“Other Spaces”

Race and Class in Late Colonial Mozambique

Abstract

The late Portuguese colonialism in Africa was characterized by paradoxes and ambiguities inherent in the "assimilationist" policies, which generated a series of "othernesses:" of "other" protagonists of colonization, initiators of "other spaces" hardly adjusting to the oppositional logic between colonizers and colonized, Whites and Blacks.

Departing from the necessity of a more accurate reading of these "other spaces," the text presents a critical analysis from a social point of view of: a) an example of agricultural colonization of rural and conservative nature, the Limpopo Colony; and b) the social utopia, envisioned by a Portuguese housing cooperative, COOP, active in Mozambique in those years.

Through the analysis of the mentioned case studies, this article intends to prove how part of the spatial production of late Portuguese colonialism indicates the presence of a multiplicity of social actors and ideological instances entangled with codetermined notions of race and class.