Children with machine guns. Boys with toy guns. Infants slung over armed mothers. The militarization of childhood takes on many different visual forms. During a recent research trip to the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (IISG) [International Institute of Social History] in Amsterdam, I came across all these images. I initially visited IISG at the recommendation of an intellectual collaborator, historian, and friend, Lennart Bolliger. He located previously stumbled upon an image of the father of a mutual friend and coauthor, Dino Estevao, crossing the Angolan-Namibian border in the midst of armed conflict. Beyond searching for this photograph, I entered their photographic archives with an open mind.
As I examined hundreds of images spanning twentieth century Angola, themes of militarism and the militarization of children seamlessly connected materials from colonial to postcolonial rule. In some instances, the imprint of militarization took on subterranean forms. Often not. Given my previous research with former Flechas, San counterinsurgent forces conscripted into the Portuguese colonial forces in the late 60s and 70s, I was unsurprised to see militarized children from the colonial era. Admittedly, even naively, I was caught off guard by the ubiquity of children with or proximate to firearms in images produced by liberation movements-cum-competitors for state power. From Algeria to Namibia, whether through the provision of healthcare or education, liberation movements often tried to present themselves as governments-in-waiting. From today’s vantage point, the presentation of children with or near weapons would seem to run counter to these objectives.
Yet, liberation movements staged and disseminated images of militarized children and youth. For the purposes of illustration, I’ll briefly describe two pre-independence images from the Komitee Zuidelijk Afrika/Mondlane StichtingPhoto Collection at IISG in a folder with images from the armed forces of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) [People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola]. Both are noted as originating between 1962-1974. Annotated “MPLA” on the backside, the first image features a mother standing in front of thatch structure, AK-47 in hand, a baby is tucked in the inset under her left arm. The baby’s left hand resting on the gun’s barrel while their right hand, almost mimicking their mother, reaches over the top of the gun, towards the dust cover. The second image, also annotated “MPLA” on the backside, also includes an official stamp from the MPLA’s Departamento de Informação e Propaganda [Department of Information and Propaganda]. This image features a young boy raising what appears to be the party flag in the foreground while behind him, four boys, who appear slightly older, stand upright, in formation, presenting arms.
Each image provokes a wide range of questions in and of themselves. However, I will conclude by reflecting on the ubiquity of such images. Why might a liberation movement pose and stage their children and youth with arms? Today, most observers would view these images as a rejection of the political sovereign—in this case, the MPLA’s—legitimacy. However, norms and with them, strategies, change, and do so rapidly. As these images, and similar material I identified up to the late 1970s suggest, presenting children and youth with weapons offered a mode of legitimation precisely through the cause of popular, anticolonial struggle; in forging a new society, everyone had their role to play. As Samuel Moyn argues, human rights only became a cause célèbre out of the crisis of postcolonialism—as the “final” far more modest utopia left standing in the ashes of unrealized Cold War utopian visions. Thus, the concern over “child soldiers” also emerged in light of this collapse as well. These images constitute artifacts of a time and place in which conscripting children and youth, both militarily and visually, into popular struggle offered a political currency rather than a liability.