Liberation by the Letter: Brazilian Correspondence on Portuguese African Independence

When independence leader Samora Machel assumed presidential office in 1975, he received an outpouring of support from members of the international community that had been following the ongoing liberation struggle against Portuguese colonizers in Africa. Letters arrived from around the world to congratulate the Mozambican leader and his people as they embarked upon this new phase of governance and daily life. Among these were handwritten letters from Brazilians who had been closely following the developments of the anti-colonial wars from their homes in cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Machel, however, was not the only independence leader to receive support from Brazilians, as Brazilian leftists had by then developed a practice of making direct contact with the men they believed would not only free their African comrades, but would perhaps mark new turns in left ideology.

My paper “Liberation by the Letter: Brazilian Correspondence on Portuguese African Independence” examines letters Brazilians sent directly to black political leaders in Portuguese African colonies during their respective concurrent struggles against military rule and colonialism during the 1960s and 70s, as well as letters they penned to the editors of Brazilian left-leaning publications regarding independence in the Portuguese African colonies. In “Liberation by the Letter,” I specifically consider the language Brazilians employed to express a solidarity with their African counterparts, and how their letters’ meditations on race and nation challenged more traditional historical constructions of shared Lusophone identity. Further, I analyze how the letter writers’ seemingly uniform expressions of solidarity belied a backdrop of competing constructions of freedom, recognition, and democracy at home directly influenced by African anti-colonial struggle that would spur considerable shifts in local left organizing against the military dictatorship.