Deportation Marks. Mozambicans deported to Sao Tome and Principe (1947-1961): History, stories, present time

Abstract

During the Portuguese colonialism, hundreds of people were deported from the African Lusitanian colonies to São Tomé and Príncipe. Starting from the 19th century, with the insertion of Portugal into the international economy as a country which provided raw materials, peripheral and dependent, the way of human supply of the productive colony of São Tomé and Príncipe occurred through the forced work, formally alternative to the slavery, which was no longer allowed. The article here presented aims at illustrating the mechanisms which got this forced migration possible, until the beginning of the Sixties of the 20th century, concentring the analysis on the Mozambican case. The research adopted a historical approach in its first part, and an anthropological and ethnographic approach in the second one, with interviews to some of the former Mozambican workers deported to São Tomé and Príncipe, to some repatriated former workers in Mozambique e to privileged witnesses from the Mozambican and the São Tomé side. The research revealed a historical reality - the "desterro" - yet little known, together with a current situation ignored as by the Mozambican State, as by the Portuguese State. The latter did not assume the historical responsibility for the serious violations of the most basic human rights of these deported, meanwhile Mozambican government did not carry out any action, to date, to alleviate the existential condition of this group of their citizens, today very old and poor and completely dependent from the humanitarian assistance.