1Colonialism, as a hegemonic domination project, was transmitted by different means of influence and authority that included – besides the domain of local populations – the control of work and production, of time, of domesticity and familiar practices, of intimacy and of the body (Comaroff & Comaroff 1992). These heterogeneous authoritarian practices led to the establishment of colonization processes that represented a definitive rupture with the previous socio-cultural structures. As Talal Asad states, the history of European dominance cannot be understood as a

temporary repression of subject populations but as an irrevocable process of transmutation, in which old desires and ways of life were destroyed and new ones took their place – a story of change without historical precedent in its speed, global scope, and pervasiveness (Asad 1991: 314).

2Colonialism, as a project and as an action, was not a process of univocal nature. It was imposed over active subjects that reacted to it, opposed it, manipulated it or even collaborated with it. These reactions were creative processes that led to the creation of new identities, either collective or individual. The relations created under and by colonialism generated new agents, statutes and references. The control of local sovereigns and chiefs is one significant example of such processes of interaction and manipulation. Every colonial administration sought to integrate autochthonous chiefdoms in their projects of establishment of European hegemony. Controlling local chiefs was a pragmatic way of superintending the local populations. However, autochthonous sovereigns were not just the privileged middlemen amongst two social structures but also amongst two cultural formations. In this sense, they represent a special perspective for a reflection about how colonialism was imposed.

3In this paper I try to approach the subject of the ambivalent relationship between colonial authority and local chiefs through the example of manjaco régulos from the Cacheu Region in Guinea-Bissau. This relationship should be understood in its double meaning of the establishement of relations of power and dominance on the one hand, and of the creation of new symbols and significants on the other. The consequences of this process can still be felt today. The practices of opposition and/or seduction regarding the forms of hegemonic power are expressed in every moment of social life as in values, acts or representations. The purpose of this paper is the representation of local dignitaries and the representation of power, based on the confrontation of the iconographical representations of the manjaco régulos, done by the colonial administration through the photographic register, and by the local population, expressed in the local post-mortem statuary.

Representing the colonized and the “scientific colonization”

4One of the problems recurrently faced by colonial administrators was the ability to understand local social structures in order to integrate them into intelligible sociological models. African social reality presented itself as unyielding to European references. The colonial project was imposed in two interrelated ways: the creation of sociological models that translated a complex reality into intelligible sociological models, and the imposition of a certain representation of power that intended to obtain indirect control of the populations through the autochthonous authorities. The need to administer led to the demand of a more detailed knowledge of the effective social structures, and it motivated the systematic ethnographic production done in the colonies. This was part of a general project of scientific colonization developed by different researches on agronomy, zoology, engineering, but also anthropology and ethnography. The colonial project co-existed with the imposition of a scientific project. Creating a typology of the territory and of controlled populations – or in order to control them – was essential for the delimitation of that same space, of those same people. As reminds Gyan Prakash,

The [colonial] administration became regularized and extended its reach farther down into the colonized society in its effort to generate new forms of knowledge about the territory and its population (Prakash 1999: 4).

Ethnographic studies in Portuguese Guinea

7The collection of monographs published by the Center of Studies of Portuguese Guinea began in 1947 with the work of António Carreira entitled The Social life of Manjacos (Vida Social dos Manjacos) which constitutes a paradigmatic example of the ethnography undertaken by the Center. At the time of its publication the author was the administrator of Teixeira Pinto (Today Canchungo, Region of Cacheu) and his ethnography can be understood as an answer to the problem faced by every local administrator: how to govern? This monograph constitutes an exemplar case of the relationship between ethnographic research and colonial administration interests. Carreira based his work on the answers to the 1945 inquiry, obtained according to a well known method of colonial ethnography, consisting of a questionnaire given to selected informants (chiefs and sovereigns or régulos, as they are called in creole) gathered through the administrative center expressly for that purpose. An essential part of his book is dedicated to the problem of succession and the organization of chiefdoms, and the author attempts to give a unified presentation of these populations based on his interpretation of the data regarding the Babok or “Manjacos of Costa de Baixo” (as they are known in the colonial ethnography), the inhabitants of the chiefdoms of Bassarel, Calequisse and Canchungo. This monograph was, for four decades, the main source of information about the populations of the area. A new ethnographer of Babok, Eric Gable, who conducted research in Bassarel in 1986-87, has recently questioned Carreira’s interpretation of manjaco society (Gable 1990 and 1995). According to this author there are two main problems raised by the “administrative ethnography”: the concepts used by most authors published by the Center of Studies of Portuguese Guinea had a juridical (and European) origin and its application to an alien reality created several misunderstandings; and these authors also overvalued political organization and local economy over the religious and ritual system. We can add two other limitations to these works, derived from the application of sociological models inspired in the Western social hierarchy and the tendency to make general conclusions based on limited data. In order to explain these points, we shall begin by an abbreviated characterization of the populations that today identify themselves as Manjaco.

