Blufo
The Blufo newspaper was printed by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, and played an important role in the struggle for decolonisation and political re-africanisation. Its production was overseen by Luís Cabral, from the Cassacá Congress onwards. The Blufo archive contains all 22 editions produced by the Escola-Piloto in Guinéa Conakry.
The Escola-Piloto was founded following resolutions at the Cassacá Congress to establish schools, storehouses and local administrative bodies within the liberated areas. Blufo was part of the same politics that established the Secretariat, and the Departments of Information, Culture and Cadre Training.
The paper was made available for free at PAIGC schools and distributed in small batches from January 1966 to December 1970. It aimed to reach the party’s “pioneers”, the student body made up of the children of combatants, PAIGC militants, war orphans and other young people. Its articles were unattributed, written in Portuguese using a typewriter and printed on A4 pages. The length of each publication varied; earlier issues were shorter and reached four pages, with issues ten, eleven and twelve reaching twelve pages.
Blufo acted as an innovative pedagogical tool. It educated the pioneers in culture and politics, towards the construction of internationalist, pan-African perspectives within the struggle for self-determination. This research analyzed the 1959 Pidjiguiti Massacre in the newspaper… read more
Priscilla Marques Campos is a PhD student in African Social History, at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP). She is the Editor of encontro orí Review (@encontroori) and part of the editorial board of Hydra Review (@revistahydra), published by the UNIFESP History department. She is a member of the Anti-Racist Education Study Group (GEPEAR) […]