Pereira, Aristides

Born in a large family of a Catholic priest who refused to observe celibacy ^[1] . Father Aristidesis Pereira preached in the church and worked as a teacher, the mother was a peasant. The Pereira family was deeply committed to traditional values ​​and village patriarchy.

He graduated from high school in San Vicente , while the only one in Cape Verde (Cape Verde Islands) . In 1947 , during a drought and economic crisis, he moved to work in Bissau . He graduated from a technical college, received a specialty telegraph technician. The operator entered the postal and telegraph company Correios, Telégrafos e Telefones (CTT) . Joined with a group of people from Cape Verde who formed the football team in Bissau.

He was sent to work in Bafatu , but he tolerated the climate of continental Portuguese Guinea . He spent several months in the hospital, after which he returned to Cape Verde. Then again came at the disposal of CTT. Worked in Bissau and Bolama . Initially he had nothing to do with the national movement, although from his youth he was outraged by the violence of the colonial authorities ^[2] .

In 1951, Aristidis Pereira met Amilcar Cabral . Under his influence he joined the underground anti-colonial movement MINGP ^[3] . In 1956 he took part in the establishment of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Fully shared the ideas of Cabral, belonged to his closest associates ^[4] .

When Amilcar Cabral was the Secretary General of the PAIGC, Aristidis Pereira was his deputy. He participated in the underground struggle of the second half of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. During the war of independence 1963 - 1973 Pereira was one of the organizers of the FARP partisan army, from 1965 - a member of the Military Council. Located in the headquarters of the PAIGC in Guinea . He supervised the diplomatic service of the PAIGC ^[2] , headed the party delegation at the Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies (CONCP) . He established effective cooperation with the anti-colonial movements of the MPLA and FRELIMO , a number of African governments and the Western European public.

Aristidesh Pereira was at PAIGC the undisputed leader of "number 2", after Amilcar Cabral. In terms of party power, influence and authority, he even surpassed Luis Cabral , who was a half-brother to Amilcar ^[5] .

January 20, 1973 Amilcar Cabral was killed as a result of the operation of the Portuguese special services PIDE / DGS . The conspirators, led by Inocencio Cani and Mamadou Njay, captured Aristidis Pereira and brutally beaten ^[1] . They tried to take him out of Conakry by boat ^[6] . However, the plot was quickly suppressed, Pereira was freed by the Guinean military (according to other sources, by the Soviet naval forces at the request of Guinea’s President Sekou Touré ^[1] ).

In July 1973, the II Congress of the PAIGC elected Aristidis Pereira Secretary General of the party. With his leadership, the anti-colonial struggle was brought to a victorious end, the independence of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau ( September 24, 1973 , recognized September 10, 1974 ) and the Republic of Cape Verde ( July 5, 1975 ) was proclaimed.

Aristidesh Pereira took the post of the first President of Cape Verde . He was re-elected twice in 1981 and 1986 ^[2] . A one-party Marxist regime of the type of real socialism was established on the Islands ^[7] .

At the same time, the Pereira rule was somewhat moderated against the background of similar regimes in Guinea-Bissau, and especially in Angola and Mozambique . Political repressions did not become so widespread, traditional economic forms remained, on a pragmatic basis they maintained ties with Western countries and to some extent even with South Africa . The Republic of Cape Verde participated in the Non-Aligned Movement , actively developing relations with Libya and the PRC .

The first years of independence Aristidesh Pereira pursued a policy of uniting Cape Verde with Guinea-Bissau. However, in November 1980 , a coup d'état took place in Bissau. Luis Cabral, a longtime associate of Pereira and a native of Cape Verde, was removed from power (at the same time Pereira did not want to take Cabral to Cape Verde, which sharply worsened former friendship ^[8] ). The new head of Guinea-Bissau, João Bernardo Vieira, expressed the dislike of Bantu nationalists for Cape Verdean mulattoes .

From the unifying project had to be abandoned. The final split was constituted in January 1981 by the creation of the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAIKV), headed by Aristidesis Pereira ^[4] . There is a widespread belief that it was on the Cape Verde Islands, and not Guinea-Bissau, that the covenants of Amilcar Cabral were put into practice ^[9] .

In 1990 , against the backdrop of a global trend, Cape Verdean authorities abandoned the one-party system. In 1991 , free alternative presidential and parliamentary elections were held. President Pereira ran from the ruling PAIKV. A decisive victory was won by the opposition Movement for Democracy Party ( MpD ). MPD leader António Monteiro collected more than 73% of the votes, Aristidis Pereira - less than 27% ^[10] .

After his resignation from the presidency of Aristidesh, Pereira left active politics. He lived with family privacy. He gave an interview to the press, talked a lot about the history of the PAIGC and about his own biography. In 2003 he published the book of memoirs O meu testemunho: uma luta, um partido, dois paíse - My testimony: one battle, one party, two countries ^[11] .

Aristidis Pereira died at the age of 87 in the hospital of the University of Coimbra . The funeral ceremony was organized at the government level. The official statement emphasized that the name of Aristidis Pereira stands next to the name of Amilcar Cabral ^[4] .

Aristidesh Pereira was married, had two daughters. His wife, Carlena Pereira, led the Cape Verde women's organization under the PAIGC-PAIKW regime ^[12] .