A memória como promotora de interculturalidade em Maputo, através da preservação da estatuária colonial

Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary Vítor de Sousa Abstract Since this is a matter that is not yet resolved, where the strength of ideologies and reuses may change deeply or even reverse the ways it is evoked, the colonial past may become a problem (Vecchi, 2018a). This is the case of Portuguese colonialism which is frequently invoked to stress resentments: whether from the country that was colonised or the colonising country (Ferro, 2009). As soon as the Portuguese Revolution of 25 April 1974 took place, Mozambique promoted the elimination of colonialism symbols. This predictable attitude, aiming to show that the colonisation had ended, was later amended by the future Governments, with the colonial statues (at least, the ones that remained) being relocated to a place where they may be observed and contextualised. This action aimed to preserve the memory, which may enable the development of intercultural dynamics, softening the mentioned resentment: promoting questioning, in order to understand certain logics and, at the same time, filling gaps in the forgotten memory and in the Mozambican identity (Khan, Falconi & Krakowska, 2016). This paper refers to the cases related to the new life of two colonial statues in Maputo – Mouzinho de Albuquerque and Salazar –, during the post-colonial period and the permanence, until today, of the first monumental trace of Estado Novo [Second Republic] (Monumento aos Mortos da Primeira Guerra Mundial [World War I monument]), showing the importance that the preservation of memory has in a country or a nation’s life, even when it is associated with the former coloniser. This sort of mental decolonisation (Mbembe, 2017; Thiong’o, 1986), aims the questioning of the way the colonial past weighs on the current intercultural relations, in Mozambique, when the country establishes a relation with the former coloniser, allowing its inhabitants to look at the past as a way to build future dynamics. Keywords Memory, history, coloniality, post-coloniality, interculturality A memória como promotora de interculturalidade em Maputo, através da preservação da estatuária colonial Resumo Por não se tratar de um assunto encerrado, onde a força das ideologias e dos reusos poderá alterar profundamente, ou até inverter, os modos da sua evocação, o passado colonial pode revelar-se problemático (Vecchi, 2018a). É o caso do colonialismo português que, de forma recorrente é invocado para sublinhar ressentimentos: quer do país que foi colonizado, quer do país colonizador (Ferro, 2009). Moçambique, logo que eclodiu em Portugal a Revolução do 25 de Abril de 1974, promoveu o apagamento dos símbolos do colonialismo. A previsível atitude, tendente a mostrar que a colonização tinha acabado veio, depois, a ser corrigida pelos futuros Governos, com as estátuas coloniais (pelo menos as que restaram), a serem deslocalizadas, onde passaram a poder ser observadas e contextualizadas. Tratou-se de uma ação com vista à preservação da memória, que pode permitir o desenvolvimento de dinâmicas interculturais, esbatendo o referido ressentimento: promovendo a problematização para perceber determinadas lógicas e, ao mesmo tempo, preencher vazios na memória esquecida e na identidade dos moçambicanos Comunicação e Sociedade, special vol., 2019, pp. 269 – 286 http://dx.doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.0(2019).3073 Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. especial, 2019 270 Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary . Vítor de Sousa (Khan, Falconi & Krakowska, 2016). Este artigo referencia os casos relativos à nova vida de duas estátuas coloniais em Maputo – a de Mouzinho de Albuquerque e a de Salazar –, em tempo pós- -colonial, e à permanência, até hoje, daquele que foi o primeiro vestígio monumental do Estado Novo (o Monumento aos Mortos da Primeira Guerra Mundial), observando a importância que tem a preservação da memória na vida de um país, ou de uma nação, mesmo estando associada ao antigo colonizador. Esta espécie de descolonização mental (Mbembe, 2017; Thiong’o, 1986), passa pela problematização da forma como o passado colonial pesa nas relações interculturais nos dias de hoje em Moçambique, quando o país se relaciona com o antigo colonizador, permitindo que os seus habitantes olhem para o passado como forma de construir dinâmicas de futuro. Palavras-chave Memória; história; colonialidade; pós-colonialidade; interculturalidade Introduction Statues are present in public spaces, such as cities, where major communities are settled. As public monuments, they express collective memory and its representations, and they are usually related to themes or figures connected to national identity, through those in power in those circumstances. A statue is an immovable object (three-dimensional sculpture), which may represent a real