Masculinidades debaixo de fogo

Abstract

The experience of homosexuality among Portuguese troops engaged in the colonial wars in Africa (1961-1974) appears primarily in those rare works that do not defend the colonial conflict nor shy away from crises of masculinity. Conversely, works apologetic of Portuguese colonialism are almost exclusively homophobic. In texts that narrate the colonial experience of openly gay writers, such references arise indirectly and in the background. Generally focused on the conflicts and traumas of young soldiers, allusions to homosexual experience negotiate a tension between surrender and self-defensive resistance. That this tension is normally resolved in favor of the latter shows how resistance was not a subversion of heteronormative masculinity; rather, it contributed to the repression of its crisis. The result is a reinforcement of the open homophobia encoded in the revolutionary ideals that led to the events of April 25, 1974.