Movimento Popular da Libertação de Angola (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), an Angolan political party that has ruled the african country of angola since its independence from portugal in 1975.

The earliest anticolonialist political group in Angola, founded about 1953, was the PLUA: Partido da Luta Unida dos Africanos de Angola (Party of the United Struggle of Africans of Angola). In December 1956, the PLUA combined with other organizations in Luanda , angola's capital city, to form the MPLA, whose aim was to achieve independence for Angola by means of a united front of all African interests. After many of its leaders were arrested in March 1959, the party moved its headquarters to Conakry, Guinea. The MPLA's first leader, Mário de Andrade, an educated mestiço and a poet, gave the party a reputation for representing primarily the interests of urban intellectuals rather than the indigenous masses.

The MPLA traces its Marxist-Leninist (see karl marx and vladimir ilyitch lenin) origins to its ties with the clandestine Partido Comunista Português (pcp). The initial MPLA manifesto called for an end to colonialism and the building of a modern society free of prejudice, a goal that could be realized only after a lengthy period of political preparation followed by a revolutionary struggle.

The MPLA leadership sought a definite direction and a set of objectives for the independence struggle, in contrast with the broad nationalist approach of its greatest rival for supremacy in the struggle, the Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (National Front for the Liberation of Angola - FNLA). Thus, the MPLA's program, outlined in a policy document in the 1960s, avoided a stated commitment to socialism or Marxism-Leninism, but it clearly alluded to the movement's adherence to Marxist-Leninist principles and the Nonaligned Movement.from 1975 until 2002 the mpla was fighting in a civil war against the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola - UNITA). this Civil war, which received varying degrees of support from the U.

S. and South Africa in the '80s, continued until 2002, when UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi was killed. The two parties agreed to a ceasefire, and a plan was laid out for UNITA to demobilize and become a peaceful political party.

The organization's leftist orientation attracted the support of the Soviet Union, cuba and China, both of which envisioned prospects for a foothold in Africa provided by a ruling Marxist-Leninist vanguard party.

In the 1992 elections, MPLA-PT won 53.74% of the votes, and 129 out of 227 members of parliament.