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e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº.1, TD4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026

111

PORTUGUESE OR NOT PORTUGUESE: THE QUESTION BETWEEN AMÍLCAR

CABRAL AND PAULO FREIRE AND ITS LESSONS FOR THE TIMORESE BROTHERS

KARIN NOEMI RÜHLE INDART

karin.indart@untl.edu.tl

PhD holds a PhD in Sociology of Education from the University of Minho, Portugal, awarded in

2017, with a thesis entitled “Education Policies, Language Policies, National Identity and State

Building in Timor-Leste.” She holds a Master’s degree in Educational Evaluation from the

University of Minho, awarded in 2011, with a dissertation entitled “Policy and Linguistic Planning

of the Portuguese Language in Timor-Leste: An Evaluative Study.” She obtained a Bachelor’s

degree in Portuguese and German Languages from the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, in

2002. She has also completed postdoctoral research in Applied Linguistics at the University of

Porto, Portugal, and in Sociolinguistics at Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Brazil. She is

currently a Guest Professor in the Postgraduate and Research Program at the National University

of Timor Lorosa’e (UNTL), (Timor-Leste). She has lived, worked, and conducted research in

Timor-Leste since 2003, developing field research in areas including Education Policy, Educational

Evaluation, Educational Management, Sociology of Education, Language Policy, Sociolinguistics,

Linguistic Anthropology, and Applied Linguistics. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3320-3376

Abstract

This study analyses Paulo Freire’s literacy program in Portuguese-speaking African countries,

particularly with regard to the choice of the language of instruction. Its central focus is the

linguistic dilemma arising from the differing positions of Amílcar Cabral and Paulo Freire

concerning literacy education in Portuguese within the African Countries of Portuguese Official

Language (PALOP). For political reasons, Cabral regarded the Portuguese language as a “gift”

and as a unifying force among diverse ethnic and linguistic groups, a position that Freire

interpreted as a constraint on his educational intervention. Freire advocated literacy

instruction in Creole, arguing that the exclusive use of Portuguese reproduced the elitist

character of the educational system, since it was a language detached from the social practices

of the people. Following Bowen's (2009) qualitative approach to documentary analysis, which

involves skimming, reading, and interpretation, this article examines the sole point of

disagreement between Cabral's thought and Freire's literacy program: the use of the

colonizer's language in emancipatory education and the implications of this debate for

language policy in Timor-Leste. By comparing this experience with the latter case of Timor-

Leste’s independence, where Tetum was granted co-official status and employed in literacy

programs, the article highlights a more open language policy, albeit one marked by new

dilemmas of its own.

Keywords

Amílcar Cabral; Paulo Freire; popular literacy campaign; language of instruction; Portuguese

language in former colonies.

Resumo

Este estudo analisa o programa de alfabetização de Paulo Freire nos países africanos de língua

portuguesa, com particular atenção à escolha da língua de instrução. O seu foco central reside

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 111-129

Portuguese or not Portuguese: The Question Between Amílcar Cabral and Paulo Freire and

its Lessons for the Timorese Brothers

Karin Noemi Rühle Indart

112

no dilema linguístico decorrente das posições divergentes de Amílcar Cabral e Paulo Freire

relativamente à alfabetização em português nos Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa

(PALOP). Por razões políticas, Cabral considerava a língua portuguesa uma “dádiva” e um

elemento de unificação entre os diversos grupos étnicos e linguísticos, posição que Freire

interpretava como um condicionamento da sua intervenção educativa. Freire defendia a

alfabetização em crioulo, argumentando que a utilização exclusiva do português reproduzia o

caráter elitista do sistema educativo, uma vez que se tratava de uma língua dissociada das

práticas sociais e culturais das populações. Seguindo a abordagem qualitativa de análise

documental proposta por Bowen (2009), baseada nas etapas de exame preliminar, leitura

aprofundada e interpretação, este artigo analisa o único ponto de divergência entre o

pensamento de Cabral e o programa de alfabetização de Freire: o uso da língua do colonizador

na educação emancipatória e as implicações deste debate para as políticas linguísticas em

Timor-Leste. Ao comparar essa experiência com o caso posterior da independência timorense,

em que o tétum adquiriu estatuto de língua cooficial e foi utilizado em programas de

alfabetização, o artigo evidencia uma política linguística mais aberta e inclusiva, embora

igualmente marcada por novos dilemas e desafios.

Palavras-chave

Amílcar Cabral; Paulo Freire; campanha de alfabetização popular; língua de instrução; língua

portuguesa nas ex-colónias.

How to cite this article

Indart, Karin Noemi Rühle (2026). Portuguese or not Portuguese: The Question Between Amílcar

Cabral and Paulo Freire and its Lessons for the Timorese Brothers. Janus.net, e-journal of

international relations. Thematic Dossier – Geopolitics of Anxiety: Ideology, Identity, and

(Un)Bordering in Contemporary Europe and Asia, VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD4, October 2026, pp. 111-129.

DOI https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT0726.5

Article submitted on 26 June 2026 and accepted on21 August 2026.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 111-129

Portuguese or not Portuguese: The Question Between Amílcar Cabral and Paulo Freire and

its Lessons for the Timorese Brothers

Karin Noemi Rühle Indart

113

PORTUGUESE OR NOT PORTUGUESE: THE QUESTION BETWEEN

AMÍLCAR CABRAL AND PAULO FREIRE AND ITS LESSONS FOR

THE TIMORESE BROTHERS

KARIN INDART

Introduction

Amílcar Cabral’s writings undeniably influenced Paulo Freire’s concepts of education for

liberation. Evidence of this influence can be found in Freire’s dedication of his book Letters

to Guinea-Bissau to Cabral, whom he describes as an “educator educating his people.”

