Emblematic

With presidential elections on Monday, the office has been hit by a wave of elections swag - posters, brochures, etc. I was checking out the bumper sticker tonight ("Vote: Your vote decides your nation and your future") and noticed the controversial new state emblem in the left corner.

The AK-47-clad emblem or coat of arms has been well described on blogs; it was Tumbleweed's post (21 March) that sparked a conversation with my mom in which I claimed that at least one national flag featured an AK-47.

It turns out that flag is Mozambique's.

For those not hip to Portuguese history, Mozambique was, like Timor Leste, a Portuguese colony. Mozambique gained independence in 1975 following the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, bringing an end to a decade-long fight between the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO) guerilla forces in the north and the Portuguese administration.*

After independence, FRELIMO carried its AK-47 symbol over into the Mozambique’s flag. A similar process took place in Timor Leste, with the National Council for Timorese Resistance (CNRT) - an umbrella pro-independence political group founded in 1998 – sticking its logo in the center of Timor Leste's first national seal. I do not know the origin of the new AK-47 design.

More than disgust or outrage, I have found myself fascinated by the choice as pseudo-historical performance or as aspirational. The AK-47 was the weapon of the Indonesian military. The AK-47 was the weapon distributed to Timorese militias during the devastating 1999 Indonesian pullout. Perhaps its prominence is a form of appropriation – take what hurt you most and claim it as your own.

Alternately, the AK-47 could shout solidarity. According to the New York Times, Mozambique’s flag has repeatedly withstood efforts to lose the gun (and star). The resistance movement and its symbols, the 2005 Times article suggests, still represent a time when the fractured nation was unified.

Timor Leste continues to struggle to mainstream and honor its recent, brutal past. For example, the military is known as the F-FDTL, which, once its nesting acronyms are unpacked, stands for the Armed Forces for the Liberation of East Timor-East Timor Armed Forces. Why the redundancy? To acknowledge the resistance fighters (the Armed Forces for the Liberation of East Timor or FALINTIL) and merge them – at least, titularly – into the new military structure.

The new coat of arms is the visual analog – an inelegant, forceful attempt to include an increasingly anachronistic** symbol of the 25-year guerilla resistance movement into the (visual) discourse of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste.

So between the puzzle of tiny AK-47s on election bumper stickers and the cats living in my ceiling, this place is causing me to forget my laundry and keeps me up way too late at night.

Still to ponder: Campaign posters featuring J-Lo (no joke, pending photo).



* The histories of Timor Leste and Mozambique intertwine; Timorese leaders, including the present and former PMs, spent time in Maputo both before and after Mozambique’s independence.

** The FALINTIL resistance fighters are almost all too old to fit within the F-FDTL’s narrow age requirement.