From: mim@nyxfer.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Date: 28 Dec 92 20:58 PST
Subject: Cape Verde
Nf-ID: #N:co1iwB7w165w@nyxfer.uucp:1284959411:000:5189
Nf-From: nyxfer.uucp!mim    Dec 28 20:58:00 1992


Subject: Cape Verde
From: nyxfer!mim (Maoist Intl'ist Mvmnt)

 
Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)
 
MIM Notes, Issue 70: November, 1992


                            Cape Verde

                           by a comrade

On October 3, Prime Minister Carlos Veiga of Cape Verde visited
Boston to speak at Roxbury Community College. Approximately 300
Cape Verdeans came out to protest this visit and the policies of
Veiga's party, the Movement for Democracy (MPD), which has been
ruling Cape Verde since January 13, 1990. The protestors were
members of the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde
(PAICV), the party originally founded under Amilcar Cabral in the
revolutionary war for independence from Portugal.

Veiga and other MPD representatives came to the United States to
prove that the MPD has the support of the Cape Verdeans here, and
perhaps try to gain some support. Cape Verdeans in the United
States are represented by one seat on the Cape Verde national
assembly, which the PAICV won. MIM spoke with Representative
Francisco Fernandes of the PAICV.


In January and February of 1990 the PAICV opened the country to a
multi-party system and lost the presidential and national assembly
elections to the MPD. People have speculated that the MPD was
funded by Portugal, England, Europe, and the United States, among
other major powers, but no one MIM interviewed could officially
confirm this. The MPD won the elections on the promise of
change -- they promised to give everyone everything they needed
including free emigration, a four-times increase in the minimum
wage, free higher education for all, and a decrease in government
waste.

But in the course of the past two years, the MPD has succeeded in
raising their own salaries, censoring the media to the degree that
even their own president's recent public address was censored,
spending outrageous amounts of money on "government business,"
allowing in foreign imperialist investors who take the profits
back to their own countries, and persecuting members of the PAICV
by kicking them out of their jobs and homes.

"My brother used to work for the Party [PAICV] and so he was
kicked out of his job. Now I work to support him too," one Cape
Verdean told MIM.

Another said, "The problem is not that we are against change in a
positive way, they change anything that looks like PAICV, they
bring back symbols of colonizers, even changing the streets named
after nationals and put statues of Portuguese colonizers in the
best public places."

In the course of the past year the popularity of PAICV in Cape
Verde increased from 27% to 45% of the population with a
coincident decline in popularity for the MPD. Members of PAICV
speculate that if the MPD were to hold elections right now they
would lose. They are quick to add that the MPD is not going to
hold elections now.

October's protest in Boston focused on the issue of the national
flag and its symbolic importance for the independence of Cape
Verde. In July, the MPD decided to change the national flag and
national anthem from those conceived by Amilcar Cabral as symbols
of national independence to an adaptation on the European
Community flag with no African symbolism.

The PAICV proposed that the government hold a referendum to see
what the people thought of changing the flag, but the MPD ignored
this suggestion as it ignored the 25,000 signatures sent to the
national assembly opposing this change. The new flag was raised in
Cape Verde the Friday before the Boston demonstration.

The revolutionary struggle of the Cape Verdean people was handed a
setback by the imperialist colonizers who now control and exploit
much of they country through the MPD. As in Nicaragua and other
Third World countries, the people learn from these setbacks.
Maoism is an ideology built on successes and lessons from
mistakes.

The revolution in Cape Verde was a relative success, but now some
of the advances have been overturned and the people are no longer
in power. Maoists do not throw out revolutions like this one just
because they did not achieve perfection on the first try. These
revolutions do advance the conditions and understanding of the
masses: they are material advances.

And from the fact that the revolutionary governments could be
overturned we learn that our political line and practice is not
yet perfect. Communism will only be achieved through the long
struggle of revolutionary practice and study to learn the lessons
from this practice so that we do not make the same mistakes twice.

Notes: Gerard Chaliand, _Armed Struggle in Africa_. Monthly Review
Press, 1969.

                               -30-
 
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From: patm@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Pat Murphy)
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 17:51:13 GMT
Subject: Re: Behind Pentagon's Move Into Somalia
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA