Diverse unity: creole contributions to interethnic integration in Guinea-Bissau

The paper explores how creole categories of people who have constituted a small but influential minority in Guinea-Bissau for centuries contributed to a countrywide, integrated national culture since the eve of independence in 1974. Since independence, several cultural representations previously exclusive to creole communities have been driven by the nationalist independence movement and the early postcolonial state transformed into representations of a new national culture, crossing ethnic and religious boundaries. The fact that creole identity and culture had been transethnic i.e. creole identity brings together individuals of heterogeneous cultural, ethnic and geographic descent during the colonial period, has fostered in postcolonial times the countrywide spread of previously exclusively creole cultural features. I argue that this transethnicisation of creole cultural representations has unified Bissau-Guineans across ethnic lines, causing a strong commitment with their nation from below.