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Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire In Africa
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January 5, 2026
In December of 1958, Víctor Dreke played a big role in the battle of Santa Clara in the Cuban Revolutionary War. In an interview book called From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution, first published 20 years ago, he said that "the entire people came out in the streets and joined us.” In 1965 he was Second-in-Command, again under Che Guevara, but this time in the Congo--trying to support a movement that had lost momentum after the imperialist assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
This new book tells the story of Dreke’s role, again in Africa, starting one year later, in aiding the outstanding revolutionary Amílcar Cabral in the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), two Portuguese colonies. Portugal's African empire had started in 1462.
Unlike the British Empire, which used its enormous wealth to produce manufactured goods, Portugal (and Spain) used their wealth to purchase luxury items from more industrialized countries. Despite their huge haul of gold from the natural resources of Africa, including the human resources through the slave trade, they made it into the imperialist pantheon with a lot of feudal holdovers and much underdevelopment. Forty years of clerical-fascism kept the Church in a dominant role.
Many are familiar with Cuba’s role in Angola, another former Portuguese colony, where starting with independence in 1975, they helped Angola to stay free despite the South African (and US) backed FNLA and UNITA movements and the frequent invasions of Angola by South African troops. Over 16 years, some 425,000 Cuban volunteers served in Angola in support of that country’s defense of its newly won independence.
The Cubans didn’t take any oil, of course--all they took home was the bodies of their dead. In the end they and the Angolans of the MPLA defeated South Africa, in the process winning independence for the South African colony of Namibia and putting the apartheid state in a situation where it had to open discussions with the still-imprisoned Nelson Mandela.
For this story, see Cuba and Angola: The War For Freedom, Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own, How Far We Slaves Have Come!: South Africa and Cuba in Today's World, and also Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991.
Portugal, Amílcar Cabral emphasized, “is an economically backward country, in which about 50 percent of the population is illiterate.” The fact that Portugal was (and still is) a class-divided society meant that Portuguese soldiers captured by the PAIGC forces were often illiterate themselves. You get a sense from quotes how exceptional a leader Amílcar Cabral was.
Cabral was born in 1924 of Cape Verdean parents in Portuguese Guinea (today Guinea-Bissau) and grew up in Cape Verde. Winning a scholarship to college in Portugal, he met others who became leaders of independence movements in the Portuguese colonies, as well as left-wing Portuguese. He started with legal activities in Guinea-Bissau, but it soon became clear that armed struggle would regrettably be necessary. “We’re not militarists,” he insisted, addressing party cadres in 1966. “We’re armed militants,” political militants above all.
“Maybe I disappoint people, but I’m not a great defender of armed struggle,” he told a US audience in 1972. “I am very conscious of the sacrifices demanded by armed struggle. It is violence even against our own people.” If it “were possible to solve this problem without armed struggle, why not?” But a liberation war “is not our invention,” he said. “It is the requirement of history.” However, he soon saw that guerrilla warfare was totally impossible in Cape Verde, and the same organization there did not attempt it. Instead, many Cape Verdeans fought in Guinea-Bissau.
This book is about Cabral and the cadres who remained loyal to him, as well as about Víctor Dreke and the other Cubans aiding the PAIGC. Much of the book is an interview with Dreke, conducted by President of Pathfinder Press Mary-Alice Waters, sometimes with the assistance of Róger Calero and Martín Koppel.
Cabral unfortunately didn’t live to see it, but in 1974 the Marcelo Caetano dictatorship, weakened by the liberation movements across what once had been “Portuguese Africa” was overthrown in a military coup, which soon led to a mass popular upsurge, known as the “Carnation Revolution.” By 1975, all the former Portuguese colonies were technically independent, although thanks to South Africa and its United States backers, Angola still had a long fight ahead.
For the democratic revolution in South Africa, see Nelson Mandela Speaks: Forging a Democratic, Nonracial South Africa. For more about Africa, I recommend Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983-87 and Capitalism and the Transformation of Africa: Reports from Equatorial Guinea.