9As was the case in other colonial regimes, also here the establishment of a colonial administrative order involved knowing the social organization of local populations and establishing alliances with their chiefs, or even putting in that position those from factions who were trusted by the colonial administration, with the purpose of avoiding conflicts and resistance movements (Newitt 1981). It is in this context that one should understand the constraints of António Carreira’s work, which deals precisely with the subject of power and autochthonous political organization. According to Carreira, the power structure of manjaco society was “pyramidal”: the sovereigns or régulos dominated and were responsible for the appointment of local chiefs, who in turn designated their subordinates. This hierarchy of power was accompanied by a system of land leasing, from the régulos to the chiefs and so forth. This interpretation ignores that the tribute due to the régulo consisted essentially of gifts of cattle with ritual ends (Gable 1990). Insisting on the leasing allowed Carreira to interpret the system of ritual tribute installments as a tax system, one close to a European model as it was seemingly adjusted to the logic of the colonial market.

11Carreira’s monograph reveals the relationship of mutual manipulation established between the colonial authorities and autochthonous groups of interest that created new power significants. Control and knowledge appear in this text intimately mixed. The same happened in other contexts, as suggests Michael Adas’s work on the politics of the colonial domain in British West Africa. Adas, who studied the institutionalization of “indirect rule” in the beginning of the 20^th century, recognizes that socio-cultural analyses of colonized territories by colonial administrators express their conviction that these societies

• 7 In his reference text on the invention of tradition in Africa, Terence Ranger also refers to the co (...)

had possessed act-old and clearly bounded cultural configurations of ‘traditions’ that had been basically static – despite often far-reaching political and social changes – in the era prior to the rise of European domination (Adas 1996: 292).7

12Local elites were considered the representatives of traditional practices that had been altered by European hegemony, and Adas considers that

if the initial alliances between European colonizers and indigenous elites resulted in a stress on the preservation of tradition, the widespread transformations that accompanied colonial rule prompted European administrators to adopt a number of different strategies in the defense of colonial orders that in most instances rested on accommodating indigenous elite groups (Adas 1996: 293).

13As was the case in the context studied by Adas, the Manjaco colonial administration also tried to govern with the support of the local elites. Pragmatic interests related to gaining power by both interests motivated this dubious process. Ethnographic studies in this context express that negotiation of power and impose biased interpretations of political models. The monograph Vida Social dos Manjacos prompted such a reading of the manjaco society and institutionalized changes introduced by specific groups. It legitimated a social picture where colonial intervention could be easily integrated into the local ideology.

Representations of the mediators

14As referred to above, local sovereigns were the mediators par excellence between the colonial order and local populations. Because of their central role, these characters were always the subject of an attempt to control that stemmed from the support of certain factions with access to power along with the appointment of preferential middlemen (the interpreters) as sovereigns. As political and cultural mediators, local sovereigns were particularly exemplary of the perverse but multifaceted domination game undertaken in this period. In the Manjaco case we have access to the sovereigns’ iconographical representations carried out by both the colonial administrators and the local populations, which I propose to analyze as significant. I intend to compare two representational forms of characters that occupied equivalent positions in the colonial game of force: on one side are the images of the régulos included in Carreira’s monograph, and on the other the representations of the régulos of Caió in the local post-mortem statuary. Iconographical representations, and photography in particular, were interpreted in the Western gnosis as an element of increased objectivity, allowed both by its own materiality and by an approach to the subject that is represented as a copy process. But photography is another interpretation (or even manipulation) of reality, just as every other iconographical representation is (Sontag 1983, Mirzoeff 1999). Following this perspective we propose to compare the representations of the sovereigns that were elaborated almost simultaneously by the colonizers and the colonized.

