Sample: São Tomé and Príncipe: Alda Neves da Graça do Espírito Santo: Mother of the Nation

Located in the Gulf of Guinea off the western coast of Africa, São Tomé and Príncipe is Africa’s second least-populated nation (the Seychelles has the top distinction). It is a small island nation consisting of two main islands lush with Luxuriant tropical rainforest, glorious fauna. The islands, historically uninhabited, were “discovered” by Portuguese explorers João de Santarém and Pedro Escobar in 1470, with the first successful settlement being established on São Tomé in 1493 and that of Príncipe, in 1500. The islands’ position in the Gulf Guinea made them an ideal strategic base of trading along the West African coast, and over time, the fertile lands would foster an abundant plantation economy. 

Portugal was the first European nation to engage in the transatlantic slave trade, and it dominated this sector from the early 15th century through the early 1650s. During that time, the Crown transported slaves to Portugal and, notably, Brazil: the country that imported the highest number of slaves from Africa among all participants in the Atlantic slave trade, approximately 5.5 million souls between 1540 and the 1860s. Brazil was also the last country in the Americas to officially abolish slavery, maintaining the practice for 350 years. It is to be noted that while on May 13, 1888, Princess Isabel of Bragança signed Brazil’s Imperial Law number 3,353, known as the "Golden Law,” racial injustice prevailed — and continues to do so. 

For its part, Portugal has never officially apologized for its role in the slave trade.

Eventually, the British overtook Portugal as the leading exporter of human chattel to the New World, but Lisbon did not loosen its hold on its colonies: not only did they take the Christianizing mission very seriously, these lands were important sites for agriculture, particularly sugar, and by the 19th century, coffee, and cacao. Populated with descendants of African slaves brought to the islands from Benin, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola, São Tomé was among the world's largest cacao producers by the turn of the 20th century. The high-minded did love their chocolate!

As with all colonial stories, the European rulers and their descendants enjoyed the fruits of empire. And, also typically, a small group of local people were permitted to ascend to a certain level of ease and prosperity. Such was the case of Alda Neves da Graça do Espírito Santo, a poet and political activist who made an indelible mark on her country’s history. 

MY NAME IS Alda Neves da Graça do Espírito Santo. I was born on April 30, 1926 in São Tomé. I had a privileged upbringing. I was born into a well-known upper-class family during this late period of Portuguese colonialism. My early education was at home, where I was trained to be a proper elite lady: basic literacy and numbers, learning Portuguese and all about the cultural norms of the country, a little exposure to European music and arts, and etiquette and refinement. Like most of the people in our country, I was given a Catholic instruction. I was being primed to take on a prominent role as a teacher, and sent to Porto in Portugal to complete my secondary education. 

This was like students from other African and Caribbean nations getting sent to Paris or London for their secondary education.

É isso mesmo. São Tomé and Príncipe was a Portuguese colony from 1470 until July 12, 1975. And since II lived until age 83, you understand many of my years were lived under Portuguese rule. That didn’t mean that I wanted to accept being under colonial rule. My life coincided with the birth of a nation, and I had a big part in it!

I have to say that while my family was relatively well-off, we were not impervious to the injustice that many suffered. The plantation system had these large tracts, called roças, that were operated under forced labor. Certo, it was paid, because slavery had officially been abolished in 1876, but like American sharecropping, forced labor was arduous and hardly compensated. In fact, the workers endured terrible conditions. 

I’m imagining economic imbalance between the landowners and the workers.

Absolutamente. Crops like cocoa made the colonizers and their chosen European landowners rich, but most everyone else was poor and suppressed. As a future educator, I was somewhat aware of these discriminations — my mother was a teacher, as I said, and we valued education — but it was when I went off to Lisbon, the colonial capital, in 1948 to begin my teaching training, that’s when my eyes were fully opened. 

It was a great time, with the winds of liberation starting to blow. 

Sim, this was a dynamic time for the colonies, as ideals around nationalism and independence were starting to blossom. This was the genesis of Pan-Africanist thought. It was a great time to be a student! In Post-War Europe and in America, ideas were flowing back and forth, and we were all paying attention. Black American leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey were inspirational to us, as well as some French African leaders in the Négritude movement, like the great Léopold Sédar Senghor. Our heads were full of pride in our African cultures and identities, and we were getting hungry for change.

There were many of us, from Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique. I was part of a group that created a student organization called Casa dos Estudantes do Império. (House of the Students of the Empire). The idea was to have a cultural home to support us as faraway students. Our home countries didn’t have secondary schools or universities, so the regime wanted us to have what you today call an affinity space. But we had bigger ideas, of course!

