Insular oases in globalisation: The ribeiras of the Cape Verde archipelago, fragmented and fragile areas on the way to marginalisation

Abstract

Comparing oases to islands in the desert may seem a rather simple cliché. Lacoste (in Encyclopaedia Universalis 2014) recalled the two characteristics of oases that justify such a comparison: on the one hand, “the violent contrast between the oasis, its water and its abundant vegetation and the arid or semi-arid areas that surround it” and, on the other hand, “in desert lands […] that were travelled across for centuries, the oases were stopping-places that were vital to locate and even to control”. This second feature is often lacking in oases situated on islands or archipelagos, which thus appear doubly insular and somewhat reduced in their function. This is particularly true of Cape Verde, whose “islandity”, to use the term coined by Bonnemaison in L’Espace géographique 19–20(2):119–125, (1990), was strong for a long time, notably in the twentieth century during the long period of decline imposed by Salazar’s Portugal. The Cape Verde islands then withdrew into their own microcosms and seemed to turn their back on their coasts. In the last decades of Portuguese colonisation and, for different reasons, in the years following independence, the Cape Verdean archipelago experienced a form of “superinsularity” (Taglioni in Annales de Géographie 652:664–687, 2006), which ended the conversion to liberalism of the Cape Verde economy and, as a result, its inclusion in the global economy. Only in the last twenty years has the Republic of Cape Verde become part of globalisation, due to the contribution of emigration and the development of services, particularly in transport and tourism, which has led to a spatial reorganisation in which the agricultural ribeiras have become marginalised. At the same time, beach resorts have proliferated on the islands of Boa Vista and neighbouring Sal, like “neo-oases” created ex nihilo.