Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 18

Figure 1. Portugal adjacente e ultramarine (mapa escolar) by João Maria Carlos
Moreira da Silva (detail); photograph taken at the occasion of the exhibition
RETORNAR: Traços de Memória, Galeria Av. da Índia, Lisbon, February �, ����
Based on this understanding, the ���� Bandung conference condemning
“colonialism in all its manifestations” and the United Nations Declaration
on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
of December ��, ���� (resolution ����) were considered irrelevant for
Portugal. With the revolution of April ��, ����, the wars were, from the
official Portuguese perspective, lost. Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau,
Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe were internationally recognized as
independent states. Portugal established what Graham (����:��), before the
current economic crisis and its political ramifications, calls a “noisy, messy,
healthy democracy.” The memory of the overseas wars is institutionalized
in Portugal across the country in various monuments featuring strikingly
different approaches to design and architecture (see Figures � and �).
These monuments are maintained by the Combatants League (Liga dos
combatentes) which was established after the Great War as the Great War
Combatants League to support the soldiers and their families. The name
was changed into Combatants League on December ��, ���� so that the
organization could extend its activities to include soldiers from what the
League still refers to as Overseas Wars, despite the term’s profound delegitimation
due to its association with the dictatorship.
The purpose of these memorials is to honor the soldiers who died in the
service of Portugal (Figure �), those who died while defending the overseas
territories (Figure �), and those who died in the overseas campaigns (Figure
�).
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