“What should we pay for? Brazil’s gold? Slavery? And how much is a slave worth?”: how is colonial reparation “monetized”?

President of the Republic wants to see Portugal “lead” colonial reparations, but the suggestion was not well received by either the parties or public opinion. Without national consensus, there is yet another question: how do we pay for the mistakes of the past?

The President of the Republic opened “a Pandora’s box” by arguing that Portugal must “pay the costs” of the colonial era, ambassador Francisco Seixas da Costa told CNN Portugal, who considers that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s statements “raise a problem complicated”, especially for the Portuguese Government, which, he says, is now facing a controversy that could be “divisive” internally and that could even “have consequences in other European countries, which may be uncomfortable with the circumstance of Portugal” wanting to “lead” this process.

Also for Paulo Portas, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, this initiative by the President of the Republic, to bring to the debate a topic that “has no demand” in the former colonies, “does not position us particularly well from the point of view of our relations with the ancient European empires”, which, for the most part, did not go beyond a formal apology.

In fact, he emphasizes, among the various former European empires – from France to the United Kingdom -, only Germany “partially did what the President of the Republic suggested”, with the creation of a problem of compensation for descendants of two tribes in present-day Namibia, following the massacres in 1904 and 1908, worth 1,100 million euros.

“In other words, the position that the President of the Republic took is not the dominant position in the former European empires, today democratic European states”, concludes Paulo Portas in the Global section of Jornal Nacional on TVI (from the same group as CNN Portugal).

For Francisco Seixas da Costa, who was ambassador to Brazil between 2005 and 2009, “what is curious” in this case is that “the overwhelming majority” of the former colonies “never raised the issue”. “It seems a little strange for the former colonizer to be the one to raise it”, he observes, adding that “one thing would be to respond to a desire expressed, particularly in institutional terms specific to the former colonies”. “It’s another thing to be the colonizer himself making an act of public contrition”, he adds.

Contrary to this argument, historian Manuel Loff states that this issue is being raised by the “descendants of those who were colonized”, but that during the colonial era there was also a lot of talk and judgment on the subject. “Or do you think that the massacres and colonial violence before and during the colonial war were not judged? How do all the people who reject this discussion and understand it as artificial explain the tens of thousands of desertions from the Portuguese army”, he asks.

“How do you monetize” past mistakes?

On Saturday, after the release of the President’s statements during a dinner with foreign journalists, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stated that Portugal must “lead the process” of repairing former colonies, suggesting debt forgiveness, the granting of credit lines and financing that, he said, have been established.

On the same day, the Government assured that “there was and is not in question any process or program of specific actions with the purpose” of reparation for the Portuguese colonial past and defended that it will be guided by “the same line” as previous executives.

Now, this line, the executive stated in the statement, is based on “gestures and cooperation programs to recognize historical truth with impartiality and impartiality”. Furthermore, the Government recalls some projects financed in the former colonies, such as the Museum of the Fight for National Liberation, in Angola, the museumization of the Tarrafal concentration camp, in Cape Verde, and the recovery of the slave ramp on the Island of Mozambique.

Ambassador Francisco Seixas da Costa denotes some “uncomfortability” expressed in this statement by the Government regarding this issue – which, moreover, extended to right-wing parties, such as the CDS, which refuses to “revisit colonial legacies”, and the Liberal Initiative, which accused Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa of having “misplaced” priorities. Chega, in turn, announced that it will present a vote to condemn the President of the Republic for his statements, classifying them as “a betrayal of Portugal, the Portuguese people and the history of Portugal itself”.

For Francisco Seixas da Costa, “a country of our size, to pilot this issue [da reparação colonial], there must be a high national consensus around this”, which does not seem to be the case. On the left, the parties did not reveal whether or not they agree with Marcelo’s position, but they argue that this is a debate that must be held, with the Bloc’s coordinator, Mariana Mortágua, arguing that Portugal should not be “afraid to rethink the their history, to discuss their history, to question the traumas of the past”.

“The condition for Portugal to be able to participate in such a debate is for there to be a great national consensus in recognizing this historical culpability. Without this consensus, this issue will be extremely divisive and negative for national cohesion”, he warns.

Now, as there is no national consensus on this matter, there is still another unavoidable question for the ambassador: “How can this be monetized? [do colonialismo]? How do we assign a monetary value to exaggerations and prey [do colonialismo]?”, asks Francisco Seixas da Costa.

“What should we pay? Is it Brazil’s gold? Is it slavery in Guinea? Is it slavery in Angola? And how much is a slave worth? How much are 10 thousand slaves worth? This is an extremely complex thing,” he says, concluding that “we were unable to do this monetization”.

This is because “Portugal has very serious debts on an international level that it has to pay and that it cannot forget”, he argues. “We have a debt that is above 100% of GDP. If we were a rich country, we could afford to make some exceptional generosity. We are not”, he stresses, adding that, even so, and even “being a poor country”, Portugal has made “some debt forgiveness” to its former colonies. But “we cannot function as if we were a power producing money”, emphasizes the ambassador.

For historian Manuel Loff, compensation from the Portuguese State to the former colonies can begin with the initiative that he describes as the “simplest of all”: “returning the cultural, artistic and heritage assets that were stolen in the colonies.” What, in fact, has already been done by other former colonizing powers, such as Germany, he recalls, referring to the former African colonies of current Namibia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Togo and Cameroon.

“There is a great precedent on an international scale for the return of works of art looted in the context of war”, argues the historian, remembering the post-Holocaust period, when the international community agreed that “the return of works that were stolen by the Nazis to Jewish families or to national museums in occupied countries, having been claimed, when detected in the hands of any private collector, or in a public-private museum”. In many cases, he recalls, families “had to take museums or collectors to court” to recover what was rightfully theirs.

In the historian’s opinion, taking into account the “uncountable riches” that the Portuguese economy collected due to colonialism, as well as the remaining former colonizing powers, “all countries that practiced colonialism must be available, in what international relations should be , for forms of compensation”.

“There is no money that can pay for reparations and the terrible evils of slavery”

After participating in the celebrations in Portugal of the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April, and already at the airport in São Tomé, the president of São Tomé pointed out that the issue of colonization violence has not been resolved and considered it relevant that Portugal had addressed the issue, the purpose of Freedom Day.

“Decolonization may be resolved, but the acts of mistreatment, violence and others that occurred are not resolved, so I see this [as declarações de Marcelo] with normality, especially because at the level of other colonizing powers, this process is already quite advanced, it is already under discussion”, Carlos Vila Nova told Lusa, remembering that “Portugal colonized five countries in Africa” and that this colonization is part of the history of these countries. countries.

On the Angolan side, Fernando Pacheco, former member of the Council of the Republic in the first government term of the Angolan president, João Lourenço, stressed that “there is no money that can pay for reparations and the terrible evils of slavery” and argued that the former colonizing powers they must help countries face current difficulties, first of all by supporting education and research.

In his opinion, the most important thing in this process “is not thinking about money”, but about solid actions, such as the awarding of scholarships to Angolan students, support for the education system in general or support for research, especially agricultural research.

“These are some of the examples that I think are not absurd, they are perfectly viable things and that would contribute greatly to improving the situation in our countries”, he highlighted.