Unique and proud. A nation born of the first globalisation

Left alone to face the elements for more than 14 centuries, except for occasional landings by the Senegalese or even, it is said, the Chinese, the Cape Verde archipelago was not settled permanently until 1460. It was then that the navigator Diego Gomes took possession of the archipelago. It became the property of the Portuguese Crown in 1494. A land of seafarers recruited for whale fishing and a port of call for Portuguese vessels bound for Brazil, from the beginning of the 16th century Cape Verde also became a hub of the slave trade between West Africa and the New World. It is true that this chain of islands – ten in all, nine of which are now inhabited – enjoys an “ideal” location: 600 km from Africa’s most western point (“Cap-Vert” in Senegal) and less than 2,600 km from Brazil. It was from Ribeira Grande on the island of Santiago, where the slave traders had to stop to pay duty and baptise the slaves, that they then set off for the Americas. The Cape Verdean settlers also had slaves brought from the African continent to work on their plantations. This was the beginning of a long and unique process of the mixing or ‘metissage’ of the two populations (European and African) transplanted to these virgin volcanic islands.

Treaty and pirates

In 1533, Ribeira Grande became an autonomous diocese covering the whole of former Guinea. The slave trade enabled the cotton loincloth industry to develop on Santiago and neighbouring Fogo, the only inhabited islands at the time. It was not until the 17th century that people started to settle on the islands of São Vicente and Sal. The French, Dutch and English traders, who were competing for the monopoly on the African coast granted by the Portuguese Crown, used the loincloths as currency for procuring slaves on the continent. In the middle of the 17th century, Cape Verde’s status as a slave centre declined as the traffic moved to the Guinean port of Cacheu. Thus deprived of its principal source of revenue, Ribeira Grande suffered its final blow in 1712 when Jacques Cassard, the French pirate, sacked the town. The capital was moved to Praia, 15 km from Ribeira Grande, now known as Cidade Velha (‘old town’).

The 1866 Abolition of Slavery Treaty and the separation of Guinea-Bissau from Cape Verde was the death knell for the islands’ economy and sparked mass voluntary emigration to the United States and – under constraint of the Portuguese – to plantations in their colonies of Angola and São Tomé and Principe. The departure of the Portuguese colonialists enabled the Creoles and the Blacks to accede to senior posts in both religious and secular institutions.

Following the serious droughts of the early 20th century the archipelago entered one of the darkest periods in its history, with the Estado Novo (“New State”) of the Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970 and who ruled from 1933 to 1968). It was under his regime that the ‘greenshirts’ of his political police repressed any voices raised in opposition, whether in Portugal or in the colonies. Torture and deportations to the ‘death camp’ of Tarrafal, on the island of Santiago, became common. Despite the ban on emigration, thousands of Cape Verdeans managed to flee during the 1950s and 1960s, mainly to France, the Netherlands and Belgium. It was in these countries that most of the leaders of the Cape Verdean independence movement were educated.

Amilcar Cabral’s dream

In 1956 in Bissau, along with four Cape Verdean and Guinean patriots, the agricultural engineer Amilcar Cabral, a native of Santiago, founded the PAIGC, the African Party for Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde. Four years later, disregarding UN General Assembly resolutions, Salazar refused any dialogue on independence for Cape Verde and Guinea. February 1963 saw the start of the armed struggle for national liberation in Guinea-Bissau. The Cape Verdeans and Guineans joined forces in the resistance movement. Tarrafal prison was soon full of African nationalists from Cape Verde, Guinea and Angola.

On 20 January 1973, Amilcar Cabral was assassinated in Conakry by traitors from within the PAIGC. The perpetrators were probably in the pay of the PIDE, the political police of the fascist regime, although this was never confirmed. In 1973 Guinea-Bissau proclaimed its independence, followed two years later, after the ‘carnation revolution’ in Lisbon and the end of the colonial war, by Cape Verde.

The adoption of the First Constitution, which confirmed the PAIGC as the single party, came in 1980. The coup d’etat in Bissau in November saw the end of the plans for a union of Guinea and Cape Verde. A year later the PAIGV became the PAICV (African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde), with Marxist allegiances. In February 1990, the PAICV announced that it would be opening up to democracy. A year later, the Movement for Democracy (MpD), a party of more liberal persuasion, demanded free elections that it went on to win, appointing António Mascarenhas as president and Carlos Veiga as prime minister (currently leader of the opposition).

The PAICV was returned to power in 2001 with Pedro Pires as president and José Maria Neves as prime minister. Mr. Pedro Pires was re-elected in February 2006, beating former Prime Minister Carlos Veiga, the PAICV retaining a majority in the National Assembly. In his inaugural speech, Mr. Neves restated his government’s priorities: to encourage the growth and competitiveness of the economy, to modernise the state through civil service reform, to provide training and jobs, to improve the health system and, finally, to recognise the family as “the cornerstone of society”. To facilitate its vital relations with international financial institutions, in 2006 Praia launched an austerity programme and, moreover, appointed Cristina Duarte, previously president of Citibank in Angola, finance minister, and José Brito, a former oil engineer, economy minister and then foreign minister in 2009.

Marie-Martine Buckens