or imaginary entity. Colonial governments built statues in the colonised territories, related to the metropolis or to their imagination. Margarida Calafate Ribeiro (2004) mentions the “empire as an imagination of centre”, claiming that the creation of an image of Portugal as a centre was achieved precisely through the empire. It was the empire’s traces, which represented the “excess nation, relocated far away” (Richards, 1993), especially in the relation with the “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1993), that tried to establish the connection. Even if it was a “Paper Empire”, as stated by Leonor Pires Martins (2012), in which the African regions started taking shape in the Portuguese heads through the images, although showing some fragility from Lisbon. Mozambique, namely its capital, Maputo (once Lourenço Marques), was not an exception. In a first phase, just before the country’s independence, in June 1975, the colonial statues were demolished (except the World War I monument, made of stone) and many of them were damaged. In a second phase, the Mozambique Government aimed to show the previous statuary, preserving the memory and contextualising it. This is the case of the equestrian statue that honoured Mouzinho de Albuquerque, which was located in the heart of Maputo (demolished in May 1975), in the square named after this Portuguese soldier during the colonial period, who was the Royal Commissioner of Mozambique between 1896 and 1898. This statue was transferred to the Maputo Fortress, where it could be seen by all the inhabitants and newlyweds used it as a backdrop for their wedding photos. In addition, another statue representing Salazar, which was built in the centre of the capital during the colonial period (demolished in May 1974), was placed in the National Library of Mozambique, facing the wall, as if it was being punished. In both Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. especial, 2019 271 Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary . Vítor de Sousa cases, it is a sort of mental decolonisation (Thiong’o, 1986; Mbembe, 2017), which aims to question the way the colonial past currently weighs on Mozambique. In this sense, although the concept of interculturality may not be too consensual – being associated with the Portuguese Discoveries, in a clearly tropical Portuguese inspiration –, the truth is that, during the Portuguese period, a sort of reversed interculturality (Stoer & Cortesão, 1999), protected by the coloniser, with emphasis on the idea of “Portugality”, prevailed. The post-colonial period does not erase the colonial time, although it does recycle it. Therefore, and as a metaphor of the past-present time, the colonial statue represents an absence/indifference, but, at the same time, duly contextualised, it can be assumed as a cornerstone of the memory of Mozambique and, by extension, of Portugal as well. Collective memory and history In some countries, heritage, like patrimony, becomes a watchword, evoking a multiplicity of emotional associations. For the State, it constitutes an opportunist means to satisfy the social needs of the electorate, at the same time that it promotes the political goals of nation building. In Sabine Marschall’s opinion (2009) – who wrote about the idea of heritage during the post-apartheid period in South Africa –, heritage is based on a malleable and ambiguous concept, full of paradoxes, and it can be used differently, sometimes supporting contradictory political, economic, social and cultural ideas. Since the beginning of the 1990s, that the patrimonial heritage speech arose – not only in South Africa, but also in several other countries –, as one of the main places to discuss questions of culture, identity and citizenship, suggesting what is authentic, what are the deeper roots of cultural identity and the “essence” of a sense of nationality (Shepherd & Robins, 2008). Patrimony is hard to define, because it is comprehensive, contains tangible artefacts and structures that refer to the past, as well as intangible landscapes and aspects of culture, such as traditions, customs and oral memories. Patrimony relates to both the past and the present (Marschall, 2009). The celebration is demonstrated, among others, through the renaming of streets, cities and public buildings; in the construction of new museums, documentation and interpretation centres; in the re-enactment of battles and historical events; in the identification and official marking of new patrimony places; as well as in the installation of memorials, monuments and public statues. As public monuments, statues express collective memory and representations, and are usually related to themes or figures connected to national identity, through those in power in those circumstances. Maputo did not escape that trend, although the destruction of colonial traces felt following the Portuguese Revolution of 25 April, right before the independence