Students are reliably ambitious, energetic, and idealistic.

Yes, and our goals were crystal clear. We knew what we wanted:

1) Self-determination and the end of colonial rule, first of all!

2) And cultural revival and celebration, of each of our own countries but also strong Pan Africanism.

3) Increased general political awareness and activism. We were interested in Marxism, of course. 

This was the period when the Algerian war was brimming.

Six years after we founded Casa dos Estudantes, the Algerian Revolt began, in 1954. French Colonial domination created so much economic, cultural, political, and social repression, and the youth were fed up. We were not battle-primed like our neighbors along the Mediterranean, but we did want to learn about our own histories and encourage others to organize against colonialist oppression. 

We also valued the arts’ role in social change. We had several publications where writers were able to speak their perspectives, such as a journal I helped edit called Mensagem (Message). 

And your peer group was pretty impressive, não é?

Mas você fala um pouco de português, Bravo! Yes, it was at Casa dos Estudantes do Império, an association of students from the Portuguese colonies that I met many of the future nationalist leaders such as: Guinea-Bissau’s Amílcar Cabral, Mário Pinto de Andrade and Agostinho Neto from Angola; and future Mozambiquan leaders Noémia de Sousa and Marcelino dos Santos.

I was also starting to find my path as a writer and activist. I wrote a feminist article for Mensagem in 1949, inspired by women like Simone de Beauvoir. But by 1953, my studies were over, and I had to return to São Tomé to begin my teaching career. 

I went home in January, but in February we saw a major cataclysm, known as the 1953 Batepá Massacre.

This is not something we learned about in school.

It was a period of great turmoil. As we know, the native creole people, known as forros, did not want to do manual plantation labor. In fact, many of them rejected this work, saying it was akin to neo-slavery. 

I think it’s important to bring in the legacy of Portugal’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, and the barbarity of the early conquest period. Some of our revered ancestral leaders, such as our great Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba, were brutally defeated in 17th-century Angola. And these attitudes of domination were present throughout the colonies to one extent or the other. In my country, the forropeople didn’t want to do this work, but the landowners wanted their profit. 

So, the colonial government let it be known that they would happily import workers from Cape Verde if the locals refused to work the field. By 1952, the proposal was on the table to import some 15,000 Cape Verdeans, which of course alarmed the forros, because they feared their little lands some of them had would be seized. 

By February 3, protests had erupted in the streets, and a civilian named Manuel da Conceição Soares was killed by the police. You can only imagine how the rioting broke out.

This story is giving “São Tomean lives matter.”

As you say. And well, the colonial Governor, blamed the protests on a Communist conspiracy and gave the colonialists permission, even orders, to arm themselves. The atrocities lasted several days, militias and the colonial government killing hundreds of forros. 

Foi brutal. Many protestors were suffocated in police custody, others were tortured and their bodies dumped in the sea. February 3 is commemorated as Martyrs' Day (Dia de Mártires da Liberdade) in São Tomé to this day.

Shortly after the protests ended, a Portuguese lawyer, Adelino da Palma Carlos, came to São Tomé to investigate the atrocities committed. Because of my education and social status, I was considered an appropriate assistant for him. We collected testimonials from survivors, and I was deeply moved by these stories; it was a total injustice. The Colonial Governor, a man named Carlos Gorgulho, was recalled to Lisbon as a result of the actions, but he was eventually promoted to general. Meanwhile, seven forros were convicted for assaulting the police!

A injustiça … um problema persistente!

My poetry would be infused with these themes: political and social commentary, protest and hope. And because of my feminist values, I wrote about and for women. Even though I came from the elite, my class consciousness was intact, and I addressed these issues as well. 

What are some of your most well-known poems?

My work isn’t very well known in the US, but I am a prominent voice in the Lusophone world, especially among Afro-descendant Portuguese speakers. I wrote "Onde Estão os Homens Caçados Neste Vento de Loucura" (“Where are the Men Chased by That Mad Wind?”), a poem about the Batepá massacre. But I didn’t write that until 1877. 

And while your poems are admired today, back in colonial times, they were considered “subversive and dangerous” by the authorities.

Correto. And you know, I wrote the lyrics to our national anthem: "Independência Total." But I’m getting ahead of myself. We didn’t even get our independence until the 1970s!

What did you do during the aftermath of the massacre?

I did the work I was trained to do! I taught in a primary school.

… One of the few professional jobs a black woman could have during this era. 

This is true, minha filha, especially someone from the upper class. 

Did you like it?

