Reading the Aftermath of Portuguese Colonialism: The Retorno in the Written Media of the 21st Century

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to undertake an exploratory pilot study on the multiplicity of texts that strive to write or analyse the memories of the displaced individuals from the former Portuguese African colonies during the 1975–1976 forced migration to Portugal who came to be labelled retornados (returnees), rethink history and eliminate silences, to pave the way for postmemory and controlled affective ties through reparative readings and nostalgia. We undertook bibliographical research to determine the eligibility criteria and used nonprobability convenience sampling to select the texts to carry out a content analysis. An interdisciplinary approach is used to present and discuss the results. Although decades have passed since the retorno, the stigma of being a retornado still remains in the memory of Portuguese society as interest in the topic and the time distance allows for more rigorous studies. In the analysed texts, the results achieved establish that the relationship of the Portuguese people with the contemporary memory and history of the colonial era is comprised of silences and nonmemories that still have to be deconstructed to forge a positive future for the generation of postmemory.

1. Introduction

The colonial wars (1961–1974) and the years leading to independence in the former Portuguese territories in Africa continue to be viewed, interpreted and archived as challenging collective memory, emphasising the need to decolonise history (and mentality) in contemporary Portugal.

In the last twenty or so years, numerous texts alluding to the Portuguese colonial past in Africa have been published, texts that recapture the silenced traumatic memories of the retorno and of the colonial war while debating postcolonial reactions, postmemory, trauma and nostalgia.

The aim of this review is to discuss the retorno and associated vocabulary in newspaper articles; we present the context of the retorno and the theoretical background, as it is a topic that is still being discovered outside the boundaries of Portuguese academia. Content analysis was carried out in the texts after the selection process was concluded, and the results were discussed so as to analyse the importance of the multiplicity of “texts” on the topic that contribute to writing the memories, reading the visions and rethinking the history of Portuguese colonialism and its aftermath in recent decades, in order to deconstruct nostalgia and eliminate the silences of forgetfulness, enabling postmemory, and using reparative writing and reading as a means to repair collective memory, reconstruct affective ties and possibly launch historical reparation towards the former Portuguese African colonies, an area where research is still relatively scarce.

This is also a sentimental trip down memory lane, as one of the authors was born in Angola and arrived in Portugal as an immigrant in the mid-eighties after living in other African countries for more than ten years, and on arrival, her family was almost immediately labelled retornados the pejorative label remains and is passed on by the older Portuguese generations.

2. The Context: Labelling the Retorno

The term retornado, which in English translates to “returnees” or “the returned”, is used to refer to the people who were repatriated to Portugal between 1974 and 1975 after the overthrow of the Estado Novo dictatorship and the decolonisation of the former Portuguese African colonies, mainly Angola and Mozambique. Most of the retornados arrived in the summer months of 1975 and were white settlers of the colonies, but there were also second- and third-generation African-born individuals of Portuguese descent and Portuguese Africans; this repatriation became known in Portugal as the retorno, or the “return”. Initially, the people involved in the retorno were called desalojados, i.e., the “dislodged” or the “displaced”; however, the more derogatory term retornado stuck, and with it came the “stigma of a forced return”, as Ana Cristina Mendes explains in “Remembering and Fictionalizing Inhospitable Europe: The Experience of Portuguese Retornados in Dulce Maria Cardoso’s The Return and Isabela Figueiredo’s Notebook of Colonial Memories” [1].

The Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission defines retornado/returnee as “a person going from a host country back to a country of origin, country of nationality or habitual residence usually after spending a significant period of time in the host country whether voluntary or forced, assisted or spontaneous” [2].

The retornados were thus involuntary (im)migrants from the former Portuguese African territories. Since their migration was a “forced, traumatic return motivated by political circumstances” [1] (pp. 4–5), they could also be referred to as political refugees [3], and various retornados made a claim for this designation to be used.

When the retorno occurred almost fifty years ago, there were no UN migration policies, resources or tools to instantly prepare for the displacement of more than a half million people or a plan laying out the vision for a dignified return and sustainable reintegration such as the Framework for Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (IOM 2018) [3] that now lays out the framework to facilitate a dignified (voluntary) return, support a sustainable reintegration and address migrant vulnerabilities.

According to the Training Manual on Human Rights Monitoring [4], “The simple fact of being displaced from one’s community—leaving behind property, status, employment, family members, etc—places returnees (…) in a vulnerable situation” [4] (p. 207).

Almost five decades after the retorno, the word retornado still carries a psychological, social, political and cultural load for those who were the main actors in the forced migration or mass displacement across continents; it was the legal designation given to migrants arriving from the African colonies, a label that entitled them to help from the Instituto de Apoio ao Retorno de Nacionais (IARN), a state agency created in 1975 to “solve the problems raised by the return of nationals residing in former Portuguese colonies in Africa” and “with the aim of supporting the settlement and integration of these people in Portugal” [5].

Christoph Kalter (2022) [6] claims that “the labels attached to the settlers-turned-migrants (…) were hotly contested. The most prominent among them, ‘retornados’ (returnees) and ‘refugiados’ (refugees), inferred conflicting views about the nature of their mobility and belonging and thus evoked divergent emotional and political responses”.