According to Freire (1985), it is difficult to think about the liberation movements of the

Portuguese-colonized African countries without referring to Amílcar Cabral. The two never

met in person due to Cabral’s premature death in 1973, but his works were studied

extensively by Freire when, in 1975, he was invited to organize an adult literacy project

in Guinea-Bissau. In this regard, “Freire was able to observe that Cabral was not merely

theory, but rather a great deal of practice - a practice that transformed the lives of his

people, a liberating practice” (Silva & Cassiani, 2022, p. 3). According to Freire’s own

testimony, it was possible to verify the coherence between Cabral’s writings and

liberatory concepts and the accounts of those who had fought alongside him. As Freire

states: “the reading of Amílcar, the personality of Amílcar as a great revolutionary, was

something that fascinated me then and continues to fascinate me completely today”

(Freire, 1985, p. 3). Cabral argued that education was an instrument of resistance and

of the re-Africanization of colonized peoples. However, local culture, in his view, “must

develop on a scientific basis; it must be scientific, that is, people should not believe in

imaginary things” (Cabral, 1978, p. 141, cited in Silva & Cassiani, 2022, p. 6). For this

reason, the establishment of schools in the rural interior of Guinea was one of the

concrete actions of the liberation program.

The educational system implemented by the PAIGC in the liberated zones sought to

recover what was most relevant in the experience of traditional Guinean society. The

informality and spontaneity of traditional educational practices were revalued, as was the

use of the experience of elders. Given the severe material constraints faced by the

Conflict of Interests - The author has identified no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgment - The content of this study was originally written entirely by the author in Portuguese.

Artificial intelligence tools were used exclusively to support the translation process and to enhance the academic

language, style, and readability of the English version. The intellectual content, arguments, analysis, and

conclusions presented in this work remain solely the responsibility of the author.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 111-129

Portuguese or not Portuguese: The Question Between Amílcar Cabral and Paulo Freire and

its Lessons for the Timorese Brothers

Karin Noemi Rühle Indart

114

movement, efforts were made, whenever possible, to link learning to productive activities

associated with community tasks. [...] Education contributed significantly to the

emergence of a genuinely national culture rooted in the positive aspects of the various

traditional cultures, while also incorporating, and adapting to the country's needs, the

achievements of universal scientific culture. (Cá, 2005, pp. 93–94)

This education was, however, essentially practical, focusing on “themes related to work,

health, and hygiene,” as well as learning “how to make better use of seeds and fertilizers”

or “how to monitor soil and water conditions in order to plan the sale of products”. The

objective was not formal literacy in itself, but rather a feasible and useful literacy through

which “it would be possible to establish, through the creative and deliberative capacity

of the people, an active influence of the community on the social environment, which

signifies cultural action” (Pereira & Vittoria, 2012, p. 303).

The centrality of educational programs in Cabral’s struggle led Freire to describe him as

a “Pedagogue of the Revolution” (Silva & Cassiani, 2022, p. 9). Nevertheless, Cabral’s

revolutionary character did not diminish his diplomatic abilities. According to Pereira and

Vittoria (2012), he maintained balanced relations with both the United States and the

Soviet Union during the Cold War, receiving honorary degrees from universities in both

superpowers almost simultaneously. Even with regard to the Portuguese colonizers,

Cabral stated:

We have never confused “Portuguese colonialism” with the “people of Portugal,” and we

have done everything within our possibilities to preserve, despite the crimes committed

by the Portuguese colonialists, the prospects for cooperation, friendship, solidarity, and

effective collaboration with the Portuguese people, on the basis of independence, equality

of rights, and reciprocity of benefits, whether for the progress of our land or for the

progress of the Portuguese people. (Cabral, 1974a, p. 18, cited in Pereira & Vittoria,

2012, p. 299)

In an interview, one of Freire’s sons stated that his father’s ideas were largely aligned

with Cabral’s political and revolutionary proposals (Pereira & Vittoria, 2012, p. 302). The

purpose of this article, however, is to examine the sole point of disagreement between

Cabral’s thought and Freire’s literacy program: the use of the colonizer’s language in

emancipatory education, as the resistance of African political leaders and of the educators

themselves to the use of Creole led Freire to acknowledge the political limitations of his

intervention. This is a documentary study (Quivy & Campenhoudt, 2008; Bowen, 2009).

According to Bowen:

Document analysis is a systematic procedure for reviewing or evaluating

documents—both printed and electronic (computer-based and Internet-

transmitted) material. Like other analytical methods in qualitative research,

document analysis requires that data be examined and interpreted in order

to elicit meaning, gain understanding, and develop empirical knowledge

(Bowen, 2009, p. 27).

According to the author, documentary analysis is primarily employed in “qualitative case

studies—intensive studies producing rich descriptions of a single phenomenon, event,

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 111-129

Portuguese or not Portuguese: The Question Between Amílcar Cabral and Paulo Freire and

its Lessons for the Timorese Brothers

Karin Noemi Rühle Indart

115

organization, or program” (Bowen, 2009, 29). This methodology is consistent with the

research objective, as the study seeks to analyze the disagreement between Cabral and

Freire regarding language policy. Accordingly, we examined Freire's two books - A

Importância do Ato de Ler (Freire, 2011) e Alfabetização: Leitura do Mundo, Leitura da

Palavra (Freire & Macedo, 2011), in which he argues in favor of the use of Creole as the

language of instruction and explains how this divergence of opinion was interpreted by

political leaders in the Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP) where he worked.

It is important to emphasize that Cabral and Freire never met in person nor engaged in

any direct written exchange concerning these language policies. For this reason, the

documentary analysis focuses exclusively on Freire's writings and based on Freire’s own

testimony as recorded in his published works. For this reason, we frequently cite Freire’s

direct statements concerning the principal arguments he advanced against the use of the

Portuguese language as the medium of instruction in literacy campaigns. According to

Bowen “document analysis involves skimming (superficial examination), reading

(thorough examination), and interpretation. This iterative process combines elements of

content analysis and thematic analysis” (Bowen, 2009, p.32). The analytical process

adopted in this study followed this sequence to interpret the documentary evidence on

language policy and the language of instruction in former Portuguese colonies. The

resulting interpretation was subsequently applied to the case of Timor-Leste to discuss

the applicability of these debates to the post-independence educational Timorese

context.

