The Symbols and Myths of the Colonial Period
Cross
The cross was present throughout the process of transatlantic colonisation, as the Christian religion was used as a justification for the invasion of territories and the enslavement of non-Christian peoples.
From forced baptism to the standards planted as a symbol of territorial conquest, the cross is the symbol of Catholic violence and the forced evangelisation of other peoples, particularly the indigenous peoples who already lived in the lands occupied by the colonisers.
In Portugal, the myth of the ‘divine mission of colonisation’ is still used today.
Figures such as Father António Vieira, José de Anchieta and Manuel da Nóbrega, Jesuits who took part in the process of evangelisation in Brazil, are remembered as ‘defenders of Indian rights’ because they believed in the liberation of indigenous peoples through evangelisation and religious conversion.
It was a process of violence that forced indigenous peoples to cut their hair, change their languages, their clothes, their customs, in exchange for survival.
On the other hand, this religious ‘protection’ didn't apply to everyone, since the Jesuits didn't seem to have the same empathy for the enslaved blacks, who were seen by the holy faith as “savages” ‘without a soul’.
To call the Jesuit priests of colonisation ‘defenders of human rights’ is to perpetuate a violent erasure of the suffering of colonised peoples and an error of historical anachronism.
This myth helps to reinforce racist and imperialist ideas, which ignore the violence of forced religious conversion, genocide and the cultural and identity erasure of colonised peoples.
The cross, loaded with the symbolism of guilt and suffering, was the first object to be planted whenever the colonisers arrived in a new territory of the so-called ‘New World’.
It redeemed some and massacred others.
To this day, it personifies the binary division of the Western world: good/bad, sacred/profane, light/dark, savage/civilised, man/woman, natural/human.
Caravel
A vessel used during colonial navigations and invasions, it is still exalted today as one of the greatest national symbols within the contemporary colonial narrative.
There are hundreds of reproductions of the image of the caravel in public and private spaces in Portugal, from engravings on building façades, illustrations in school textbooks to souvenirs for tourists.
Its most important representation is the ‘discoveries’ standard, a monument built during the Salazar dictatorship for the Portuguese World Exhibition, held in 1940, which served as a propaganda strategy to reaffirm the imperialist and colonial position of the Estado Novo (1933 - 1974).
The Caravela, the ultimate symbol of Portuguese imperialism, represents a key piece of national identity, sustained by the myth of the heroic coloniser. In schools, we learn that Portugal, despite being a small country, ‘conquered’ and ‘opened the doors to the world’, that Portuguese navigators were brave and daring to venture into unknown seas on an altruistic mission of evangelisation and civilisation.
In our history, they make us forget everything it cost.
This is the artefact that underpins the usurpation, genocide, capture, trafficking and enslavement of indigenous peoples in other parts of the world.
And its image is so strong that six centuries have passed and the coloniser is still seen as a hero.
Caravel remembered, slave ship forgotten... both vessels of death, expansionism and horror.
Flag
A visual symbol that represents a sovereign country or territory and therefore also represents national identity as a concept in itself.
The fabrication and historical fabrication, which transforms slave colonialism into a story of heroes and conquerors, happens because of the need to maintain oppressive systems, often sustained by the unrealistic idea of ‘nation’.
Who belongs and who doesn't.
The Portuguese flag bears explicit traces of this history of violence, from its colours to its symbols (castles, quinas and the armillary sphere).
The quest to maintain these ideas has been increasingly defended by conservative right-wing extremist groups, demonstrating the importance of these symbols and nationalist imagery in maintaining hegemonic power.
From the discussion about the images and monuments present in the public space, to the reformulation of the latest government logo into a more synthesised version, what is evident is the excessive difficulty of talking about Portugal's colonial past in the public sphere and the constant manipulation and exploitation of national symbols to rekindle ultra-nationalist, imperialist, racist and xenophobic ideas.
What happens when you question a country's national identity, its history, its memory? What if we lived in a world without flags, without anthems, without borders?
Sugar
Also known as ‘White Gold’, it was one of the biggest commodities of the colonial period.
It was brought from Asia and planted for the first time by the Portuguese on the island of Madeira, where they tested what would become the plantation in Brazil.
The introduction of sugar cane monoculture in the territory we now call Brazil was the main reason for the capture and enslavement of Africans to serve as forced labour in sugar production.
Portugal became one of the largest suppliers of sugar to the whole of Europe, thus enriching the slaveholders who profited from the lives of enslaved people and their forced labour.
The sugar plantation and Casa Grande & Senzala function as a micro-cosmos, a physical and metaphysical territory that highlights the great imperialist and colonial machine
It is also on the basis of sugar and the imaginary universe that Gilberto Freyre and many others created, that the myth of racial democracy and luso-tropicalism in Brazil was fuelled, ‘sweetening’ the reality of forced miscegenation, slavery and transatlantic trafficking, the abuse and violations of black women and erasing the history of resistance of the original (indigenous) peoples and quilombolas.
The violence of this monoculture affected not only the enslaved people, but also the indigenous people who lived in these territories and the land itself, which was also exploited as property.
Today, colonialism continues in other forms…
Savage capitalism encourages the idea of land ownership and privatisation, justifies invasions and expropriations, destroys everything that cannot be profited from, in the same colonising and slavery logic, where only a few profit from the work and land of others.