Luis Cabral, President of Guinea-Bissau

NOTE: This article discusses Luis Cabral, the former President of Guinea-Bissau. He is not to be confused with a Portuguese Protestant evangelist of the same name.

LUIS CABRAL was President of Guinea-Bissau from 1974 to 1980, when he was deposed in a military coup.

Luis Cabral's rise to leadership began in 1973, when his half-brother Amilcar Cabral, the founder of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGE), was assassinated in Conakry, in the neighbouring country of Guinea. Leadership of the party, which was fighting for independence from Portuguese rule for both Guinea-Bissau (then known as Portuguese Guinea) and Cape Verde, fell to Aristedes Pereira, who later became the president of Cape Verde. The Guinea-Bissau branch of the party, however, followed Luis Cabral. Following Portugal's revolution in April 1974, it granted independence to Guinea-Bissau on September 10 that same year. Luis Cabral became President of Guinea-Bissau. In late 1980, however, his government was overthrown in a relatively bloodless coup led by Prime Minister and former armed forces commander Joao Bernardo Vieira.