Literacy and the Language of Instruction

The discussion on the maintenance of the colonial language after the independence of

formerly colonized countries has been a recurring theme in the literature. Regarding

African countries, Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1994, p. 335) argue that “Language

policy is of vital importance for the political stability and legitimacy of the state.”

However, “the majority of Africans are governed in a language that they do not

understand, but few African states have given serious attention to language policy.” The

authors further argue that the prevailing situation in these countries is one of declaration

without implementation. In other words, decolonization discourses are not accompanied

by political actions that effectively implement them.

Makoni, Severo, and Abdelhay (2023) have recently revisited this issue, arguing that

although the “African Revolution gathered the deep struggles of African peoples for

geopolitical, intellectual, and cultural freedom and autonomy, which meant that African

institutions, identities, languages, and intellectual production were under

(re)construction and legitimation,” the need for such legitimation has not been fully

addressed. They further observe that the work of revolutionary leaders such as “Frantz

Fanon (African diaspora and Algeria), Amílcar Cabral (Cabo Verde and Guinea-Bissau),

Léopold Senghor (Senegal), Samora Machel (Mozambique), and Kwame Nkrumah

(Ghana)” is rarely cited in Western academic discussions on language policy. According

to these authors, “The African language issue during the emergence of African nations

was addressed by non-Africans as a problem to be solved and fixed, following a non-

African perspective of society, nation, and politics” (Makoni, Severo, & Abdelhay, 2023,

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e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 111-129

Portuguese or not Portuguese: The Question Between Amílcar Cabral and Paulo Freire and

its Lessons for the Timorese Brothers

Karin Noemi Rühle Indart

116

p. 485). They therefore discuss the persistence of the perspective of “language problems”

faced by “developing” nations, particularly in Africa and Asia, including within

international organizations established to protect cultures and languages, such as

UNESCO. This “monoglot ideology of one language–one nation … contributed to shape a

school literacy perspective about Africa, and vice versa, turning Africa and illiteracy into

synonyms,” with the consequence that “multilingual experiences are reduced to ideas of

weakness and lackness” (p. 486). For this reason, Makoni, Severo, and Abdelhay

conclude that “postcolonial approaches to LPP should consider the problems connected

to the management of multilingualism by postcolonial elites or the ways in which former

colonial powers have used cultural aspects of language to legitimize continued influence

(p. 487).”

It is precisely for this reason that Freire's voice is particularly significant for studies on

the decolonization of education, since as early as the 1970s he advocated the use of

national languages within formal education as a necessary condition for the completion

of the struggle for independence. Likewise, he argued for the immediate valorization of

indigenous languages from a perspective of linguistic equality, rejecting the continued

hierarchical ordering of languages established under colonial rule. What is particularly

intriguing in this article, however, is that Amílcar Cabral's own discourse of national

liberation was subsequently invoked by his political successors to justify the maintenance

of the colonial language as the only legitimate language of education.

Timorese students in Portugal during the 1970s had access to the revolutionary ideas of

Amílcar Cabral. However, since the discussion proposed here concerns the language used

in decolonial education, this article takes Paulo Freire’s theory and method as its primary

framework. His influence likewise extends to Timor-Leste (Urban & Santiago, 2022). One

of the major contributions that Freire’s writings can offer to the Timorese context lies in

his self-assessments of the literacy experiences he conducted and the theories he put

into practice in African countries that were former Portuguese colonies.

According to Fernandes (1998) and Saul (1998) these experiences were largely limited

to adult literacy and non-formal education: cultural action, cultural animation, popular

education, adult education, and informal education. The guiding principle of these

programs was that “educational work began within popular culture and sought to

innovate pathways of access to scientific and technical knowledge that did not originate

from popular culture” (Fernandes, 1998, p. 127), much as Cabral had previously

envisioned. Popular culture occupies a central place in Paulo Freire’s method, and “the

school should also be a centre for the dissemination of popular culture, not in order to

consume it, but to recreate it,” as Saul (1998, p. 157) explains. In Freire (2011) adult

literacy is understood as “the critical and creative participation of the people in the

process of reinventing their society,” once freed from prolonged colonial domination.

Political education, therefore, is the means through which responsibility for the future is

placed in the hands of the people themselves. As Freire argues, it is necessary that:

“adult literacy and post-literacy programs, at the service of national reconstruction,

contribute to enabling the people, increasingly taking their history into their own hands,

to remake themselves in the making of History” (Freire, 2011, p. 53). Thus, every literacy

program implemented in newly independent countries was conceived not merely as a

method for reading words but also for reading the world and the people’s history. Adult

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e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 111-129

Portuguese or not Portuguese: The Question Between Amílcar Cabral and Paulo Freire and

its Lessons for the Timorese Brothers

Karin Noemi Rühle Indart

117

literacy, in Freire’s view, does not simply teach “ba-be-bi-bo-bu.” Nevertheless, Freire

was frequently questioned about the modest results of his literacy programs outside

Brazil—his own social and cultural context. For this reason, he wrote extensively about

his experiences in African countries:

Obviously, not everything is smooth sailing in the development of work such as this in a

poor, small country, recently liberated from the colonial yoke, where the people and their

leadership must confront countless difficulties (...) among them the shortage of national

cadres, which are still quantitatively insufficient for the tasks demanded by national

reconstruction. The scarcity of personnel and material resources, necessarily reflected in

the field of adult literacy, inevitably constituted an obstacle not only to its planning but

also to its implementation. (Freire, 2011, p. 59)

The author does not clarify in his writings what human resources were actually available

to implement these programs. What becomes evident from his discussion of the literacy

manuals and their use is that there was no intention of producing “intellectuals” through

such methods. However, he does not describe who the cultural animators were, what

level of formal education they possessed, or the extent of their proficiency in the

language of instruction. In our interpretation, the absence of such descriptions may

indicate that Freire believed not only that any adult was capable of learning, but also that

any adult could become a literacy instructor, provided they had developed a critical

political consciousness regarding their social role. In our view, this constitutes a

significant gap in his method and deserves further discussion, particularly because a

similar issue can be observed in Timor-Leste.

