Currency of Cape Verde 5000 Escudos banknote 2014 Aristides Pereira
Bank of Cape Verde - Banco de Cabo Verde
Obverse: Portrait of the first president of Cape Verde Aristides Maria Pereira (1923-2011). View of the Presidential Palace of Cape Verde in the background. Map of the island of Cape Verde superimposed on house exterior; Map of Africa as registration device; stylized waves; embossed map of Africa.
Reverse: Stylized wave; map of Boa Vista; landscape of Boa Vista (home of Aristides Maria Pereira), including fireplace of pottery factory. Holographic stripe with Aristides Maria Pereira, BCV, and map of Boa Vista. Red-to-green windowed security thread with demetalized BCV 5000 and torch.
Watermark: Aristides Maria Pereira and electrotype torch with Cornerstones.
Purple, light blue, orange, and yellow.
Printer: Thomas De La Rue & Company Limited, London, England.
Dimensions: 148 x 74 mm.
Date: 5 de Julho de 2014. Introduction: 10.09.2015.
Cape Verde Banknotes - Cape Verde Paper Money
2014 Issue
Aristides Pereira, 1st President of Cape Verde
Aristides Maria Pereira (November 17, 1923 – September 22, 2011) was a Cape Verdean politician. He was the first President of Cape Verde, serving from 1975 to 1991.
Pereira was born on the island of Boa Vista. His first major government job was chief of telecommunications in Guinea-Bissau. From the late 1940s until Cape Verde's independence, Pereira was heavily involved in the anti-colonial movement, organizing strikes and rising through the hierarchy of his party, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde, known as PAIGC). In clandestine activity he often used the pseudonym Alfredo Bangura.
Although Pereira initially promised to lead a democratic and socialist nation upon becoming president, he compounded the country's chronic poverty by crushing dissent following the overthrow of Luís Cabral, who was President of Guinea-Bissau and Pereira's ally in the drive to unite the two Lusophone states. However, Cape Verde had a much better human rights record than most countries in Africa and was known as one of the most democratic (despite the restriction on party activity) because of the power delegated to local citizens' committees. Cape Verde is one of the few African countries that never had the death penalty. After the coup in Bissau, which overthrew President Luís Cabral and replaced him with Nino Vieira, in November 1980, any formal attempt to achieve unity with Guinea-Bissau was over. The political repression sharply decreased but the one-party PAICV state established at independence remained until 1990.
The country's policies during Pereira's rule tended toward Cold War nonalignment and economic reforms to help the peasantry. He controversially allied his country with the regimes in China and Libya. Pedro Pires served as prime minister for the duration of Pereira's presidency.
After PAICV decided to introduce multiparty democracy in February 1990, Pereira stepped down as General Secretary of PAICV in July 1990 and was succeeded in that post by Pires. Pereira was the PAICV candidate in the February 1991 presidential election, but António Mascarenhas Monteiro defeated him by a large margin.
While hospitalized in Portugal, Pereira died on September 22, 2011. Rabil Airport on the Cape Verdean island of Boa Vista was officially renamed as Aristides Pereira International Airport on November 19, 2011. His widow, Carlina Fontes Pereira, the former First Lady and a leading figure in the country's independence movement, died on December 11, 2011, at the age of 85.
Presidential Palace of Cape Verde
The Palácio Presidencial (Portuguese meaning the Presidential Palace, Capeverdean Crioulo, ALUPEC or ALUPEK: Palásiu Prizidensial or - Prezidensial) is a Cape Verdean monument located at Rua Pedro Álvares Cabral near the southern end of Avenida Andrade Corvo and is south of Rua Serpa Pinto connected with another driveway. It was constructed in the end of the 19th century of colonial and neo-greco architecture and used as a residence of the Portuguese governor until Cape Verde gained independence in 1975. It is in the downtown area of the capital city, Praia, in a part known as Platô in the southernmost part. North of the building has a driveway linking Rua Serpa Pinto. The area also features a luxuriant garden. Nearby landmarks includes the Monument to Diogo Gomes and Quartel Jaime Mota.
From 2014 to late 2015, the building went under restoration works and also expanded the east wing to Avenida Andrade Corvo, new concrete tiles were put south of the building. The nearby kiosk was removed and the walkway became narrow. West of the palace, the nearby parking lots (or carpool) were removed in around 2010, in 2014, concrete tiles were added and a square opened in 2016.
Boa Vista, Cape Verde
Boa Vista (Portuguese meaning “good view”), also written as Boavista, is a desert-like island that belongs to the Cape Verde Islands. The archipelago contains 10 different islands, in total, of which Boa Vista is the third largest.
The island of Boa Vista is located the closest to the African continent, as it’s the easternmost island of all. The distance between Boa Vista and Senegal is only 450 km.
Boa Vista, which has its capital, Sal Rei, located on the north-western part of the island, is mainly known for the numerous presence of turtles, traditional music and ultramarathon. People also associate Boa Vista with its endless beautiful beaches and sand hills. Boa Vista has an established value in the touristic sector because of the airport in Rabil and the numerous accommodation options that the island offers for its tourists.
Landscape
Boa Vista is the third largest island after Santo Antao and Santiago, with an area of 620 square kilometres. It is situated south of Sal and north of the Island of Maio. The island is overall flat, but also has numerous mountains like Santo António (Saint Anthony), Rocha Estância, Monte Negro (Black Mountain), Monte Caçador, Pico Forcado and Monte Vigia and Monte Estância as the highest point of the island (1,270 feet).
Besides mountains, Boa Vista is also famous for its large, wonderful beaches like Atalanta, Cabral, Chave, Ervatão, Gatas, Santa Mónica and Varandinha.
The island of Boa Vista is one out of the five Cape Verde Islands, which has surrounding islets like Ilhéu de Sal Rei (west), Ilhéu de Curral Velho (south), Ilhéu do Baluarte (east).
History
Diogo Gomes, a Portuguese explorer, discovered the Cape Verde Islands in 1456 when they were still uninhabited. The name Boa Vista, which means “beautiful view", was given by this man as it was the first thing that came in his mind when seeing this archipelago. 6 Years after the discovery of the archipelago, in 1462, the Portuguese started building the first town, Riberira, on the island of Santiago. In 1587, the Cape Verde Islands became an official Portuguese colony and ever since then, they used the archipelago as a lay-over for slave traffic between the African continent and America.
Since 1620, slaves have been employed in salt mines, where they processed the salt in mountainous areas, in order to make sure that pirates couldn’t attack in such areas. The salt trade made a fast-economic growth possible for the island, making Cape Verde seem a center of the trade.
Ever since, it only goes upwards with the archipelago. In 1975, Cape Verde has declared its independence, even though the fact that there had never been any war on the archipelago itself. In 2001 Cape Verde also positioned itself on the political map as they had their first prime minister from that year on. Since that political growth, the archipelago has started working on the level of tourism on the different island by building international airports, ports, roads, hotels...
Population
As of the mid-19th century, the population was estimated at 4,000. Most of the population live in Sal Rei, but there are also many small towns with 10 to 100 people. Boa Vista has the smallest population of all of inhabited Cape Verde’s islands, and it is the least-dense populated in the archipelago. Since 1990, the population has grown steadily, bouncing back from a period of dryness and famine by which a lot of inhabitants immigrated. In 2010 Boa Vista's population increased to 8,554.
The population of Boa Vista consist of a mixture of different nationalities: Creole, Negroids and Caucasians. The Creoles are the biggest group of inhabitants, with no less than 70%, as a lot of Portuguese enter into a relation with the slaves of the African continent, during the colonization of Portugal, and settled in Boa Vista afterwards.