For Cuba’s role in the fight against Ebola, see Red Zone: Cuba and the Battle Against Ebola in West Africa.
This beautiful book includes maps, two photo sections, a timeline, sidebars with Amílcar Cabral quotes, and an index.
This new book tells the story of Dreke’s role, again in Africa, starting one year later, in aiding the outstanding revolutionary Amílcar Cabral in the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), two Portuguese colonies. Portugal's African empire had started in 1462.
Unlike the British Empire, which used its enormous wealth to produce manufactured goods, Portugal (and Spain) used their wealth to purchase luxury items from more industrialized countries. Despite their huge haul of gold from the natural resources of Africa, including the human resources through the slave trade, they made it into the imperialist pantheon with a lot of feudal holdovers and much underdevelopment. Forty years of clerical-fascism kept the Church in a dominant role.
Many are familiar with Cuba’s role in Angola, another former Portuguese colony, where starting with independence in 1975, they helped Angola to stay free despite the South African (and US) backed FNLA and UNITA movements and the frequent invasions of Angola by South African troops. Over 16 years, some 425,000 Cuban volunteers served in Angola in support of that country’s defense of its newly won independence.
The Cubans didn’t take any oil, of course--all they took home was the bodies of their dead. In the end they and the Angolans of the MPLA defeated South Africa, in the process winning independence for the South African colony of Namibia and putting the apartheid state in a situation where it had to open discussions with the still-imprisoned Nelson Mandela.
For this story, see Cuba and Angola: The War For Freedom, Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own, How Far We Slaves Have Come!: South Africa and Cuba in Today's World, and also Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991.
Portugal, Amílcar Cabral emphasized, “is an economically backward country, in which about 50 percent of the population is illiterate.” The fact that Portugal was (and still is) a class-divided society meant that Portuguese soldiers captured by the PAIGC forces were often illiterate themselves. You get a sense from quotes how exceptional a leader Amílcar Cabral was.
Cabral was born in 1924 of Cape Verdean parents in Portuguese Guinea (today Guinea-Bissau) and grew up in Cape Verde. Winning a scholarship to college in Portugal, he met others who became leaders of independence movements in the Portuguese colonies, as well as left-wing Portuguese. He started with legal activities in Guinea-Bissau, but it soon became clear that armed struggle would regrettably be necessary. “We’re not militarists,” he insisted, addressing party cadres in 1966. “We’re armed militants,” political militants above all.
“Maybe I disappoint people, but I’m not a great defender of armed struggle,” he told a US audience in 1972. “I am very conscious of the sacrifices demanded by armed struggle. It is violence even against our own people.” If it “were possible to solve this problem without armed struggle, why not?” But a liberation war “is not our invention,” he said. “It is the requirement of history.” However, he soon saw that guerrilla warfare was totally impossible in Cape Verde, and the same organization there did not attempt it. Instead, many Cape Verdeans fought in Guinea-Bissau.
This book is about Cabral and the cadres who remained loyal to him, as well as about Víctor Dreke and the other Cubans aiding the PAIGC. Much of the book is an interview with Dreke, conducted by President of Pathfinder Press Mary-Alice Waters, sometimes with the assistance of Róger Calero and Martín Koppel.
Cabral unfortunately didn’t live to see it, but in 1974 the Marcelo Caetano dictatorship, weakened by the liberation movements across what once had been “Portuguese Africa” was overthrown in a military coup, which soon led to a mass popular upsurge, known as the “Carnation Revolution.” By 1975, all the former Portuguese colonies were technically independent, although thanks to South Africa and its United States backers, Angola still had a long fight ahead.
For the democratic revolution in South Africa, see Nelson Mandela Speaks: Forging a Democratic, Nonracial South Africa. For more about Africa, I recommend Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983-87 and Capitalism and the Transformation of Africa: Reports from Equatorial Guinea.
For Cuba’s role in the fight against Ebola, see Red Zone: Cuba and the Battle Against Ebola in West Africa.
This beautiful book includes maps, two photo sections, a timeline, sidebars with Amílcar Cabral quotes, and an index.
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