Another reality Freire encountered in his role as coordinator of literacy programs in

African countries was the predominance of oral language throughout traditional society.

On this matter, he states:

If nowhere, is it possible to write without practicing writing, then in a

predominantly oral memory culture such as that of São Tomé, a literacy

program must, on the one hand, while respecting the culture as it exists at

a given moment, encourage learners’ oral expression through debate,

storytelling, and the analysis of events; on the other hand, it must challenge

them to begin writing as well. Reading and writing are inseparable moments

of the same process - the process of understanding and mastering language

and linguistic expression (Freire, 2011, p. 62).

This is another important characteristic of the Popular Education Notebooks, in our

observation: language teaching is always practical, with very little grammatical

exposition and even less use of metalinguistic terminology to explain the few structural

aspects presented in the manuals. The situation observed in teacher training programs

and schools in Timor-Leste is precisely the opposite. Portuguese language teaching is

often reduced to lengthy and monotonous grammatical explanations, while literacy

instruction involves very little reading and even less writing (Soares, 2010, p. 83; Santos,

2013, p. 38). Timorese teachers themselves would need to become genuinely “literate”

in Portuguese in order to work effectively within the educational system, and such literacy

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 111-129

Portuguese or not Portuguese: The Question Between Amílcar Cabral and Paulo Freire and

its Lessons for the Timorese Brothers

Karin Noemi Rühle Indart

118

certainly cannot consist merely of the uncritical repetition of grammatical rules (Rosário,

2025).

Several decades after his experiences in Africa, when Freire revisited the weaknesses of

these literacy programs and manuals, in the books analysed in this paper, he attributed

their limited success largely to the issue of the language of instruction. This discussion is

of particular interest to the present article. In an interview with Macedo, Freire reflected

at length on this problem in the former Portuguese colonies of Africa:

Guinea-Bissau fulfilled the first basic condition necessary for the success of a literacy

campaign: the revolutionary transformation of society (...) However, Guinea-Bissau did

not meet the second condition because of its linguistic diversity. The country has

approximately thirty distinct languages and dialects spoken by different ethnic groups.

In addition, it has Creole, which functions as a lingua franca. Creole gives Guinea-Bissau,

Cabo Verde, and São Tomé a tremendous advantage over Angola and Mozambique, for

example. Creole, a linguistic creation that combines African languages with Portuguese,

developed gradually in Guinea-Bissau (...) Creole is as beautiful, rich, and viable as

Portuguese. No linguistic expression or language is born fully developed. (...) One cannot

simply decree the inviability of such a development. And that is more or less what I told

the education commission (...) By a strange coincidence, the day after I made those

remarks, No Pintcha published the only text by Amílcar Cabral with which I disagree. In

that text he stated that the most beautiful gift the Portuguese had left to the people of

Guinea-Bissau was the Portuguese language. (In fact, I later learned that there were

political reasons behind Cabral’s statement. He was attempting to use Portuguese as a

unifying force to ease tensions among rival linguistic and ethnic groups in Guinea-Bissau.)

I read that text by Cabral as if it were a message addressed directly to me: ‘My comrade

Paulo Freire, we like you very much, but do not interfere in this language issue in our

country. Amílcar Cabral himself said that the Portuguese language was a beautiful gift

from the colonizers.’ (...) Eventually, we were able to bring to Guinea-Bissau two linguists

(...) The Belgian was a specialist in Creole languages; the African specialist in African

languages. (...) I then wrote a letter to Mário Cabral in which I reiterated the impossibility

of continuing literacy work in Portuguese. In that letter, I also analysed the consequences

of insisting on Portuguese as the sole vehicle of education. One consequence, for

example, is that as long as Portuguese functions as the official language, it will also have

to assume the role of the national languages (...) I argued that the exclusive use of

Portuguese would function as a superstructure that would intensify class divisions, and

this in a society that was supposedly recreating itself through the abolition of social

classes. Continuing to use Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau as the mediating force in the

education of the youth and continuing the practice of selecting students on the basis of

their spoken and written knowledge of Portuguese, would ensure that only the children

of the elite would be able to advance educationally, thereby reproducing a dominant

elitist class. The people of Guinea-Bissau would once again find themselves excluded

from the educational system and from the higher economic and political ranks. (Freire &

Macedo, 2011, pp. 126–127)

Freire insisted that the major problem affecting the literacy programs he conducted in

African countries was the inadequacy of the language of instruction. Repeatedly, he

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 111-129

Portuguese or not Portuguese: The Question Between Amílcar Cabral and Paulo Freire and

its Lessons for the Timorese Brothers

Karin Noemi Rühle Indart

119

argued in favour of literacy in Creole in Guinea-Bissau, Cabo Verde, and São Tomé, but

encountered similar resistance from political leaders in all three countries:

The colonizers spent centuries attempting to impose their language. They

did so by decree, creating the impression that the national languages were

naturally inferior and amounted to nothing more than tribal dialects. Creole

was likewise viewed as a mixed and corrupted jargon and therefore could

not be considered a legitimate language. This profile was constructed by the

colonizers (only those who hold power can define the profile of others) and

imposed upon the people of Guinea-Bissau; and it was never repudiated, not

even during the war of liberation (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 128).

