Aristides Pereira

Aristides Maria Pereira (; 17 November 1923 – 22 September 2011) was a Cape Verdean politician. He was the first President of Cape Verde, serving from 1975 to 1991. Biography Pereira was born in Fundo das Figueiras, on the island of Boa Vista. His first job was chief of telecommunications in Guinea-Bissau. From the late 1940s until Cape Verde's independence, Pereira was heavily involved in the anti-colonial movement, organizing strikes and rising through the hierarchy of his party, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde, known as PAIGC). In clandestine activity he often used the pseudonym Alfredo Bangura. Although Pereira initially promised to lead a democratic and socialist nation upon becoming president, he compounded the country's chronic poverty by crushing dissent following the overthrow of Luís Cabral, who was President of Guinea-Bissau and Pereira's ally in the drive to unite the two Lusophone states. However, Cape Verde had a much better human rights record than most countries in Africa and was known as one of the most democratic (despite the restriction on party activity) because of the power delegated to local citizens' committees and his own government was able to cope with the drought that hit the country. Cape Verde is one of the few African countries that never had the death penalty, in fact it was banned in 1983. While Guinea-Bissau remained close to the Soviet Union, Cape Verde maintained a policy of non-alignment. On November 14, 1980, a coup, led by João Bernardo Vieira, overthrew Cabral and replaced the one-party regime with a Military Junta. In response to this, Pereira and his Prime Minister, Pedro Pires, cut diplomatic relations with Guinea-Bissau, dissolved the PAIGC and replaced it with the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde, removing the name of Guinea. Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde restored bilateral relations in 1982, when Mozambican President Samora Machel managed to bring together the two leaders (Vieira and Pereira) in Maputo, and a Cape Verdean ambassador was sent to Guinea-Bissau in 1983.