Letter from Praia, 1978.

• Author: Marks, Ed

The visitor who arrives in Cape Verde is struck first of all by the barrenness: ten years of drought have reduced the islands to a state of nature strongly resembling pictures of the moon. Brown is everywhere the dominant color and the isolated spots of green are almost shocking in their vividness. Most visitors react with a feeling of depression, followed by a real sense of pity and admiration for the inhabitants of the islands. The inevitable question is: but how do they survive? The answer is barely, and largely with the help from abroad: from the expatriate Cape Verdean communities and from foreign aid.

Next one is struck by the realization that except in a geographic sense Cape Verde is not an African country. It is a small, poor, Portuguese province, adrift off the coast of Africa. The Cape Verdean peasant may be no better educated nor in any sense richer that his counterpart on the coast of Africa, but he is not an African, he does not belong to the cultural and tribal culture which, with local variations, exists from one end of Africa to the other.

Cape Verde has a distinctive culture of its own; rich in music, literature, and a whole bag of cultural identification and memories. But this culture is clearly a regional or provincial version of the broader Portuguese culture and differs no more from the "norm" than the traditional provinces of the Metropole itself.

However, geography is determinant and Cape Verde as a political and economic nation-state has taken its place on the international scene as an African country. It talks African internationally, and has tied its economic future to West African regional economic organization. It is difficult to see how it could do otherwise.

There is another link to the African continent, which is peculiar to Cape Verde. Portuguese West Africa, now the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, has often been described as having been a Cape Verdean rather than a metropolitan colony. The administrative and commercial sectors of the colony were heavily staffed by Cape Verdeans who had obeyed the economic imperative of the islands to emigrate. It was from within this group that the independence movement arose, and the independence of both Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde was won by an ethnic Cape Verdean rebellion fought on the mainland, but in the name of both countries.

Cape Verde Flag

The present leadership in Guinea-Bissau is largely Cape Verdean in ethnic and cultural background and the single political party...