International shaping of a nationalist imagery? Robert van Lierop, Eduardo Mondlane and a luta continua

In 1967, two opponents of United States foreign policy met by chance in Nairobi, at a dinner that an exiled African National Congress (ANC) activist couple was hosting in their flat: Robert van Lierop, a young African-American lawyer, anti-Vietnam campaigner, and active member of the radical strain of the US civil rights movement, and Eduardo Mondlane, President of the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO), the armed movement that was directly challenging colonial rule over Mozambique by one of the United States’ NATO allies, Portugal’s autocratic Estado Novo (‘New State’).2 By the end of dinner, an enduring collaboration between these two strangers had been born. When van Lierop landed in Dar es Salaam two days later, Mondlane would introduce him to the inner workings of FRELIMO’s Department of Information and Propaganda (DIP). The young lawyer would go on to become one of Mondlane’s principal collaborators in the mobilization of American public opinion against the United States’ backing of Portugal. Five years later, this transatlantic collaboration materialized in what would become one of FRELIMO’s most famous propaganda films. The utopian representation of FRELIMO’s armed struggle in 1972’s A luta continua (‘The Struggle Continues’) proved to be the most effective mean of winning the hearts and minds of American audiences.