PORTUGAL: Evolution or Revolution? 30 Years On

By Mario de Queiroz Reprint | | Print |

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Apr 24 2004 (IPS) - When the Santarem armoured regiment took the Terreiro do Paço plaza, a symbol of Portugal’s four-decade iron-fisted dictatorship, 30 years ago on Apr. 25, it was the start of one of the most unique coup d’etats in history: soldiers rising up to impose democracy by force.

When the Santarem armoured regiment took the Terreiro do Paço plaza, a symbol of Portugal’s four-decade iron-fisted dictatorship, 30 years ago on Apr. 25, it was the start of one of the most unique coup d’etats in history: soldiers rising up to impose democracy by force.

In the wee hours of the morning on Apr. 25, 1974, the troops set out for war, with peace as their target. It was perhaps the longest day in Portugal’s history but the shortest for dictator Marcello Caetano, who was awakened at 05.00 local time by his secretary to hear the news: ”the revolution is in the streets.”

It took just one morning for the 144 junior officers (the ‘Captains of April’) of the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA – Armed Forces Movement) to topple the corporatist ”O Estado Novo” (The New State), put in place by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in a 1926 military coup.

Caetano, who succeeded Salazar in 1969, and figurehead president Admiral Américo Thomaz surrendered to the young Captain José Salgueiro Maia, who saved them from the rage of the people by taking them to the airport in an armoured vehicle. From there they fled to Brazil.

The MFA put an end to Europe’s oldest dictatorship and to the independence wars in Portugal’s overseas provinces in Africa, triggering the collapse of the world’s last colonial empire.

The MFA ”manifesto” was summed up by ”the programme of the three D’s”: democratise, decolonise and develop.

Thirty years later, the captains, who are today retired colonels, generals and admirals, believe the aims of the MFA programme were generally met.

Today Portugal is a parliamentary democracy forming part of the European Union (EU), and has developed immensely in the past three decades. It has also left its colonial past far behind.

But a publicity campaign launched by the government of Prime Minister José Manuel Durao Barroso, who belongs to the conservative Social Democratic Party (PSD), sparked a loud controversy in the run-up to the anniversary.

According to the campaign, what should be celebrated is Portugal’s ”evolution”, rather than a revolution.

Durao Barroso’s campaign took observers and analysts by surprise, especially given the fact that he himself – today one of U.S. President George W. Bush’s main foreign allies – was a leader of the Proletariat Party Maoist Revolutionary Movement in 1974.

In its campaign celebrating Portugal’s ”evolution” over the past three decades, the government underlines that today most Portuguese have cell-phones, cable TV, and affordable cars, that they drive on freeways.

Contrary to expectation, the controversy did not divide the country between left and right, but between two irreconcilable bands: those who insist on keeping the historic memory alive, and their detractors.

The speaker of parliament, Joao Bosco de Mota Amaral, who belongs to the prime minister’s party, found it necessary to clarify last week that Congress would ”commemorate the revolution, because the ‘evolution’ came afterwards.”

Meanwhile, leftist student activists, under the cover of night, painted a red ‘R’ in front of the word ‘evolution’ on the government posters that read ‘April is Evolution: 30 Years’.

With its nationwide campaign, the government apparently chose to try to escape history and forget – something that according to writer and political analyst Ana Sá Lopes ”is unforgivable in adult democracies.”

”The origin of this ‘brilliant idea’ is the nearly obsessive political urgency to banish history to the basement,” she writes.

According to Sá Lopes and other analysts, the prime minister took the ”evolution not revolution” approach to indulge his coalition ally, the nationalist right-wing Social Democratic Centre/Popular Party (CDS/PP).

In numerous analyses and columns that have appeared in the press this month, observers have argued that the right is nostalgic for Portugal’s imperial past and the epic deeds of this country’s great navigators, and wants to paint a rosy reconstruction of that past while highlighting the supposed errors committed by the ‘Captains of April’ in granting the colonies independence overnight.

”Apr. 25, 1974 was a revolution in every sense of the word: an ‘illegal’ rupture with the regime in power and the start of a new political era, with mass social movements,” according to historian Fernando Rosas, a professor at the University of Lisbon.

The MFA ”was an armed revolutionary movement led by junior officers tired of the colonial wars, which, in its triumph, decapitated the military hierarchy,” he added.

The campaign, he said, arises from ”the anti-social priorities of the PSD-CDS/PP government, and is aimed at extinguishing the (memory) of the revolution, part of our recent history.”

Portugal’s ”was a typical model of transition by rupture, in other words revolution, very different from the Spanish model,” said Professor Vital Moreira at the University of Coimbra.

Moreira explained that Spain’s was ”a transition by ‘evolution’, because it was carried out by the very leaders who emerged from Franquismo” – a reference to the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1939-1975).

Colonel Mario Tomé, commander of the military police regiment in 1974-1975, complained that Durao Barroso ”is using techniques of manipulation learned alongside (former Spanish prime minister José María) Aznar.”

Apr. 25, 1974 will always be remembered as a revolution, the retired officer told IPS, because ”we must not forget the essential: the defeat of the politics of colonial wars by the soldiers and captains, who were willing to take any risk to satisfy the people’s demand to put an end to it all and to support the liberation movements,” he said.

Tomé, who commanded one of the MFA’s ”red regiments”, argued that ”evolution is something different, and Durao Barroso and his spin-doctors know that very well.”

Otelo de Carvalho, the ”face of the revolution”, continues to defend his ideals 30 years later, although they cost him several years in prison, from 1984 to 1989, when he was accused of belonging to armed groups of the extreme left.

Despite the fact that the retired lieutenant colonel is a ”happy 67-year-old grandfather” today, he has not lost the revolutionary zeal that characterised him as the officer in charge of coordinating the operational aspects of the coup.

De Carvalho said that on the whole, the balance ”is positive, because in these 30 years, the strategic objectives of the three D’s were achieved: Portugal is a representative democracy that has no more empire and has experienced a process of enormous development.”

But that ”does not mean that all of the objectives of the MFA programme were fulfilled, because it also aimed at greater economic, social and cultural equilibrium, and truly participative democracy,” he lamented.

The retired officer answered for IPS a question that remains after three decades: how can a military coup without casualties be possible, despite the resistance put up by some sectors of the police and secret services, and by others who were nostalgic for ‘Salazarismo’?

”The military did not want to kill anyone. The MFA was born in Africa, where we fought real enemies who we didn’t hate and didn’t want to shoot. That, although it sounds like a paradox, creates respect for life,” he said.

That is ”a big difference with many Latin American armies from the decade of the 1970s, which only won ‘battles’ by shooting in the head defenceless workers and students who had been captured and tied up to be executed,” he said.

”Our revolution was fundamentally a generous one. This is the legacy that the ‘Captains of April’ have left the future generations,” said de Carvalho.