Claridade (Portuguese for "light") was a literary review inaugurated in 1936 in the city of Mindelo on the island of São Vicente, Cape Verde. It was part of a movement of cultural, social, and political emancipations of the Cape Verdean society. The founding contributors were Manuel Lopes, Baltasar Lopes da Silva, who used the poetic pseudonym of Osvaldo Alcântara, and Jorge Barbosa, born in the Islands of São Nicolau, Santiago and São Vicente, respectively. The magazine followed the steps of the Portuguese neorealist writers, and contributed to the building of "Cape Verdeanity", an autonomous cultural identity for the archipelago. Claridade revolutionized Cape Verdean literature. It set new standards of literary aesthetics and language, overcoming the conflict between Portuguese Romanticism—dominant during the 19th century—and the New Realism. Its founders aimed to free Cape Verdean writers from the Portuguese canons, awaken the Cape Verdean collective conscience and recover local cultural elements that had long been repressed by Portuguese colonialism, such as Cape Verdean Creole. The project was a facet of the political and ideological unrest that existed in Cape Verde in the 1930s during Salazar's fascist regime, caused by widespread misery and colonial mismanagement, and exacerbated by severe droughts. Claridade'''s editors had to deal with the Portuguese colonial censorship system and the surveillance of PIDE (International and State Defence Police). Subversive activities could lead to torture and to the political prison of Tarrafal, on the Island of Santiago. The founders of Claridade had considered creating a newspaper, but found the required deposit of 50 thousand Portuguese escudos excessive, and settled for a magazine. The title reflected the hope that the publication would become an intellectual "beacon". Its founding can be viewed in the context of nineteenth century liberalism. Origin of the name The name of the review was inspired by the French book Clarté by Henri Barbusse, later another review and a peace group were later made with the Argentine review Claridad Endogenous and exogenous elements Prior to the foundation of Claridade, certain literary and cultural elements had been developed both within and outside of Cape Verde, which to some extent influenced directly or indirectly the magazine. As the endogenous factors, stood out: During the 'pre-Claridade' generation, later named classical-romantic generation, the three literary and cultural figures of Cape Verde, Eugénio Tavares, Pedro Cardoso and José Lopes, from the Islands of Brava, Fogo, and São Nicolau, respectively, contributed immensely to the appreciation