Paper short abstract:

Broader social and geostrategic implications of Portuguese Colonial War are a little researched topic. We seek to discuss the results of an ongoing project about the Alcora Exercise, a secret alliance between Portugal, South Africa and Rhodesia to preserve the “white” sovereignty in Southern Africa.

Paper long abstract:

Colonial War, besides constituting a founding moment of the sociopolitical reality of present day Portugal, was crucial to independencies of its former African colonies, having, likewise, repercussions in the lasting conflicts that followed (the so called civil wars). Thus, a thorough understanding of Portuguese Colonial War gains relevance in a critical approach to the construction of national memories in all countries involved. It is crucial to understand the roots of present day social and political crisis in liberated African colonies, as well as to recognize how such important secrets - as is this "white" alliance against black nationalisms in Southern Africa - reached present days untold. Exploring research lines suggested by Alcora Exercise, Colonial War will be seen as part of a regional conflict - fight against black independencies in Southern Africa -, and as part of a global one - what some consider having been a Cold War subsystem in Southern Africa. One of our lines of questioning will, then, focus on the implications of the Alcora Exercise in a "post-colonial violent order" in newly independent African states, seeking to shed a new light over the roots of present day sociopolitical crisis sadly affecting those countries.