Amílcar Cabral



Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral (12 September 1924 – 20 January 1973) was a Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean agricultural engineer, pan-Africanist, intellectual, poet, theoretician, revolutionary, political organizer, nationalist and diplomat. He was one of Africa's foremost anti-colonial leaders.

Quotes about Amílcar Cabral

 * He was a Cape Verdean agronomist, born in Guinea in 1924, and educated in Portugal where he had been a brilliant student. He was at the time regarded as a young and promising engineer. He had published widely in his field and was highly regarded by his Portuguese colleagues. Unknown to them, however, he had steeped himself into political and social literature while a student in Lisbon. He had become thoroughly acquainted with the cultural movements (most notably Negritude) which had led so many privileged and educated young Africans to 'return to their African roots'. Unlike many, however, he had become determined to go beyond this cultural revolt and to seek an end to colonialism by political means.
 * Patrick Chabal, “National Liberation in Portuguese Guinea, 1956-1974,” African Affairs 80, no. 318 (1991): 75-9 9. Quoted by Bruce Gilley, "The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics", 1981, p. 124.


 * What we need is a collective practice in which investigating and shedding privilege is seen as reclaiming connection, mending relationships broken by the system, and is framed as gain, not loss. Amílcar Cabral, leader of Guinea-Bissau's war of independence from Portuguese colonial rule, called it "class suicide," meaning to die to one's class position by irrevocably aligning oneself with the interests of the oppressed. Cuban revolutionary José Martí put it more positively and poetically in the poem that became the popular song "Guantanamera": "I want to throw in my lot with the poor of the earth. The little mountain stream pleases me more than the sea."
 * Aurora Levins Morales Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals (2019 edition)