His political activities resulted in his imprisonment by Portugal’s International and State Defense Police (PIDE), and during military service he was sent to Angola for three years, returning to Cabo Verde in 1967. Vieira published his first poems in the Boletim de propaganda e informação de Cabo Verde and in the Angolan journal Mákua, and he later contributed to the important journals Raizes and Ponto & Vírgula, among others. In 2009, he became the first Cabo Verdean writer to be awarded the Camões Prize, the most prestigious accolade in Portuguese-language letters.