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Cabral

Luis de Almeida Cabral (11 April 1931 - 30 May 2009) was the first president of Guinea-Bissau.

Biography[]

Cabral's family came from Cape Verde; he had been born in Bissau in Portuguese Guinea. He belonged to the independence movement established in 1956 as the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), like his half brother Amílcar Cabral, the renowned pan-African intellectual and founder of PAIGC. From 1963 to 1974, he led a guerrilla war against Portugal. Luis Cabral's rise to leadership began in 1973, following the assassination of Amilcar in Conakry, Guinea. Cabral, who was the leader of the party at that time, was dedicated to the fight for independence from the Portuguese rule of Guinea-Bissau (then known as Portuguese Guinea) and Cape Verde, faced Aristides Pereira, who would later become president of Cape Verde. The Guinea-Bissau branch of the party, however, followed Luis Cabral.

Following the April 1974 coup in Lisbon (Carnation Revolution) the new leftist revolutionary government of Portugal accepted the independence of Portuguese Guinea as Guinea-Bissau on September 10 of that same year, despite that the PAIGC had unilaterally proclaimed the country's independence a year earlier, and it had been recognized by many socialist and non-aligned states of the United Nations. Luis Cabral became president of Guinea-Bissau following this. A program of national reconstruction and development of socialist inspiration (with the support of the Soviet Union, China, and Nordic countries) started. However, signs of instability were present in the party since the death of Amílcar Cabral and independence. Some sections of the party accused Luis Cabral and the other members of Cape Verdean origin of dominating the party. Then, alleging this, the prime minister and former commander of the armed forces, João Bernardo Vieira, produced his downfall on November 14, 1980, in a military coup.

Luis Cabral was then arrested and put in prison for 13 months. Later, at the beginning of 1982, he was sent into exile, first in Cuba, which offered to receive him, then (in 1984) in Portugal, where the government received him and granted him conditions to live with his family.

Shortly after being appointed prime minister in the wake of Guinea-Bissau's 1998 civil war, Francisco Fadul called for Cabral's return from exile in December 1998. Cabral said in response, in the Portuguese newspaper 24 hours, that he was willing to return to the country, but not while Vieira remained in power; Vieira had said he could not guarantee Cabral's safety, and Cabral said that as a result, he feared for his life should he return while Vieira remained president. On 22 October 1999, after the fall of Vieira, the coup leader, Ansumane Mané, invited Cabral to return, granting him a passport designating him as "President of the Council of State of Guinea-Bissau" while he was still in Lisbon. He returned to Bissau in mid-November 1999, saying on this occasion that he did not want to pursue political activities or rejoin the PAIGC. Cabral would later die on 11 May 2009 of a heart attack.

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