Paulo Freire and Amílcar Cabral

Abstract

Two men, two great men, two courageous defenders of human dignity, two fighters against injustice, against the exploitation and oppression to which human beings are so often subjected: one was named Paulo Régulus Freire, born in 1921 in South America, Brazil, in the city of Recife; the other was named Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral, born three years later (1924) in Africa, in Guinea-Bissau, then a Portuguese colony.

Paulo Freire, having studied in Recife, earned a degree in Law, but soon abandoned that field of work and developed his activities in the area of sociopolitical engagement through education. Cabral, born in Africa, in a colony, had to come to Portugal (Lisbon) to pursue his university studies, where he graduated in Agronomy. A theorist of political action, he defended and organized armed struggle against colonialism. Freire described him as someone who was “in the gestation of all the liberation movements of the former Portuguese colonies, since the time when he, still young, was studying in Lisbon” (Freire, 1985, p. 4).

With such different geographical origins, with such varied life contexts and academic backgrounds, one might expect their reflections, goals, and methods of action to be quite distinct. However, when we look closely at the life stories of both, the similarities between many of their characteristics become strikingly evident.