Overview

WINNER OF THE 2017 MARTIN A. KLEIN PRIZE In his in-depth and compelling study of perhaps the most famous of Portuguese colonial massacres, Mustafah Dhada explores why the massacre took place, what Wiriyamu was like prior to the massacre, how events unfolded, how we came to know about it and what the impact of the massacre was, particularly for the Portuguese empire. Spanning the period from 1964 to 2013 and complete with a foreword from Peter Pringle, this chronologically arranged book covers the liberation war in Mozambique and uses fieldwork, interviews and archival sources to place the massacre firmly in its historical context. The Portuguese Massacre of Wiriyamu in Colonial Mozambique, 1964-2013 is an important text for anyone interested in the 20th-century history of Africa, European colonialism and the modern history of war.

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9781350036802

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This book is a feat of investigative research and layered storytelling. Dhada unearths with exceptional degree of detail the events surrounding the infamous Portuguese colonial massacre of Wiriyamu, as well as the ways in which competing narratives about this event were crafted, buried, revealed, diffused, and contested. The book leads the reader through a maze of documents and memories, until a shattering vision of the destruction of Wiriyamu in which even the trees come to life to testify. The writing is alive with personal passion spanning decades; rich, sophisticated, and utterly compelling. Paolo Israel, University of the Western Cape, South Africa, author of In Step with the Times: Mapiko Masquerades of Mozambique The murdered inhabitants of Wiriyamu, casualties of brutal Portuguese refusal to relinquish imperial rule, now have the recognition they deserve. Mustafah Dhada's heroic work of historical reconstruction relocates these lost lives: documenting the names of the 385, he reminds us of the potential they represented. Dhada interweaves the narrative of the massacre with the fierce course of decolonization and subsequent debates on the legacy of Wiriyamu. Portugal's young officers, persuaded by Mozambicans, overthrew their generals and made Portugal a democracy; Mozambique gained independence but could not get free of Cold War or imperial struggles. In its interplay of revolutionaries, priests, villagers, soldiers, and journalists, this multilayered work shows how senseless exercise of power, accompanied by denial, remains with us. Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburg, USA and President, American Historical Association

This book is a feat of investigative research and layered storytelling. Dhada unearths with exceptional degree of detail the events surrounding the infamous Portuguese colonial massacre of Wiriyamu, as well as the ways in which competing narratives about this event were crafted, buried, revealed, diffused, and contested. The book leads the reader through a maze of documents and memories, until a shattering vision of the destruction of Wiriyamu in which even the trees come to life to testify. The writing is alive with personal passion spanning decades; rich, sophisticated, and utterly compelling. Paolo Israel, University of the Western Cape, South Africa, author of In Step with the Times: Mapiko Masquerades of Mozambique The murdered inhabitants of Wiriyamu, casualties of brutal Portuguese refusal to relinquish imperial rule, now have the recognition they deserve. Mustafah Dhada's heroic work of historical reconstruction relocates these lost lives: documenting the names of the 385, he reminds us of the potential they represented. Dhada interweaves the narrative of the massacre with the fierce course of decolonization and subsequent debates on the legacy of Wiriyamu. Portugal's young officers, persuaded by Mozambicans, overthrew their generals and made Portugal a democracy; Mozambique gained independence but could not get free of Cold War or imperial struggles. In its interplay of revolutionaries, priests, villagers, soldiers, and journalists, this multilayered work shows how senseless exercise of power, accompanied by denial, remains with us. Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburg, USA and President, American Historical Association The jacket copy calls Wiriyamu Portugal's most famous colonial massacre, but infamous is more suitable. Casualty figures are appallingly precise: 385 named individuals dead; livestock slaughtered, houses and bodies burned; victims' memory desecrated by Portuguese denials. In 1972, the Wiriyamu area became a flashpoint due to rising FRELIMO infiltration and local chiefs' fraught attempts to chart a middle course between guerrillas and the colonial state. Though short, the book is thorough. Historian Dhada (California State Univ., Bakersfield) details the massacre and its antecedents, the official cover-up, and the saga of the story's emergence in UK media. Marnia Lazreg notes that empires that resort to torture-and terror-seek to redeem the irredeemable and inevitably fail (Torture and the Twilight of Empire, 2008). The consequences here were severe, shattering Portugal's credibility as anticommunist stalwart, provoking a 1974 coup by alienated army officers. Democratic resurgence ended four decades of fascism and five centuries of Portuguese colonialism. Revisiting such awful events must be harrowing for survivors, but assisted by a sensitive chronicler like Dhada, their full story is available at last. Lest we forget. CHOICE

Author Information

Mustafah Dhada is Professor of History at California State University, Bakersfield, USA, and Research Associate at the Center for Social Studies, Coimbra University, Portugal. He is the author of Warriors at Work (1993). Peter Pringle is a foreign correspondent, investigative reporter and writer. He is the co-author of Those Are Real Bullets: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972 (2000).

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