Vitor Alves stops his four-wheeler along the road that leads to Cuito Cuanavale. The town in Angola’s southeastern corner has often been dubbed “Africa’s Stalingrad” due to its longtime besiegement (October 1987–June 1988) during the civil war that gripped the country throughout the final quarter of the last century. He points to abandoned and dilapidated tanks, adorned with graffiti and looted of technical gadgets, decorative items, and removable scrap metals.

“Be careful, there’re still landmines here,” Alves warns. Despite a massive nationwide cleanup effort, over a thousand minefields across Angola must still be cleared.

Alves was the son of Portuguese settlers who escaped dire poverty in their homeland under António Salazar’s fascist Estado Novo dictatorship. Born in a newly independent African nation that had suffered five hundred years of colonialism, he recalls a violent youth.