I didn’t mind it. But my heart never stopped craving political change. I was not seen as a nice, safe lady. In fact, I was on a trip to Lisbon in 1965, and I was arrested and detained for several days because of my involvement with the African liberation movement, probably going back to the 50s.

Can you enlighten me about how independence finally came to São Tome and Principe?

We were lucky in my country in that Independence was a relatively peaceful affair. Not like the other Portuguese colonies, alas! You see, our little nation was sparsely populated and of relatively small strategic economic importance. Unlike the fates of my brothers and sisters in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau! 

I do know these were very bloody times. I remember the word “Angola” was equated with “war atrocity” in some minds.

Yes, well, that is Western media doing its thing to “other” our nations, but it is true that Angola’s War of Independence was a bloody guerrilla struggle that caused many deaths. It started in 1961 and didn’t end until 1974! And in 1964, FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique or Mozambique Liberation Front, operating out of Tanganyika) initiated the Mozambican War of Independence, which also went on until 1974, and it caused so many atrocities. There was the terrible 1972 Wiriyamu massacre, where Portuguese forces killed an estimated 400 villagers. And do you know about Guinea-Bissau?

No, I am sorry to say I do not.

Their war was often referred to as "Portugal's Vietnam.” A group called PAIGC (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde, or the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) waged guerrilla warfare from 1963-1974. We’re talking bloody battles, counterinsurgencies, and massive civilian suffering. And during this same time, Portugal was also more or less at war with itself, trying to free itself from the Estado Novo dictatorship. 

I also have to say that timing and geography were probably on our side. In São Tome, our activation, The Movement for the Liberation of São Tomé and Príncipe (MLSTP), didn’t start overtly agitating for independence until later, in the mid-1960s. By then, the political climate was already shifting, compared to what our other colonized cousins had confronted. And, we only had one single independence movement, whereas the other nations had several factions, which made battles internecine and very complicated.

And I imagine since your country was smaller, a bit isolated, and devoid of mineral wealth, some considered the stakes “lower.”

Naturamente. Even though, we had our voices to make heard. I myself led a group of women protestors in a demonstration in front of the colonial palace on September 19, 1974. We dressed all in black and protested outside of the government palace. We believed that the colonial government had poisoned our local salt and drinking water. After independence, that day was commemorated and declared International Women's Day São Tomé and Príncipe.

When did all the fighting end? Were the Angolans and Mozambicans victorious?

Well, in a manner of speaking. What finally happened was Portugal’s left-wing Armed Forces Movement (MFA) launched a military coup on April 25, 1974. They call it the “Carnation Revolution,” but it was pretty bloodless, over in 15 hours! It got that nickname because the civilians stuck red carnations in the rifles of soldiers, to symbolize a peaceful coup. 

How come it was so easy to overthrow the government when it had been so hard in the African colonies?

Besides the probable fact that the Portuguese were not Black, and so their lives were valued more highly, the local discontent over nearly 50 some years of Estado Novo dictatorship was intense. These folks had ruled the country since 1933. Remember what was going on next door in Spain. Their dictator, Generalissimo Francesco Franco was on his last gasps. He’d taken over in 1939, at the end of the Spanish Civil War, and held absolute power as Head of State, Head of Government, and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. And even though he had resigned as prime minister in 1973, he held onto power with an iron grip until his death in 1975. So, the Iberian Peninsula was marching towards democracy. And today, April 25 is Portuguese Freedom Day. 

Interestingly and ironically, several African freedom fighters collaborated with the Portuguese pro-democracy activists in the struggle. And at the end of the day, the outcome was the ties between the former colonizer nation and its colonized peoples grew stronger. After all those years!

So, the wars ended because the empire was no more?

Sim. Once the dictators were out, the new Portuguese regime immediately ended the colonial military actions. These new leaders were on board with independence, and by January 1975, Portugal signed independence agreements with MPLA, UNITA, and FNLA. 

In addition to writing the national anthem, you had a role in the new government.

Yes. I became Minister of Education and Culture during the transitional government (1975-1978), and Minister of Education, Social Affairs and Culture (1978-1980). After that, from 1980-1990, I served as president of the National People's Assembly, which is the equivalent of being Deputy Head of State.

What an inspiration to other women leaders!

Yes, But I was still a writer in my soul, and I was grateful to found and serve as the President of the Union of Writers and Artists of São Tomé and Príncipe (UNEAS) from 1987 until I died in 2010.

And eternally, today you are still known as the “mother of the nation.”

Yes indeed. May more women leaders be encouraged to fight for what is right. 

Obrigada por nos iluminar, “mãe da pátria”!

Chapter One, World Brave Sis: 100 Foremothers Who Led the Way

© Rozella Kennedy, 2025