A pesca artesanal de Cabo Verde no jogo da racialização dos descontentes : o caso da comunidade pesqueira de Tarrafal de Santiago

Abstract

Throughout this thesis, it is defended that the spectrum of primitivism inherited from the colonial period plays an important part in the modern definitions of Cape Verde’s artisanal fishermen as a social class. This spectrum has a complex genesis, but has its higher point of formulation at the moment the Portuguese colonial administration starts to explore, on a large scale, the fish of the archipelago. With the event of independence in 1975 – that also means the conformation of the modern state's structure and the emergence of state institutions that start to administrate the exploration of fish in the seas of the islands – a moment of redemption of the local fishing communities is rehearsed. At least for the local fishermen, the past returns as the ideals of independence lose strength and the state opens itself up to neoliberal policies in the early 1990’s. Hence, it goes from the re-Africanization of spirits – concept coined by Amílcar Cabral, in the scope of the fights for independence – to the racialization of the discontented – notion developed in this thesis to handle the game that is being established between the State, the big international players that explore the seas of the islands and the artisanal fishing communities that fight for their fish and for their maritime culture, which is ecologically based and has high penetration among the country’s popular classes.