Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the first visual representations of the Liberated zones in FRELIMO's propaganda materials. In opposition to the urban imagery of Lourenço Marques (emblem of Portugal in Africa); I argue that in the rural Liberated zones FRELIMO found the ideal venue for its diplomatic activities

Paper long abstract:

As the armed struggle against Portugal advanced, FRELIMO employed the term "Liberated zones" to allude to the rural areas of northern Mozambique which were taken under its control. However, similarly to Algerian FLN or Guinean and Cape Verdean PAIGC, FRELIMO's "Liberated zones" were not just a territory. In FRELIMO's usually text-heavy information and propaganda materials, the "Liberated zones" were depicted as a sort of laboratory where "The people of Mozambique" were collectively experiencing the economic and social life that would govern the "New Mozambique." Based on archival research conducted in Portuguese, Dutch and North American archives, and on a vast collection of audiovisual materials raging from magazines, pictures, pamphlets, press releases, TV reports to films, this paper explores the visual emergence of the "Liberated zones" in FRELIMO's media diplomacy. To this effect, I will focus on the period from mid-1967 to mid-1969, as it is in this short time-frame that FRELIMO carried out the bulk of its diplomatic activity from Dar es Salaam (where its headquarters were) and Algiers (where its main Political Office was) to the "Liberated zones" of Niassa and Cabo Delgado. I argue that, in opposition to the urban imagery of the modern African capitals of Lourenço Marques and Luanda, which were the two emblems of the Portuguese "New State" in Africa, FRELIMO found in the rural site of the Mozambican "Liberated zones" its more iconic space of "Liberation." From 1969, foreign press, heads of states and international officials became frequent visitors to the carefully constructed space of FRELIMO's "Liberated zones."