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This article engages Goan diasporic dynamism in littoral East Africa – Mozambique and Zanzibar, respectively. It begins by considering a series of images taken by Mozambican photographer Ricardo Rangel, that of a rural Goan fishing community living across the bay from Lourenço Marques (present day Maputo), in the small village of Catembe in the early 1970s on the eve of Portuguese decolonisation. It then places this photo archive in dialogue with one compiled by Ranchhod Oza, of Capital Art Studio in Stone Town, Zanzibar, with a focus on his visual representations of a minority Goan community during the 1950's that took up positions as tailors and bakers (and photographers) in this urban setting that was once a thriving centre of cosmopolitanism and global trade. That both of these communities are the product of Indian oceanic circuits of exchange mobility will suggest the role that understudied minority communities had in forming port cities scattered across littoral Africa. Using these visual bodies to think about intersections and divergences of representations of Goan-ness in two distinct locations and timeframes, the article brings new cultural forms, i.e. the visual, to the fore for elaborating on the (Goan) African everyday, expressive moments captured on film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trained as a photojournalist, Ricardo Rangel (1924–2009) has contributed some of Mozambique's most iconic images, even as many of his colonial-era photographs were banned or destroyed by Portuguese censors. In this article, using the concept of the archive as less a repository than a process, I delve into his photographic collection that, for me, speaks so cogently about Mozambican society during the last years of Portuguese colonialism (1961–1975), both in its representational aspects as well as its ability to generate critical commentary and insight. I focus on three themed sets of his photographs, that I engage with in my writings on Portuguese Mozambique, as a form of ‘auto-ethnographic’ intervention (Ellis, Adams and Bochner 2011; Russell 1999). Framing my discussion of Rangel's images (and imaginary) as a form of ‘intimate exposure’ (Bystrom and Nuttall 2013: 308), I explore photography's potential to suggest the contours of individual lives and experiences on the cusp of colonial independence and which, in turn, can be used to build a Mozambican public–private archive, thus contributing to its collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Every year on 29 June members of an immigrant Goan fishing community living in the port of Catembe (Mozambique) gather for a religious ceremony at a designated spot on the shore overlooking the Indian Ocean with Maputo's skyline as a backdrop. They pray to São Pedro (Catholic St Peter) to bless their boats for the coming fishing season. Afterwards, they take out their highly decorated vessels, very often dedicated to Catholic patron saints, into Maputo Bay for a maritime procession. This essay takes as its entry port this ritualized annual event to look more closely at religious connectivities between India and East Africa, via Portuguese colonizing and conversion processes, and across the Indian Ocean. That this rite of passage has endured over four generations for this ‘littoral’ Catholic Goan community, one that largely relies on commercial prawn fishing as a way of life, suggests the power of religious practices, including the Catholic pantheon of saints, to migrate alongside persons. That this feast day celebration takes place at the oceanfront, the place they originally arrived as migrants from Portuguese India by ship at the turn of the twentieth century, suggests the ways in which Catholic religiosity is used to commemorate Goan migration and culture simultaneously. Lastly, that this maritime parade is dedicated exclusively to St Peter, the Catholic patron saint of fishermen the world over, suggests the importance of fishing – not only as a means of economic livelihood, but also as a source for community solidarity and social reproduction – in the daily lives of this dynamic diasporic group that presently numbers approximately one hundred families. Ethnography, literature and photography are used as forms of postcolonial intervention in carving out old and new (Indian) oceanic geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a case study of Goan Mozambicans - a diasporic group created out of the itinerant quality that characterized Portuguese (de)colonization in the Indian Ocean. Many chose to emigrate from Portuguese India to Portuguese Africa between the 1920s and 1950s. That some Goans chose to stay while others left in the aftermath of Mozambican independence (1975) is also tied to this migratory history. An ethnographic life history approach is employed to access individual varied experiences of migration. Findings will suggest that Goan Mozambicans occupied an ambiguous position in the colonial order of things, and identify them as local cosmopolitans in postcolonial Mozambique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]