In an article published in the Jornal de Angola in February 2019, the poet Fernando Pessoa was accused by the PADEMA’s president of being a racist slavocrat. Luzia Moniz’s accusation, which at the time was a reaction to the fact that Pessoa’s name had been chosen by the CPLP to sponsor an academic exchange program among Lusophone countries, is based upon three loose passages, in which the presumed blemish is indisputably verified. This article offers a careful analysis of the three passages in question, and reflects upon the importance of the act of interpretation. Also, in not forgetting the context in which the texts where the passages appear, the author’s specific intentions when writing them and the relation between these texts and other Pessoa texts that help us to understand them, the article tries to discuss and question the legitimacy of this accusation.
