Toggle menu
Toggle personal menu
Not logged in
Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits.

Amílcar Cabral

From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia
More languages
Amílcar Cabral
Born12 September 1924
Bafatá, Portuguese Guinea
Died20 January 1973
Conakry, Guinea
Cause of deathMurder by Portuguese colonialists
Political orientationScientific socialism
Pan-Africanism
Black nationalism
Political partyAfrican Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cabe Verde


Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral (12 September 1924 – 20 January 1973) was a Bissau-Guinean national liberation leader and pan-African revolutionary. Following his murder by traitorous elements of his movement, the Second Congress of the PAIGC elected Aristides Pereira as secretary-general of the party.[1][2]

Early life[edit | edit source]

Cabral was born to a Cape Verdean family in Bafatá in the colony of Guinea in 1924. He completed elementary school on the island of Santiago in Cape Verde and attended São Vicente High School from 1938 to 1944, where he presided over the students' association and played soccer. He moved to Portugal in 1945 to study in Lisbon. He went to the same school as Agostinho Neto and demonstrated against NATO and the Portuguese fascist regime. He returned to Guinea after completing his degree and joined the Guinea Agricultural and Forestry Services in 1952.[3]

Political career[edit | edit source]

Cabral tried to start a recreational association in Guinea in 1954, but the colonial authorities shut it down. He frequently traveled to Portugal and Angola and founded the African Independence Party, which later became the PAIGC, in 1956. He left Lisbon for the last time in 1960 and set up the PAIGC headquarters in the Republic of Guinea. He began the armed independence struggle in 1963 with an attack on the barracks of Tite.[3] In 1964, he attended the second meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cairo.[4] Portugal assassinated him in 1973 but failed to stop the national liberation movement.[3]

References[edit | edit source]