16The third picture represents the régulos of Costa de Baixo and Pandim, photographed from a low angle (contre-plongée) to emphasize their importance, wearing Western civil suits (see photo 3). The last picture, the only that was not taken in the District capital, portrays a régulo of Pecixe in institutional clothes, including a hat over a scarf, “band cloths” that cross his shoulder, an enormous earring, a collar of the initiates (see photo 4).

18The iconographical representations of the régulos are an expressive element of colonial history. They appear as representative of the power relations supported and embodied by the dignitaries. But we also have access to another representation of the sovereigns involved in this process through their post-mortem representations in the local statuary. One of the most expressive local representations of the régulos during the colonial period can be observed through the icap (manj.) or forkilha di alma (creole) that represented deceased sovereigns. In the continent (but not in the manjaco islands of Jeta and Pecixe) several houses have a place of libations constituted by a group of wooden sticks, each one invoking an ancestor of the house independent of his/her gender. The aspect of the icap is diversified: the older examples look like a fork or even a straight piece of wood, sometimes decorated with parallel engraved lines (see photo 4), common to numerous libation places in the area; while recent examples are clearly anthropomorphic, varying between the simple evocation of the honored ancestors gender and a complete representation of their physical features. These last representations are today more valuable, as they imply that the payment was made to a local sculptor, which would have increased the costs of the ceremony in whick the icap was placed (see photos 5-6). The icap are installed in the course of a ritual that works as a second funeral (manj.: ussái pesser; creole: cerimónia di korda), constituting the final collective homage to the dead that establishes him/her as an ancestor of the house. It is the régulos who are the main characters to be honored in this way.

19In Caió, near Canchungo, it is possible to follow the evolution of these representations of the sovereigns. Near their residence (manj.: kor; creole: reino) in Belabate are several sculptures of the ancient régulos and their wives, grouped by their respective matrilineage (manj.: kakanda). The oldest among them did not resist time and the termites’ hunger and so only a hole marks the place of libations; the most recent are sculpted thoroughly and painted, as it is the case with the icap of the last three régulos who have reigned through the 20^th century (1920-1967). These last sculptures are representations of Europeans, two of them wearing a military uniform, one with his honor strip, the other with gallons. In the most ancient and deteriorated statue the drawing of a tie can still be recognized (see photos 7-9). This europeanization of the image occurs equally in its physiognomy, with fine lips, long noses and black mustaches that stand out over the clear painting that represents the skin tone. The contrast with the women’s figuration is obvious: the régulo’s first wife or namaca (manj.) is portrayed transporting a gourd and a “band cloth” attached by a ceremonial string, usual ceremonial clothes used in several rituals. Besides their clothes, sculptures of the women are painted in a dark tone with African physiognomic lines. One of these icap represents Francisco Mango, a régulo of Caió that was eventually imprisoned in Galinhas island in 1962 (where he would die in 1967), accused of supporting the liberation movements. Before this episode (occuring in a period of strengthening opression that accompanied the raising of the colonial war) there was another interpreter who became a régulo with the support of the colonial administration. In the 1940s, Caió’s administrator, Artur Meireles, like his homologue in Costa de Baixo (Babok), was photographed wearing a masculine Western suit, representing the characteristics of European urbanity (Meireles 1949: 17).

21As described above, the régulos were some of the preferential middle-men of colonial intervention, who were related not only to a perversion of the model of traditional authority, but also to an alteration of their own role and identity, as they appeared as allies of a foreigner power as well as of an alien culture to the local population. The attempt of cultural assimilation of the régulos was effected through several strategies, including the preferential education of the sovereigns’ children, and the support of candidates with whom the administrator had a good communication (namely with those who spoke Creole). Cultural assimilation was also atempted through the régulos in the administrative circuit, giving them responsibilities on sensitive subjects such as the collection of taxes or the responsability for collective projects (Mendy 1994, Newitt 1981). This europeanization of the régulos also occurred through their adoption of the dominant culture’s mode of dress, even if the styles could not be used during traditional ceremonies such as an enthronement. This europeanization is portrayed in Carreira’s illustrations of the régulos of Costa de Baixo and Pandim or in the picture of Francisco Mango. These factors contributed to present the sovereigns to the population as an embodiment of the brankundade (creole), following a typology based on differentiated cultural identifications. This classification opposes the branku (creole) – all those that share a way of life and cultural habits associated with urbanity and Western values – to the pretu (creole) – those linked to a rural existence and habits. The opposition between pretu and branku is inspired, obviously, in the antagonism between the urban European and the African farmer and, above all, in the hegemonic dominance system imposed by the former where the body stands as the significant element par excellence. As recognized by Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, concerning the dramatization modes in postcolonial contexts, racial characteristics become one of the first significant elements precisely because colonial hegemony has emphasized physiognomic differences as expressive of the relation of dominator/dominated (Gilbert and Tompkins 1996: 206). In this sense, the representations of the régulos of the icap of Caió naturalized a cultural and power attribute in order to make it more expressive. Free of their original references, these representations privileged the cultural attributes and incorporated the elements of colonial power in the portrayed régulos. What meaning can be given to these portraits of the brankundade?