of Mozambique, had been replaced by its preservation, in an attempt to show the Mozambican people memory traces from the Portuguese domination period. Collective memory – a concept created by Maurice Halbwachs, in 1925, after concluding that memory is shared, transmitted and built by a group or by society –, should always be considered in its multidimensionality, since the individual memory of a person Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. especial, 2019 272 Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary . Vítor de Sousa or related to a country are the basis for formulating an identity. At another level, there is history, which promotes the summary of the important events of a nation, which makes collective memories only a sum of details. Regarding the relation between history and memory, the author refers that “history starts only when tradition ends and the social memory is fading or breaking up. So long as a remembrance continues to exist, it is useless to set it down in writing” (Halbwachs, 1990 [1950], p. 80). This idea is also shared by Pierre Nora, although this historian observes that memory has become an object of history, so it corresponds to history itself. He highlights that the acceleration process verified in history, resulting from the mediatised massification of society, has produced the end of memory tradition, as a consequence of the radical change of practice related to archives, which no longer have a critical view, only being used as instruments, contracting “live memory”. In this sense, he mentions the crystallisation of forms of memory, considering them as “prosthetic memories”, which substitute the experience lived (Nora, 1989). He advocates the idea that memory no longer exists, since it is only relived and ritualised, therefore, nowadays, society uses history to grant it memories. In this sense, in contemporary society, there is no possibility for a memory-history, as in the 19th century. He refers that the separation between memory and history produces well-defined meanings, with memory being considered a tradition based on live and dynamic heritage, and history representing the opposite, separating and selecting the facts. Thus, the historian refers that modern societies completely eliminate memory, and the one that exists is assumed as history. And, in the event of not having memory, he mentions the possibility of accessing a reconstructed memory that gives sense to identity, such as the creation of archives, organisation of celebrations, among others, in which the sites of memory are assumed as a space where the ritual of a historymemory can be translated into a memory (Nora, 1989). The cultural, historical and educational narratives establish memories and postmemories, being its productivity demonstrable through, for example, an analysis of memoralisation of the Colonial War in the Portuguese contemporary context (Ribeiro & Ribeiro, 2018), and that, in this context, is also relevant to Mozambique. According to António Sousa Ribeiro (2018), one of the most productive reflections on these themes is translated into the concept of “postmemory”, proposed by Marianne Hirsch, in the 1990s, whose importance is “based on the way it allows thinking about the complex position of the subsequent generations in the scope of the memory processes” (Ribeiro, 2018, p. 15). Paradoxically, “postmemory” will be considered a memory that was not lived, but that “by its violence and the important meaning of its consequences, namely in the scope of family socialisation, stands out to the next generation with enough strength to be indelibly inscribed” (Ribeiro, 2018, p. 15). It is in this sense that postmemory “is transformed into one of the cornerstones that gives a specific performative content to the relation with a violent past” (Ribeiro, 2018, p. 15). This also enables codifying those memories in stories and narratives, preserving them and allowing new members to share a story in group. Sheila Khan stresses the existence of a Mozambican post-colonialism, differentiated from the post-colonial dynamic of the expression in the Portuguese language, a Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. especial, 2019 273 Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary . Vítor de Sousa fact she mentions stands out in João Paulo Borges Coelho’s writing. The researcher approaches three author’s works – As visitas do Dr. Valdez [The Visits of Dr. Valdez] (2004), Crónica da Rua 513.2 [Chronicle of the 513.2 Street] (2006) and Campo de Trânsito [The Camp of Transit] (2007) – looking to a “Story of the ‘silent’, [where] the margins, the silences, the fragilities of all of those who witnessed the cycles, the transitions, the changes of this nation being built that is Mozambique [are appointed]” (Khan, 2008, p. 134). After a conversation with the writer and historian, Sheila Khan refers that the social and collective memory is interlocked in a