The debate concerning the viability of Portuguese as a vehicle for literacy in Cabo Verde

is confined to the technical question of whether Cabo Verdean Creole constitutes a valid

rule-governed system. I believe that the issue must be posed in infinitely more political

terms. We need to question the resistance to literacy in Creole based on claims that

Creole lacks a standardized orthography. Excuses of this kind are used to justify the

current policy of Portuguese as the sole medium of instruction. One must ask why

Portuguese-speaking Cabo Verdeans rely on the common argument that Portuguese

possesses international status and therefore guarantees upward mobility for educated

Cabo Verdeans. Such a position, moreover, implies the presumed superiority of the

Portuguese language. The sad reality is that although Portuguese may provide access to

certain positions of political and economic power for the upper strata of Cabo Verdean

society, it keeps the majority of the people behind - those who cannot learn Portuguese

well enough to attain the level of literacy necessary for social, political, and economic

advancement. In fact, continuing to use the colonizer’s language as the sole medium of

instruction means continuing to support the manipulative strategies that sustain cultural

domination. Thus, what lies hidden beneath the technical debate concerning the language

of instruction in Cabo Verde is resistance to re-Africanization or, perhaps, a subtle refusal

on the part of assimilated Cabo Verdeans to “commit class suicide.” (Freire & Macedo,

2011, pp. 135–136)

As an example of national leaders’ resistance to the official use of Creole, Freire recounts

the post-independence remarks of a Cabo Verdean authority who had participated in the

liberation struggle. When asked which language he used at work, he replied:

“Portuguese, of course. It is the only way to keep my subordinates in their place. If I

speak Cabo Verdean, they do not respect me” (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 196).

Freire further reports that debates concerning the language of instruction were

continuous among educators, and that the teaching profession itself expressed similar

reservations about the use of Creole as the instructional language within the educational

system. These educators repeatedly employed “the lack of orthographic standardization

in African languages as an argument to justify their current policy of using Portuguese

as the sole medium for teaching reading. The question they raise concerns which dialect

such an orthography should be based upon” (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 183). Freire

countered this argument by drawing upon linguistic theory, according to which all

languages constitute valid rule-governed systems, including African tribal languages. In

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e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 111-129

Portuguese or not Portuguese: The Question Between Amílcar Cabral and Paulo Freire and

its Lessons for the Timorese Brothers

Karin Noemi Rühle Indart

120

his view, the real issue was that these languages continued to occupy a stigmatized and

subordinate position in relation to Portuguese.

However, it is not our intention to dismiss Freire’s extensive arguments in favour of

literacy in Creole and its evident advantages. In his own defence, Freire published a

lengthy letter addressed to Mário Cabral, the Minister of Education of Guinea-Bissau

during the period in which Freire coordinated adult literacy programs and culture circles.

The purpose of publishing this correspondence years later was to insist that the so-called

failure of the project in Guinea-Bissau “was not due to the ‘Freire method.’ This failure

demonstrated with complete clarity the impracticability of using Portuguese as the sole

vehicle of instruction in literacy campaigns. This is a fundamental point” (Freire &

Macedo, 2011, p. 132). Nevertheless, in the same letter, Freire acknowledges the

difficulty of implementing what he considered the appropriate course of action and

demonstrates an understanding of the sensitive circumstances facing education in post-

independence Guinea-Bissau. As he states: “We do not mean by this that the Party and

the government should have suspended all systematic educational activities in the

country until a written form of Creole became available. That would be so absurd that it

is not even worth considering”. (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 251). Accordingly, he

concluded his letter with the following recommendations:

While this process of standardizing Creole was underway, we would limit

literacy in Portuguese, within the framework of cultural action, to: 1. The

area of Bissau, where the population, while fully mastering Creole, is also

familiar with Portuguese. There, above all, literacy in Portuguese would take

place in workplaces, where reading and writing in that language might

represent something important both for learners and for the effort of national

reconstruction; 2. Certain rural areas, whenever and if socio-economic

development programs require workers to acquire technical skills that, in

turn, demand reading and writing in Portuguese. In this case, if Creole is not

spoken fluently, as it is in Bissau, the methodological approach to be adopted

in the teaching of Portuguese would still need to be determined (Freire &

Macedo, 2011, p. 252).

When Freire proposes differentiated treatment and differentiated opportunities for

different regions of Guinea-Bissau, he is, to some extent, reinforcing existing social and

educational inequalities. This is precisely the principal argument advanced by Timorese

leaders who oppose multilingual literacy policies. Their concern is that inequalities in

access to and mastery of the official languages may become entrenched once the use of

mother tongues in the classroom is legalized and extended into higher levels of education

(Indart, 2017). This concern is not without foundation. Research based on interviews and

classroom observations has shown that teachers frequently justify the continued use of

a particular instructional language by arguing that it is the only language through which

students can understand their explanations. As a result, the gradual introduction of the

official languages is often avoided in everyday educational practice (Cali, 2015, p. 37).

At the same time, Freire’s letter to Mário Cabral reveals a fundamental social factor that

also hinders the acquisition of Portuguese in Timor-Leste: Portuguese is not part of the

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social practice of the popular masses because it is absent from virtually every level of

that practice. Equally significant is Freire’s recognition that external intervention in the

decisions of an independent nation must have limits. Such interventions should remain

at the level of suggestions rather than impositions. Thus, we argue, that two issues are

involved in the language policies of independent yet formerly colonized nations. The first

concerns the interests of liberation leaders themselves in maintaining political authority

and demonstrating their superiority as leaders, among other means through the use of

the official language. The second concerns external intervention - whether by Freire in

Guinea-Bissau or by organizations such as UNICEF or UNESCO in Timor-Leste - which

must necessarily respect the autonomy of the country’s decisions, even when those

decisions are disputed. In his own testimony, Freire states: “What I could not do in

Guinea-Bissau was go beyond the political limitations of the moment. As a foreigner, I

could not impose my proposals upon the reality of Guinea-Bissau and upon the needs as

perceived by its political leaders” (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 116). As an example, Freire

refers to the disagreement regarding the language to be used in literacy programs, since

“the leadership considered it politically advantageous to adopt Portuguese as the principal

vehicle of the literacy campaign” (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 116).

