[A movement led by Amílcar Cabral fought against Portuguese rule
in Guinea-Bissau and won independence against seemingly overwhelming
odds. It also contributed to the end of white-settler rule in Southern
Africa and the democratic revolution in Portugal itself.]
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GUINEA-BISSAU’S LIBERATION STRUGGLE TRANSFORMED THE FACE OF WORLD
POLITICS  
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Rui Lopes, Víctor Barros
December 23, 2022
Jacobin
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_ A movement led by Amílcar Cabral fought against Portuguese rule in
Guinea-Bissau and won independence against seemingly overwhelming
odds. It also contributed to the end of white-settler rule in Southern
Africa and the democratic revolution in Portugal itself. _

Ginuean rebel soldiers during the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence
in West Africa, June 14, 1972., Reg Lancaster / Daily Express / Hulton
Archive / Getty Images

 

Today, Western media reports frequently present Guinea-Bissau as a
“failed state” with a “narco-economy.” These disparaging
labels strip the country out of its context in the global economic
system and erase the legacy of European colonialism and the Cold War,
giving the false impression that its problems are self-generated.

By looking at the international dimensions of Guinea-Bissau’s
history, we can counter such misleading views and shed light on an
anti-imperialist revolution that had a major impact well beyond this
comparatively small West African territory. The revolutionary struggle
launched by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape
Verde (Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde
or PAIGC) not only led to the independence of Guinea-Bissau itself. It
also made a vital contribution to the demise of Portuguese colonialism
throughout Africa and the fall of Portugal’s own long-entrenched
dictatorship.

This in turn had decisive consequences for the coming of democracy in
Spain and South Africa alike. These two countries with a combined
population of well over a hundred million people today owe a
considerable debt to Guinea-Bissau, which has a population of two
million. Branding Guinea-Bissau as a “failed state” erases the
outsized contribution it has made to the modern world.

Cabral and the PAIGC

Amílcar Cabral was the founding leader of the PAIGC, which waged a
successful guerrilla war against Portuguese rule between 1963 and
1974. Born in 1924, Cabral distinguished himself as a brilliant
student and was one of very few Africans to attend university in
Portugal, where he trained as an agronomist.

The Portuguese authorities expected men like Cabral to serve as junior
colonial administrators, facilitating the exploitation of their own
people. But he used his time in Portugal to forge ties with students
from other African colonies such as Angola and Mozambique, some of
whom would go on to play leading roles in their own independence
movements. He also made contact with Portugal’s left-wing opposition
currents, most notably the Portuguese Communist Party.

 

After a massacre of striking dock workers by Portuguese security
forces, Amílcar Cabral and his comrades decided that nonviolent
resistance was no longer sufficient.

On returning to Guinea-Bissau, Cabral was officially employed to carry
out an agricultural survey of the country for the Portuguese state.
However, he used the survey as an opportunity to learn about social
and geographical conditions in different regions — a base of
knowledge that was essential for the coming struggle. Cabral and his
comrades established the PAIGC, and after a massacre of striking dock
workers by Portuguese security forces at the port of Bissau in 1959,
they decided that nonviolent resistance was no longer sufficient and
began preparing for a campaign of guerrilla warfare against Portuguese
rule.

The Anti-Colonial Moment

The anti-colonial liberation struggles in Africa and Asia profoundly
shaped the global history of the twentieth century. Liberation
movements from the Global South played a key role in the emergence of
a novel world order. They also empowered the colonized peoples and led
to the rise of new postcolonial states in international forums.

In his writings and speeches, Cabral stressed the importance of the
fight against colonial domination for world politics:

The people’s struggle for national liberation and independence from
imperialist rule has become a driving force of progress for humanity.
It undoubtedly constitutes one of the essential characteristics of
contemporary history.

Although they defined their goal as national self-determination, we
should understand these movements in terms of a more inclusive, global
perspective, taking account of all the connections and interactions
that shaped them at local, regional, and international levels.

 

The anti-colonial liberation struggles in Africa and Asia profoundly
shaped the global history of the twentieth century.

The liberation project of the PAICG went beyond nationalist concerns.
It identified itself as a revolutionary party that was working toward
the creation of a new society, starting with the organization of a
new education system
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economy, and structure of health provision in the so-called liberated
areas of Guinea-Bissau (the areas which were no longer under
Portuguese control).

The PAIGC was fighting for the independence of not one but two
colonies: Guinea-Bissau on the West African mainland and the
archipelago of Cape Verde. Cabral argued that any project for
liberation which did not encompass these islands would undermine the
fight for Guinean independence, since Portugal and its allies could
use Cape Verde as a military support base from which to launch a
counteroffensive.