process of “organisation of a national identity”, although it presents another dimension, which is related to “the legitimacy of its power, as narrative holder, of a sort of meta-narrative of History”, that, after all, is nothing more than “the struggle for liberation, [which] legitimates its power, and which means pulling out the entire past (…) of demonising the entire colonial past”1. Therefore, in the author’s diegesis, it is assumed “as a link of contrasts, of signs that project, (…), precisely in what concerns the denunciation of a political attempt to establish a rupture (…) between the colonial and post-colonial periods” (Khan, 2008, pp. 134-135). In which it is clear “the intersection between the social memory and the elimination or oblivion, strategic or political, of that other colonial period, which is urgent not to forget, delete or conceal” (Khan, 2008, p. 135). Furthermore, it remains in the generation that lived the Colonial War, a confrontation with its own process of cultural, identity and physical deterritorialisation. Or, as the character Sá Caetana (As visitas do Dr. Valdez, 2004) mentions: “we belong to the old world, we don’t have the strength of the new one” (Coelho, 2004, p. 204). The colonial past is present in the contemporary world in many different ways, being integrated in a material culture in several forms. In a maybe less tangible way, but not less active, it shapes society, recognising positioning (L’Estoile, 2008). According to Roberto Vecchi, the empire “explodes today in multiple subjective splinters, whose shape is not yet formed and it is subject to the risk of partial reuses or interested reviews” (2018a, p. 18). A transfer of memory between generations is taking place, “which allows a glimpse of possible survivals, of distant and fragmentary pasts, by the strength of an image caught by a glance that does not reproduce it, but recreates it” (Vecchi, 2018a, p. 18). And this is what will remain, when there are no longer live witnesses of the events. The ideologies and social memory regarding the colonial past between the Portuguese speaking countries, without being subject to reflection and critical deconstruction, may contribute to Portuguese-centric expressions and social stereotypes, and lead to intergroup conflicts, social discrimination and exclusion of some people (Abadia, Cabecinhas, Macedo & Cunha, 2016; Cabecinhas, 2007; Cabecinhas & Feijó, 2010; Feijó & Cabecinhas, 2009; M. L. Martins, 2015; Sousa, 2015, 2017). In fact, the collective memories regarding the colonial past generate tension between the so-called “Portuguese speaking nations”, whose contact with hegemonic versions of the colonial past was provided by cultural, educational and historical narratives that have been frequently mobilised to strengthen national identity and justify policies. 1 Sheila Khan, personal interview, July 19, 2007. Interview with João Paulo Borges Coelho. Sines, Portugal. Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. especial, 2019 274 Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary . Vítor de Sousa Cultural memory (Assmann, 2008) – or the bond between the past, present and future – constitutes a continuous process of remembrance and oblivion, in which the reconfiguration of individuals and of the group itself with the past remains, with its positioning made in terms of the emergent and established sites of memory. Hence, the cultural memory dynamic must be contextualised, taking into account the social factors on which it sails and the way power was exercised. Presentism, post-colonial theory and interculturality Memory has transformed, from a cultural and political point of view, into a fertile ground, where a tough battle for the building of a hegemonic narrative is being fought, with one of the participating factions claiming its own truth or, at least, its memory authority. We still look at history as if it was built between good and bad people, but history is much more complicated than that. According to Diogo Ramada Curto, this is a deviation of a question that is urgent to ask and that is related to the situation of historical research. He argues that the past should be studied through the intersection of history and social sciences in general, based on sources and the development of an analytical practice that prevents a moralist one: “that allows us to think about social differences on a scale that transcends the nation, to compromise migrations and population movements” and that also enables “as better understanding of the big structures that, with the force of inertia, continue to impose themselves in the present, complicating the modernisation of societies, such as the Portuguese”, preventing presentism (Curto, 2018, s. p.). It is exactly in this direction that the most recent research of the historian António Manuel Hespanha (2019) goes. In Filhos da Terra: identidades mestiças nos confins da expansão portuguesa [Portuguese