The consequences of decolonisation and the end of the empire were the disruption of the lives of an unknown number of people (more than five hundred thousand) forced into a cross-continental massive human displacement, encountering hostility and lack of organisation on arrival, feeling vulnerable after a violent uprooting from their homes and facing a loss of cultural identity.

3. Theoretical Background

Samuel O’Donoghue [7] focuses on the concepts of trauma and postmemory and criticises the fact that these terms are often wrongly used interchangeably. The concept of postmemory is used to show how the trauma of distant historical events still lingers on in the new generations even though they have never experienced those events personally. For these generations, according to Ofelia Ferrán, their memory, a postmemory, is an inherited traumatic memory [7] (p. 2). However, the issue with this is that inheriting trauma is not straightforward, but rather it is more the psychological effect of living with or being raised by people who have experienced hardships and are thus traumatised. For instance, the memories of parents and grandparents impact their lives, and sharing experiences or rememorising can be affected by past traumas, which, in turn, affect the younger generations, as described by Marianne Hirsch [8]:

Postmemory describes the relationship that the generation after those who witnessed cultural or collective trauma bears to the experiences of those who came before, experiences that they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Postmemory’s connection to the past is thus not actually mediated by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. To grow up with such overwhelming inherited memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one’s birth or one’s consciousness, is to risk having one’s own stories and experiences displaced, even evacuated, by those of a previous generation. It is to be shaped, however indirectly, by traumatic events that still defy narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension [8].

(pp. 106–107)

Postmemory is, thus, an action to be undertaken or to be used to create a “structure of remembrance” and characterises how the past is communicated to the descendants of the survivors as well as to the rest of society. Indeed, in terms of forgotten or repressed memories, postmemories are a form of antihistory, as they transmit that which is not usually written in formal history [7] (pp. 4–5). For Sheila Khan, “the duty of postmemory is the salutary relationship with that past, the unashamed path of touching and understanding that those ‘wounds’ are also ours; that sorrow will also be part of our biographies [9] (pp. 354–355).”

Nostalgia is closely related to cherished and positive memories, as it comes from a boost in a psychological positive state and thus evokes positive emotions. Nostalgia is, in simple terms, thinking about the past and “that which was” in a blissful way, and is, therefore, a feeling that people enjoy [10] (pp. 6–7). However, there is also a negative side to experiencing nostalgia. The “instigators” of nostalgia can be in less optimistic states, such as experiencing distress, sadness, loss or feeling lonely or out of place [10] (pp. 3–4, pp. 27–29). People engage in nostalgic thoughts during times when they are overwhelmed, and it is thus a psychological response to a current negative experience and negative emotions [10] (p. 6, pp. 26–27). Nostalgia can be said to be a bittersweet phenomenon. However, it should be emphasised that in reality, it is more sweet than bitter, as people are also more inclined to point out the positive experiences even in a negative nostalgic experience [10] (pp. 17–18).

Nostalgic memories can be referred to as “social memories” and social interactions are, in fact, a “particularly potent nostalgia cue” [10] (p. 21, 38). Nonetheless, it should be maintained that, in most cases, a nostalgic memory is a phenomenon that is very personal and is seen through one’s own personal lens. If a group of people shares an experience, the way in which it will be remembered and the emotions associated with it will differ, even if only slightly [10] (p. 18).

For Dennis Walder [11], “Nostalgia in a curious way connects people across historical as well as national and personal boundaries. (…) a strange, even uncanny mix of individual and social desires that prompts the search for remembered times and places that constitutes it, and which seems to become prominent at certain critical periods of human history, including our own” [11] (p. 1). Although nostalgia can enhance a feeling of belonging, and core nostalgic memories are based on relationships and shared experiences with others, there must be a strong and unified experience or identity for all the people within the group to experience nostalgia in the same way [12] (p. 123). The research conducted on “collective nostalgia” shows that not dissimilar to using nostalgia as a method to destigmatise a group, if engaging in nostalgic memories is undertaken collectively, it creates a better image of the group within the group itself and leads to a stronger want to spend time with that group. Moreover, it furthers collective self-esteem [12] (p. 123).

A major concern of Mendes is the idea of memory and nostalgia and that “return narratives present the colony in all its multilayeredness, but often through a nostalgic perspective” [1] (p. 3). Return narratives show a compromised relationship affected by a collective loss of memory with an increased focus on personal memory, which puts the literature “between history and a fanciful elaborated testimony” [1] (p. 5). The way in which the return is then portrayed in these narratives is, thus, often seen as controversial, as it is not subjective and often focuses on holding the former empire accountable [1] (p. 4).

