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Return to the source; selected speeches , 1974
/
Revolution in Guinea; selected texts,
1970 /
Unity and
struggle : speeches and writings, 1979
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Fobanjong, John, and Thomas K. Ranuga.
The Life, Thought, and Legacy of Cape Verde's Freedom
Fighter Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973): Essays on His
Liberation Philosophy. 2006.
McCulloch, Jock.
In the Twilight of Revolution: The Political Theory
of Amilcar Cabral. 1983.
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CABRAL ON CULTURE
"... Many folks think of Cape Verde as Praia or
Sao Vicente. But anyone who knows the bush in Cape Verde
feels in Cape Verde an African reality as palpable
as any other fragment of Africa. The culture of the Cape
Verde people is quintessentially African...."
"... Culture, whatever the ideological or idealist
characteristics of its expression, is thus an essential
element of the history of a people. Culture is, perhaps
the resultant of this history just as the flower is the
resultant of a plant. Like history, or because it is
history, culture has as its material base the level of the
productive forces and the mode of production. Culture
plunges its roots into the humus of the material reality
of the environment in which it develops, and reflects the
organic nature of the society, which may be more or less
influenced by external factors. History enables us to know
the nature and extent of the imbalances and the conflicts
(economic, political and social) that characterize the
evolution of a society. Culture enables us to know what
dynamic syntheses have been formed and set by social
awareness in order to resolve these conflicts at each
stage of evolution of that society, in the search for
survival and progress.
Just as occurs with the flower in a plant, the capacity
(or responsibility) for forming and fertilizing the seed
which ensures the continuity of history lies in culture,
and the seed simultaneously ensures the prospect for
evolution and progress of the society in question. Thus it
is understood that imperialist domination, denying to the
dominated people their own historical process, necessarily
denies their cultural process. It is further understood
why the exercise of imperialist domination, like all other
foreign domination, for its own security requires cultural
oppression and the attempt at direct or indirect
destruction of the essential elements of the culture of
the dominated people.
Study of the history of liberation struggles shows that
they have generally been preceded by an upsurge of
cultural manifestations, which progressively harden into
an attempt, successful or not, to assert the cultural
personality of the dominated people by an act of denial of
the culture of the oppressor. Whatever the conditions of
subjection of a people to foreign domination and the
influence of economic, political and social factors in the
exercise of this domination, it is generally within the
cultural factor that we find the seed of challenge which
leads to the structure and development of the liberation
movement.
In our view, the foundation of national liberation lies
in the inalienable right of every people to have their own
history, whatever the formulations adopted in
international law. The aim of national liberation is
therefore to regain this right, usurped by imperialist
domination: namely, the liberation of the process of
development of the national productive forces. So national
liberation exists when, and only when, the national
productive forces have been completely freed from all
kinds of foreign domination. The liberation of productive
forces, and consequently of the ability freely to
determine the mode of production most appropriate to the
evolution of the liberated people, necessarily opens up
new prospects for the cultural process of the society in
question by returning to it all its capacity to create
progress.
A people who free themselves from foreign domination
will not be culturally free unless, without
underestimating the importance of positive contributions
from the oppressor's culture and other cultures, they
return to the upwards paths of their own culture. The
latter is nourished by the living reality of the
environment and rejects harmful influences as much as any
kind of subjection to foreign cultures. We see therefore
that, if imperialist domination has the vital need to
practice cultural oppression, national liberation is
necessarily an act of culture...."
"Tell no lies. Claim no easy
victories!"
Lenin's Influence
"How is it that we, a people deprived of
everything, living in dire straits, manage to wage our struggle and
win successes? Our answer is: this is because Lenin existed, because
he fulfilled his duty as a man, a revolutionary and a patriot. Lenin
was and continues to be, the greatest champion of the national
liberation of the peoples." -- Amilcar Cabral,
Secretary-General of the PAIGC, "Lenin and National
Liberation" held at Alma Ata, capital of Soviet Socialist
Republic of Kazakhstan, in 1970
Revolutionary Theory
"If it is true that a revolution can
fail even though it is based on perfectly conceived theories --
nobody has yet made a successful revolution without a revolutionary
theory."
The Race Question
"We are fighting so that insults may no
longer rule our countries, martyred and scorned for centuries, so
that our peoples may never more be exploited by imperialists not
only by people with white skin, because we do not confuse
exploitation or exploiters with the colour of men's skins; we do not
want any exploitation in our countries, not even by black
people."
Socialist allies
"It is our duty to state here, loud and
clear, that we have firm allies in the socialist countries ... Since
the socialist revolution and the events of the Second World War, the
face of the world has definitely changed. A socialist camp has
arisen in the world. This has radically changed the balance of
power, and this socialist camp is today showing itself fully
conscious of its duties, international and historic, but not moral,
since the peoples of the socialist countries have never exploited
the colonised peoples." Cabral at a conference held in Dar-es-Salaam
in 1965,
"Availing ourselves of this opportunity we
want to express on behalf of our people fraternal gratitude to the
Soviet people, the CPSU, its Central Committee for the versatile
assistance you render us in our bitter struggle against the
Portuguese colonialists, against the war and genocide, for
independence, peace and progress of our African Motherland."
Cabral at the Joint Meeting in the Kremlin dedicated to the
50th anniversary of the USSR. * *
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| Amílcar
Cabral became well known both in and beyond Bissau
and was the author of several posthumously published texts,
among the most well known of which are "Revolution in
Guinea" and "Return to the Source." Fluent in the
Romance languages of French, Spanish and Portuguese, he was less
comfortable in English, and relatively few of his writings have
been translated for Anglophone audiences.
Those available include the following:
Cabral, Amilcar, 1921-1973.
Return to the source; selected speeches. Edited by
Africa Information Service. New York, Monthly Review Press
[1974, c1973].
DT613.75.C32
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updated 2 October 2007 |
