The Cultural Dimension in the Strategy for National Liberation

In establishing the principle of unification between Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, Amilcar Cabral essentially referred to ethnic, historical, and political reasons. In spite of the links that these have with culture, we do not remember having come across in Cabral's writings any direct and precise reference to the identity of the existing cultural links between the peoples of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. It appears, nevertheless, that Cabral's whole political course was aimed at uniting both peoples in the struggle against colonialism, beginning with the acute perception of the existence of these links and the analysis of the fundamental role that they would have to play in the formation of a cohesive force against the common enemy-colonialism. The accuracy of Cabral's analysis is all the more startling when one considers that a superficial examination of the cultures of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau could have led to the conclusion that few similarities existed between the two peoples. The facts, however, proved that Cabral's perception of the deep roots of Cape Verdean culture being located in Africa was exact and that only the policies of assimilation and alienation practiced by the Portuguese colonialists had allowed this reality to be obscured. Had it been otherwise, it would have been impossible to obtain such a profound unity as that which came to exist, on the one hand, between the Cape Verdean popular masses-upon taking integral consciousness of their true cultural identity-and the popular masses of Guinea-Bissau; and, on the other, between these and the Cape Verdean petite bourgeoisie, which by consciously opting for the struggle of national liberation identified itself with the popular masses of Cape

Dimension (graph theory) · Liberation · Political economy · Political science · Pure mathematics · Sociology · Contemporary and Historical Greek Studies · Gender Studies · Mathematics

• Amílcar Cabral's modernist philosophy of culture and cultural liberation

  Zeyad El Nabolsy•Journal of African Cultural Studies•2020

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