As Roberto Vecchi [12] states, “the colonial heritage is still very much alive and present in contemporary sociability”, constituting itself as “a memory field crossed by turbulences, conflicts and traumas that keep Portugal still far from the construction of a common horizon of public memory” [12] (p. 170). For Vecchi, “‘imperial’ or ‘colonial nostalgia’” is a relevant theme in postcolonial studies and memory studies, being also an important legacy of colonialism that conditions contemporary times in former metropolises. Vecchi links nostalgia to postmemory, considering this “tributary to the nostalgic filter with which the transmission of family memories occurs in the private sphere”, with nostalgia “of an Africa that only exists in their memories” to incorporate “an agglutinating function—therapeutic or ideological—that allows the past to be projected into the present” [12] (p. 170).

Vecchi states that “the colonial war can be seen (…) as an anti-nostalgic event” [12] (p. 174); however, the participation of young people in the armed conflict, even if synonymous with violence, can condition the memories of ex-military personnel towards nostalgia for a “uniformed” time of experiences, of camaraderie, nurtured by encounters of the returned ex-combatants after the April revolution in Portugal.

In the time of colonial postmemories, nostalgia grows as a reaction to the disenchantment, the humiliation, the uprooting, the desertion, the loss of identity and experiences, the forced “failed experience” of life in Africa; the memories of the past of colonial times condition the present (des)colonial time. Memory is thus rooted in a desire for a lived, nostalgic and almost idealised past based on the denial of the complexities of the postcolonial present.

Erica L. Johnson [13] explains what she considers “reparative writing” to be: “Memory—personal and cultural—has come to form an important archival source in how we write about, and feel about, culture and history” [13] (p. 2). The idea of reparative writing, writing that retrieves memories and builds bridges between the present and the past, emerges in situations of trauma, with authors resorting to autobiographical texts or narratives that evoke memories to face the pain of reality, of memory, of trauma. Reparative writing presupposes reparative reading, a function of fictional or nonfictional works that depict or reflect on a specific issue, here on the retorno and the lives it affected and transformed.

For Johnson, “just as reparative reading is open to the fullness of a text by holding off on diagnosing or pathologizing the problems it presents, reparative writing records even profound problems as such, in a raw and uncodified state. (…) Reparative writing thus has value even when that value lies in precisely its nonargumentative explorations of creativity, of the nonevent, of the mundane, the ordinary” [13] (p. 16, 23).

Fictional and nonfictional texts on the retorno, retornados, colonial war and displacement from the former colonies “use affective fragments from the past—memories—in order to crack open new possibilities (…) [and work] into the form of affective possibility (…) display[ing] (…) memories as illuminations of collective feelings, past and present” [13] (p. 30) and promoting reparative reading.

In 2021—sixty years after the beginning of the conflicts that became known as the colonial war—the discomfort that the colonial war in/on the Portuguese Ultramar (overseas territories) still causes is proof that “the physical and psychological marks endure to this day” [14]. The ghost of the colonial war (soldiers, deaths, consequences) remains among us six decades after it erupted, with newspaper articles, documentaries, academic work, and the personal archives of soldiers and retornados with letters, photographs, newspaper cuttings and postcards being used mostly by historians and academics to preserve memories and postmemories.

Reminiscences and perceptions of colonial times and colonial war in the present time are visible in written, audio and visual registers everywhere in Portuguese society, with academia and the media leading the recent reinterest in the subject, almost five decades after the Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution) (1974) that projected the independence of the Portuguese colonies in Africa.

In the fictional corpus that focuses on the retorno or the flight (of those who did not return), there is a “repository of colonial nostalgia, of the nostalgia for Africa, for an other time, which feeds a significant part of the contemporary Portuguese imagination” [12] (p. 175). In other words, when people bring to mind memories that make them nostalgic, they are revisiting personally meaningful life events or places.

Just before the sixty-year mark, Esquerda.net published a dossier organised by Mariana Carneiro [15] regarding the open wounds of the colonial war in which the author points out that the colonial war lasted longer than the Second World War and that “It is urgent to break the silence and deconstruct the myths surrounding this conflict and Portugal’s colonialist past” [15].

The repatriation or coerced migration occurred almost 50 years ago, and, thus, a great deal of research has already been conducted, and the subject has been intensely studied through various forms of actual experiences using real-life methods, as well as (non- or semi-) fictional literature. At the same time, however, historical events that occurred decades ago are part of modern history, and many of those that experienced the repatriation and its aftereffects are still alive and active in society today and take part in building public memory.

The relationship of the Portuguese people with the contemporary memory and history of the colonial era is still comprised of silences and nonmemories that have to be deconstructed for postmemory to positively contribute to the public history of decolonisation and to forge a future with the former “overseas African territories” or former colonies.

This review aims to bring together the theoretical frameworks of postmemory, trauma, nostalgia, and reparative writing to allow an interpretation of the impact that reading about the retorno and the former Portuguese colonies in Africa still have in contemporary Portuguese society.

4. Materials and Methods

The idea for this exploratory study took shape after one of the authors presented a paper at a conference in 2021 regarding reparative writing and reading in the aftermath of Portuguese colonialism in recent fiction. The author was then invited to give a seminar on the topic to PhD researchers and other members of the research centre on “The aftermath of (Portuguese) colonialism: nostalgia, postmemory, reparative writing and (re)history” using different written and audio-visual sources. For this review, we decided to focus only on a selection of written media texts, as they are easily available online and are a means of keeping the memories or nostalgia alive and conveying the ongoing interest in the mid-seventies transcontinental mass displacement.

