Among the five million files of people followed by the Portuguese political police, which make up the archives of the PIDE, is the file of Amílcar Cabral, which has generated much interest from academics who study the thinking of the African leader, considered the "father" of the independence of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau.

In an interview with the Lusa agency, Silvestre Lacerda, director of the Directorate-General of Books, Archives and Libraries (DGLAB), responsible for the National Archive of the Torre do Tombo, stated that Cabral's file reveals that he began to be followed in the early 1950s, when he was still a student in Lisbon.

Cabral, whose birth centenary is being celebrated this year, began "his most intense political activity at the Casa dos Estudantes do Império (CEI)", which was intended for university students from the former Portuguese colonies and which had among its members names such as Agostinho Neto, Lúcio Lara, Joaquim Chissano, Pedro Pires or Onésimo Silveira, among many others.

At this time, "the police began to have more detailed information about Amílcar Cabral, about what he was" and about the political activities he carried out at the CEI, especially with Lúcio Lara, "with whom he would have very close relations and who is an Angolan who was at the origin of the formation of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola" (MPLA).

"He began by studying at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia, he is an agronomist. He studied in Portugal, namely in Cuba [Alentejo], but then he went to Guinea and in Guinea he did a fundamental work, which is a land registry and, in some way, the concrete knowledge of the land, which would later be particularly useful to him in the context of the actions he would carry out during the guerrilla war. He was in Angola, returned to Guinea, returned to Lisbon and this is a whole journey that was followed by the political police", he said.

"This persecution can be demonstrated through information from the political police of Cabinda, Luanda, Bissau", but also by the "activity of Portuguese ambassadors in different countries".

"We have reports from the ambassadors, namely the Portuguese ambassador in England, who report to the Portuguese Government what activities Amílcar Cabral was carrying out, because he was always considered the denunciation of colonialism as an insult to the Portuguese homeland", he added.

According to the official, "the PIDE feared Amílcar Cabral, especially because of the relations he quickly established, namely with foreigners, in particular with the English".

Cabral would even use the pseudonym Abel Djassi to "write in English newspapers and, in some way, the internationalization and denunciation of Portuguese colonialism, which naturally the regime was not even willing to hear".

For Silvestre Lacerda, the PIDE agents who followed Cabral perceived him as "a scholar". "And this is one of the characteristics with which Amílcar Cabral is recognized, both nationally and internationally, as a leader who is not limited to arms, he is also capable of thinking, he is also capable of establishing a strategy for the independence of the territory, which, in fact, he will develop in his writings".

"He himself assumes a first letter addressed to the Portuguese Government, before the beginning of the armed actions by PAIGC, that he was willing to negotiate with the Portuguese Government as long as the negotiation was based on the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde and this is a matter that was non-negotiable, either with the President of the Council, António Oliveira Salazar, or even later, with Marcelo Caetano", he continued.

The letter is part of Cabral's archives at the Mário Soares Foundation, which is the guardian of this documentation at the request of the African leader's family, but in the PIDE archives it is a theme in some expressions that lead precisely to Amílcar Cabral's thinking and his willingness to negotiate, along with what was happening since the end of the Second World War with the colonies in Africa, Asia and a little all over the world.

Cabral's path as leader of the PAIGC and in the meetings he attended in Tunis and Algeria with the other liberation movements, namely the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), as well as the constitution of a coordination council for the colonial war that is designated as CONCP is followed by the PIDE elements.

"There, the police will clearly follow him, treating him as a terrorist leader - the expression that is used".

For Silvestre Lacerda, the PIDE archives allow us to identify Cabral as "a leader with a strategic thinking of independence for his country, of an also interesting characteristic that is to defend that there should be no exploitation of man by man".

"This is probably one of Amílcar Cabral's legacies, which we do not know how he would have implemented it, because it was signed before the seizure of power and even before the declaration of independence of Guinea, in 1973", he said.

And also of someone who did not fail to "draw attention to aspects that are not easy to say to those who move from guerrilla warfare to power: That one should not be dazzled by the exercise of power, but should take into account what is the will of their fellow citizens".

Amílcar Cabral was born in Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, on September 12, 1924.

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