Today is Independence Day, a public holiday in Cape Verde. This is the National Day of Cape Verde and commemorates the country’s independence from Portugal on this day in 1975.
Cape Verde is an island country consisting of 10 volcanic islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Northwest Africa. The islands were uninhabited when they were discovered by Portuguese navigators in the middle of the 15th century. Portuguese settlers arrived in 1462, establishing the first permanent European settlement in the tropics. The islands benefited from their position, first as a stopping off point for the Atlantic slave trade and then as a location for re-supplying ships bound for the Americas.
Cape Verdeans are descendants of Africans (free or enslaved) and Europeans of various origins. There are also Cape Verdeans who have Jewish ancestors from North Africa, mainly on the islands of Boa Vista, Santiago and Santo Antão. A large part of Cape Verdeans emigrated abroad, mainly to the United States, Portugal and France, so that there are more Cape Verdeans residing abroad than at home.
The call for nationalism had grown louder after the end of the second world war. So much so that in 1951, Portugal changed Cape Verde’s status from a colony to an overseas province to try and reduce the increasing disenfranchisement with colonial rule.
The nationalist movement in Cape Verde was entwined with the other Portuguese territory in the area, Portuguese Guinea. In 1956, Amílcar Cabral, a Guinean organised the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). The aims of the PAIGC were to improve the economic, social and political conditions in Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea and formed the basis of the two nations’ independence movements. These demands erupted into a war on the African mainland, with Portuguese Guinea declaring independence in 1973.
The April 1974 revolution in Portugal led to change of approach to its overseas territories, and in 1974 the PAIGC and Portugal signed an agreement providing for a transitional government composed of Portuguese and Cape Verdeans. On June 30th 1975, Cape Verdeans elected a National Assembly which received the instruments of independence from Portugal on July 5th 1975.
Today is the birthday, in 1943, of Canadian musician, songwriter, film composer, producer, actor, Robbie Robertson. He joined The Hawks in 1962 who became known as The Band. Bob Dylan and the Hawks toured the United States throughout 1965 and a world tour the following year. As a songwriter, Robertson is credited for writing ‘The Weight’, ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’, ‘Up on Cripple Creek’, ‘Broken Arrow’ and ‘Somewhere Down the Crazy River’. Robertson died in Los Angeles on 9 August 2023, at the age of 80, after a year-long battle with prostate cancer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREUrbGGrgM
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