Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) MIM Notes, Issue 70: November, 1992 Cape Verde by a comrade On October 3, Prime Minister Carlos Veiga of Cape Verde visited Boston to speak at Roxbury Community College. Approximately 300 Cape Verdeans came out to protest this visit and the policies of Veiga's party, the Movement for Democracy (MPD), which has been ruling Cape Verde since January 13, 1990. The protestors were members of the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV), the party originally founded under Amilcar Cabral in the revolutionary war for independence from Portugal. Veiga and other MPD representatives came to the United States to prove that the MPD has the support of the Cape Verdeans here, and perhaps try to gain some support. Cape Verdeans in the United States are represented by one seat on the Cape Verde national assembly, which the PAICV won. MIM spoke with Representative Francisco Fernandes of the PAICV. In January and February of 1990 the PAICV opened the country to a multi-party system and lost the presidential and national assembly elections to the MPD. People have speculated that the MPD was funded by Portugal, England, Europe, and the United States, among other major powers, but no one MIM interviewed could officially confirm this. The MPD won the elections on the promise of change -- they promised to give everyone everything they needed including free emigration, a four-times increase in the minimum wage, free higher education for all, and a decrease in government waste. But in the course of the past two years, the MPD has succeeded in raising their own salaries, censoring the media to the degree that even their own president's recent public address was censored, spending outrageous amounts of money on "government business," allowing in foreign imperialist investors who take the profits back to their own countries, and persecuting members of the PAICV by kicking them out of their jobs and homes. "My brother used to work for the Party [PAICV] and so he was kicked out of his job. Now I work to support him too," one Cape Verdean told MIM. Another said, "The problem is not that we are against change in a positive way, they change anything that looks like PAICV, they bring back symbols of colonizers, even changing the streets named after nationals and put statues of Portuguese colonizers in the best public places." In the course of the past year the popularity of PAICV in Cape Verde increased from 27% to 45% of the population with a coincident decline in popularity for the MPD. Members of PAICV speculate that if the MPD were to hold elections right now they would lose. They are quick to add that the MPD is not going to hold elections now. October's protest in Boston focused on the issue of the national flag and its symbolic importance for the independence of Cape Verde. In July, the MPD decided to change the national flag and national anthem from those conceived by Amilcar Cabral as symbols of national independence to an adaptation on the European Community flag with no African symbolism. The PAICV proposed that the government hold a referendum to see what the people thought of changing the flag, but the MPD ignored this suggestion as it ignored the 25,000 signatures sent to the national assembly opposing this change. The new flag was raised in Cape Verde the Friday before the Boston demonstration. The revolutionary struggle of the Cape Verdean people was handed a setback by the imperialist colonizers who now control and exploit much of they country through the MPD. As in Nicaragua and other Third World countries, the people learn from these setbacks. Maoism is an ideology built on successes and lessons from mistakes. The revolution in Cape Verde was a relative success, but now some of the advances have been overturned and the people are no longer in power. Maoists do not throw out revolutions like this one just because they did not achieve perfection on the first try. These revolutions do advance the conditions and understanding of the masses: they are material advances. And from the fact that the revolutionary governments could be overturned we learn that our political line and practice is not yet perfect. Communism will only be achieved through the long struggle of revolutionary practice and study to learn the lessons from this practice so that we do not make the same mistakes twice. Notes: Gerard Chaliand, _Armed Struggle in Africa_. Monthly Review Press, 1969. -30- Subscribe to MIM Notes: Individual: Institutional: 1 year domestic $12 1 year domestic $48 2 years domestic $20 2 years domestic $90 1 year overseas $36 1 year overseas $60 Make checks payable to "ABS" or send cash. MIM, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-3576 --- email: mim%nyxfer@igc.apc.org NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit Modem: 718-448-2358 * Internet: nytransfer@igc.apc.org