The liberators of our memory

In my recent article "Lagos of Discoveries," I stated, among other things, that a project entitled "Libertar a Memória," which screened films about slavery and colonialism in Lagos and featured Nuna, Apolo de Carvalho, and Marta Lança as commentators or debaters, was not "liberating memory," but rather "imprisoning it in a vest of errors and blame." I also stated that what such commentators can offer "is not information, but rather propaganda and woke activism from people with no known or recognized qualifications to speak on this subject."

These statements of mine bothered Luísa Rosa Baptista, the mentor and producer of the so-called "Libertar a Memória" project, who decided to respond to my article, offering nothing to dispute my assertions. In fact, she didn't provide us with any credentials for the aforementioned commentators, nor did she prove—quite the contrary—that what they did in Lagos wasn't woke propaganda. Well, I can add another twist to prove that it was.

Luísa Baptista insinuates that I only now wrote "Lagos de Descobertas" and mentioned the "Libertar a Memória" project, which took place in the fall of 2024, for reasons related to the upcoming local elections. But she is doubly mistaken. I do not live in the Algarve, I have no direct interest or involvement in those elections, and I only wrote this article now because a Lagos resident contacted me to denounce what is happening there regarding the memorialization of the past and historical information. I'll take a moment here to reaffirm one of the many things my opponent chose to ignore in my article. In fact, I didn't write this article solely based on one person's complaint, but also based on a long conversation with the director of the Lagos Museum and my own online research into the ideas of the people involved—that is, Nuna, Apolo de Carvalho, Marta Lança, Catarina Demony, and now Luísa Rosa Baptista. Having closed this parenthesis, I reaffirm that I have no interest whatsoever in the local elections in Lagos—I am not a voter in that city—but as a historian and Portuguese citizen, I have every interest in historical truth and I have a lot to do with the deceptions that the self-proclaimed liberators of memory have been trying to hammer into the heads of my fellow citizens for years, whether they live in Caminha or Tavira.

And so I was chilled to encounter speakers like Apolo de Carvalho, who assumes that the abolition of slavery was the work of Black people or that the Portuguese were the first human hunters. And I was even more chilled to see that, to better "liberate the memory" of their audience, the session organizers had a stand where they suggested further reading. It would be a great idea if that stand had offered good books, by good historians, on the history of slavery. However, there wasn't a single one—I repeat: a single one—of those books on that stand. Which shouldn't surprise us, because woke people—as they apparently are—believe that the historical memory of the Portuguese isn't liberated with history books, but rather with books on political theory and other forms of agitation and activism. Therefore, at the aforementioned stand, the inhabitants of Lagos, eager to know more about the slave trade or slavery, came across, among others, Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists , Politics of Enmity , Critique of Black Reason , The World of Amílcar Cabral and the inevitable and very appropriate History of Modern Palestine , as you can see in the image below.

I've known this type of stall since my days as a student at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lisbon, in the 1970s, when the entrance hall was filled with stalls where the MRPP and the UEC (Union of Communist Students) tried to sell their wares.

It must have been the same in Lagos. None of this has anything to do with information, nor with freeing memory. Rather, it has to do with political propaganda and the attempt to imprison memory in a box of ignorance that is then tried to be padlocked. And if there were any doubts about this, or if there were a temptation to think that this was merely an exceptional and unrepresentative episode, it would be enough to go back a little further in time to dispel that benevolent notion. Indeed, my research allowed me to deepen my understanding of the "Freeing Memory" project. What happened in the city of Lagos in the fall of 2024 was the second edition of this project. The first edition took place in the summer of 2023, in Sagres. And, readers will ask, was it then relying on someone who knew history and was capable of providing a more comprehensive and informed perspective? Unfortunately not. In that first session, the "Libertar a Memória" project gave the Algarve people more of the same: among others, Luca Argel, the Brazilian singer-songwriter who wants President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to apologize for slavery, and Kitty Furtado, the activist and cultural critic, avowedly and proudly Woke, who, like Apolo de Carvalho and Marta Lança, demanded reparations from the Portuguese state. She considers me a persecutor of Black intellectuals and activists, and therefore not a political adversary, but an enemy. Yes, you read that right, an enemy who persecutes Black people. This is what being Woke is. Anyone who challenges your ideas and points out your obvious lack of historical knowledge becomes a racist and an enemy.

These and other individuals who seek to "deconstruct the imaginary of the history of the Discoveries and colonialism" are, as I mentioned in my previous article, highly competent in their respective fields of training and knowledge, but none of them, as far as we know, possess the specific knowledge to inform (and debate) the history of the slave trade, slavery, or colonialism. Inevitably, I challenged—and will continue to do so if appropriate—the public positions of Luca Argel and Kitty Furtado , a woman with whom I have, in fact, had the opportunity to debate face-to-face on RTP. It is these individuals, and others with similar positions, that have supported and presented the "Libertar a Memória" project to the public. Is this what the Lagos museum and city council intend to offer their residents by way of memorialization and historical information? They are, of course, free to follow whatever path they choose, but does the city's population agree?

Luísa Rosa Baptista considers herself very progressive and modern for wanting, in what she calls a "civic gesture," to listen to and consider "the experience of others directly or indirectly involved in the issues discussed." But I wonder: Were Apolo de Carvalho, Kitty Furtado, or Marta Lança slaves or slave traders? What is their legitimacy to speak on this topic? Are they historians? Have they researched the issue thoroughly? Is Luísa Baptista convinced that people of African descent, simply because they are, are descended from slaves or have special expertise to speak on this subject? The mentor of the "Libertar a Memória" project also considers herself very progressive for addressing issues she classifies as "(un)comfortable" and giving voice to the less positive aspects of our history. He even asks, rhetorically, the following: "Isn't Portugal already mature enough to face all sides of its history, both the positive and beneficial and the tragic and negative?" But he's certainly knocking on the wrong door, unknowingly, and preaching to the converted. In 1999, Luísa Baptista was only 22 years old and, I suppose, still a student at ISCTE, and I was already writing about the "uncomfortable" history of Portugal's involvement in slavery. And I was writing without holding anything back .