Guinea-Bissau-Cape Verdean relations

Guinea-Bissau-Cape Verdean relations

Guinea-Bissau	Cape Verde

The Guinea-Bissau-Cape Verdean relations encompass the interstate relationship between Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde . The history of both countries has been closely linked since they became part of the Portuguese Empire in the 15th century.

The mutual immigrant communities and the close linguistic relationship of Bissau Guinea- and Cape Verdean Creole ( port. Crioulo ) are still living connection elements between the two countries. They also work together in a number of bilateral organizations. So they both belong u. a. the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries , the Group of African States with Portuguese as the Official Language (PALOP), the Latin Union and the various UN organizations .

In 2017, according to the Guinea-Bissau authorities, around 9,000 citizens of Guinea-Bissau lived in Cape Verde, while in 2007 around 2,000 citizens of Cape Verdean origin lived in Guinea-Bissau.

history

15th century to 19th century

Ribeira Grande on Santiago (1589), seat of the administration of Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea until 1879 (map by Baptista Boazio )

Portugal took possession of the uninhabited Cape Verde Islands in 1456 and began permanent settlement around 1461 with the establishment of a military post on the island of Santiago , from which the capital Ribeira Grande developed. The Portuguese built the first Christian church south of the Sahara here in 1495 and Cape Verde became the seat of a governor general and thus the first official colony of the emerging Portuguese Empire .

In 1446 Nuno Tristão reached what is now Guinea-Bissau, and in 1456 Diogo Gomes was the first European to go ashore here, in Porto Gole . Ribeira Grande became a center of the slave trade , to which slaves were brought for resale from what is now Guinea-Bissau, in particular from Cacheu , a trading post founded in 1588 on the Guinea-Bissau coast, which in 1614 became a colony administered from Cape Verde.

The encounter of the slaves of the different home regions of West Africa with the Portuguese colonial masters triggered the first creolization of colonial history. Today spoken in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verdean Creole language based on the Portuguese had its origin here.

While Ribeira Grande became prosperous as a stopover for overseas trade in the course of the 16th century, little significant towns developed in today's Guinea-Bissau. Even with the expansion of the Portuguese sphere of influence on the mainland, Portuguese Guinea remained administered from Cape Verde.

The Portuguese operated plantations on the Cape Verde Islands, but the low rainfall and frequent periods of drought have repeatedly led to famines in which thousands of people died, mostly without receiving any major help from the mother country. As the population continued to grow in the 17th and 18th centuries, these famines increased. In the course of the 18th century, when the Portuguese plantation economy in Cape Verde became increasingly impossible and the famine increased, many Portuguese entrepreneurs gave up and released their slaves, even before the abolition of slavery . Since then, people of mixed European and African descent have made up a large part of Cape Verde's population.

A number of Cape Verdeans went on the train to the mainland in what is now Guinea-Bissau, where a number of Cape Verdeans were traditionally employed as administrative officials and made up the administrative and educational elite and co-determining economic class.

From 1900 until independence in 1974

Amílcar Cabral (1964), a Cape Verdean born in Guinea-Bissau: he is considered the father of their independence in both countries, but was also a symbol of the Cape Verdean elite in Guinea-Bissau

The First World War in 1914 ended the modest growth phase on Cape Verde, and emigration increased again afterwards. The Portuguese motherland did little to alleviate the hardships on Cape Verde.

During the semi-fascist Salazar dictatorship in Portugal from the 1930s onwards, Cape Verde experienced a relative economic recovery and an expansion of its educational institutions. The higher level of education compared to the other colonies was retained and contributed to the replenishment of administrative officials for the Portuguese colonies. In Guinea-Bissau there was also a noticeable development, to read u. a. on the buildings from the 1940s to 1960s in the capital Bolama (until 1941) and Bissau (since 1941), but the administration, military and trade here remained predominantly in the hands of the Portuguese and Cape Verdeans.

In 1951 Cape Verde was the first colony to receive the status of a Portuguese overseas province , followed by Guinea-Bissau in 1952. However, this status was little more than cosmetic, and the emerging idea of ​​independence continued to grow in both countries.

Amílcar Cabral in particular , the son of Cape Verdean parents born in Guinea-Bissau, subsequently became the central figure in the anti-colonial struggle of both countries against the Portuguese Estado-Novo regime, which reacted with repressive severity. The resistance struggle was essentially waged by the joint independence movement Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (German: "African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde"), founded in 1956 .

In Campo do Tarrafal , the central political prison of the Portuguese dictatorship

In this context, the regime expanded its political prison, which had opened in 1936 on the main island of Santiago in Cape Verde, into a concentration camp with the Campo do Tarrafal . Resistance activists and political prisoners from all over the colonial empire and the mother country were interned here and often systematically tortured, a large number of prisoners died in the process.

While no open guerrilla war broke out in Cape Verde, from 1963 Guinea-Bissau became the most intense and bloodiest scene of the Portuguese colonial war . Cape Verdeans fought on both sides in Guinea-Bissau: one as regularly drafted soldiers of the Portuguese armed forces , the other as resistance fighters of the PAIGC, with mutual defections again and again.

