ABSTRACT
Marcelo Caetano became the President of the Portuguese government on 26 September 1968, when the colonial war/liberation struggles in Africa were escalating. He quickly reinforced Portugal’s overseas defence policy. With the growing military and political challenge in Mozambique, Caetano introduced some cosmetic changes and psychosocial programmes to win Mozambican ‘hearts and minds’ and to discredit the insurgency. This included the creation of a prison-produced newspaper RESSURGIMENTO (Resurgence). It published prisoner confessions and proclamations of their supposed embrace of Portugal and patriotism.
The RESSURGIMENTO, written by ‘repentant’ political prisoners, aimed to reach Mozambican population from the districts more affected by ‘subversion’, the foreign public opinion, in particular the countries that surrounded Mozambique, and finally the headquarters of FRELIMO in Dar-es-Salaam.
This chapter analyses the newspaper RESSURGIMENTO, interrogating it as a historical document and as an instrument of colonial propaganda. It argues that such documents suggest a multitude of readings that may surpass the colonial context.
