Exploring the antifascist history of Cape Verde’s Tarrafal concentration camp

A new photobook magnifies the stories of people who had spent time imprisoned in the camp and those who helped them.

When pho­tog­ra­ph­er João Pina touched down on the island of San­ti­a­go, Cape Verde for the first time in Jan­u­ary 2020, he head­ed straight to the home of an 87-year-old woman named Lil­i­ca. Cape Verde had long been on Pina’s list of places to vis­it, but he had been delay­ing his first trip to the island arch­i­pel­ago. His famil­ial ties to the coun­try meant he would be there to work on his most per­son­al project yet.

I went to vis­it a girl – who was then an 87-year-old-girl – who my great grand­par­ents spon­sored to go to Por­tu­gal and study,” Pina says. She was the daugh­ter of the cou­ple who ran the local shop and housed my great grand­par­ents in Tar­rafal. They were the ones pro­vid­ing food to the camp, soap and aid to the prisoners.”

Tar­rafal was an infa­mous con­cen­tra­tion camp sit­u­at­ed on San­ti­a­go Island, which was found­ed in 1936 under António de Oliveira Salazar’s fas­cist rule of Por­tu­gal and its empire. Dur­ing its first peri­od of oper­a­tion, from 1936 to 1954, Por­tuguese polit­i­cal rebels and dis­si­dents were sent to Tar­rafal – which was inspired by Nazi camps – and forced to work intense labour under the West African sun until they were released or died. In its sec­ond phase, between 1961 and 1974, the space was used to imprison inde­pen­dence move­ment activists and mil­i­tants from then-colonies of Ango­la, Guinea-Bis­sau and Cape Verde.

In 1949 Pina’s grand­fa­ther, Guil­herme da Cos­ta Car­val­ho, was sent to Tar­rafal as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er. That same year, Pina’s great grand­par­ents were giv­en unprece­dent­ed access to vis­it Tar­rafal, and they brought along a cam­era to take pic­tures of their son and his fel­low pris­on­ers, shar­ing the pho­tographs with fel­low fam­i­ly mem­bers as a means of keep­ing them updat­ed. Lilica’s par­ents offered them a place to stay, and Pina want­ed to recon­nect their stories.

Top to bottom: Herculana Carvalho, placing flowers on the gravestone of Bento António Gonçalves, the secretary general of the Portuguese communist party who died in the Tarrafal concentration camp in 1942. Guilherme da Costa Carvalho, b. 1921, Porto Arrested for the first time in 1948 for being a member of the Portuguese Communist Party.

As Lil­i­ca and Pina sat and shared a plate of John Dory fish, she recount­ed how Pina’s great grand­par­ents had helped to sup­port and fund her edu­ca­tion, after which she joined the gueril­la inde­pen­dence move­ment for Guinea-Bis­sau and Cape Verde and lat­er served as the first female mem­ber of Cape Verde’s Nation­al Assem­bly. Resis­tance doesn’t fall far from the tree. She is a very rel­e­vant woman in the strug­gle for inde­pen­dence of Guinea-Bis­sau and Cape Verde,” Pina recalls. And here I am 60 or 70 years lat­er, sit­ting down with her and hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion – it was a tru­ly amaz­ing moment.”

A small por­trait of Lil­i­ca now fea­tures in Pina’s new mono­graph Tar­rafal. Open­ing with those por­traits of inmates made by his great grand­par­ents, the book mag­ni­fies the sto­ries of peo­ple who had spent time impris­oned in the camp, while pro­vid­ing a space for Pina to trace his con­nec­tion with his ances­tors. He first began work­ing on the project in 2019, when he opened a box passed onto him by his moth­er that was filled with those pic­tures from Tar­rafal, as well as sev­er­al let­ters exchanged between his grand­fa­ther and great grandfather.

Top to bottom: Helmets belonging to the Angolan police, who were charged with securing the perimeter of the concentration camp; A group of Portuguese political prisoners pose for a portrait; What is left of the laundry room used by the political prisoners to wash their clothes

The book fea­tures those let­ters and pho­tographs, along­side pic­tures that Pina made him­self dur­ing his trav­els to Cape Verde and beyond, as he vis­it­ed the con­cen­tra­tion camp’s site (now the Resis­tance Muse­um), for­mer inmates of Tar­rafal and their fam­i­lies, as well as places that his ances­tors had vis­it­ed dur­ing their time in the arch­i­pel­ago nation.

It cre­ates a human­is­ing sto­ry of anti-fas­cist resis­tance, at a time when far right pol­i­tics once again threat­ens ascen­den­cy across the west­ern world. For me, keep­ing the record of peo­ple who were oppos­ing the Salazar régime was key,” Pina explains. We just cel­e­brat­ed 50 years (since the fas­cist régime was over­thrown), but we cel­e­brat­ed 50 years with a very sour taste in our mouths, because in the pre­vi­ous elec­tion the extreme right par­ty had 50 par­lia­men­tar­i­ans elect­ed – it’s inter­est­ing and sour at the same time, so we need to shed light on what happened.”

João Divo Macedo an Cape Verdean freedom fighter who spent 4 years in the Tarrafal concentration camp in Cape Verde, during the so called "African phase" of the camp between 1962-1974;
Jose Luandino Vieira, an Angolan writer who spent 8 years in the Tarrafal concentration camp in Cape Verde for being a member of the MPLA.

In doing so, he pays trib­ute to those who suf­fered and sac­ri­ficed while oppos­ing fas­cism and impe­ri­al­ism. Con­di­tions were harsh in Tar­rafal, and sev­er­al inmates nev­er left. The dif­fer­ent direc­tors of the camp had dif­fer­ent poli­cies [so liv­ing con­di­tions dif­fered],” Pina says. But as the world war was start­ing and the fas­cist forces were con­quer­ing Europe, it was very clear that this was a camp for peo­ple to die – there’s a famous sen­tence from the camp’s doc­tor from when the pris­on­ers were com­plain­ing that they were sick and need­ed help. He said he wasn’t there to cure any­one, he was there to write the death certificates.

Tar­rafal is this place of very heavy his­to­ry, but it’s also a place where cama­raderie and sup­port for each oth­er hap­pened for so long,” he con­tin­ues. The ideas that brought those men there were the right ones – it wasn’t the fas­cists who were on the right side of his­to­ry, it was these men who were on the right side of his­to­ry. A few hun­dred men sac­ri­ficed their lives, their health and their fam­i­lies in order for us to be able to have this con­ver­sa­tion today.”

One of the shared cells in which prisoners were held in the camp

Tar­rafal by João Pina is pub­lished by GOST

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