I was born in Paradise

Today on Facebook I spoke up. For the first time I spoke up in a public forum of continental Portuguese about their selfishness and the sheer evil of the decolonisation process. Dad would have been proud, he would have felt just a little bit vindicated. The writer of the text answered, she agreed, she spoke of the horror we created, they created, cos we, my family and millions of others, were the victims. And other people’s comments ended. I am PROUD

One day I would like to write a book. To speak to all my parents friends and collect their stories. I heard them once. Amazing stories of fleeing with the clothes of their bodies into cars with children and no food and driving nonstop to the border and waiting for days for the boat to get them, praying the boat would arrive before the army on their backs. And the man who killed his dog single-handedly cos the dog was covered in blood after leaving him home alone with his sleeping daughter for a few minutes. Distraught he ran to his daughter’s room thinking he’d find her dead and he found a dead black man instead, in his daughter’s room, killed by his hero dog. The man’s cries of pain for the dog were… And my cousin who was about to get abducted for being blond and pretty and had to flee straight to the airport, after spending the night hiding in my father’s rooftop, cos my father’s sofa was not safe enough. And my father’s best friend, whose wheelchaired father and car disappeared, probably murdered by one of the many black fighter patrols on the side of some road. The pain in my father’s friends eyes lives there still.

Portugal was the only country who still had colonies. Not because it woke up late to the virtues of non-imperialism, like some over-simplistic Dane once told me. But because it was the only Imperial country who was not in WWII. And therefore who had no trouble maintaining an economic health all the other European countries would have loved to have gone on keeping if only they could. And this was a threat. It was a threat to US and Russian domination over post WWII European debris. They had to make sure there was no going back to gold standard, to not USD standard, for any of us. So they sponsored armies against Portugal, one army each, UNITA and NPLA in Angola, similarly in Mozambique, US and USRR sponsored. And they invented a war. I was born in paradise, a paradise where people had jobs and flowers grew in the side lanes. They made it a war zone of holes on the ground and blood everywhere. And when Continental Portuguese finally said “screw them all” and pulled out and left us all to die, white and black, the World cheered a joyful cry in favour of Democracy and Freedom, oh ignorants, the only conclusion to that was the US and USSR sponsored armies went on killing each other for 25 years. Whites fleed wherever their passports would take them; non-whites were left behind to die. And die they did. Or got eaten by poliomilities or starvation or each other’s guns. “Oh it’s the African way, elasse” said the World, oversimplistically again, lulled from the controlled news it saw. It’s not. It’s the result of US and Russian intervention in the world, the same that later created havoc in the Arab world, the same that now has people blowing themselves up in our cities, a policy of selfishness and short term view of saving a dollar and “fuck all that aren’t us”. The same policy that created a divided world of rich and poor and a Globalisation we all hate, well all that are not in power that is.