Pereira, Aristides Maria [key], 1923–2011, first president of Cape Verde. In the late 1940s he became an activist in the struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in Cape Verde. He and Amilcar Cabral founded (1956) the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, and in 1973 Pereira was named the party's secretary general. When Cape Verde achieved independence in 1975, he became the new nation's president. After the 1980 coup in Guinea-Bissau, plans to unify the two countries were abandoned and the party was renamed (1981) the Party for the Independence of Cape Verde. Pereira served as president until 1991, when he lost the presidency in the country's first multiparty democratic election.
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