The Returned - Agents of Colonial Interculturality

Abstract

The issue of the returnees is still a sensitive one in the Portuguese society. Some of us know someone, relatives or friends, who had to escapefrom the war overseas. Within a few decades, the overseas territory shifted from Promised Land to nightmare, with thousands of settlers returning to the metropolis, many of them only having what they were wearing. This article presents the reasonsbehind the colonization of Africa, lists the central problems of the land occupation, mainly in the beginnings of the last century, and talks about the economic and social life overseas until the independence of the African territories, focusing on Angola’s case. It also tells stories in the first person about the escape from the colonies until the arrival in Portugal.