The article studies two processes related to the intellectual elites' constitution in Cabo Verde: the dispute between the several versions about the islands' cultural identity and the questioning concerning political and cultural mediation, this dispute meaning how different kinds of thought (political and literary) are articulated inside the relation between the cultural producer role and the political and cultural mediation condition. In Cabo Verde, this political-cultural mediator condition has been disputed, throughout this century, by groups who define themselves as intellectuals. Besides demonstrating the arbitrary characteristic concerning the invention of the national "essence" exemplified by the "cabo-verdianidade", it is intended here to establish a correlation between the attempts of legitimizing different versions of national identity and the constitution of a mediation space between the local cultural multiplicity and the official thought about national identity, which gives material and symbolic profit to those who are included in this dispute.
Identity; intellectual elites; political mediation; Cabo Verde; Africa