Luis Cabral
Luis Cabral became the first president of Guinea-Bissau because his half-brother, who had led the war that won it, was assassinated eight months before independence. Amilcar Cabral had founded the PAIGC and run one of the most effective anti-colonial campaigns in Africa: by the early 1970s the movement controlled most of the countryside, had built schools, clinics and courts in the areas it held, and had shot down Portuguese aircraft with Soviet missiles. He was shot dead in Conakry in January 1973 by dissidents from within his own party, with Portuguese involvement generally assumed and never proved. Independence was declared unilaterally that September and recognised by Portugal a year later - after the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon, which the African wars had done as much as anything to produce. The colonial war had cost Portugal more than four decades of Salazar's regime could sustain. Luis Cabral governed a country with almost no infrastructure and a movement designed for war rather than administration. The state took over the cashew trade and set prices, the economy did not recover, and the party was split between those who had fought in Guinea and those from Cape Verde, with which union was still official policy. His government also killed. Several hundred Guinean soldiers who had served in the Portuguese colonial forces were executed after independence and buried in mass graves, which was denied at the time and confirmed when the graves were opened in 1980. That discovery is what the coup against him was justified by, and he was charged over it and never tried. He was deposed in 1980 by Joao Bernardo Vieira, his own prime minister and the best-known field commander of the war. The union with Cape Verde ended with him, and Guinea-Bissau has had coups or attempted coups in most decades since.
- Lived: 1931 CE – 2009 CE
- Nationality: Bissau-Guinean
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
