Baltazar Lopes da Silva

Baltasar Lopes da Silva
Baltasar Lopes da Silva on a 500 Capeverdean escudo note issued between 1992 and 2000
Born	(1907-04-23)23 April 1907 Caleijão, São Nicolau
Died	28 May 1989(1989-05-28) (aged 82) São Vicente, Cape Verde
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Lusophone African philosophy; Independence Movement
Main interests	Ethics, Humanity, Justice, Love, Politics, philosophy

Baltasar Lopes da Silva (Caleijão, São Nicolau, 23 April 1907 - Lisbon, Portugal, 28 May 1989) was a writer, poet and linguist from Cape Verde, who wrote in both Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole. With Manuel Lopes and Jorge Barbosa, he was the founder of Claridade. In 1947 he published Chiquinho, considered the greatest Cape Verdean novel and O dialecto crioulo de Cabo Verde which describes different dialects of creoles of Cape Verde. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Osvaldo Alcântara.

Ressaca, his work of poems can be found on the CD Poesia de Cabo Verde e Sete Poemas de Sebastião da Gama by Afonso Dias

Baltasar Lopes da Silva was born in the village of Calejão on the island of São Nicolau in Cape Verde on April 23, 1907. He graduated with degrees in Law and Romance Philology. His last days were spent in Lisbon, where he was transferred for treatment of a cerebrovascular disease and died shortly afterwards on May 28, 1989.

Baltasar Lopes, with the collaboration of other writers, such as Manuel Lopes, Manuel Ferreira, António Aurélio Gonçalves, Francisco José Tenreiro, Jorge Barbosa, and Daniel Filipe, founded the Cape Verdean journal Claridade in 1936. Claridade published essays, poems, and short stories. Its contributors wrote about the problems of their society, such as drought, famine, and emigration, bringing clarity to the study of Cape Verdean reality, especially with regard to the most disadvantaged social groups.