People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola

The founding of the MPLA grew mainly out of two organisations: the Party of the United Struggle for Africans in Angola (PLUAA), founded in 1953 by Viriato da Cruz and Matias Miguéis, and the Angolan Communist Party (PCA), founded in December 1955 as a Luanda cell of the Portuguese Communist Party. The PCA leadership concluded that Marxist–Leninist class struggle and the Estado Novo's persecution were holding back the nationalist movement, and opted for a broad front that would not use communist symbols or theory openly. On 10 December 1956 Ilídio Machado, Viriato da Cruz and Mário Pinto de Andrade wrote in Luanda the "Manifesto of 1956" for a "broad Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola". Machado, the first president, held office until his arrest in 1959, and part of the leadership moved to Paris and Frankfurt to set up a base in exile. According to the Portuguese-language source, Agostinho Neto became president in 1960.

Having taken up armed struggle in 1961, the MPLA joined the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), FRELIMO and others in the Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies (CONCP). Internal disputes persisted. A faction led by Viriato da Cruz broke away in 1963, and in 1972 the movement split in effect into three: Gentil Viana's Active Revolt, Daniel Chipenda's Eastern Revolt and the Presidential Wing loyal to Neto. The split was overcome at a unification conference in Zambia in 1974, but Chipenda, Mário de Andrade and others were expelled or left.

After Portugal's Carnation Revolution of 1974, the MPLA signed the Alvor Accords with the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and UNITA in January 1975 and joined a transitional government, but the coalition soon collapsed into civil war. Holding Luanda and the oil fields of the Atlantic coast, the MPLA proclaimed the independence of the People's Republic of Angola on 11 November 1975, while UNITA and the FNLA declared independence separately in Huambo. South Africa and Zaire intervened militarily on the side of the FNLA and UNITA and the United States aided both; Cuba intervened in 1975 to support the MPLA, and the Soviet Union aided Cuba and the MPLA government. Neto died in 1979 and was succeeded by José Eduardo dos Santos.

At its First Congress in 1977 the MPLA adopted Marxism–Leninism as its ideology and added "Labour Party" to its name, becoming the MPLA–PT. In the same year an attempted coup against the leadership by Nito Alves and others, officially called "Fractionism", failed at once when Cuban troops sided with the leadership, and the purge that followed cost very many lives; the English-language source gives estimates ranging from 2,000 to 70,000 dead. The MPLA then ruled as a one-party state, and according to the Portuguese-language source dos Santos used successive purges from 1982 onwards to remove Lúcio Lara and other communist-leaning figures from key posts.

With the end of the Cold War the MPLA abandoned Marxism–Leninism. The English-language source says it declared social democracy its official ideology at its Third Congress in December 1990; the Portuguese-language source dates the abandonment to the introduction of multi-party politics in 1991. In the first multi-party election of 1992 it won 129 seats (out of 227 according to the English-language source, out of 220 according to the Portuguese-language source), but UNITA rejected the result and the civil war resumed, ending only after UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in 2002. João Lourenço was elected president in 2017 and took over the party presidency in 2018. In the 2022 general election the MPLA kept power with about 51% of the vote and 124 seats.