Global Journal of Human Social Science, C: Sociology and Culture, Volume 21 Issue 5

own association in order to face an older population in the neighbourhood, ethnically Portuguese, to whom the urgency of their needs was not an option (Cuberos- Gallardo , 2017, p. 245). In this context, the association favoured a healthy confluence of factors enabling the population to activate a process of self-organization in which lack of material infrastructure was systematically paired with the claim of its differentiated cultural identity - the Cape Verde traditions. At this point, we argue that as a phenomenon historically built of resistance to the constraints imposed by the host society in several segregation dimensions: residential; educational; political; religious; citizenship; and, in relation to the alienation of labour rights, the practice of popular traditions originating in Cabo Verde’s archipelago, such as batuko (RIBEIRO, 2012), funaná , as sound dimensions of tabanca (CIDRA, 2011; TRAJANO FILHO, 2016 ) 4 This essay focuses on the festivities of Kola San Jon , organized, and carried out by residents in the neighbourhood of Cova da Moura since 1991. They were recognized as ICH in Portugal, in 2013. In this wake, the festivities of Colá Son Jon in Porto Novo , Santo Antão – on the Cabo Verde islands – are staged as a comparative background and, at one time, reproducing a secular cyclical phenomenon that pervades the entire construction process of Porto Novo Municipality and spreads through Cape Verdean Diaspora or the São João festivities (MIGUEL, 2010; 2016; QUEIROZ, 2019; LOPES, 2017; 2020) are strategies forged within ACMJ to represent migrant communities. Such practices have been adopted during the struggling process for visibility waged by social and cultural movements. 5 4 Cape Verdean musical genres from Santiago: a) batuko , considered the oldest Cape Verdean cultural manifestation, has records from the 18th century. A performative practice, essentially feminine, involving music and dance, with poetic components and the use of collective singing and percussion; b) funaná , a musical genre created during the 20th century, belonging, like batuko, to the sound dimension of the ritual of tabanca and characterized by the experience of the populations of the interior of the island of Santiago. Since National Independence (1975), funaná has been a source of inspiration for musicians living in the diaspora with a biographical connection to their traditional context (CIDRA, 2011, p. 6). For more information on tabanca see Trajano Filho (2016). 5 It is worth to warn the reader on the approach adopted in this text. It does not directly affect the festivities of Kolá San Jon de Rª de Julión , on the island of São Vicente, nor Colá San Djon de Praia Branca , on the island of São Nicolau, although it constantly refers to them. . The research methodology adopted in this work does not deal with the perspective of linear progress, but seeks to build its arguments through a cyclical historical context, in which critical phases end cycles that, in turn, will necessarily be followed by a phase of social resilience: a decolonizing cycle of construction. From this historical perspective we seek to identify, amongst the countless troubled episodes that occurred since the late 1970s, and throughout the 1980s and 90s, other narratives that describe the violent and explicit processes, involving the demolition of houses in Cova da Moura and the consequent abandonment of unprotected families. At the same time, we try to learn about the creative (re) construction skills developed by the increasing resident population, whose collective construction activities supplanted the municipality's capacity for inspection and demolition. Mr. Ribeiro, coordinator of the Kola San Jon group, refers to “intruders”. Once, I asked him why he used that word, he explained that these were elements that used to come to the neighbourhood to carry out demolitions, without the residents knowing exactly to whom responsibility those destructive acts should be credited. It is possible that public officials would be secretly involved in negotiations that fuelled a greater cycle of political clientelism. Mr. Ribeiro confirms an episode written elsewhere, which mentions a violent demolition action that brought down sixteen houses at once. The residents mobilized and claimed the creation of a residents’ committee in 1979. Before that, according to the Kola San Jon member, there were attempts, but the immigrant residents had not been allowed to represent themselves by a committee of residents. In Portugal, the implementation of public policies aimed at migrant populations have been neglected for an awfully long time. Suppression of rights and/or exacerbation of inherent requirements for granting them at the local level, were related to the legacy inherited from the Estado Novo ’s political system, namely: “the weak penetration of the state apparatus in certain areas of the administrative structure and the ubiquity of informal relations in the elaboration of local policies” (RUIVO, 1993 apud HORTA, 2000, p. 103). Twenty years have passed since researching carried out by Horta (2000), in which, the local nature of institutional responses (Municipality of Amadora ) to the African immigration process was investigated. By that time, Horta alerted to the complex and contradictory nature of the production and implementation practices of those policies. She denounced that national integration policies had been appropriated and reformulated at the local level in a configuration, according to which power structures not only shaped the patterns of integration of immigrants, but also imposed specific profiles of subjectivity, while marginalizing others. Horta also focused on the emergence of deterritorialized association processes and the ways in which they influenced the development of policies and collective patterns of immigrants’ organization (2000, p. 97). ACMJ, while emerging as an entity that clashes with the “old ways of doing politics” established an atmosphere of tension with prior manners of dealing Volume XXI Issue V Version I 4 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2021 C © 2021 Global Journals Kola San Jon De Cova Da Moura : An Instrumental Case of Intangible Cultural Heritage Safeguarding in the African Diaspora in Portugal