The People Mobilized: The Mozambican Liberation Movement and American Activism (1960-1975)

Abstract

The anti-colonial struggles in lusophone Africa were the most internationalized wars on the continent. Involved were people from across the globe and across the socioeconomic and political spectrums - Chinese Communists and Portuguese right-wing dictators, American black nationalists in the urban North and South African white supremacists, cold warriors and human rights activists. The Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), was the only national liberation movement in the 1960s to receive aid from the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China. I contend that, because both FRELIMO and Portugal relied on support from the international community to wage war for over a decade (1964-1975), the anti-colonial wars in lusophone Africa were not only armed struggles, but also cultural and rhetorical battles. FRELIMO's program of socialist revolution which heralded human rights and social justice through education, non- racialism and gender equality resonated with the international shift to the left of the 1960s. Counterpoised were the Portuguese right-wing corporative dictatorship which espoused a "Lusotropical" civilizing mission for its African overseas provinces, and the white supremacist regimes of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa that militarily and economically dominated Southern Africa. This dissertation focuses particularly on the relationship between FRELIMO and the activists of the black freedom struggle and the New Left in the United States. It will show the significant contributions that American activists made to Mozambican liberation, as well as the impact that this transnational movement had on the entire Southern African region, on U.S. foreign policy, and on the United States' domestic social and political landscapes. I explore issues of colonialism, nationalism, and modernity within a cold war context using the lenses of race, class, and culture in the United States and southern Africa during the long Sixties. I also examine the significance of religious organizations and the moral imperative that underpinned the global advocacy supporting southern African independence. The development of a transnational network of activists that reached from rural Africa to the White House provided the leverage needed for southern Africans and their international allies to topple the Portuguese dictatorship and, eventually, end South African apartheid.