Marcelino dos Santos

Marcelino dos Santos was a Mozambican poet, revolutionary, and politician. As a young man he travelled to Portugal, and France for an education. He was a founding member of the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, in 1962, and served as the party's deputy president from 1969 to 1977. He was Minister of Economic Development in the late 1970s, FRELIMO Political Bureau member in charge of the economy in the early 1980s, chairman of the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, from 1987 to 1994, and, as of 1999, remained a member of the FRELIMO Central Committee. He represented the left wing of the party, remaining an avowed Marxist-Leninist, despite the party's embrace of capitalism in recent decades, an embrace which dos Santos declared was temporary.