In Western contexts, Freire consistently argued that mastery of the standard language

by socially marginalized or stigmatized groups constitutes a powerful and indispensable

instrument of empowerment. The fact that students’ linguistic varieties should be

respected and valued does not imply that they do not need to learn to “fight with the

weapons of the other”. Students should not be confined “to their own local language”.

Genuine empowerment, in Freire’s view, “must also be a means of enabling students to

examine and selectively appropriate those aspects of the dominant culture that will

provide them with the basis for defining and transforming the broader social order, rather

than simply serving it”. For this reason, “educators must understand the value of

mastering the dominant standard language of the wider society” (Freire & Macedo, 2011,

p. 186).

The argument above reveals another dimension of Freire’s position regarding the

maintenance of Portuguese in the former colonies. Although he opposed the use of the

colonial language as the primary medium of literacy instruction, he never advocated its

complete elimination as a language of education. On the contrary, he argued that positive

elements of other cultures should not be ignored in the pursuit of development. As he

explains: “In speaking of the impossibility of exporting practices, I am not denying the

validity of foreign practices. Nor am I denying the need for exchange. What I am saying

is that such practices must be reinvented” (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 157). Once again

referring to the African context, he observes:

It would be very unwise for the people of Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São

Tomé, and other countries to sever all ties with the Portuguese language

simply because it is the language of the colonizer. To renounce entirely the

positive aspects of Portuguese culture (for example, refusing to read

Portuguese authors) makes no sense whatsoever. In the process of re-

establishing relations with these countries, the former colonizers should help

demonstrate the benefits that the Portuguese language can offer. The

question that must be asked is how to activate and institutionalize the use

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of indigenous African languages so that they can gradually replace the

language of the colonizers in spheres such as the economy, politics, and

finance (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 214).

In the two books here analysed, Freire also acknowledges that it would be impossible to

translate literary works and official documents into Creole “overnight,” since such an

undertaking would require not only extensive linguistic planning but also economic

resources that did not exist. The creolization of the former colonies, therefore, would

need to proceed gradually within the educational system so that future generations might

“feel free to express themselves in their national language, without fear and without

experiencing any elitist constraints” (Freire & Macedo, 2011, pp. 214–215). Freire further

recognizes the political and identity-related challenges involved. It is unlikely that the

selection of a local language as the language of schooling would not generate “a rupture

among different ethnic groups who may feel deprived of their linguistic rights. This could

even endanger the revolutionary process itself” (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 215),

especially in countries where no unifying Creole language exists.

Lessons From Cabral and Freire for Timor-Leste

Having described the dynamics surrounding the choice of literacy languages in Africa, we

can now compare them with the process of reintroducing Portuguese in Timor-Leste after

independence. It should be emphasized that some of Timor’s key political figures lived in

the African countries discussed by Freire during the very years in which those companion

nations were confronting linguistic challenges similar to those currently faced by

Timorese society. For this reason, we can identify both parallels and lessons learned

through observation in the Timorese decision-making process. Timor-Leste took care not

to repeat certain mistakes made by fellow nations engaged in similar struggles.

Upon achieving independence, the country granted co-official status to Tetum in the

Constitution without any prejudice regarding its alleged impurity or corruption as a

language. Only as a language of technical instruction is Tetum still considered not fully

developed, and for this reason its lexical expansion continues to be supported by

Portuguese. As early as 2001, the National Institute of Linguistics was established to

undertake lexical development, structural description, and the standardization of Tetum

so that it could immediately be used as the language of literacy instruction in schools.

These contextual differences in comparison with the African countries demonstrate that

Timor-Leste’s language policy is considerably more open and less discriminatory, at least

at the level of official policy. Language policy for literacy since 2000 has been bilingual,

without prejudice to Tetum. The issue currently raised by linguists concerns competition

between Tetum and the mother tongues rather than between Tetum and Portuguese.

When successive national censuses are examined, it becomes apparent that the Timorese

“Creole” is the language threatening other indigenous languages through its rapid

acquisition, substitution, and lexical expansion (fuelled by Portuguese) even in rural

areas. While the officialization of a “Creole” language is important for the construction of

a unified national identity, it is naïve to assume that internal competition among

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indigenous languages for status either does not exist or is unimportant for the new social

and linguistic order emerging in the country.

Freire was unable to perceive this context in such depth because he did not reside

permanently in the countries where he coordinated literacy programs. Rather, he made

periodic visits for debates, the training of cultural animators, and the preparation of

literacy materials, while actually residing in Geneva and conducting much of his work

from a distance. Likewise, concerns regarding the choice of a particular dialect or variety

as the basis for orthographic standardization should not be minimized. Beyond its

technical dimensions, this is undoubtedly a political decision that privileges one variety

over others. This is the case, for example, with the Mambae language in Timor-Leste.

Because it is spoken as a mother tongue across several mountainous and geographically

isolated regions, it has developed distinct varieties (Carneiro, 2010; Fogaça, 2017).

