Synopsis

The 1953 massacre in Sao Tome and Principe is, in Espectros de Batepá, seen not only as a historical event, but as an event whose symbolic dimension needs to be brought to the research centre. The premise of the book is thus based on the belief that, since it is impossible to fully access what constituted the experience of the massacre, it is through imagination and representations that several memories of the event can be told, some that legitimize public and/or official narratives - or who approach them through selective versions of the past - and others that are part of a more inclusive process creating discursive, symbolic and political spaces that allow the articulation of non-dominant memories on the aforementioned events. These lines of narration and interpretation of the past, of course, contain various silences and absences which, in this case, will manifest symbolically or literally through the figure of the spectrum. What do the specters tell about the memories of Batepa and about Portuguese colonialism on the islands? What do they reveal about power relations and colonial society? What do the spectres say about social identities and marginalised groups in the archipelago? Who writes the massacre and who celebrates it? How are Portugal and Sao Tome and Principe designed in these representations? These are some of the questions that this book seeks to answer.