Summary

Guinea-Bissau represents Africa’s only successful anticolonial liberation struggle through a well-adjusted combination of constant mobilization of the population, armed struggle, and active diplomatic engagement with foreign actors. The 1950s represented a boom of anticolonial nationalism in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde, like for most West African states. Inspired also by the long tradition of resistance and the labor of public intellectuals in the process of imagining the nation, anticolonial nationalism in Cabo Verde and Guinea-Bissau developed in the Bissau-Dakar-Conakry axis. These three cities—chiefly the last two, where a vibrant diasporic community of Cabo Verdeans and Guineans lived—formed the main arenas of political action.

Though several liberation movements appeared on the Guinean political scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the actual liberation movement was almost entirely carried out by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cabo Verde (PAIGC). Given its binational inclination, the PAIGC engaged in a grueling struggle in the two territories. While plans were drawn to open a new battlefront in Cabo Verde in the 1960s, political and military pragmatism dictated that the liberation struggle in Guinea-Bissau could serve the purposes of liberating the two lands. In 1973, under PAIGC, Guinea-Bissau unilaterally declared independence, which was recognized by more than eighty states, causing another major blow to the eroding dictatorial regime in Lisbon that eventually fell on April 25, 1974. Pressured by PAIGC, the new regime in Portugal would subsequently accept the recognition of the independence of Guinea-Bissau and the right of Cabo Verde to self-determination and autonomy, paving the way to its independence on July 5, 1975.