Portugal confronts its slave trade pastPosted in Africa, Articles, Europe, History, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Slavery on 2018-04-23 23:05Z by Steven |
Portugal confronts its slave trade past
Politico
2018-02-06
 Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on Goree Island in April 2017 Moussa Sow/AFP via Getty Images |
Planned monument in Lisbon sparks debate over race and history.
LISBON — Over five centuries after it launched the Atlantic slave trade, Portugal is preparing to build a memorial to the millions of Africans its ships carried into bondage.
Citizens of Lisbon voted in December for the monument to be built on a quayside where slave ships once unloaded. Yet although the memorial has broad support, a divisive debate has ignited over how Portugal faces up to its colonial past and multiracial present.
“Doing this will be really good for our city,” said Beatriz Gomes Dias, president of Djass, an association of Afro-Portuguese citizens that launched the memorial plan.
“People really got behind the project, there was a recognition that something like this is needed,” said Gomes Dias. “Many people told us this is important to bring justice to Portugal’s history here in Lisbon, which is a cosmopolitan and diverse capital with such a strong African presence.”…
…Country of tolerance
Few Portuguese miss their imperial regime. Four decades on, no political force clings to colonial nostalgia. Yet a belief lingers that Portuguese colonialism was gentler than other European empires, marked by a tolerant interaction with other peoples and widespread racial mixing.
That tolerance, the narrative goes, is reflected in today’s Portugal.
Unlike just about everywhere else in Europe, there’s no significant far-right party spouting xenophobic populism; during Europe’s refugee crisis, a parliamentary consensus backed doubling the country’s refugee quota; in 2015, Portugal quietly voted in António Costa, whose father was Indian, as prime minister…
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