Víctor Barros and Aurora Almada e Santos were two of the researchers invited to collaborate on the exhibition ‘Before Being Independence, It Was a Struggle For Liberation’, recently opened at the Aljube Museum — Resistance and Freedom, curated by Rita Rato.

Following on from another exhibition — ‘Ato (DES)colonial’ — the exhibition is part of the programme marking the 50th anniversary of the independence of the Portuguese colonies, ‘bringing to light the multiple forms of resistance that arose against colonialism’. It resulted from the work of exploring the documentary funds donated to the Museum, ‘hoping that it would generate more anti-colonial and anti-racist thought and action, abolishing all forms of violence’.

In an interview with Bantumen, Victor Barros said that it was a challenge to communicate to a non-academic audience ‘a set of ideas and reflections for us to think about how the idea or memory of the struggle for independence can inspire us to rethink political cosmologies and how we can connect new struggles against systems and against the reproduction of structural inequalities, including global domination itself, of which racism itself is one of the focal points of this post-coloniality in which we currently live’. Aurora Almada e Santos stressed that ‘we can’t understand 25 April without understanding the anti-colonial struggle, without understanding the armed struggle in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea’.

In addition to the IHC researchers, Kitty Furtado and Miguel de Barros also collaborated on the exhibition. The exhibition was also supported by the Tchiweka Documentation Association and the African Activist Archive. It will be open until 31 January 2026.

Photo: Rita Rato, Víctor Barros, and Aurora Almada e Santos at the opening of the exhibition (Credit: José Frade / EGEAC).