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THE TEAM
CONTACT
This identification is most likely the condition that made possible the research mission in northern Mozambique, dedicated to studying the Makonde people, where Dias drew inspiration from Thurnwald, who had studied the Makonde living in Tanganyika, a former German colony. The result was a four-volume publication, dominated by his contributions, a work of unique scope in Portuguese colonial anthropology.
This approach emerged as being somewhat disconnected from the contemporary development of anthropology in Africa, which was interested in the processes of transformation taking place at that time, practised in Mozambique 's neighbouring countries—such as the impact of colonialism, social change, migrant labour, and economic development (H. West, Inverting the Camel’s Hump..., p. 56). Dias consciously offered a portrait of the Makonde as a traditional, static society (J. Dias, pref. to Os Macondes de Moçambique, p. 11), excluding the dynamics of change that he knew were occurring intensely at that very time and in that very place (J. Dias and M. V. Guerreiro, Relatório da Campanha de 1957 [1957 Campaign Report], 1958).
The treatment of these latter issues was explicitly relegated to confidential reports for the authorities. The content of these reports shows that the interest in studying the Makonde was closely linked to an acute concern with attitudes towards the Portuguese presence. It was thought that the Makonde of Mozambique could serve as a buffer against Islam, as Muslims were viewed as hostile to the Portuguese presence. S ignificant anxiety can also be denoted regarding the presence of communities from the Indian subcontinent that still possessed the so-called "State of India", and were viewed as being hostile to the Portuguese. There was also concern about what was happening in particular African societies, especially in neighbouring Tanganyika, a country to which the Makonde from northern Mozambique emigrated, as it was considered materially superior, and a place where "black people" were becoming emancipated. The text of the reports also reveals a colonial reality entirely at odds with both the Estado Novo’s propaganda and Dias' own essays praising the exemplary uniqueness of the Portuguese colonisation. There is an awareness of hostility towards the coloniser s, of the racism of the colonisers, manifested in the protection of the "white" man’s arbitrariness, in physical abuse, in economic exploitation, in a "racial" interrelationship entirely contrary to the official discourse.
