and Acknowledgments
Early Childhood in Portuguese Guinea, 1924–32
Schooling and Adolescence in Cabo Verde, 1932–45
Higher Education and Political Militancy in Portugal, 1945–52
Colonial Service and Anticolonial Activities, 1952–56
Passive Resistance and War Preparations, 1956–63
The Liberation of Portuguese Guinea, 1963–73
7. Solidarity with “Every Just Cause”
Pan-Africanism and Internationalism in Action
The Assassination of Amílcar Cabral, 20 January 1973
The Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde, 1973–75
Illustrations
Maps
1. Portuguese Guinea, ca. 1960
Figures
1. Cabral the revolutionary theoretician
2. Cabral in pensive mood as the war intensified during the early 1970s
3. Cabral the consummate freedom advocate
Preface and Acknowledgments
The assassination of Amílcar Cabral, the charismatic leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cabo Verde (PAIGC), on 20 January 1973, and the unilateral declaration of the independence of Guinea-Bissau by his liberation movement eight months later, were critical turning points that greatly sharpened my political consciousness. I was born in Gambia, West Africa, during the terminal period of British colonial rule. Both my parents were natives of Guinea-Bissau, then called Portuguese Guinea, located about four hundred miles south. Like thousands of others before them, they left their homeland to escape the harsher colonial order there characterized by forced labor and corporal punishment. While the Portuguese were not the only European colonizers in Africa to maintain the pax colonica by brutal repression, they were nevertheless the last to formally end it, in 1961, following the uprisings in Angola that signaled the beginning of armed national liberation struggle there.
Growing up in Gambia before the start of the war of independence in Guinea-Bissau, I heard numerous stories from newly arrived family members of colonial abuse and violence meted out to the majority of the population, contemptuously called gentios (heathens). As a student in England during the 1970s, I keenly followed the unfolding brutal war that became known as “Portugal’s Vietnam” because of the huge Portuguese troop concentration, the dropping of napalm and white phosphorous bombs, and the removing and resettling of villagers in heavily guarded camps fenced by barbed wire. I also kept abreast of the development of the armed struggle by way of publications obtained from the Mozambique Angola Guiné Information Centre (MAGIC) in London and presentations by Basil Davidson at the Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham, England, where I was a politically active graduate student.
The remarkable achievements of Cabral, who was an accomplished agronomist, an ardent nationalist, an astute diplomat, a brilliant military strategist, a committed Pan-Africanist, and an outspoken internationalist, became an enduring source of inspiration for me. As a revolutionary leader, Cabral remains as significant as his celebrated contemporaries, notably Mao Zedong, Frantz Fanon, Fidel Castro, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
A lot has been written about Cabral. Many of the studies are excellent scholarly analyses of him as a revolutionary theoretician and practitioner and of his achievements and legacy. In the English-speaking world, the pioneering work of Basil Davidson, The Liberation of Guiné: Aspects of an African Revolution (1969), inspired or provoked such studies as Amílcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War (1983) by Patrick Chabal, Amílcar Cabral’s Revolutionary Theory and Practice: A Critical Guide (1991) by Ronald H. Chilcote, and Warriors at Work: How Guinea Was Really Set Free