The sample size used in this work is relatively small but diversified, as it exemplifies the different media texts that have been published over the last 15 years on the theme of the retorno. This is an initial study that aims to evaluate the potential for a future full-scale study that will focus on the impact that the retorno has had or is having on the writing of fiction and autobiographies, production of documentaries and films and organisation of exhibitions of personal and collective archives. This was initially projected and partly presented in the seminar mentioned above when the aftermath of Portuguese colonialism was read through the lens of nostalgia, postmemory, reparative writing and even touching affect studies. The options taken regarding the selection of the corpus for the application of the content analysis were based on the need to find a sampling process that would meet the research objectives. The purpose of this work was to understand how the media were analysing the retorno issues, from inside (Portugal), from outside (international media), in the written press, on the radio and in newspapers representing different political forms or forces (left/right), bringing a more plural approach to the research. Vilelas [16] (pp. 252–254) mentions, in this regard, that in the case of qualitative studies, it is possible to use small nonprobabilistic samples, as is the case in this study.

We opted for a nonprobabilistic convenience sampling, and our research was planned to identify texts that fit the predefined search criteria—media articles covering the retorno. The following keywords were used: retorno, retornar, retornado, guerra colonial, Ultramar, ponte aérea, império, colonial, 1961, descolonização. Different keywords were also combined using “and” (e.g., retorno and ponte área, colonial and 1961) during the search to achieve a corpus that would enable the most satisfactory nonprobabilistic convenience sample. We obtained 33 results (see Appendix A). Figure 1 presents the Flowchart of the research and eligibility process.

According to Bruce L. Berg [17], “The convenience sample is sometimes referred to as an accidental or availability sample (…). This category of sample relies on available subjects—those who are close at hand or easily accessible” (p. 32). The 33 articles were considered an adequate availability sample for our study, as they focused only on the issue from a mediatic point of view and were published during the past 15 years, a date criterion defined beforehand. The choice of a nonprobability sample was considered appropriate for the type of study that we were undertaking—an exploratory study that aimed to contribute to the understanding of the impact of the aftermath of Portuguese colonialism on the “postmemory generations”.

The exclusion criteria were applied to the initial records (n = 33) based on the lack of relevance of other terms/words used in the titles or when the information provided by the article was considered repetitive and/or redundant. Ten (10) articles were excluded after title screening, as they did not meet the inclusion criteria even though the selected keywords were present; they focused on issues not relevant to the study we were carrying out. A further eight (8) articles were excluded after a content screening, as they did not meet the inclusion criteria even though the selected keywords were present in the title; most focused on the memories or gazes of the retornados in the present and one article tells the story of the departure of soldiers going to fight in the colonial war. Three (3) articles were then also excluded after we opted to narrow the choice to twelve (12) journalistic pieces, as it is an exploratory study, and the inclusion criterion was that the eligible articles had to have the word retorno and/or retornado and/or Guerra Colonial in the title or words associated with these terms, such as Angola and “Ultramar”. The 12 articles included in our study were thus determined by the result of the online research carried out from 18–23 July 2022 and the application of a screening process following the inclusion/exclusion criteria adequate for a nonprobabilistic convenience sample.

It was never the goal of this study to generalise the data collected from this sample to the entire universe but to understand how these were reading indicators for the questions discussed in the theoretical part of this paper. Thus, the nonprobability convenience sampling focused on the 12 articles chosen for the convenience and interest of the researchers were seen as adequate for this exploratory pilot study, as “this strategy is [identified by Berg as] an excellent means of obtaining preliminary information about some research question quickly” [17] (p. 32).

The selected texts are, therefore, of diverse nature and sources—including national and international newspapers, typically generalist, and also more specialised and politically connoted publications, as is the case of “esquerda.net” and the Observador newspaper.

Inspired thus by Bardin [18] (2011), the data research that followed was carried out from an adaptation of the content analysis technique, whose main objective is “to give convenient form and to represent in another way that information, through transformation procedures” [18] (p. 51).

The use of content analysis, in an initial phase, included the counting of words in one of the articles of the corpus (Observador, Text 1, “Os retornados começaram a chegar há 40 anos” [19]), and the words that were most evident were: Angola, Mozambique, Guiné Bissau, Portugal, Blacks, Whites, retorno, retornado, Metrópole, Cabo Verde, Settlers; in a second phase, these words were used as a unit of record, for statistical verification, in the sample of the 12 texts of the corpus, being counted in all of them.

Table 1. List of articles used in the study.