Mimesis and creation

22Power mimesis and the way it marked the colonial encounter have been the object of research in different colonial contexts, notably Fritz Kramer’s classic comparative study on foreign representations in African statuary and performances (Kramer 1993 [1987]), Michael Taussig’s works on the Cuna figures (Panama) (Taussig 1993) and Paul Stoller’s analysis of the mimetic performances of the Hauka cults of Niger (Stoller 1995). Taussig analyzed the meaning of mimetic acts and figurations – from the point of view of the colonized who reproduced the gestures and figures of the colonizers, using them as elements of power, and of caricature, sometimes in true terror representations. Inspired by sir James Frazer’s reflection about the logic of magical thought, as well as Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert’s classical study on magic, Taussig invokes the notions of infectious and sympathetic magic to explain mimesis as a form of adapting and controlling the unassimilated characteristics (because of their aggressive or incomprehensible nature) of social groups marked by the colonial encounter. According to Taussig, mime-sis is a way to think and to react to alterity:

Pulling you this way and that, mimesis plays this trick of dancing between the very same and the very different. An impossible but necessary, indeed an everyday affair, mimesis registers both sameness and difference, of being like, and of being Other. Creating stability from this instability is no small task, yet all identity formation is engaged in this habitually bracing activity, in which the issue is not so much staying the same, but maintaining sameness through alterity (Taussig 1993: 129).

23This interpretation of mimesis as an act of political creation offers insight into the representations of the manjaco régulos. Their anthropomorphic representations provide the régulo-ancestor (as they are destined to be an object of libations) with attributes of power, and brankundade is recognized as one of these elements of power. As with the case of the Cuna illustrations, interpreted by Taussig, the figurations of the régulos also mimetically integrate the symbols of an alien power as a way to control it. The mimetic icap, as it combines elements of a new power in a traditional figuration, represents an attempt to integrate and to control terrible and powerful forces and symbols. In Paul Stoller’s formulation, the mimetic character of these representations of the sovereigns signifies an embodied opposition (Stoller 1995).

24The colonial encounter has not just fractured the previous social structures (paraphrasing Talal Asad 1991: 314), as it has forced the creation of new relations, symbols and significants. The régulos, for the role they played and were constrained to play, were some of the most sensitive elements of this process. Colonial dominance was not applied on passive subjects, but on people who reacted to it in many and different ways. Colonialism did not just control political regimes, it was intended to dominate global forms of social existence and to institute a hegemonic ideology. This control could be effected through continuous interrelation with populations. In the case of the régulos and chiefs, it becomes obvious that there existed a continuous and mutual negotiation among them. The examples reffered to in this paper demonstrate that the colonial process must also be seen as the construction of a dominant ideology constantly negotiated among the involved parts. Government, as a form of power that infiltrates the social fabric, cannot be reduced to a single strategy. As Peter Pels states, trying to define the field of an “anthropology of the colonialism”,

it is still unusual for researchers to fully escape the dichotomy of colonial state and oppressed and/or resistant others, and to realize how much colonial empires were fragmented by other tensions (Pels 1997: 176).

25Colonialism brought goods, technologies and symbols that were desired, possessed, used and interpreted by groups with divergent interests (Pels 1997: 176). In their role as middlemen, traditional chiefs form an excellent case through which to analyze the constitution of colonial hegemony. The actual role of the régulos, their representation and the way they embody power may only be understood in relation to the recent influence of colonial presence in the postcolonial context where they were invoked again, in a movement that revitalized tradition in Guinea-Bissau.