Standardizing only one of these varieties for literacy purposes would constitute an act no

less imposing than adopting Tetum or Portuguese as the language of instruction. A

political decision that fails to take such issues seriously would certainly not resolve the

social, ethnic, and linguistic tensions characteristic of multilingual nations; it would

merely relocate a national problem to the local level, where it would be less visible. The

question that must be considered is the extent to which ethnolinguistic groups should be

subdivided so that all may enjoy the same right to education in their own language or

linguistic variety, while at the same time avoiding the fragmentation of the educational

system into a multitude of linguistic microsystems in the effort to guarantee equal rights

to all groups. Even Tetum - the national unifying language and a point of broad consensus

across Timorese political and educational circles - remains surrounded by dilemmas

concerning standardization. Portuguese was also granted official status in part to provide

lexical and structural support to Tetum. Evidence demonstrates that Indonesian has been

replaced within society primarily by Tetum rather than by Portuguese, including at higher

levels of education (Almeida & Indart, 2023).

Freire believed in the development of the “Creole” language as the language of education

not only for literacy but also for technical and scientific instruction. He argued that: “The

principal issue is to enable people to create and develop their own Creole. Creole can

only be systematized by the people who speak it and by no one else” (Freire & Macedo,

2011, p. 219). However, in practical contexts, such developments require time and

cannot be scheduled or accelerated at will, since linguistic evolution is a natural process.

For this reason, the officialization of a “Creole” language and its systematic use in

education are particularly complex during the first years or even decades of

independence. The Timorese context also differs from the African experience with respect

to the use of language as an instrument of liberation. Unlike the African countries

discussed by Freire, Timor-Leste experienced a new invasion shortly after its Declaration

of Independence. There was a moment in 1974, while still under Portuguese colonial rule,

when literacy campaigns aimed at the masses were envisioned exclusively in Tetum

(Mendes, 2005, p. 138). Subsequently, however, when Portuguese became a symbolic

weapon in the struggle against Indonesian occupation, it acquired an entirely new

significance for national liberation, functioning in support of the liberation movement

rather than as an obstacle to it.

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However, Freire insists that linguistic oppression through the colonial language must be

repudiated if the struggle for liberation is to be complete. Otherwise, the liberation

leaders themselves would merely be reproducing the colonizer’s dominant ideology. After

all, these leaders were educated by the colonizer and are often the only members of

society who are fully fluent in Portuguese. Consequently, it is the children of this

“liberating” elite who alone perform well in examinations and obtain high grades. “They

are the only ones who gain access to science and technology. Thus, the majority of

children, the sons and daughters of peasants, will remain excluded. Tomorrow, the new

generation in power will be composed only of the sons and daughters of those families

who are in power today”. (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 216) The issue, however, is that

the liberation movements in the territories colonized by Portugal did not primarily

struggle against traditional social stratification; rather, they fought against foreign

colonial domination. The fact that they employed Marxist discourse and methodology

does not necessarily make them socialist once in power, at least not in terms of

guaranteeing equality among all citizens. Upon returning to their original cultures, these

societies often recovered communal traditions, but not necessarily communist principles.

Social classes were not abolished; indeed, their divisions frequently became even more

visible among the native population once the colonizer withdrew.

Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that there exists an attachment among the Timorese

ruling class to its own interests through the Portuguese language. Evidence of this can

be seen in the fact that the children of the elite attend the Portuguese School in Dili,

where one of the admission criteria is the use of Portuguese in the home environment.

This requirement effectively restricts access to European Portuguese and to the

Portuguese curriculum to the elite. However, the ruling class’s rejection of literacy in

mother tongues is presented not as a denial of the rights of subordinate groups, but

rather as a defence of those rights. Their argument is that children from rural areas would

be further marginalized and once again excluded from access to the official languages if

they were educated exclusively in their own local languages. Freire, however, remained

convinced that the language of the colonizer could not serve as the primary medium for

literacy because it was not part of learners’ reading of the world. He repeatedly reaffirmed

this conviction. In his view, “the challenging task of reappropriating one’s own culture

and history cannot be accomplished through the language that denied one’s reality and

sought to eradicate one’s own means of communication”. (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p.

133). To some extent, independent Timor-Leste sought complete emancipation and

liberation through detachment from the language of oppression. Yet that language was

no longer Portuguese; it was Indonesian. For this reason, schooling in Indonesian was

not maintained after independence. For the Timorese elite, it made little sense to fight

against Indonesian domination and subsequently continue using Indonesian as an official

language. Such a situation would have represented only a partial independence.

Moreover, Portuguese colonialism in Timor-Leste was initially more religious and

commercial than political and military, and its influence on Timorese culture and identity

was gradual and deeply intertwined with local realities. After four centuries, it became

impossible to reconstruct a “pure” identity without denying the country’s own history.

Furthermore, after Portuguese was employed as a language of resistance against

Indonesian occupation, memories of Portuguese colonial oppression receded, making it

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even more difficult to dismiss Portuguese as part of Timor-Leste’s contemporary linguistic

identity. Even negative historical legacies of colonialism, such as the disappearance of

cultures and languages, are irreversible realities. In the lives of individuals as well as

nations, ideal situations do not exist; only concrete realities do. Progress can only be

built from those realities. Nevertheless, the construction of a new post-independence

identity remains both desirable and necessary, and such an identity inevitably

incorporates both indigenous and foreign elements. It is precisely this search for a new

identity that is currently underway in Timor-Leste.

Despite Freire’s reluctance to employ the colonizer’s language in critical education, he

himself acknowledged that such a language may remain indispensable for gradual and

balanced social transformation. An abrupt break with a linguistic system that has long

been used in education carries negative consequences, even when that system is

considered undesirable. Both the African Creoles and Tetum have developed in close

relationship with Portuguese, and the very survival of these vehicular languages depends

upon linguistic partnership and borrowing - not only lexical but also syntactic and

semantic—from external languages. The other indigenous languages are generally unable

to provide such support at more technical levels of communication. Another difficulty

identified by Freire concerns financial and functional constraints. The development of a

substantial body of literature and educational materials, as well as the standardization

process for either Creole or indigenous languages, requires considerable time and

financial investment—resources often unavailable to newly independent countries.

