Imperial memory: the home of silences in Portuguese Colonial War

Abstract

The Portuguese Colonial was fought between Portugal's military and the nationalist movements in Portugal's African colonies between 1961 and 1974. In spite of its length and social impact, the Colonial War has never been given a space of commemoration in the process of the democratic and post-imperial reconstruction of Portuguese society after 1974. That is why this silence about the war may be described as a constituting element of this process. From various points of view, the disabled war veterans represented the vivid expression of a collective trauma which the democratic social order has wished to forget.