children: interracial identities at the ends of the Portuguese expansion], the history of the Portuguese expansion is told not from the metropolis point of view, but from the point of view of those who left and settled in the lands of the Portuguese empire. Hespanha refers that this publication aims to gather and process together “elements for the analysis of what has been called, for some years, the Portuguese ‘shadow empire’, which means, that set of communities (…), mainly in Africa and Asia, [that] were considered ‘Portuguese’” (Hespanha, 2019, p. 12). Therefore, he questions the existence of a “‘Portuguese’ identity”, assuring that the problems start there, with the definition of the object of study. In fact, as the “Portuguese” communities are being considered, in their ambiguity and complexity of their constituent elements, “their identity is lost”. And he explains: “they are so different from one another that, grouping them is, above all, the result of having decided to look at them together. And (…) we have concluded that is related (…) to the way we previously imagined them as ‘Portuguese’” (Hespanha, 2019, pp. 12-13). Drawing on Sanjay Subrahmanyam (1995), he even demonstrates doubts regarding the applicability of the expression “Portuguese Diaspora”2. 2 Stuart Hall had already mentioned that “the diasporic perspective of culture can be seen as a subversion of the traditional cultural models oriented to the nation” (2013, p. 36), even more so, in a time of globalisation, the diaspora concept may be a contradiction when evoked in the name of “Portugality” (Sousa, 2013). Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. especial, 2019 275 Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary . Vítor de Sousa Moisés de Lemos Martins (2018) considers that the European maritime expansion of the 15th and 16th centuries was a process that opened to alterity, diversity and knowledge of the other, but it failed to assimilate and destroy the entire difference, producing colonialism. What was stressed during Estado Novo, in which the inoculation of ideology together with the colonised territories was done since school, highlighting the “values” that were the basis of the regime. This made Sephen R. Stoer and Luiza Cortesão stress the “heavy legacy of ‘Portugality’, as a ‘reserved interculturality’”, justified through the attempt of that regime to try to assign a “built homogeneity”, through curricula, teachers, school materials, in which the education process was assumed as “one of the ways resorted to, in an attempt to awake/develop the sense of belonging to that dispersion/diversity” (Stoer & Cortesão, 1999, p. 59). This contradicted the existing rhetoric in Estado Novo, under the development of an assimilationism policy, although controlled, ending in the 1960s, already in full assimilationism, in which the indigenousness law was even extinguished, giving Portuguese citizenship to the natives (Torgal, 2009). Rosa Cabecinhas and Luís Cunha (2008) thus typify interculturality as a distant plurality of the exotic diversity spread through the Estado Novo propaganda. Interculturality should be seen as a process, which means that several people with different inequalities participate in it, and that it is important to understand “that the places where we live and the frontiers that separate us constitute realities that, to a large extent, are irremovable, therefore transcending any multicultural rhetoric” (Cabecinhas & Cunha, 2008, p. 7). It is important to understand that the smaller world globalisation provide is not directly proportional to “different ways to state inequalities” (Cabecinhas & Cunha, 2008, p. 7). However, the authors alert to the risk of “confusing dialogue with symmetry and interculturality with equality of the parties”, which arises from an attempt to simplify processes, although that attitude is “more appropriate of an imperial imagination recycled in postmodern shades, than from a challenging view, and that aims, in fact, to create renewed senses and fairer ways of life” (Cabecinhas & Cunha, 2008, p. 7). The famous dialogue with the ‘other’, is almost summarised in a folkloric dimension, even if the opening up to the ‘other’ means “reciprocal transformation”, since, in this entire process, the expectation is that an asymmetry exists based on the idea that “the other should think like us, because we think better” (Cabecinhas & Cunha, 2008, p. 9). João Maria André (2005) proposes some principles aiming for the promotion of intercultural dialogue, that imply the knowledge of the “other” as a determining fact for the development of a practical action, based on a critical awareness that is necessary for social transformation. This intercultural logic undergoes the challenge of a universal declaration of human rights, another formulation of universality, based on pluralism and that is not imposed, in addition to the recovery of the fundamental traits of each