Publication	Author	Title	Date	Number of Pages	Category of Analysis
Observador	Helena Matos [19]	“Os retornados começaram a chegar há 40 anos”.	2014	29 pages	Right-wing
		“The Retornados began arriving 40 years ago”.
Observador	Helena Matos [20]	“Há 40 anos, o desespero dos retornados: Tirem-nos daqui!”.	9 September 2015	39 pages	Right-wing
		“40 years ago, the despair of the retornados: Get us out of here”.
Esquerda.net	Elsa Peralta [21]	“Descolonização e retorno à antiga metrópole: a memória difícil do fim do império”.	13 October 2019	12 pages	Left-wing
		“Decolonisation and return to the old metropolis: the difficult memory of the end of the empire”.
Esquerda.net	Miguel Cardina, e Bruno Sena Martins [22]	“15 de março de 1961: A UPA e a revolta no norte de Angola”.	15 March 2021	7.5 pages	Left-wing
		“15 March 1961: UPA and the revolt in northern Angola”.
Deutsche Welle	João Carlos [23]	“Baixas na guerra colonial são maiores do que se pensava”.	9 September 2021	1.5 pages	international
		“Colonial war casualties are higher than expected”.
Deutsche Welle	Madalena Sampaio [24]	“Cronologia 1961–1969: Início da Guerra Colonial e viragem no destino das colónias”.	10 December 2013	10 pages	international
		“Chronology 1961–1969: Start of the Colonial War and turning point in the fate of the colonies”.
Diário de Notícias	Author not mentioned [25]	“Retornados de África, a imigração invisível”.	14 August 2005	2 pages	generalist
		“Retornados from Africa, the invisible immigration”.
Diário de Notícias	Leonídio Paulo Ferreira, and Simões Dias [26]	“Retornados de África em 1975”.	20 August 2016	1 page	generalist
		“Retornados from Africa in 1975”.
Jornal Económico	R. de Almeida [27]	“Os Combatentes do Ultramar”.	2021		Specialized business-oriented
		“The fighters from the Overseas Territories”.
Jornal de Negócios	Author not mentioned [28]	“25 de Abril: Retornados contam história 40 anos depois”.	2014		Specialized business-oriented
		“ 25 April: Retornados tell the story 40 years later”.
Radio Renascença	Vitor Mesquita [14]	“60 anos depois, “continua a ser um desconforto’ falar sobre a Guerra do Ultramar”.	15 March 2021		Radio
		“60 years later, ‘it is still uncomfortable’ to talk about the War in the Overseas Territories”.
TSF	Author not mentioned [29]	“’Está muito viva ainda hoje em Portugal.’ Há 60 anos começava a Guerra Colonial”.	2021		Radio
		“It is still very much alive today in Portugal. Sixty years ago, the Colonial War began".

lists the titles of the 12 articles analysed in this study.

Thus explained, in the first stage of the application of the method, the word count was performed using the “Microsoft Word programme”; in the second stage, categories were created through the use of keywords, benefiting from the relative and absolute frequencies that each of these categories represents for the entire article. The potential inferences arising from data extraction are not intended to generalise the results but only to reflect them in more detail for future research.

5. Results and Discussion

Our aim is to discuss the results and demonstrate that words associated with the retorno, retornados and the territories, mainly Angola, are linked to nostalgia, postmemory and reparative writing (and reading) in the context of the aftermath of Portuguese colonialism. The reason for grouping Mozambique, Cabo Verde and Guiné Bissau into Other African Colonies relates to the fact that more than 50% of the retornados, the displaced, came from Angola, the colony that had the higher number of settlers. Having analysed the texts in question, the most evident themes are shown in Figure 2, highlighting the dominance of the themes of the colonial war, the retornados and the colonial reference, with Angola being the most named colony.

Focusing on the need to analyse the contents of the texts, the option was to narrow down the corpus, limiting it only to the pieces that had the words retorno and/or retornados in the title, resulting, as mentioned, in a selection that was subjected to a deeper content analysis based on the identified words. First, a fragmented analysis of each of the texts was carried out, and afterwards, a reflection, as a whole, of the reading and discussion of the results.

This analysis begins with the data concerning the newspaper Observador, characterised as a newspaper that “is born outside of the existing communication groups in Portugal and, therefore, is not bound to their commitments, their past and their priorities” [30], seeking to “inform independently, to inform differently, to inform in a more demanding manner and more respectful of the intelligence of our readers” [30]. Despite what was assumed by its founder, it should be added that this publication occupies a prominent place in the media panorama in Portugal but is associated, in public opinion, with right-wing politics. This fact is pertinent due to the contrast that may be made with another publication also used in this study and associated with left-wing politics, esquerda.net, insofar as the two publications may have similarities and differences regarding the necessary reflection on the retorno and its contexts.

As such, two of the Observador’s texts were analysed, and the partial results of this analysis are presented below in Figure 3 and Figure 4.

In the case of the first text (Figure 3), there is a preference for the expression retornado, followed by Whites and Portugal, thus indicating a more evident territoriality associated with Portugal, without neglecting the judgement that may eventually be produced regarding the association of the three words: retornados—Whites—Portugal.

Since the Observador texts are authored by the same journalist, we tried to verify whether this tendency was only circumstantial; in the case of Figure 4, a greater emphasis is given to the word Angola. This fact is quite pertinent because it seems to indicate a global trend in which the most quoted country in the texts analysed is not Portugal but Angola.

In the aggregate of the two texts (Figure 5), the most dominant words are: Angola, retornados, Whites, Portugal and Other African Colonies.

