Prominent Captain of April Colonel Luís Macedo dies of Covid-19 in Mozambique

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Prominent Captain of April Colonel Luís Macedo dies of Covid-19 in Mozambique

7:12 CAT | 15 Nov 2020

File photo: Lusa

Colonel Luís Macedo, who was part of the Portuguese army’s engineering group which conceived and organised the plan for the 1974 revolution, died of Covid-19 in Mozambique on Saturdayday, announced the president of the April 25th Association Vasco Lourenço.

“It is with immense regret and enormous pain that we report the death of our founding partner, Colonel Luís Ernesto Albuquerque Ferreira de Macedo, after a prolonged and fierce fight against Covid-19. Luís Macedo was one of the main April captains, and important throughout the April 25 process,“ Lourenço said on Sunday.

In a statement, the president of Associação 25 de Abril pointed out that Luís Macedo was part of “a notable group of Army engineers, who would distinguish themselves in the Captains’ Movement, the driving force and fundamental agent of the liberation of Portugal and the Portuguese”.

Colonel Vasco Lourenço noted that Luis Macedo was the “right-hand man and the main support” of Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho.

“While he was of great importance in the conception of the order of operations, it would be in obtaining and organising the space where the Command Post of the MFA (Movement of the Armed Forces) was installed that Luís Macedo’s role was decisive. It was he who, in his unit, RE1, organised, prepared and coordinated from the Pontinha post, where Otelo [Saraiva de Carvalho] and his team directed all operations,” Lourenço relates.

During the April 25 military operations in 1974, Luís Macedo was also at Praça do Comércio giving support to Captain Salgueiro Maia.

“In the struggle for the consolidation of the April 25th achievements, Luís Macedo joined the Council of the Revolution (he, who once belonged to the Coordinating Committee of the Captains’ Movement), between March and September 1975. I remember him as an important element, with all his strength and youth, at the service of the Portuguese Revolution,“ Lourenço writes.

Vasco Lourenço further laments that Macedo was later “one of the victims of the marginalisation and persecution that the political/military establishment subtly directed towards the captains of April”, and which led him to withdraw from his military career and move to Mozambique.

“His character, his ethics, did not allow him to agree with incompetence, hypocrisy and blind ignorance. The Army lost one of its best, and the civilian world ended up the winner, as in so many other cases. Luís Macedo, let us not hide it, is an example of the values that the Portugal of Abril did not know, did not want to harness, out of revanchism against those who had the courage to move towards the overthrow of fascism and colonialism, and the opening of doors to freedom and peace,” Lourenço concludes.

Luís Macedo was 73 years old.

Also read: Mozambique: Covid-19 deaths rise to 113, cumulative total of cases now stands at 14,448

A partida de um Capitão de Abril, vítima de Covid-19, nestes dias em que negacionistas e fascistas marcham sobre a Liberdade.
E depois do adeus, o que será de nós?
O que faremos?
Pela Liberdade que nos permitiu?

Gratidão, descanse em paz.

Luís Macedo
1947-2020

📷 Alfredo Cunha pic.twitter.com/TtphDxeoKF

— rui borges (@homo_viator) November 15, 2020