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

possible for previously purely strategic spots to become places of encounters, points of sociability, for example: cafés , associations, alley corners, squares. These places carry their own stories, they are significant spaces in the social organization of those who inhabit the neighbourhood ( ibid .). In this context, one argues that these were the similar conditions on which choices were based. We mean the path’s symbolic mapping taken annually by the group of Kola San , through the streets and alleys of Cova da Moura . Which brings us to the “specific founding moment” mentioned earlier (Lopes, 2020, p. 222-23). The argument around the “specific founding moments” of the group and the festivity of Kola San Jon in the Cova da Moura neighbourhood is less related to the essence of an “authentic” moment, than with the identification of relationships’ networks established amongst different individual and social actors who acted, consciously and collectively, within the community. This initiative was supported by an important social actor – the ACMJ, to encourage a festival, through which they could celebrate their cultural identity: The Kola San Jon Festivity. A process that resulted in a case which the construction of a heritage safeguarding process demonstrates an instrumental nature: to guarantee the urban qualification, and fight against social/racial discrimination to change the neighbourhood’s reality. This is an authentic objective, although it proposes a quite different image of Colá Son Jon in Santo Antão island. b) Colá Son Jon de Porto Novo In this paper, Colá Son Jon de Porto Novo festivities act as a comparative background that works as framework, not exclusive, to be modulated or falsified. Other similar festivities pertaining to the Cape Verdean Creole universe, such “F esta das Bandeirsas ” (Flag’s Festivity) and tabancas , are also considered. However, at this moment we are less interested in the description of the Colá Son Jon festivities (Lopes, 2017), than understanding the historical aspects and social, economic, political and religious factors that influenced the construction of the famous festivities since they existed before the foundation of the city of Porto Novo itself. c) What do historical narratives tell us (written archives) The island of Santo Antão is at the northwest of the archipelago, and it was discovered in 1462. However, it was populated only in 1548. The main settlements were initially established in the island’s north and northeast, in the village of Maria Pia (now Ponta do Sol) and in the village of Santa Cruz ( puvoson ). For a long time, the mountain range that separates the northern region from the island’s southern region was considered insurmountable. The island was governed by a Captain Donatory, equipped with overseers, with wide administrative, legal, and economic powers, over the entire community. It was mostly populated by enslaved people captured on the Guinea Coast, some Europeans (around a dozen) and elite mestizos from the islands of Santiago and Fogo, which, at that time, were already populated (cf. Cabral, 2015). Among the great contradictions and gaps that permeate the private and official narratives about Cabo Verde islands by Portuguese and Brazilian authorities and adventurers (cf. Santos, 2017), it seems that the island of Santo Antão was the most punished by the starvation cycles and the consequent scourges that plagued the Cape Verdean archipelago until the middle of the 20 th century. We argue that the starvation cycles experienced by the island’s population, are pervaded by a mysterious foggy ve il and a mountain range of obstacles of all kinds 16 16 When assessing the number of victims, in relation to the total population to assess its importance, Cabral shows that in the periods of crisis of the 18th century, hunger claimed 50% of the population of the islands. Among cyclical crises, which occurred between periods of approximately two decades, we have a peak of 40% at the end of the 19th century and 35% in the last crisis of the 20th century. Cabral demonstrates that in 223 years (1747-1970) the people of Cape Verde lived more than half a century of hunger, with a total number of victims higher than the population of the archipelago in the 1970s. In the 20th century, the country suffered 21 years of hunger, having lost in each of the “great famines” (precisely those that will coincide with the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars), between 15% and 35% of the population. In every four years of the last two centuries of Portuguese domination, the Cape Verdean man who lived in a permanent state of “specific hunger”, suffered a year of “total hunger”. Thus, in his fierce denunciation of Portuguese colonial imperialist forces, Cabral reiterated then: “this is yet another denial of the so- called civilizing and Christian work of Portugal in Africa” (CABRAL, 2015 p. 140). . If, on the one hand, subsistence agricultural production was conditioned by drought cycles and torrential rains, on the other, when there was agricultural production, due to the lack of roads, but mainly, due to the island’s topology, there was no mobility of goods in an intensity that could transform the island's economic conditions (Évora, 2005, p.35). It is worth arguing that the reasons encouraging the settlement of Cabo Verde islands were strictly economic. Hence, it is wiser admitting that the weight of the crime against humanity, which resulted from the initial activities of the colonists from the Iberian Peninsula, took place under the Portuguese Crown Royal Charter of 1466. This charter, allowed the creation of Treasury and Judiciary Offices, granted “absolute rights” over Africans and secured an exclusive license to trade on the adjacent coast (Rodney, 1970). It should be noted that while the Crown encouraged the settlement of islands and archipelagos, it strictly prohibited the presence of European traders on the coast of the continent. If this were not the case, most settlers of European descent that could be found off the coast of Guinea, although their presence there was illegal, were from the Cabo Verde islands. Volume XXI Issue V Version I 10 ( ) 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