From US-educated anthropologist to founder of Mozambique's liberation front
“Although I loved university life above all, I decided to devote the rest of my life to the war of liberation of my country, until it receives independence!”
A Mozambican anthropologist who earned his PhD in the United States, he gave up an academic career to fuse rival liberation groups into the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO). As its first president he launched the 1964 armed struggle and set the movement toward a socialist line, leading it until his assassination in 1969, six years before independence.
Career timeline
1953BA in anthropology and sociology, Oberlin College
1955MA, Northwestern University
1957–1961Research officer, UN Trusteeship Department; field research across Africa
1960PhD in anthropology, Northwestern University, under Melville J. Herskovits
1961–1963Assistant professor, Syracuse University; helped develop East African Studies Program
1962FRELIMO founded; elected first president
1964Launches armed liberation struggle against Portuguese colonial rule (25 September)
1968Second FRELIMO Congress adopts socialist line, protracted war strategy; re-elected president
1969.2.3Assassinated by letter bomb in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
From agronomist to master theorist of African liberation
“Tell no lies. Claim no easy victories.” — party watchword, 1965
Anti-colonial revolutionary of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde and founder of the PAIGC. An agronomist who learned the colony by walking it village by village, he fused armed struggle with cultural liberation into an original strategy against Portuguese rule. Assassinated in 1973 on the eve of the independence he had made inevitable.
Career timeline
1945–1952Agronomy in Lisbon; organizes African nationalist student circles
1952–1954Agricultural census of Portuguese Guinea — learns the country village by village
1956Founds the PAIGC
1963–1973Leads the liberation war; schools and clinics in the freed zones
1966Presented The Weapon of Theory at the first Tricontinental Conference
1973.1Assassinated in Conakry, months before independence
Portuguese historian of the colonial war and of Angola's 1977 purge
Died in Lisbon on 30 October 2014; her husband and co-author Álvaro Mateus had died about a year earlier, in August 2013.
Portuguese historian. Born in Viana do Castelo in 1952; she died in Lisbon on 30 October 2014. Her research covered Portuguese colonialism, the colonial war and the political police; her doctoral work became A PIDE/DGS na guerra colonial 1961-1974 (2004), a reference study showing the PIDE was more brutal than assumed, worked closely with the Army in the colonies, and persisted in Africa after being dissolved in Portugal itself, siding with those who obstructed decolonisation. With her husband and co-author Álvaro Mateus (a former PCP militant, d. 2013) she published on Angola and Mozambique, including Purga em Angola (2007) on 27 May 1977, in which she held President Agostinho Neto responsible for the killing of Nito Alves's supporters. She interviewed former political prisoners; recordings and transcripts are held at the Torre do Tombo.
Career timeline
1952Born in Viana do Castelo, Portugal
2004Published her doctoral research as A PIDE/DGS na guerra colonial 1961-1974
2007Co-authored Purga em Angola with Álvaro Mateus
