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An exacerbated defence of Africanness would equally exclude from Angolan literature the commitment of some contemporary writers aiming to piece together this important but neglected phase of Angolan history, such as José Eduardo Agualusa and Arnaldo Santos.
As noticed by Leonel Cosme in his essay Crioulos e Brasileiros de Angola, at the present time, a memory other than the genuinely black African one can hardly be appreciated in Angola.2 On the other hand, these days, the concept of “creoleness” intended as a sort of caution or royalty granted by Portuguese colonisation is no more than a rhetorical figure destined to fade away with those who still aspire to any historical right of compensation for the discrimination suffered in the past or for the political prescriptions that turned them into “Portuguese-others”.
This attitude seems to be confirmed by the demolition in 1999 of the primary emblem of the creole past dating back to the nineteenth century: the mansion which once belonged to the powerful mulatto mistress of Luanda, Dona Ana Joaquina dos Santos Silva, a slave trader who grew rich from the fortunes of ships, fazendas, and buildings owned both in Brazil and Angola, an authentic patroness of creole society until her death in 1859.
The claims of autonomy and independence expressed concomitantly with the profound changes affecting Portuguese society and colonial policies during the period examined were exclusively put forward by a tiny fragment of Angolan urban society that was reprovingly involved in the slave trade and deeply integrated into the colonial system, to which it supplied the subordinate administrative body of the province and the middle and low ranks of the armies sent to fight in the countless Guerras Pretas (Black Wars) waged by Portugal to subdue unruly and rebellious tribes. Moreover, these demands were not the direct evidence of an original sprouting of national consciousness as much as they were inspired by the echoes of the liberal ideals that could reach, covertly packed below deck, the harbours of Luanda and Benguela through the merchant ships proceeding from Brazil or Europe—ideals that were often assimilated in a quite disorderly and confused way.