culture, valuing its symbolic contour. That is why the definition of “Interculturality” in Dicionário da Expansão Portuguesa (1415-1600), raises many doubts, because of the fact that it is precisely associated with the Portuguese expansion, although translated as a concept that appeared in France, in the 1970s, within the education sciences, during a period of increase in immigration (Lacerda, Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. especial, 2019 276 Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary . Vítor de Sousa 2016, p. 588). The use of this concept in the study of previous eras is justified by the need of identifying, in the past, phenomena similar to those intended with an intercultural education. For this purpose, processes that imply cultural exchanges and amalgamation and not only knowledge or interaction with a different culture are analysed: “Interculturality is related to other concepts, such as acculturation and syncretism, but it clearly distinguishes itself from multiculturality, which only entails the interaction of two stratified and hierarchical cultures” (Lacerda, 2016, p. 589). So, according to the mentioned dictionary, the culture of Portuguese expansion – as with all cultures –, “was the result of an osmosis process, which was developed by the clash, acceptance and rejection of aspects of communicating cultures” (Lacerda, 2016, p. 589). The agents of the Portuguese expansion were not aware of this process, but they almost always behaved “as bearers of a finished culture, even considering that some of its matrices, namely Christianism, were superior forms that should be spread” (Lacerda, 2016, p. 589). From this belief and from the resulting behaviours, according to Teresa Lacerda, “processes of acculturation that generated intercultural phenomena” were born (Lacerda, 2016, p. 589). This is a tropicalist Portuguese view of the Portuguese expansion history, given that it is, at least, very questionable, associating it to an interculturality contour, when power was, at that time, unilateral, with the one-way direction being on the side of the colonising country, and those who did not obey the rules imposed, suffered the respective consequences. It is in this sense that not considering the differences between colonial histories and colonisation processes may impose over a nation the post-colonial narrative of another nation, making that people even less visible, as stated by Ana Paula Ferreira (2007). Which means that colonialism “may be speaking on behalf of a critical, off-centre and non-hegemonic post-colonialism” (Ferreira, 2007, pp. 22-23). According to Pedro Shacht Pereira, this “represents an appropriation of a critical metalanguage, historically decontextualised, even when made with the best of intentions” and that entails “considerable theoretical risks, namely the fact of voluntarily perpetuating the colonial relation that is intended to be abolished to another level” (2017, s.p.). As mentioned by José Neves (2016), historical knowledge depends on empirical elements from a certain past, as well as the use of new theoretical and conceptual tools that are determined in the present, given that in history no topic may be considered closed. On the other hand, Paul Ricoeur (2000) had already confirmed the inseparability between memory and oblivion, and, as Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Meireles, 2016) refers, the main job of a historian is not to remember, since the job is developed in the direction opposite to the dynamic of believing in memory, even going against it, since it has been revealed to be false. According to Tzvetan Todorov (2002), memory is a sort of selective consciousness of time, that is not opposed to oblivion. Memory is an interaction between elimination and preservation, given that the full restitution of the past is impossible, since memory always involves a selection. The historian Fernando Bouza even quotes an African proverb that synthesises what was mentioned regarding the memory modus operandi: “memory goes to the woods and brings from there the wood it wants” (Canelas, 2014). Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. especial, 2019 277 Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary . Vítor de Sousa The statues of Mouzinho de Albuquerque, World War I monument and Salazar recycled A statue is an immovable object (three-dimensional sculpture), which may represent a real or imaginary entity. Colonial governments erected statues in the colonised territories and that materialised their imagination, in a logic of centre from the colonising metropolis, showing the symbolic relation between Portugal and its empire. Margarida Calafate Ribeiro (2004) takes the concept of “imagination of centre”, from Boaventura de Sousa Santos, and renames it “an empire as an imagination of centre”. She claims that the creation of an image of Portugal as a centre was achieved through the