Mozambique is not a factory of corpses

The author begins by describing a Sunday morning in Lisbon, where a street is named after Quelimane, a city in Mozambique. This personal reflection quickly pivots to a stark critique of Mozambique, a country the author feels is unfairly stereotyped as inherently violent.

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Is it with a bullet in the heart that one crowns those who do good, in Mozambique?

The piece then delves into the disturbing reality of violence in Mozambique, which the author likens to a "strange industry of death." This industry, operating invisibly, produces the demise of good people with alarming speed. The author lists several prominent figures who have been killed in recent years, including constitutionalist Gilles Cistac, judge Silica, Mahamudo Amurane (mayor of Nampula), Anastácio Matavele, lawyer Elvino Dias, filmmaker Paulo Guambe, and most recently, Bishop Dom Osório Citora Afonso of Quelimane.

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My country, which for 50 years has been balancing on the rubble of underdevelopment and trying to polish a violence that shines brighter with each blink of an eye, has built a strange industry. An industry of death.

This pattern of violence, the author argues, overshadows the country's potential and the inherent kindness of its people. The author laments that Mozambique, which has been striving for progress for 50 years amidst the ruins of underdevelopment, seems to be increasingly defined by a violence that shines brighter with each passing moment. The killing of Bishop Afonso is presented not just as the loss of a religious leader, but as the silencing of a person dedicated to the gospel, the common good, and peace.

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Factories invisible that produce the death of good men with industrial speed, as if they were candies: manufactured, packaged, distributed through the markets of our pain.