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Paper Short Abstract:

This paper provides an example of how anthropological research in the field contributes to understand contexts of tension and conflict, and to changes in the historical path, based in a scientific mission among the Makonde (Mozambique) commissioned by the Portuguese government in the 1950s.

Paper Abstract:

There were still around 20 years left until the end of Portuguese colonialism, but it was from within the colonial field that came some of the main contributions to triggering the end of colonialism. One of the paradigmatic examples of these contributions comes from the results produced by the anthropological mission to Mozambique, commissioned by the Portuguese government, which took place between 1956 and 1960, and whose team members were Jorge Dias, Margot Dias and Manuel Viegas Guerreiro. These results included the writing of monographs and also secret reports, these latter addressed only to the government. The initial stance of this team seems to denounce their belief in the idea that Portuguese colonialism was different, because it was benevolent and contributed to a humanitarian mission. This is especially true in the results that have been published. However, in the secret reports produced by this team, several descriptions denounce the racism and violence in Portuguese colonial field, which led the authors to conclude that colonial domination could not continue for much longer (Pereira 2021). The contacts made with Mozambique's neighboring countries, such as Tanzania and Zimbabwe (where winds of change were already circulating and where the headquarters of some of the independence movements, whose actions aimed to reach the Portuguese colonies were based) also contributed to this perception. Both the circulation of people and of ideas, which are distinct from ideologies (Wolf 1999), although a basic condition for intellectual activity, cannot be separated from this historical and geographical context (Said 1983).