In January 1973, Amílcar Cabral was murdered in Conakry while in exile . If the Portuguese secret police PIDE were initially accused of being behind the scenes, it is now considered certain that Cabral fell victim to an internal coup by the Guinea-Bissau military within the PAIGC. The coup was intended to end the predominance of Cape Verdeans within the PAIGC and was also an expression of deep dissatisfaction with the dominance of the Cape Verdean elite in administration, military and economy in Guinea-Bissau.

Since independence 1974/1975

Luís Cabral , son of Cape Verdean parents, was President of Guinea-Bissau until the coup in 1980, which forced him and countless other Cape Verdeans to leave the country

The Carnation Revolution on April 25, 1974 finally ended the dictatorship in Portugal. As a result, the now democratic Portugal put an end to the colonial war, released its African territories into independence and put its international relations on a new basis. In particular, the new, progressive Portugal sought partnership relationships with a large number of African countries. In this context, Guinea-Bissau (1974) and Cape Verde (1975) also became independent from Portugal.

The PAIGC ruled as a unity party in both states . On November 14, 1980, a coup led by João Bernardo Vieira in Guinea-Bissau brought an end to Cape Verdean key positions in the state and the two countries were finally separated. In Cape Verde, the party was re-established as the Partido Africano da Independência de Cabo Verde , and both parties finally gave up the goal of a unification of the countries.

While Cape Verde has experienced continuous development, especially since its market economy and democratic opening in the 1990s, Guinea-Bissau has repeatedly been thrown back in its development by domestic political and economic crises. In the Human Development Index (HDI) 2016 , the dry Cape Verde with few natural resources was in 122nd place with a further upward trend, while the fertile Guinea-Bissau in 2014 ranked 177th with hardly optimistic prospects.

The two countries remained connected through their common history and close personal relationships and have come closer again in recent decades, especially within the framework of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries , which was founded in 1996 and of which both are founding members.

In 2011 Guinea-Bissau opened its first consulate in Cape Verde, which in turn already had an honorary consulate in Guinea-Bissau.

diplomacy

The first consulate of Guinea-Bissau, which opened on October 1, 2011, in the Cape Verde capital, Praia , became the country's first embassy in Cape Verde in November 2017 . First Ambassador of Guinea-Bissau there was M'Bala Alfredo Fernandes , former charge d'affaires of the Guinean Embassy in Portugal and representative of his country in the CPLP in Lisbon.

Cape Verde has not yet opened an embassy in Guinea-Bissau, the country belongs to the administrative district of the Cape Verdean embassy in the Senegalese capital Dakar . A Cape Verdean honorary consulate has been opened in Bissau .

Sports

Soccer

Kiosk in Bissau with the emblem of the Portuguese top club Sporting Lisbon : Portuguese football is followed daily in both countries

Football is the most popular sport in both countries and, as a result of the centuries-old Portuguese presence, has been heavily influenced by football in Portugal . Football fans in both countries follow the events of the Portuguese Primeira Liga on a daily basis, and the top division of both countries, the Campeonato Cabo-verdiano de Futebol and the Campeonato Nacional da Guiné-Bissau , are hosted by branch clubs of Portuguese clubs such as Sporting Lisbon and Benfica Lisbon , Académica de Coimbra or Belenenses Lisbon dominates, such as the multiple champions Sporting Clube de Bissau and Sport Bissau e Benfica in Guinea-Bissau or Académica do Mindelo and Sporting Clube da Praia in Cape Verde. The emblems and jerseys of the three big Portuguese clubs Sporting, Benfica and FC Porto are omnipresent in the streets of both countries .

The Guinea-Bissau national soccer team and the Cape Verdean national team have met ten times so far, with six Cape Verdean and two Guinea-Bissau victories, twice they were drawn (as of the end of 2017). For the first time they played against each other at the Amílcar-Cabral-Cup on February 28, 1987, the game in the Guinean capital Conakry ended 0-0.

See also : List of international matches for the Cape Verdean national football team

Other

Athletes from both countries have so far participated in all Jogos da Lusofonia , the games of the community of Portuguese-speaking countries .

Web links

Commons : Guinea-Bissau-Cape Verdean Relations  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Guiné-Bissau nomeia pela primeira vez embaixador para Cabo Verde - "Guinea-Bissau appoints an ambassador for Cape Verde for the first time" , article from November 24, 2017 on the website of the Portuguese radio station TSF , accessed on January 14, 2018
2. ↑ António Henrique de Oliveira Marques : History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 385). Translated from the Portuguese by Michael von Killisch-Horn. Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-38501-5 , p. 634.
3. ^ Francisco Henriques da Silva, Mário Beja Santos: Da Guiné Portuguesa à Guiné-Bissau. Fronteira do Caos Editores, Porto 2014 ISBN 978-989-8647-18-4 , pp. 129f
4. ↑ List of the Cape Verdean consulates on the website of the Cape Verdean Consulate General in the Netherlands (Port.), Accessed on January 14, 2018