Portugal: reparations for former colonies?

The military dictatorship and its myths continue to cast a shadow to this day, anthropologist Miguel Vale de Almeida writes in Público: “On the basis of the colonial economy, it constructed a narrative that mystified the experience of the expansion of the Portuguese state and its colonialism, while at the same time excluding the trade in enslaved people from the national narrative. … The state, which represents us as a historical community, must apologise to the victims, to us, and to the world for the crimes of the trade in enslaved people and for colonialism and its violence. … Our national identity will not suffer if we have the political courage to move forward with these ‘gestures’.”