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Kronos

On-line version ISSN 2309-9585
Print version ISSN 0259-0190

Abstract

DE SOUTO, Amélia Neves. Memory and identity in the history of Frelimo: some research themes. Kronos [online]. 2013, vol.39, n.1, pp.280-296. ISSN 2309-9585.

This article, which is part of a larger research project on historical memory and identity in the history of Frelimo, is a contribution to the study of certain central aspects of the transmission of that history and memory from 1975 to the present day. After independence, Frelimo's history was transmitted above all through the documentation published by the Secretariat for Ideological Work, and through testimony provided by protagonists in the liberation struggle. This historical narrative became, during the period of single party rule (1975-1990), the official national history of the Frelimo government. However, the war of destabilization/civil war was extremely unsettling for the country, and the economic and social changes after 1986-1987 and the political changes after 1990 - which established political pluralism - profoundly altered the political and public space and hence the freedom to question this referential historical narrative. Frelimo needed to guarantee that its memory, which it was now possible to interrogate, would continue to be part of the national identity and the reference point for the past and the future. For this reason, in response to all these changes and to critiques, Frelimo not only countered by revitalising the party at all levels, but also by publishing large numbers of pamphlets about the lives of its heroes and the restoration of historical sites. Through these actions, Frelimo tried to maintain both its identity and the ideological project that sustained it as a party in an attempt to guarantee its own legitimacy and hegemony

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