Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chibalo
differed from slavery; terms typically lasted six months (though sometimes
years), and there was nominal compensation (which was often not paid). Like slavery
under the Portuguese, the mortality rate on work gangs was high, and as one dissident
Portuguese general put it in 1961, at least with slavery, masters valued their assets
(Castelo 2007). Even after the official abolition of
chibalo
in 1961, long after the prac-
tice had been officially abolished in other European colonies in Africa, forms of coer-
cive labor persisted in the countryside until independence (Vail and White 1980; Mun-
slow 1983).
Other European colonial powers frequently portrayed Portugal as back-ward and in-
humane and undeserving of its African possessions, and in the 1950s and 1960s, as the
French, British, and Belgians departed Africa and their colonies became independent,
Portugal faced mounting international pressure to do the same. The Portuguese regime
stubbornly resisted. Lisbon argued that the Portuguese were exceptional, particularly
suited for colonization in ways the other European powers had not been (Duffy 1962;
Bender 1978).
Portugal's argument boiled down to a question of race. The Portuguese, asserted the
regime's propagandists, had demonstrated over the course of centuries a genius for as-
similating different cultures and peoples into Portuguese civilization. Large mixed-race
populations in Brazil, Angola, and elsewhere were supposedly testament to Portugal's
history of harmonious racial relations (Andrade 1961; Godinho 1962; Freyre 1961;
Boxer 1963; Bender 1978; Castelo 2001). To advance this claim, a 1951 constitution-
al makeover changed the status of the African territories from “colonies” to “overseas
provinces” of a single multicontinental, multiracial Portuguese nation. And following
reforms in the 1960s, the laws of Portugal recognized as legal Portuguese citizens all
those who lived within its many borders. The international community was generally
coldtoPortugueseclaims.TheysawAfricansocietiesdominatedandexploitedbywhite
minorities.
Declarations of racial harmony were in any case of little significance to the millions
who lived in Mozambique's countryside, where in the 1960s perhaps one in three chil-
dren died before the age of five and illiteracy neared 100 percent (Garenne, Coninx,
and Dupuy 1996; Cross 1987). Only a small percentage of Mozambicans, fewer than 10
percent, lived in urban areas (Pinsky 1985). But the Portuguese presence was felt most
directly in cities, where white populations were concentrated. Segregated Lourenço
Marques cast in particularly sharp relief the contradictions of what Lisbon insisted was
said, could by no means be described in simple black and white. The 1960 census for
both the city and shantytowns registered 41,165 whites, the vast majority of them Por-
tuguese (Direcção Provincial dos Serviços de Estatística Geral 1960). Among recent ar-
