Batepá massacre

The Batepá massacre occurred on 3 February 1953 in São Tomé when hundreds of native creoles known as forros were massacred by the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners. Many forros believed the government intended to force them to work as contract laborers, to which they objected. In response, the governor blamed the unrest on communists and ordered the military to round up such individuals and for civilians to protect themselves. This quickly turned into a bloodbath, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of forros. No communist conspiracy was ever proven.

Carlos Gorgulho assumed office as governor in 1945. At the time São Tomé Island was one of the world's largest producers of cocoa. Large plantations, called roças, occupied the majority of the island's farmland. The roças operated as a quasi-feudal system using contract laborers (serviçais) from mainland Africa and Cape Verde. The forros had always refused manual field work on the estates, since they considered it slave labor. In Gorgulho's assessment the economic modernization polices of the Portuguese Estado Novo regime required breaking São Tomé's dependence on contract laborers from overseas. To accomplish this Gorgulho implemented policies to make it easier for serviçais to return home while at the same time improving conditions on the roças, which he hoped would attract local labor. He also introduced measures targeting the livelihood of the forros such as prohibiting the sale of palm wine and the locally produced gin and raising the poll tax from 30 to 90 escudos; Gorgulho believed these measures would result in the forros taking up wage labor on the roças.

Gorgulho also faced a shortage of labor to carry out his public works and construction projects. The colonial administration used police raids to kidnap people for forced labor gangs to carry out much of this work.

Faced with widespread labor shortages, in 1952 the colonial administration proposed settling fifteen thousand people from Cape Verde on São Tomé; then in January 1953 rumors spread that the government would seize the land of the forros to give to newly arrived Cape Verdians and compel the forros to work as contract labor. On February 2, 1953, hand-written pamphlets appeared in São Tomé threatening to kill anyone who contracted forros as laborers. The government responded with on official declaration: "The government has been informed that individuals who are hostile towards the present policy, known as communists, are spreading tendentious rumors to the effect that the creoles are to be obliged to contract themselves for the work on the roças like serviçais. The government declares that no creole should give credit to these rumors, but should report such individuals to the police. Thus, the government which has the obligation to protect the creoles, as it has always demonstrated, guarantees them that it will never agree to authorize such contracts." Crowds of protestors gathered on February 3 and the police killed one of them, Manuel da Conceição Soares. His death precipitated a large protest in Trindade the following day.