marketing system was then extended to cover the entire country (Forrest 1992:
87-88).
As the war came to an end and independence brought a close to the colonial chapter of Guinea-Bissau’s history, spirits ran high with the perspective of independent post-colonial development. However, the PAIGC, now in power, had been through 11 years of war and inherited very little by way of infrastructural or productive capacity left over from the colonial days. Moreover, what it did inherit was the colonial administration’s underdeveloped bureaucracy, which effectively left the bulk of day-to-day administration, particularly in rural areas, to traditional local-level power structures (Forrest 2002). In addition to this, it had suffered a significant blow with the assassination in 1973 of its historical leader Cabral, which paved the way for the subsequent decades of intestine strife (Castanheira 1995; Temudo 2009).