Paper short abstract:

In this paper we will discuss some records, fragments of a documentation, found at the Mozambique’s Historical Archive collection “Direção de Serviços de Negócios Indigenas”, related to the turbulent process of elaboration of the Mozambique’s Native (indigenas) Civil and Penal Code.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we will discuss some records, fragments of a documentation, found at the Mozambique's Historical Archive collection "Direção de Serviços de Negócios Indigenas", related to the turbulent process of elaboration of the Mozambique's Native (indigenas) Civil and Penal Code, task commissioned to the jurist/ethnologist José Gonçalves Cota, by the General Governor of the Colony of Mozambique, José Bettencourt. The documentation in question allows us to vividly capture the effective process of native inscription as described by G. Spivak, under the framework of "legibility" as discussed in other way by Veena Das. From this perspective we are able to discuss the political transit of women's fate incorporation, and of their body. This incorporation made by the State allows us to see the gender political economy articulation in the colonial environment. Such incomplete transition/translation works as an postcolony element, as described by Achille Mbembe, that survives to the Mozambique's political emancipation, and go further, modified, in the frelimist discourse, as we intend to demonstrate.