The Guinean engineer Amílcar Cabral, one of Africa's most important anti-colonial leaders, confessed in his biography that as a child his mind was so steeped in colonialism that he felt Portuguese. Within a few years, he became one of the continent's most renowned revolutionaries: he led the independence movement of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde against Portugal, and was assassinated a year before the definitive recognition of independence in 1974. His writings and speeches have become legendary. One of them stated that to convince peasants to join the guerrillas, people didn't need to hear grand theories, but rather the promise of a better life.