Lúcio Lara

Lúcio Rodrigo Leite Barreto de Lara (9 April 1929 – 27 February 2016), also known by the pseudonym Tchiweka, was an Angolan revolutionary, physicist-mathematician, politician, anti-colonial ideologist and one of the founding members (and president) of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). He served as General Secretary of the MPLA during the Angolan War of Independence and Angolan Civil War. Lara, a founding member of the MPLA, led the first MPLA members into Luanda on 8 November 1974. He swore in Agostinho Neto as the first president of the country.

He was acting president of Angola for ten days, from 10 September 1979 to 20 September 1979, briefly leading the country between the death of Agostinho Neto and the inauguration of José Eduardo dos Santos. He was a member of the Angolan parliament from independence until 2003.

He was the main ideologist and thinker of Angola's self-determination, as well as an important theorist of Marxism, being one of the biggest names in the country in the 20th century.

Early life and education Lúcio Lara was born in the city of Caála, in the province of Huambo, on 9 April 1929. His father was a merchant, and his mother was a princess of the Bailundo kingdom.

Between 1949 and 1952, he studied for a degree in mathematics at the University of Lisbon. It was in this discussion center that he became friends with António Agostinho Neto (future president of Angola). The two would be responsible for the formation of the ideological nucleus of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). After graduating in mathematics, he began working as a teacher in Lisbon.

Political career He founded, together with several anti-colonial students and workers, the Clube Marítimo Africano in Lisbon, a recreational and sports entity that also served as a center for debates about colonialism. The Clube was important to circumvent Portugal's intelligence and information services and prevent the interception of correspondence. In 1963, with its expulsion from Democratic Republic of Congo/Zaire, and its flight across the river to Congo-Brazzaville, the MPLA fell into a state of total disarray and might have ceased to exist had Lara's brilliant organizational skills and cunning political decisions not saved it.

After being elected as secretary general of the party, he moved permanently with his family to Brazzaville (in 1964), considered the pro-tempore seat of the MPLA during the period of Angola's war of independence. In this city, he worked as a teacher of mathematics and chemistry in the party's schools and organizes the MPLA's department of education and culture, responsible for preparing teachers and maintaining a vast library. Though the work of arresting, jailing, torturing and killing dissidents, real or imagined, was ordered by Neto, and carried out by lower-level cadres, it is generally accepted that the operation was directed by Lara, Minister of Defence Iko Carreira, Head of DISA Ludy Kissassunda and Kissassunda's Deputy Henrique de Carvalho Santos (Onambwe).

On 10 December 1977, despite the tragic results of the purge, Lara was re-elected to the central committee of the MPLA, which made him the second most important member of the political bureau (after only Neto) and vice-president of the party, being responsible for the organization and the ideological sector.

In 1980 he was re-elected member of the MPLA's central committee, political bureau and secretary of organization. In addition, he was elected chairman of the intergovernmental council of the Pan-African News Agency (PanaPress), a position he held for 5 years. In the same year, he was elected deputy representing the province of Moxico. While in this term, he was responsible for the special parliamentary commission for coffee production and the permanent parliamentary health commission. The Angolan Ministry of Defense retired him as an army general in 2004, but he refused to use the rank because he did not consider himself a military professional. In 1996 he released the memoir "For a broad movement…", with a preface by his wife Ruth.

Personal life His only wife was the German-Angolan teacher Ruth Manuela Pflüger Rosemberg Lara, with whom he had three children: Paulo, Wanda and Bruno. Ruth died of natural causes in 2000. With Ruth, in the 1960s, she adopted a Brazzaville-Congolese child Jean-Michel Mabeko Tali.