Abstract

SEMEDO, Carla Indira Carvalho. The migratory experience of Cape Verdeans to the plantations of São Tomé and Príncipe: field research. População e Sociedade [online]. 2020, n.34, pp.87-106.  Epub Dec 01, 2021. ISSN 0873-1861.

Among the various destinations of Cape Verdean people, the migratory experience in São Tomé and Príncipe was narrated as the portrait of Cape Verde's “worst migration”, as it reverberated the experimentation of “slavery” and reinforced a renegade blackness. With the narratives of those who experienced not only hunger, but the effects of it, the event and the experience of Cape Verdean migration to the gardens of São Tomé and Príncipe, this article discuss the multiple places of utterance of this experience and event, about everyday of hunger, as well as the “decision or not” to join the São Tomé plantations. It is argued that the discourse and practices of the colonial authorities on famines led to the creation of modes of existence and daily famines, in which, as a motto for Cape Verdean migration to the cocoa and coffee fields in São Tomé and Príncipe, contracted migration would constitute “the only possible alternative” to famines and the imminence of death tolls.

Keywords : Contracted work; forced emigration; Sao Tome and Principe; Cape Verde; plantations.

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