Nationalist insurgent, statesman, and intellectual, Marcelino dos Santos (born 1929) was instrumental in coordinating the Mozambican nationalist groups into the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo). The party fought a ten-year war which culminated in independence in 1975.

Marcelino dos Santos was born in 1929, son of Firmindo dos Santos and Teresa Sabina dos Santos, and was raised in Lourenco Marques (now Maputo), Mozambique. When he left Mozambique in 1947 to continue his education at the Industrial Institute in Lisbon, Portugal, he already showed himself ready to carry a torch held by his father's generation. Firmindo dos Santos, a member of the African Association of Mozambique, had urged revitalization and unity among Mozambicans in their pursuit of justice and social equality. Young dos Santos, in a 1949 letter to the association from Lisbon, similarly urged members to put aside individual considerations and stand united. At the House for Students of the Empire...