Aquino de Bragança

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Tomaz Aquino Messias de Bragança (born April 6, 1924 in Bardez ( Portuguese India ), † October 19, 1986 , Lebombo Mountains ) was a Portuguese physicist, journalist, Mozambican diplomat and scientist at Eduardo Mondlane University . In the process of dissolving Mozambique from the colonial power Portugal, he assumed a leading intellectual and political position.

Life

youth

Aquino's parents were João Paulo Proença Bragança and Ana Carlota Praxetes Antónia do Rosário Sousa. Both lived in the former Portuguese colony of Goa on the Indian subcontinent. He spent his childhood in Goa, where he attended school. He graduated from high school at the Liceu Nacional de Afonso de Albuquerque in Pangim, India (suburb of Velha Goa ). In 1945 he took part in a training course for chemical process engineering in Dharwar .

Professional and political development

Study times

As a young adult, Aquino de Bragança went to Portuguese East Africa in 1947 to look for a job. During this time he was confronted with the effects of Portuguese colonial policy in a memorable way that had a decisive influence on his future life.

Aquino de Bragança moved from Lourenço Marques to Portugal in 1948 , where he met the future writer Orlando da Costa from Goa, who was studying philosophy at the University of Lisbon . It was here that Aquino de Bragança came into contact with the physician Arménio Ferreira and the Casa dos Estudantes do Império , a service facility for students from the African colonies of Portugal.

In 1951 Bragança went on to France. He studied physics in Grenoble and Paris . In both places he met students who took positions that were critical or even negative towards Portugal's role as a colonial power, including Mário Pinto de Andrade , Frantz Fanon and Marcelino dos Santos . At this time Aquino de Bragança developed a strong political awareness of Marxist influences and drew hope that the Goa colony could become independent from Portugal. On the basis of his ideas, personal ties arose with other activists from various Portuguese colonies.

Within such political activities, an informal alliance called Paris-Casablanca-Algiers group developed, as a result of which the Confederação das Organizações das Colonias Portuguesas (CONCP, Conference of Nationalist Organizations of Portuguese Colonie ; German: Conference of the National Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies ) Founded.

Stay in Morocco

In 1957, Aquino de Bragança emigrated to Morocco to take up a scientific teaching position in that country. Here he marries his first wife Mariana. Both of the couple's children were born in Morocco. During this time he became increasingly active as a journalist and writes for the magazine Afrique Asie, founded by Simon Malley in Paris . It was very difficult to do this in Portugal under the government of António de Oliveira Salazar .

With the approval of King Mahomed V, he acts as secretary of the editorial group of the Moroccan trade union newspaper Al Istiklal and becomes private secretary of Ben Barka , a Moroccan opposition politician whom he had already met in Paris.

When the PAIGC and the MPLA set up an office of the CONCP in Rabat in 1961 to coordinate the political work of the independence movements , he and George Vaz represented the Goan People's Party (German: Goas Volkspartei) within the new organization. His participation in this umbrella organization led to a growing influence in the CONCP secretariat and expanding contacts to leading figures in the liberation movements on the African continent.

The Bragança family lived in Morocco until 1962. In the same year they moved to Algiers in Algeria . During this time he worked under simple circumstances and his journalistic activities offered only a small living. He co-founded the weekly newspaper "Révolution Africaine" (published by the Front de Liberation Nationale ) and writes for the daily newspaper "El-Moudjahid". The Salazar government became aware of his political activities and thereupon issued an arrest warrant for the Portuguese secret police Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado (PIDE) dated March 14, 1962. All of its activities were monitored by the PIDE and recorded in regular reports.

In 1965 he was found participating in the 2nd CONCP conference in Dar es Salaam , held from October 3rd to 8th , organized by Agostinho Neto and the secretary Mário Pinto de Andrade (MPLA), as well as by Amalia de Fonseca and himself. He participated as an author and co-author together with Pascoal Mocumbi and Edmundo Rocha on conference documents (for example "The political situation in Portugal" and "Liberation struggle in the Portuguese colonies").

On the recommendation of Simon Malley, he has been working for Africasia , later Afrique-Asie , since 1969 as a commentator on topics relating to the Portuguese colonies. Together with Immanuel Wallerstein and Melo Antunes, he created the three-volume work “Quem é o inimigo?” (German for example: “Who is the enemy?”) On central issues of colonialism, which was first published in 1978 in Lisbon.

Stay in Algeria

His work in Algeria is a phase of life of extensive journalistic activities about the goals of African liberation movements and the participation in logistical support, the organization for their international reputation and the promotion of the training of journalists. In this way, Aquino de Bragança became a co-founder of the Algerian School of Journalism, where he lectured on the sociology of journalism . In the course of his varied activities he met leading figures of the liberation movements, became their adviser and was friends with a number of these people. This group of people includes Mário Pinto de Andrade, Ben Bella , Amílcar Cabral , Samora Machel, Eduardo Mondlane and Agostinho Neto.

