Osvaldo Vieira
A statue of Viera outside the airport in Bissau.
Personal details
Born
Osvaldo Máximo Vieira

1938
Bissau, Portuguese Guinea
Died31 March 1974
Conakry, Guinea
Resting placeFortaleza de São José da Amura
Political partyAfrican Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde

Osvaldo Máximo Vieira (1938 – 31 March 1974) was a pioneer of the Bissau-Guinean independence movement and a key military commander during the War of Independence. He was the cousin of Nino Vieira, who would later serve two separate terms as president.[1]

Vieira was one of many early recruits from the so-called "revolutionary petty bourgeoisie", a group which Amílcar Cabral entrusted with instigating the war of independence.[2] His father worked at the Sociedade Comercial Ultramarina, while his grandfather had worked in the postal service, owned land, and was considered a "small intellectual".[3]

Before his revolutionary career, Vieira worked as a pharmacy assistant to Sofia Pomba Guerra, a white Portuguese feminist who was active in the burgeoning independence movements of Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. In 1961 he, along with nine other young PAIGC fighters, trained at the Army Command College of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Nanjing, China.[1]

The Osvaldo Vieira International Airport in Bissau is named in his honour.

References

  1. 1 2 Mendy, Peter Karibe (2019). Amílcar Cabral: A Nationalist and Pan-Africanist Revolutionary. Athens: Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821446621.
  2. ↑ Sarrazin, Chantal; Gjerstad, Ole, Sowing the First Harvest: National Reconstruction in Guinea-Bissau (PDF) (Pamphlet), Oakland, California: Liberation Support Movement
  3. ↑ Davidson, Basil (2017). No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky: The Liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, 1963-74. London: Zed Books. ISBN 9781783609994.
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