Amílcar Cabral

Amílcar Cabral was an agronomist, revolutionary and political thinker from Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde who co-founded the PAIGC and led the armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule. He was assassinated in Conakry in 1973, shortly before Guinea-Bissau declared independence. Trained in Lisbon, he grounded his politics in close study of the societies he hoped to free. His speeches, collected in Return to the Source and Unity and Struggle, treat national liberation as a cultural as well as a political act.

Key ideas

• National liberation is necessarily an act of culture, because culture is a people's main form of resistance.
• The educated elite must 'return to the source', reconnecting with the culture of the masses.
• To serve the revolution, the petty bourgeoisie must commit 'class suicide' and identify with the workers and peasants.
• Theory must be drawn from the concrete reality of a society, not imported ready-made; this is the 'weapon of theory'.
• Peoples who lose control of their own productive forces are taken out of their own history.

Major works

• Return to the Source (1973)
• The Weapon of Theory (1966)
• National Liberation and Culture (1970)
• Unity and Struggle (1979)

In the Book corner

• Return to the Source 1973 · Beginner
  A short collection of speeches by the agronomist and leader of the independence movement in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, published in 1973,…

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