empire, concealing a “Portuguese image connected to its existential reality of periphery that ‘imagines the centre’” (Ribeiro, 2004, p. 12). That ideology dates back to the period of the Portuguese expansion, given that colonialism is not a movement of one-way direction, since it ‘affected’ both the colonised countries and the colonising ones. Therefore, maybe this way it is possible to understand the idea of Thomas Richards (1993), who refers to the empire as an excess nation, which was relocated far away (maybe too far), conquering territories, without the respective control being an easy task. As remarked by Leonor Pires Martins regarding the Portuguese colonial empire (Um império de papel [A paper empire] 2012), the idea of nation shifted to a “huge gathering of territories, disperse and distant from each other, whose direct and effective domain would end up being more fictional than real, more illusory than factual” (Martins, 2012, p. 20). In fact, it was the empire’s traces, especially in this relation with the “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1993), that tried to established the connection, giving a clear picture of that idea. The various overseas territories were only confiscated by the Portuguese through the enactment of specific laws (e.g. the publication of the Colonial Act, in 1930, extinct in 1951), the regime propaganda, as well as the dissemination of images showing “Portugal from Minho to Timor” in its entire geographical extension. This way, as mentioned by Manuela Ribeiro Sanches from Gary Wilder, the imperial nation state was consecrated as a consistent whole, notwithstanding “the distinctive views, idiosyncrasies, contradictions and limits of the ‘civilising missions’, based on national disputes”, which were also the basis of the modern nation state (Sanches, 2012, p. 195). During the 1930s and 1940s, Lourenço Marques (currently, Maputo) is subject to several aesthetic interventions in its public space, aiming to “‘monumentalise’ and ‘Portugalise’ the city, trying to meet its newly acquired status of Colony capital” (Verheij, 2012, p. 11). From these actions of the colonising country, two monuments should be highlighted: the World War I monument (by the sculptor Ruy Roque Gameiro, in collaboration with the architect Veloso Reis, de 1935), and the statue of Mouzinho de Albuquerque (Simões de Almeida, 1940) (Verheij, 2012, 2013, 2014). Around these monuments, celebrations take place, intended to give the monuments “the status of the Portuguese nation allegory”, therefore playing an emphasised political role in the authoritative reformulation of the city’s public space “as an ‘imperial’ space and in the putative hegemonisation of the representations of an imagined community as a ‘Nation’”, allowing the Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. especial, 2019 284 Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary . Vítor de Sousa Cabecinhas, R. & Feijó, J. (2010). 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The monument to Mouzinho de Albuquerque in Lourenço Marques. RIHA Journal 0065. Retrieved from http://www.riha-journal.org/ articles/2013/2013-jan-mar/verheijmouzinho-monument-marques Verheij, G. (2014). Monumentos coloniais em tempos pós-coloniais. A estatuária de Lourenço Marques. In B. F. Torras (Ed.), Actas do IV Congresso de História da Arte Portuguesa em homenagem a José Augusto França (pp. 36-45). Lisboa: APHA. Biographical note Vítor de Sousa has a PhD in Communication Sciences (Intercultural Communication), by the University of Minho, with the thesis: Da ‘portugalidade’ à lusofonia [From ‘Portugality’ to Lusophony], he has a Master’s Degree (specialised in Media Education) and a Bachelor’s Degree (specialised in Information and Journalism) in the same area. Among his research areas are questions surrounding identity, Cultural Studies, Media Education and Journalism theories. He is a researcher at CECS (Communication and Society Research Centre), where he integrates the Group of Cultural Studies, is a member of the project: “CulturesPast&Present - Memories, cultures and identities: how the past weights on the present-day intercultural relations in Mozambique and Portugal?” (FCT/ Aga Khan) and Museu Virtual da Lusofonia. He is a member of Sopcom, ECREA and Associação dos Amigos da Biblioteca Municipal de Penafiel. He won the Mário Quartim Graça 2016 Scientific Award, which distinguishes the best doctoral thesis in the last three years in the area of Social Sciences and Humanities, in Portugal and in Latin America. He was a journalist (1986-1997) and a press officer (1997-2005). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6051-0980 Email: [email protected] Address: CECS-Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Sociedade, ICS-Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade do Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga - PORTUGAL * Submitted: 04/02/2019 * Accepted: 07/03/2019