“In the hold of the ship as a bag!”: temporalities and ways of working in Santomean plantations

Abstract

Cape Verde appears in the social memory and practices of Cape Verdean people as a territory crossed and sewn by mobilities to other territories, from Europe, the Americas and Africa. Of the various possible territories, São Tomé and Principe was the stage for experiences of pain, exploitation and attempts at dehumanization. With the narratives of my interlocutors in allusion to the ways of life in the 'time of the white man' versus 'the time of the company' (nationalization of the fields), lived in the multiple fields of Santomean, I point out the horrors and the slavery ways that populated the experiences and ways workers in the bush and in the fields. I propose that we revisit the contours of these labor modus operandi that emanate from the event of the contract, as a central key in the fabrication of lives and in the creation of the various temporalities – the present, current and everyday time, coupled with the category 'punishment' mirrored in the practices and daily lives devastated by the 'punishment' of enslaved lives.