Amilcar Cabral and the Liberation Struggle: Education as the Corners for Revolution

STUDY BLOCKS: HISTORY, ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY

Summary

A lecture with militant historian Sónia Vaz Borges on the revolutionary struggle of the PAIGC and life and legacy of Amilcar Cabral.

“The people of ‘Portuguese’ Guinea took up arms to free their country from colonial domination in 1963, under the leadership of the Partido Africano da Independencia da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC). Amilcar Cabral, the founder of the PAIGC, saw the necessity of freeing their country from Portuguese colonial domination. The experiences of other liberation movements, the growth of neo-colonialism in the newly ‘independent’ African countries, and above all the development of the movement within Guinea itself made clear the necessity of a true socialist revolution if any real change was to be made.

To revolutionary movements throughout the world, the struggle in Guinea is of prime importance as an outstanding illustration of the need to study one’s own concrete conditions and to make the revolution according to these conditions, rather than relying on the experience of others, valuable as this may be.”

-From Amilcar Cabral – Revolution in Guinea Bissau. An African People’s Struggle. London: Stage 1. 1969

Sónia Vaz Borges is a militant interdisciplinary historian, social and political organizer. She has B.A. in Modern and Contemporary History, Politics and International Affairs from ISCTE -University Institute of Lisbon, and a M.A. in African History from the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Lisbon. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Humboldt University of Berlin, and a postdoctoral from the Center for Place, Culture and Politics (CPCP) at the Graduate Center City University of New York. She is also the editor of the booklets Cadernos Consciência e Resistência Negra (2007-2011) and author of the book Na Pó di Spéra. Percursos nos Bairros da Estrada Militar, Santa Filomena e Encosta Nascente (2014). Along with filmmaker Filipa César, Sónia Vaz Borges co-authored the short film Navigating the Pilot School (2016). Sónia Vaz Borges lives in Berlin and is a researcher at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and its currently working on a new project and a second film together with Filipa César.