Cabral, Amílcar Lopes

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Cabral, Amílcar Lopes
1924–1973

Born on September 12, 1924, in Bafataá, Guinea-Bissau, Amílcar Lopes Cabral was one of Africa's greatest revolutionary leaders and political thinkers. Born of a Cape Verdean father, Juvenal Cabral, and Guinean mother, Iva Pinhel Evora, his father's concerns for the environment and the conditions of Africans in Portuguese Guinea had an early influence on him.

A brilliant student, Cabral completed secondary school in Mindelo on the island of São Vicente in Cape Verde in 1943. After working with the National Printing Office from 1944, Cabral was awarded a scholarship to study at the Agronomy Institute in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1945. He graduated from the institute in 1950 as an agricultural engineer.

Like other emerging African elites during the colonial period, Cabral felt the urge to return to Africa where he felt that people needed his contribution in struggle against colonialism and nature itself. Cabral returned to Guinea-Bissau in 1952 to work for the Agricultural and Forestry Services of Portuguese Guinea after a period of apprenticeship at the Agronomy Center in Santarém, Portugal. Between 1952 and 1954, Cabral worked as an agronomist traveling throughout Guinea.

But Cabral was deeply troubled by the political condition of Portuguese Guinea, where the increasing Portuguese military contingent on the island gave rise to several conflicts with the local population. Drought and famine complicated the situation. This was the atmosphere in which Amílcar Cabral spent his early days and which may have been reflected in his decision to become an agricultural engineer.

The twenty-eight-year-old agricultural engineer did not limit his goals to his profession; he was concerned with creating awareness among the Guinean people. His work as an agronomist which gave him the opportunity to travel also helped him to obtain detailed knowledge of the Guinean land and people and in turn helped him develop a strategy for national liberation. He left a more prestigious job as a researcher at the Agronomy Center to take a job as an engineer in Guinea, from which base he aspired to the higher goal of fighting Portuguese imperialism. He used his position as the manger of the agricultural station at Pessube to interact with rural workers, including Cape Verdeans. Cabral did not distinguish between his work as a political activist and as an agricultural engineer. He raised anticolonial sentiments and consciousness among both intellectuals and rural peasants through what he called the reafricanization of the spirit. He tried to use a radio program to make Cape Verdeans aware of their conditions, but the Portuguese forbade his broadcasts.

In 1955 Cabral moved to Angola after Diogo António José Leite Pereira de Melo e Alvim, who was governor from 1954 to 1956, ordered him out of the colony. He was allowed to return once a year for family reasons. This was a period of increasing anticolonial activity in Africa. Cabral came into direct contact with the founders of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, and he became a member. In 1957 he attended a meeting in Paris to discuss strategies for the anticolonial struggle against the Portuguese. The meeting provided him the opportunity to meet with other anticolonialists. He also attended a Pan-African meeting in Ghana, among other international anticolonial conferences.

In 1959 Cabral and Aristides Pereira (b. 1923), Luís Cabral (b. 1931), Julio de Almeira, Fernando Fortes, and Elisee Turpin founded a new political party called the African Party for Independence and Union of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). This underground organization acquired legal status four years later.

Between 1960 and 1962, the PAIGC operated out of the Republic of Guinea with the objective of preparing armed militants and obtaining international support. War broke out against the Portuguese in 1962 with the aim of attaining independence for both Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde. Cabral adopted guerrilla tactics and led one of the most profound revolutionary movements in Africa. Over the course of the conflict, the PAIGC gained land.

In 1972 Cabral began to form a people's assembly in preparation for independence, but a disgruntled former associate, Inocêncio Kani, and other members of the All Guineans Party assassinated him in January 1973. Cabral provided the military and intellectual leadership for the anticolonial movement for over a decade before his assassination. When Guinea-Bissau became independent in 1974, Cabral's brother, Luís, became president (1974–1980).