Paulo Freire arrived at Guiné-Bissau in 1976. Amílcar Cabral had been murdered in January 1973. The encounter of Paulo Freire with Amílcar Cabral was by the study of his texts, by interviews and by the learnings with a people trying to achieve a role as subjects of their own history. The influence of Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi was already present in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. However, the issue of liberation was still located in the relation between conscience and ideology. The encounter with Amilcar Cabral and with the people of Guiné resulted in a revision of the proposition that the transformation of reality could happen through an “internal reform” of the human beings. The relationship between the world of labour and the productive system acquired centrality and, consequently, education and labour constituted a unity. Another issue in which affinities and influences are expressed, refers to consider the struggle for liberation is a cultural fact and a factor of culture. The encounter between these two pedagogues of anti colonialism and their critical and creative appropriation of Marxism to praxis provides contributions, among others, to problematize fashionable merely epistemological decolonial approaches and to overcome the limits of approaches that essentialize the cultural dimension.
Keywords:
Paulo Freire; Amílcar Cabral; Decolonization; Anticolonialism; Struggle for Liberation