Amílcar Cabral, February 1964. (Wikimedia Commons)

Cabral himself had been born in Guinea-Bissau to Cape Verdean parents.
He also grounded the unitary, binational project of the PAIGC in
cultural and historical factors. Ever since the beginning of
Portuguese colonization from 1462 onward, the colonizers had populated
Cape Verde with enslaved peoples from the Guinean African coast. This
meant that their peoples shared common origins.

In practice, the independence war only took place on the territory of
Guinea-Bissau, as the PAIGC found it too challenging to launch an
insurgency on Cape Verde. However, the liberation movement also
included Cape Verdean guerrilla fighters.

Portugal and the World System

From the early 1960s, the PAIGC campaigned on the international stage
against Portuguese colonialism, courting the support of governments as
well as non-state allies. The Portuguese dictatorship, whose origins
harkened back to interwar European fascism, was now firmly integrated
in the US-led Western bloc during the Cold War, and it had been a
founding member of NATO. It systematically rejected any demands for
independence and fought protracted wars in three of its African
colonies: Angola (from 1961), Guinea-Bissau (from 1963), and
Mozambique (from 1964).

The PAIGC developed networks with the liberation movements from the
other Portuguese colonies, Mozambique’s FRELIMO and the MPLA in
Angola. It also took part in various pan-African and Third World
initiatives. Cabral’s party gathered material, technical, and
diplomatic aid for its armed struggle while spreading its analysis of
Portuguese colonialism and the wider imperialist system that sustained
Portugal’s wars.

 

The PAIGC campaigned on the international stage against Portuguese
colonialism, courting the support of governments as well as non-state
allies.

By depicting Portuguese colonialism as merely the tip of a much larger
complex of Western economic and political domination, the PAIGC
projected its cause onto a global level. It vociferously denounced the
growing investment by Western companies in the Portuguese colonies and
the supply of military materiel and diplomatic cover to the Portuguese
dictatorship by some of its NATO allies — particularly the United
States, the UK, France, and West Germany.

This message struck a chord with states across Africa and the wider
world, through international forums such as the Organization of
African Unity, the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America, and the UN Special Committee on
Decolonization. Such discussions linked anti-colonialism to a broader
critique of capitalist interests.

The Weapon of Theory

At the same time, Cabral exposed the role of the Cold War system in
perpetuating colonialism. He defended a form of nonaligned
anti-imperialism that challenged the geopolitical division of the
world and sought to mobilize possible allies across the “iron
curtain.”

The PAIGC obtained much military and political support from the Soviet
bloc and from Third World allies — most notably Cuba, which sent
both doctors and soldiers to assist its struggle. Yet it also received
substantial aid from governments in Scandinavia and the Netherlands,
whose material contributions enabled the state-building process that
was taking place in the liberated areas.

We should not underestimate the impact of the struggle in
Guinea-Bissau on Western civil society. There were many solidarity
networks forged in Western Europe and North America to support the
liberation of the Portuguese colonies. A range of sympathizers, from
the US Black Panthers to activists of the French New Left, embraced
Cabral’s notion of connected struggles, which argued that
imperialism was a common enemy of the liberation movements and of the
international working class.

 

There were many solidarity networks forged in Western Europe and North
America to support the liberation of the Portuguese colonies.

They supplied the PAIGC with political and material assistance, such
as blood donations, medical aid, and school supplies for the liberated
areas, while publicizing Portuguese atrocities and the complicity of
Western companies and governments. Writers, journalists, filmmakers,
and photographers from different countries traveled to Guinea-Bissau
and reported on the experience of the population in the liberated
zones.

The image of these regions that were ruled by PAIGC guerrillas played
a vital role in legitimizing the Guinean anti-colonial revolution at
an international level. In a wider perspective, these solidarity
initiatives integrated the PAIGC’s struggle into the global
emancipatory movement of the so-called “Long 1960s,” while also
fostering new transnational networks and practices of protest and
cooperation.

Cabral became an inspirational figure well beyond the
Portuguese-speaking countries, both before and after his assassination
in January 1973. Indeed, he remains a reference point for
anti-colonial thinkers to this day.

This is not least because of the original way Cabral engaged with
Marxist ideas, especially in the famous “Weapon of Theory
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speech he delivered at 1966’s Tricontinental Conference in Havana,
which made a favorable impression on the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Many of his writings and speeches, which dealt with issues of culture,
race, colonialism, agriculture, and the liberation struggle, were
translated into languages such as English, French, and Spanish.

Cabral’s heterogenous, multifaceted ideas drew upon his evolving
assessments of the liberation trail, and they continue to stimulate
productive discussions and reflections. Scholars and activists from
various disciplines and currents have placed his intellectual
contributions in the context of debates
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black radical tradition, Pan-African history, decolonial thought, and
revolutionary politics, among others. One recent essay
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reinterpreted his initial scientific work as an agronomist in a
progressive light.

