Activities and affiliations

Military command Angola state institutions 1933–2000 ○ Natural causes

Founder of Angola's People's Armed Forces and its first Defence Minister

After the October 1976 plenum, Carreira officially declared that "for the MPLA, the only socialism that exists is the socialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin, scientific socialism."

First Defence Minister of independent Angola, founder and commander-in-chief of the People's Armed Forces (FAPLA), and the MPLA's military strategist second only to Agostinho Neto. After the October 1976 Central Committee plenum he officially declared that 'for the MPLA, the only socialism that exists is the socialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin, scientific socialism,' marking the party's adoption of Marxism-Leninism. He directed the suppression of the 1977 Nitista uprising and its military tribunals, but lost power after Neto's death in 1979 and spent his last years denouncing Angola's 'savage capitalism.'

Military command Angola state institutions 1939–1977 ✕ Executed after capture; exact date unconfirmed

Angolan political-military leader and co-leader of the Nitista current with Nito Alves

On 20-21 May 1977 the MPLA Central Committee removed him and Nito Alves on fractionism charges; the abortive coup of 27 May followed.

An Angolan soldier, politician and anticolonial ideologue. Influenced by his Marxist-oriented family, he abandoned medical studies for the MPLA, coordinated its clandestine Luanda committee, and was nicknamed 'Filósofo'. In January 1970 he enlisted in the Portuguese colonial army on a military-intelligence mission to seize weapons and was imprisoned until the Carnation Revolution freed him in 1974. Elected the youngest Central Committee member at the July 1974 Lundoji conference, he was named FAPLA national political commissioner and deputy chief of staff in March 1975. He attended the 25th CPSU Congress with Nito Alves and was a leader of the orthodox-communist Nitista current. Removed in May 1977, he was captured and executed.

Military command Angola state institutions 1945–1977 ✕ Executed (failed coup)

The radical MPLA interior minister who sought Soviet backing only to die in a failed coup

At the 1977 Central Committee he declared, 'As for me, I am the revolution incarnate,' demanding the immediate resignation of the leadership.

Nito Alves was the first interior minister of Angola and leader of the radical 'Nitista' faction within the MPLA. A guerrilla commander in the Dembos region during the independence war, he won the interior ministry at independence and used it to plant loyalists throughout the new state apparatus. In March 1976 he led Angola's delegation to the 25th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, presenting himself as head of the 'purely Marxist-Leninist wing' to win Soviet backing, which pushed Neto's leadership to adopt Marxism-Leninism formally. After the failed coup of May 1977 he was captured and shot by firing squad.