Trying to understand to what extent a project such as esquerda.net could distance itself from the results presented by the Observador, the same simple frequency counting exercise was carried out for the words listed in the articles of this online newspaper.

Thus, there was a preference, once again, for the territoriality implied by the word Angola, but this time followed by the relevance also given to retornados and Metrópole. The triad was, therefore, altered, with the combination Angola—Metrópole—retornados clearly evident here. The values associated with the word retorno increase in relation to the previous publication (Observador), as shown in Figure 6.

It is important to point out a striking detail of the analysis: the fact that this research proposes a category for retorno and a category for retornados was intentional and aims to underline the need to distinguish between a noun with adjectival functions retornados) from a noun not so polyphonic or so polemic in its reading (retorno). In this first text from esquerda.net, the word retornados is more important than that of retorno.

In the second text from the same source (Figure 7), a country, Angola, is the most repeated word, followed by the word “Blacks”. The word retorno now appears with greater frequency than retornados.

On the esquerda.net website, it is clear that it is an alternative and politically conditioned media project that “is an alternative information portal (…) but presenting a critical, left-wing perspective, in the selection of news, in the production of its news, in its sources of information” [31]. It also refers to the political party connection that links it to the left: “This internet news organ is maintained by the Bloco de Esquerda” [31].

Since their ideological connection is expressed here, it became challenging to test and contrast, merely for illustrative purposes, the two publications based on the data taken from the comparison between text 1 (Figure 3 and Figure 6) of the two publications:

Figure 8 shows some similarities in the use of words such as Other African Colonies, Negroes and Settlers. The most notable differences are the way both use the words Angola, Metrópole, retornados and Whites—esquerda.net highlights the words retorno, Metrópole and Angola more, while the Observador uses with more evidence the words retornados, Portugal and Whites. A provocative question emerges from this superficial analysis: could the word retorno be more appealing to the left and the word retornado more appealing to the right?

In order to bring an external, impartial look, texts from the Deutsche Welle, an international publication, which has also published about the issues being analysed here, will be presented.

In the first text (Figure 9), there is a greater need to identify locations, thus proving, once again, the predominance of Angola, followed by the territories Portugal and Other African Colonies. No other word previously analysed stands out in the first text.

In order to verify whether this is only a circumstantial aspect, a second analysis was carried out based on text 2 of the same publication. Thus, Figure 10 confirms a preference for the geographical location of the news items, and less emphasis is given to other words. Nevertheless, the contrast between the words Whites and Blacks now appears more frequently.

Do these data mean that an international look analysed the issues mainly from a territorial point of view?

The analysis returns to national publications, but now with a more generalist slant, as is the case of the newspaper Diário de Notícias (DN). Its editorial statute defines it as “a centenary newspaper, at the service of the country, whose main objective is to ensure the reader the right to be informed with truth, rigor and impartiality” [32].

DN assumes itself as a generalist newspaper that seeks to mediate the different voices that echo from Portuguese society, “constitut[ing], without prejudice to its journalistic vivacity, a trace of union among all the Portuguese, regardless of their political opinions or religious beliefs, playing a moderating role in the conflicts that manifest themselves in Portuguese society” [32].

Figure 11 shows that, besides the territory, DN gives importance to the word retornados judging from the first text considered here.

Being a generalist newspaper, there is a greater tendency to use the territories and the word retornados, a tendency also manifested in Figure 12 with text from the same newspaper with, however, an inversion of the values associated with the words Portugal and Angola.

In the aggregate of the two texts (Figure 13), the preference for words associated with territories and the word retornados is confirmed.

When a more specialised (business-oriented) newspaper is analysed, as is the case of Jornal Económico, a trend towards concerns related to territories can be observed, as shown in Figure 14. This article focuses on two territories—Portugal and Angola—with noticeable prominence going to Portugal.

In order to understand whether this is also a circumstantial analysis, a text from Jornal de Negócios, also a specialised (business-oriented) newspaper, was analysed using the same methodology. The results were different, although there is still a preference for the binomial Portugal–Angola. However, the categories Other African Colonies and Whites also have some relevance, as can be seen in Figure 15.

A final analysis was carried out comparing the texts published on the websites of two national radio stations: Rádio Renascença (RR) and TSF. Being of a different nature, it is important to identify the main features of their editorial statutes: “Rádio Renascença (…) differs from the others by the strong presence of aspects linked to the religious universe, which is understandable for a radio station linked to the Catholic Church. In addition, it establishes objectives such as spreading ‘the Christian message in a clear way and linked to the reality of everyday life of the community’” [33]. (p. 9)

It is possible to state that RR and TSF share similarities, as suggested by Fernando Morgado. A common point is the declaration of respect for “the deontology of the media” [33] (p. 10). Morgado suggests that the idea of pluralism and independence is more evident in TSF [33] (p. 11).

As can be seen in Figure 16 (RR), the most prominent words are also those that define territories: Portugal and Angola. In spite of this, the word Whites stands out in fourth place. There is no reference to retorno or retornados.