An International Struggle

In 1964, the French writer Gérard Chaliand published the first book
for a Western audience about the struggle in Guinea-Bissau. After a
visit to the country in 1966–67, he went on to write influential
accounts of conditions in the liberated areas. According to Chaliand,
the PAIGC led the most significant armed struggle in Africa from 1963
onward, with the most highly structured popular military mobilization
the continent had ever seen.

This is not to claim that the PAIGC struggle unfolded triumphantly
without internal tensions or moral compromises. The liberation war was
difficult, complex, and fragmented. Nevertheless, having successfully
combined armed combat with a broad and active diplomatic approach, the
PAIGC managed to unilaterally proclaim Guinea-Bissau’s independence
in September 1973, which was soon recognized by more than forty
states.

This declaration came just months after the assassination of Cabral
himself in the neighboring state of Guinea-Conakry, whose leader Ahmed
Sékou Touré had long provided support to the PAIGC. The Portuguese
colonial authorities clearly hoped that the PAIGC would disintegrate
or accept a compromise short of full independence in the absence of
Cabral. But its surviving leaders launched a major offensive soon
afterward, making use of the anti-aircraft missiles that Cabral had
recently obtained to contain Portugal’s previously unchallenged use
of air power.

Combined with the wars in Angola and Mozambique, the conflict in
Guinea-Bissau fueled internal discontent in Portugal. Many junior
officers were sick of fighting what they considered an unwinnable war
and began asking questions about the domestic political order. When a
movement of Portuguese army captains staged a coup against the
dictatorship on April 25, 1974, this developed into a fully-fledged
revolution that put an end to Europe’s oldest right-wing
dictatorship. The new government in Lisbon soon officially recognized
the independence of all its territories in Africa.

 

Combined with the wars in Angola and Mozambique, the conflict in
Guinea-Bissau fueled internal discontent in Portugal.

The guerrilla struggle in the Guinean forests and villages was
therefore part of the wider process of African decolonization,
strengthening the anti-racist struggles in Rhodesia and South Africa.
With the end of the Portuguese colonial presence in Southern Africa,
the Rhodesian white-settler dictatorship of Ian Smith could only last
until the end of the 1970s.

The apartheid regime in South Africa clung on for another decade, but
the defeat of its army by Cuban forces in Angola in 1987–88 sounded
the death knell for white supremacy in the region. After his release
from prison, Nelson Mandela paid tribute to the legacy of Cabral.

Guinea-Bissau also supplied a key trigger for the most important
left-wing revolutionary movement in Europe during the second half of
the twentieth century. The fall of the dictatorship in Portugal then
greatly accelerated the democratization of neighboring Spain after the
death of Francisco Franco in 1975, as key figures in the Francoist
regime feared an eruption from below if they did not begin a process
of reform from above. A movement that began in Africa conjured up
radical dynamics that flowed from the South to the North and back
again.

Legacies

On gaining its independence, Guinea-Bissau was still a desperately
poor country, which faced the same problems of poverty and economic
“underdevelopment” as its West African neighbors. There were also
lingering tensions between PAIGC leaders from Guinea-Bissau and Cape
Verde, where the party also took power after independence.

Those tensions gave rise to a military coup in 1980, in which the
former guerrilla commander João Bernardo “Nino” Vieira ousted the
country’s first president, Luís Cabral, brother of Amílcar. The
PAIGC in Cape Verde broke off to form a separate party, ending hopes
of unity. On the international stage, the decades following
Guinea-Bissau’s independence were an increasingly bleak time for
Africa, as the international financial institutions used debt as a
lever to impose the so-called Washington Consensus.

We cannot know how well Amílcar Cabral would have coped with these
political and economic challenges. But there is no question that the
loss of such a talented leader on the eve of independence was a
grievous blow to Guinea-Bissau. However, those who reduce the
country’s modern history to a narrative of “failure” obscure the
positive lessons we can derive from its history.

The fight for the liberation of Guinea-Bissau showed that it was
possible to defeat a regime that had the backing of major imperial
powers, bringing together support from different continents and
subverting what was then perceived as the hegemonic logic of the
international system. At a time when we are seeing a dangerous revival
of old Cold War formulas, this is the kind of political imagination
that the world badly needs.

_RUI LOPES is a lecturer at Birkbeck and Goldsmiths, University of
London, and a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History,
NOVA University of Lisbon. He was the principal investigator in the
research project “Amílcar Cabral: From Political History to the
Politics of Memory” (2016–19)._

_VÍCTOR BARROS is a researcher at the École des Hautes Études
Hispaniques et Ibériques in Madrid and member of the Institute of
Contemporary History, NOVA University of Lisbon. He worked as a
fellow in the research project “Amílcar Cabral: From Political
History to the Politics of Memory”(2016–19)._

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* Guinea-Bissau
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* war
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* imperialism
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* anti-imperialism
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* self determination
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* independence movements
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* anti-colonialism
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* Amilcar Cabral
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