A Memória E O Esquecimento Da Guerra Civil Angolana (1975-1993): Um Olhar Sobre O Município Da Matala

Abstract

The post-colonial war period in Angola set the achievement of independence on November 11, 1975. The following scenario was marked by the Angolan Civil War, which lasted about 27 years and had as a corollary the production of traumatic events for those who witnessed or lived, building in this case a kind of past that does not pass. Dates with some prominence such as the events of May 27, 1977, the Red September at Jamba in 1981 and the Massacre of the Bakongo during the post-election clashes are some of the main examples of these scenarios. Individuals' memories carry the general representation of society, social vision, needs, interests and collective values. Those who have memory and remember are human beings or individuals always located in specific groups and social contexts. For Halbwachs, this means that through the social frameworks of memory «we can only remember when it is possible to recover the position of past events in the dictates of collective memory. Forgetting, understood in this text by Paul Ricoeur, Pollak and Jelin, has several nuances, with the absence of presence being what best represents its existence. Obviously, forgetting is explained by the disappearance of social frameworks from memory in the words of Halbwachs (1990, p.172). In order to approximate the reported events and the theoretical approaches, we included the study of the field in which 10 elements were selected as a sample who lived, heard or saw what allowed certain conclusions to be drawn that are valid for understanding the history of Angola, especially in relation to Memory and to forgetting the Civil War, which is the main object of this research project.