Finally, Freire recognizes that the danger of national fragmentation during processes of

linguistic valorisation is real. While this risk may be reduced in countries possessing a

widely shared Creole language, it nevertheless remains present.

Freire also raises questions concerning the identity implications of the continued use of

Portuguese as a language of struggle and development after liberation. According to him,

“colonized peoples must preserve their native language. And the more elaborated they

make their language, the better, because the colonizer will not understand it, and thus

they will be able to use their language to defend themselves against the colonizer” (Freire

& Macedo, 2011, pp. 219–220). Freire overlooks, however, the fact that a Creole

language, despite being national in character, may not be the mother tongue of many

citizens—as is the case with Tetum, which is not the primary language spoken in most

Timorese households. Using it in literacy education may address questions of national

identity, but it does not necessarily resolve the pedagogical concerns that Freire himself

considered so important. This constitutes the central dilemma of literacy and linguistic

identity in a multilingual and plurilingual country such as Timor-Leste. Indigenous

identities are multiple (Carneiro, 2010, p. 11), while the “colonial” identities are likewise

plural, encompassing Indonesian, Portuguese, and, more recently, the persistent efforts

of international organizations to promote the significance of English. Furthermore, it was

not an indigenous language that played the principal role in resistance against Indonesian

occupation. Portuguese was not understood by Indonesian authorities and therefore

became an effective instrument of political struggle.

Nevertheless, in confronting this complex linguistic and identity diversity, independent

Timor-Leste must also recognize that the aspirations of different groups are not

necessarily unanimous. Multilingual literacy is not always the preferred option among

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families in rural areas. It is therefore necessary to question who has the authority to

speak on behalf of particular groups or of society as a whole, since this too is a field

marked by contestation and contradiction. Literacy in the mother tongue is not a

universally accepted solution, just as no other language of instruction will be universally

accepted. Whether literacy is organized through a bilingual model (Portuguese and

Tetum) or through a multilingual model involving mother tongues, it remains necessary

to recreate educational contexts in which language and school-based thinking are

meaningfully connected to the actual needs of the society concerned.

Conclusion

We contend that, for Freire, authentic emancipatory literacy requires the simultaneous

pursuit of two interrelated objectives. First, learners must develop literacy grounded in

their own historical experiences, cultural identities, and social realities. Second, they

must acquire access to the linguistic and cultural codes of dominant social formations,

thereby enabling them to move beyond the limitations imposed by their immediate

context and engage critically with broader structures of power. As Freire and Macedo

(2011, p. 79) observe, learners must “appropriate the codes and cultures of the dominant

spheres so that they may transcend their own environment.” It is in this sense that Freire

viewed his educational philosophy as convergent with the ideas of Amílcar Cabral:

To recognize the cultural nature of education, however, does not mean

blessing every cultural expression, but rather recognizing that the struggle

to overcome what Amílcar Cabral called the “weaknesses of culture” requires

first acknowledging those very weaknesses. Hence, education must take the

culture that it seeks, at least in part, to explain as an object of careful

understanding, thereby questioning itself in the process. And the more

education questions itself within the culture and society in which it takes

place, the clearer it becomes that culture is a totality traversed by class

interests, class differences, and class tastes (Freire & Macedo, 2011, pp. 85–

86).

Despite the profound respect and admiration that Freire held for Amílcar Cabral, his

struggle for liberation in the Portuguese-speaking African countries and his plans for

emancipation and education diverged from those of the African leader regarding the role

of the Portuguese language in post-independence education. Whereas Cabral viewed the

appropriation of the colonial language as a strategy of national unification, Freire

regarded the exclusive use of Portuguese as the language of literacy instruction as the

principal reason for the failure of his method in several of the countries where he

participated in adult literacy programs.

We argue, however, that the partial failure of the Freirean method in these African

countries cannot be attributed solely to the issue of the language of instruction, as Freire

himself maintained. What the critical theorist failed to identify was the crucial importance

of teacher preparation and the training of the cultural animators involved in his literacy

programs. Freire himself worked directly as a classroom teacher only during the early

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and most successful phase of his career (Furter, 1998, pp. 83–84), and he achieved

remarkable results in Angicos precisely because he personally conducted literacy

instruction among an adult, working-class, and previously illiterate population, drawing

upon a level of education and preparation associated with the social elite. In Africa,

however, he delegated the role of implementation to local personnel who did not possess

his training, knowledge, or pedagogical flexibility. As a consequence, the “Freire method”

came to be implemented by teachers or cultural animators who were insufficiently

prepared and who were quite possibly limited in their own mastery of the language of

instruction. Under such circumstances, the Popular Education Notebooks were

transformed into a technique to be applied mechanically, much like any other

instructional manual. Freire himself insisted that “experiences and practices cannot be

exported or imported. It follows that it is impossible to satisfy the request of anyone

seeking to import practices from other contexts” (Freire & Macedo, 2011, p. 157). Yet

the very architect of the literacy project was unable to implement it directly in contexts

that he did not know in sufficient depth. In this sense, Freire ultimately became another

academic specialist operating at a distance from the realities of implementation.

We conclude that this is the most important lesson that Freire offers to Timor-Leste and

to its contemporary literacy challenges: the recognition that the preparation and

professional training of teachers can never be underestimated in the implementation of

any educational theory or policy, regardless of how correct, democratic, or emancipatory

that policy may appear to be. In Timor-Leste, multilingual literacy is likely to encounter

the same difficulties and limited outcomes as bilingual literacy so long as policymakers

fail to acknowledge that the principal and most serious problem within the educational

system is the insufficient pedagogical, theoretical, and subject-matter preparation of

practicing teachers, regardless of the language in which they are expected to teach.

Without such professional preparation, no teacher will be able to educate for

emancipation, and no educator will be sufficiently critical to become an agent of

transformation.

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