May 23, 2025

Heritages of Portuguese Influence

Miguel Cardina e Roberto Vecchi

This study examined the monumentalisation and musealisation of the Portuguese Colonial War (1961-1974). The main objective was to analyse representations, images, messages, imaginaries and public discourses about this historical event, stemming from these two processes. It is an investigation on memory politics, products and practises that aims to contribute to reflections on contemporary phenomena connected to imperial pasts and colonial wars. The work is situated at the intersection of Memory Studies, Museology and History. The thesis adopts a transdisciplinary approach, using the concept of monumentalisation as an analytical guide for the memorialisation processes examined. Here, monumentalisation is understood as the promotion of memorial projects and initiatives that aim to give public visibility and significance to the memory of the Colonial War and former Portuguese combatants. I have shown how the processes of monumentalisation and musealisation have been configured as a memorial heritage of the agents and communities that have promoted them. They are an expression of the power of these communities to represent themselves. The work explores the political uses of the past in contemporary contexts, examining the (re)configuration of public narratives about past times and events, as (re)constructions of (partial and selective) visions of the past that specific social actors and communities seek to transmit and perpetuate. To this end, the analysis focuses on the role of different agents in establishing these processes and how they shape public narratives and representations of the war in museological spaces and public thoroughfares, through the construction of monuments. The study seeks to understand how their actions are linked to personal or collective objectives, as well as political, social, or associative demands. Firstly, I conduct a diachronic analysis of the construction process of 521 monuments, from their inception to the present day (1963-2024). Key dimensions include the evolution of sculptural and iconographic proposals, representations of war and the Portuguese Colonial Empire, and the social dynamics underpinning monumentalisation. Special attention is given to recently built monuments that project imperial imaginaries into public thoroughfares. I observe how some of them have been appropriated and (in)contested by certain social actors and communities and identify the motivations of those who promoted their construction. Ideologies, visions of the past, and discourses embedded in the monuments will also be examined. Based on this collection and subsequent analysis of the sources, I reflect on the uses and motivations that lead memory agents to mobilise specific representations of the past in the present. Secondly, I analyse how the conflict and those who fought in it have been represented in museums or collections open to visitors of the Portuguese Armed Forces, military and veterans' associations and the Colonial War Museum. This thesis expects to contribute to reconfiguring the musealisation of the conflict and launches proposals and questions for discussion on the paths that can be explored. Lastly, this work aims to challenge a set of hegemonic representations about the Colonial War and Portuguese colonialism. Acknowledging that mnemonic processes and products are vectors for transmitting knowledge (and not just memories) about historical pasts and for (re)configuring identity narratives with which communities and groups identify themselves, I advocate the application of a pedagogy of memory in the way the Colonial War is memorialised, to provide more comprehensive and historicised perspectives on the historical phenomena addressed.

Keywords: memorial heritage, politics of memory, uses of the past, war commemoration, war memory studies.