Luís Cabral | |
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1st President of Guinea-Bissau | |
In office 24 September 1973 – 14 November 1980 |
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Preceded by | Office created |
Succeeded by | João Bernardo Vieira |
Personal details | |
Born |
Luís Severino de Almeida Cabral 11 April 1931 Bissau, Portuguese Guinea |
Died | 30 May 2009 Torres Vedras, Portugal |
(aged 78)
Political party | African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde |
Luís Severino de Almeida Cabral (11 April 1931 – 30 May 2009) was the first President of Guinea-Bissau. He served from 1974 to 1980, when a military coup d'état led by João Bernardo Vieira deposed him. Luís Cabral was a half-brother of Amílcar Cabral, with whom he co-founded the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in 1956.
Luís Cabral was born in the city of Bissau, Portuguese Guinea, on April 11, 1931. He completed his primary school studies in the Cape Verde archipelago, which was also a Portuguese territory at that time. Later on he would receive training in accountancy.
In the early 1960s, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) launched an anti-colonial guerrilla war against the Portuguese authorities. Luís Cabral's rise to leadership began in 1973, after the assassination in Conakry, Guinea, of his half-brother Amílcar Cabral, the noted Pan-African intellectual and founder of the PAIGC. Leadership of the party, then engaged in fighting for independence from Portuguese rule for both Guinea-Bissau (then known as Portuguese Guinea) and for Cape Verde, fell to Aristides Pereira, who later became the president of Cape Verde. The Guinea-Bissau branch of the party, however, followed Luís Cabral.