Working in Mozambique

After the so-called Carnation Revolution of 1974 in Portugal, Aquino de Bragança decided to continue working in Mozambique. This event had completely changed the political balance of power in southern Africa. At the beginning of his new life, Samora Machel commissioned him in May 1974 with a political mission in Lisbon to find out who the new negotiating partners for FRELIMO would be . This led to a meeting with Ernesto Melo Antunes and the first official contacts with Mário Soares , whom he had already met earlier in Paris, and with the Portuguese minister for inter-territorial contacts, António de Almeida Santos . Aquino de Bragança conducted the first official talks on behalf of his future home country Mozambique with the new political forces of the former colonial power Portugal. As a result, intensive working contacts developed between the two sides, which were largely supported by Victor Crespo for the Portuguese government and by Joaquim Chissano and Aquino de Bragança for the Mozambican negotiating partners. In September 1974, representatives from both sides met in Lusaka for further negotiations. In this context, the talks between Samora Machel and Ramalho Eanes , the future President of Portugal, a long-time general in Angola and a member of the Movimento das Forças Armadas , had to be relaxed.

After the victory of FRELIMO in Mozambique, Aquino de Bragança renounced a possible ministerial office in the Samora Machel government. Instead, he took over the position of his advisor and in 1975 founded the Center for African Studies ( Centro de Estudos Africanos ) at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo . In the following year he was appointed director of this research area. The work dealt with development issues within Mozambique and the situation in neighboring Rhodesia . The South African journalist and sociologist Ruth First took over the position of research director here in 1977. She previously taught at Durham University in the UK . Together they put together an international group of scientists. The first project of their collaboration, entitled "The Mozambican Miner", is dedicated to the situation of Mozambican miners in South Africa.

He was seriously injured in the 1982 attack on Ruth First on the university premises using a letter bomb from a South African source, but she died as a result of this attack.

The friendly and trusting relationship with Samora Machel granted him a special position, as a result of which the Mozambican government left him official missions abroad. Within the government Aquino de Bragança was nicknamed "the submarine" ( the submarine ). When asked about his political credo, he described himself as an "anti-anti-communist".

Death and the unfinished

Aquino de Bragança died on October 19, 1986 in a much publicized plane crash in the Lebombo Mountains in an area on the joint border of Mozambique and South Africa . With him, President Samora Machel and 33 other high-ranking representatives of the country were also killed. The causes of the crash have not yet been clarified. Before his death, Bragança worked on the preparations for a meeting between the South African President Pieter Willem Botha and Samora Machel, which should aim to reduce the conflict between the two countries.

family

Aquino de Bragança was married to Mariana Bragança. His first marriage resulted in two children, daughter Maya (born March 1, 1962) and son Radek (born November 30, 1959). His first wife died on May 23, 1979. The second marriage to Silvia do Rosário da Silveira was concluded on September 22nd, 1984 and was officially consummated in the same year. Both had met a year earlier in Lisbon.

Honors

  • The Centro de Estudos Sociais Aquino de Bragança (CESAB) at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo bears his name.
  • The University of São Paulo named its Research Area for Social Studies ( Centro de Estudos Sociais Aquino de Bragança ) with his name.
  • In 2011, the Indian civil servant Eduardo Faleiro (Commissioner for NRI Affairs) paid tribute to Aquino de Bragança's life's work in the worldwide liberation movement of Goa by describing him as an important Goan.

selected Writings

  • Brandt, Krupp et le Portugal. In: Africasia No. 12, March 30, 1970, pp. 14-16
  • Amilcar Cabral. Lisbon 1976
  • Independência sem descolonização: a transferência do poder em Moçambique, 1974–1975.
  • Independence without decolonization: the transfer of power in Mozambique, 1974-1975. Harare 1985
  • Zimbabwe: Reflections on the problem of rhodesia. Etude de Center d'Etudes Africaines du Mozambique, In: Revue tiers-monde, Vol. 20 (1979), pp. 79-118 ISSN  0040-7356
  • Aquino de Bragança, Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein: African Liberation Reader . 3 volumes, 1982
  • Aquino de Bragança, Jacques Depelchin: From the idealization of Frelimo to the understanding of the recent history of Mozambique . In: African Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 1 No. 1, 1986, pp. 162-180

swell

further reading

  • Sílvia Bragança: Aquino de Bragança. batalhas ganhas, sonhos a continuar . Maputo 2009
  • Sílvia Bragança: Aquino de Bragança. Battles Won, Lasting Dreams . Goa 2011
  • Boaventura de Sousa Santos : Aquino de Braganca: criador de futuros, mestre de heterodoxias, pioneiro das episternologias do Sul . In: Teresa Cruz Silva, João Paulo Borges Coelho and Amélia Neves Souto (all editors): Como fazer ciências sociais e humanas em África. Questões epistemológicas, metodológicas, teóricas e políticas . Dakar, CODESRIA, 2012, pp. 13-61. ( PDF )
  • Ruth First, Jonathan Steele, Christabel Gurney: The South African Connection. Western Investment in Apartheid . London, Temple Smith, 1972

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in worldcat
  2. ^ Aquino de Bragança, Bridget OLaughlin: The Work of Ruth First in the Center of African Studies . The Development Course. P. 171 In: Review, VIII, 2, Fall 1984, 159-172 (PDF file; 990 kB)
  3. ↑ Website of the Centro de Estudos Sociais Aquino de Bragança (CESAB) ( Memento of April 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Website of the Centro de Estudos Sociais Aquino de Bragança of the University of São Paulo
  5. ↑ Aquino de Braganca: Battles Waged, Lasting Dreams Released. on www.goachronicle.com April 4, 2011 ( Memento from January 24, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Bragança, Aquino de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bragança, Tomaz Aquino Messias de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese-Mozambican sociologist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Bardez , Portuguese India
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1986
Place of death Lebombo Mountains , South Africa