Contrasting these data with those of TSF, Figure 17 shows a curious triad in this case: Portugal, Metrópole and Settlers. Other references are less relevant in this publication.

In addition to the parcelled data, a final aggregate of all the texts analysed was put together, which ascertains some relevant curiosities.

In Figure 18, a predominance of words indicating territory (Portugal and Angola), followed by the words retornados, Whites and Metrópole, is verified. We could question whether this could be an indicator of a preference for words associated with a nationalist discourse? On the other hand, can a lower use of the word Negroes show that the discourse of the media seeks to approach what could be defined as a politically correct discourse? Further studies on this theme could certainly help to answer these two questions.

The aim of this study was to identify the relevance that the words retorno and retornados have for/in the analysed corpus and the impact that these words still have almost five decades after the 1975 mass migration from the former African colonies.

Retornado(s) continues to be more relevant than retorno, Whites continue to have more relevance than Negroes and Portugal continues to have more importance if the African colonies are considered separately in this context. Angola, on its own, assumes almost the same prominence as the Other African Colonies grouped together, as a reminder that more than half of the retornados came from Angola, as it was the colony with the highest number of Portuguese settlers.

Now that the characteristics resulting from the simplified word count in the different journalism pieces have been analysed, we proceed to the process of codification and creation of categories. We identified three main categories: Territoriality, which points to the space most mentioned in the analysed texts; “Racial Evocation”, which analyses how the words “White” and “Black” have been found in the pieces chosen for analysis; and finally, the category “Enunciation of the Return”, in which the existing frequencies for retorno and retornado are analysed.

Regarding the first category, Territoriality, there are two important binomials: reference to the Metrópole/Colonies and direct references to Portugal and the former colonies. In this case, a more intensive reference to the Portuguese physical geographical space is visible, whether this is identified as Portugal or as the Metrópole. In the context of other spaces, Angola, as proposed elsewhere, stands out as the central country/colony regarding the retorno issues.

Table 2. Absolute and relative frequencies for the “Territoriality” category.

Category 1	Subcategories	Indicators	Absolute Frequencies	Relative Frequencies
Territoriality Geographical Space in the media	Metrópole	“direct reference to the word Metrópole”	28	17.2%
		“direct reference to Portugal”	134	82.7%
	Total parcial: 162	Total:	162
	Colonies	“direct reference to Cabo Verde”	5	3.9%
		“direct reference to Angola”	79	62.6%
		“direct reference to Moçambique”	34	26.9%
		“direct reference to Guiné-Bissau”	8	6.3%
	Partial Total: 126	Total	126
	Portuguese Territory		162	56.25%
	Other Territories		126	43.75%

presents the absolute and relative frequencies for category 1, Territoriality.

With regard to category 2, “Racial Evocation” (

Table 3. Absolute and relative frequencies for the category “Racial Evocation”.

Category 2	Subcategories	Indicators	Relative Frequencies	Frequencies
Racial Evocation	Negroes	direct reference to the word Negroes and the word Blacks	19	25.6%
	Whites	direct reference to the word Whites	55	74.3%

), there is a predominance of frequencies for the word “White” in the aggregate, as can be seen in the previous table, and a doubling of the word “White” over the word “Black” is visible.

Finally, with regard to the focus of this work, in which we sought to analyse the distance that the word retorno would have from retornado (

Table 4. Absolute and relative frequencies for the category “Enunciation of Return”.

Category 3	Subcategories	Indicators	Relative Frequencies	Frequencies
Enunciation of the Return	Retorno	direct reference to the word Retorno	20	26.6%
	Retornado	direct reference to the word Retornado	55	73.3%

) we observed that the word” retornado continued to mark the agenda of the national and international media, contributing, perhaps, to the replication of (derogatory) stereotypes associated with those who came from the former Portuguese colonies. It should be remembered that these words are not synonyms in Portuguese, having different connotations.

The analysed media corpus proves that “the colonial heritage is still very much alive and present in contemporary sociability, perhaps due to a lack of adequate critical coagulation. It is a memory field crossed by turbulence, conflicts and traumas that keep Portugal still far from the construction of a common horizon of public memory” [12] (p. 170).

The media keep the subject/theme present, probably due to the almost fifty-year time gap that has enhanced forgotten memories and nostalgia.

Christopher Kalter [34] explains the “recent resurgence of [interest in] retornado issues as linked to time and opportunity:

An impressive number of recent testimonies, novels, and journalistic accounts are aimed at a readership ready to spend money on a nostalgic depiction of the bygone African empire, on the sensationalist recalling of wartime horrors, on adventurous tales of flight from the colonies, or on the edifying accounts of retornados building a new life for themselves in post-revolutionary Portugal [35].

(p. 36)

Miguel Cardina [35] chooses to point out the “persistence of colonial imaginary” in contemporary Portuguese society. Cardina recalls Eduardo Lourenço when stating that “Portugal is the place of ‘the most spectacular colonial good consciousness that history records’, based on the active forgetfulness that ‘its empire was the fruit of colonization’” [35] (p. 387). The idea of a grand past remains associated with colonisation (what one had) and decolonisation (what was lost), but for Cardina, “the presence in common sense of the colonial imaginary is still today part of a national ontology based on a grandeur as lost as it is operative: Portugal would still be great, modern, enterprising and conquering because it had once been all that” [35] (p. 388).

