AFRICA, SIGN FOR FREEDOM: MARCUS GARVEY, THE CARNIVAL OF BAHIA, AND THE “BRADO AFRICANO” IN MOZAMBIQUE

Abstract

A critical approach to the notion of diaspora, should take into account the different and complex interconnections and passages that constitute a horizon to the subject positions, informed by history transits, migration and reconnections. Less than admitting a source, defined as the starting point, it is important to recognize the arise of  the identities, or perspectives, conditioned by socio-political requirements. I explore here these connections from: 1) the consideration of a process found in the Historical Archive in Mozambique in Maputo, which tells us about the arrest of two Mozambicans arrested upon returning from South Africa in 1922, bringing in copies of the garveysta newspaper "The Negro World"; 2) the discursive articulation around the Mozambican nationalism, and the very idea of ​​"African nation" as it appears in the pages of the newspaper "O Brado Africano"; 3) the revision of symbolic disputes raised in the carnival of Salvador de Bahia in Brazil  around the meaning of African and African-ness for the descendants of slaves throughout the twentieth century.