Amílcar Cabral and the politics of memory in post-independence Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde

Abstract

This study examines how Amílcar Cabral’s legacy has been constructed, disputed, and reconfigured in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde since independence. Through an analysis of monuments, official commemorations, political speeches, public debates, and youth and artistic mobilisations, it situates Cabral’s figure within broader processes of nation-building, political legitimation, and historical narration. It asks why the memorialisation of the same founding figure took such different forms in the two states born of the struggle he led and links these trajectories to the international conjunctures – Cold War alignments, structural adjustment, democratisation – that shaped state formation in both countries. The article argues that Cabral functions as a central mnemonic reference through which state actors legitimise authority and shape narratives of unity, while younger generations and diaspora groups reactivate his legacy as a language of critique in contexts marked by political instability, neoliberal reform, and social inequality. Rather than eroding his symbolic status, these competing appropriations reaffirm Cabral’s enduring relevance as a living political framework through which contemporary actors articulate claims for social justice, democratic accountability, and alternative futures.