The results of our study are yet another confirmation that, as Elsa Peralta argues, “the colonial war, decolonization and return from Africa, is a heritage that still awaits a full inscription in the discourse of history and memory of contemporary Portugal” [16].

6. Sharing Memories to Achieve Closure

There are still so many “stepchildren” or “orphans” of Portuguese colonialism—from former Portuguese soldiers to individuals born in Africa but forced to leave their homeland to migrate to a new continent and live a “labelled existence” as retornados after 1975 in Portugal. Adding to these are the African migrants from the former colonies, black and white, those without any ties to Portugal. The narratives are many, unique, diverse, singular and still linger in memories and postmemories.

The memories, the nostalgia, the longing abound in the collections/archives of photographs, letters, postcards and other records and writings but are mostly restricted to the family circle, generation after generation. This restriction of the proximity of sources and transmission of memories leads Hirsch to question the scope of postmemory [9]; in the case of the retorno, participants and experiences go beyond the circles of family and friends—they are collective experiences, public memories that make public history.

Prejudice and stereotypes were part of the lives of these children of colonialism in Portugal—being “retornados was a pejorative (and contested) label, especially for those who arrived for the first time in the country and found a reality that was unwelcoming and culturally different from that of their origins. Take here as an example O Retorno by Dulce Maria Cardoso [36], a novel about the retornados, a portrait of decolonisation, showing the lives of those who “returned” or who “(im)migrated” to Portugal in 1975 and were left with their lives in suspense. From Luanda to Lisbon, from Lourenço Marques to Lisbon, with the discomfort of not belonging, of disaffection, these stepchildren of the collapsed empire, forced to a massive displacement to the metropolis, were received with hostility and distrust; lives were shattered between memories and history, which decades later remain fragmented by the deconstruction of their cultural identity and the loss of affective ties due to the separation from their homeland, their lives, their heritage.

Descendants of the migrants arriving in Portugal had complex, ambiguous views of this “homeland” as well as of identity. The feeling of (not)belonging was visible in the thousands of faces and in the despair of the unknown and of being unwanted. One in every three retornados was born in Africa [37] (p. 105) and did not feel welcome in Portugal, as can be read in the multiple works of fiction and autobiographies published since the 1975–1976 airlift and the consequent mass displacement of the Portuguese individuals from Africa.

The postmemory of the retorno, of people coming from the former colonies, does not necessarily carry the traumatic weight that Hirsch [8] attributes to postmemory; rather, it presents itself as a spontaneous sharing of memories between generations, of recovering silenced experiences, a moment of reflection on memory itself.

By experiencing nostalgia while identifying with a stigmatised group such as the retornados, some of the negative connotations are temporarily or permanently alleviated for the individuals involved. Reparative reading (such as the media texts analysed here) conjures nostalgic memories that can bring about positive feelings [11] (pp. 65–66). Nostalgic memories help maintain the connection between the past and present self by reminding one of still existing close social relationships, shared identities, valuable personal achievements, and having participated in culturally valued events [11] (pp. 75–76, 79). Moreover, the focus of nostalgic memories is more often than not on the time when a person felt loved and valued by others [11] (p. 85). Additionally, if nostalgic thoughts bring about a positive view of oneself when confronted with distress and unhappiness, which can be induced by others through bias or prejudice, nostalgia becomes a more pro-social tool in maintaining one’s own existential security [11] (p. 99).

7. Conclusions

The colonial wars and the retornados continue to be archived as difficult collective memories, and the need to decolonise history (and mentality) persists; evidence of this are the different narrative and essayistic texts, fictionalised autobiographies, scientific papers, newspaper and magazine articles, courses at universities, conferences, colloquia, films, documentaries, exhibitions, projects, as well as works linked to private archival collections (correspondence and photographs), collections of official or unofficial photographers, of Africanists and politicians, of writers and men of culture. Associated with the topic of memory and postmemory and the resulting emotions are trauma, nostalgia and affections, foci that reparative writing and reading bring out in retornados, forced migrants and their descendants.

The purpose of this exploratory study was to analyse the impact of words associated with retorno, retornados and colonial territories in the written media using a nonprobability convenience sample to carry out a content analysis. Interpreting the selected texts within the theoretical frameworks of postmemory, trauma, nostalgia and reparative writing allows for the repairing of the collective memory of the retornados and their descendants and also contributes to the much-needed “historical reparation” towards the former Portuguese African colonies.

We would like to end with an iconic sentence from an article published in the Observador [19]: “Chamaram-lhes desalojados, regressados, repatriados, fugitivos, deslocados ou refugiados. Finalmente, em meados, de 1975 tornar-se-ão retornados. O nome colou-se-lhes. Ficaram retornados para sempre. Como se estivessem sempre a voltar.”1

This iconic sentence could hold the key to the shift in the (re)history of the narratives of the retorno: Will the generation of postmemory enable historical reparation?