On April 12, the President of the Republic of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, opened in Lisbon “O MFA eo April 25”, an exhibition intended to illustrate the role of the armed forces movement (MFA) in overthrowing dictatorship and building democracy.
Particular emphasis is placed on this in the photo exhibition Origin of the military uprising: the army’s dissatisfaction with the Estado Novo’s insistence on continuing the colonial war, particularly in Guinea-Bissau, where attrition was greater than in Angola and Mozambique.
This is one of the many exhibitions of Photography that can be seen in various communities across the country today. That of Porto is another of them, or that of the municipality of Amadora.
The photographer most present in all of them is Alfredo Cunha, author of a book that brings together the most representative images of the process. Given the Most of the captains who organized the revolution were under 30 years old, almost all of them are still alive, which is why this celebration relies on your presence. Undoubtedly, this is a unique fact compared to other distant historical processes.
If you walk around Lisbon these days, you can see numerous posters reminding you of the followinghe 50th anniversary of the revolution, where images of young soldiers with carnations on their rifles predominate, but also the happy faces of the people who celebrated the end of the Estado Novo (1933-1974).
This city decoration is unique in Western Europe, In no other country have revolutionary processes that led to today’s democracies occurred so recently.
The celebration program includes numerous academic activities and conference cycles. Political meetings are also organized and even dinners with members of the “25th” association. April”, the veterans who made it possible to overthrow the dictatorship.
Unlike other countries that had conservative dictatorships after World War II (1939-1945), the right in Portugal has no nostalgia for Salazarism – the government of António de Oliveira Salazar – or for the Estado Novo, with the exception of some leaders the extremist Chega party, which achieved its best electoral results in last March’s elections. This attitude is reflected, for example, in the complete opening of the archives containing the dictatorship’s documents.
The relationship between Salazar and Franco
Despite the Turmoil that the Portuguese Revolution caused in Spanish societyTo mark the 50th anniversary, virtually no events or debates were organized in Spain to address the significance of this trial, nor were there new reflections on Salazar’s relations with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.
Some researchers have recently published some books that clarify some questions. According to them, Franco dThe aid Salazar gave him during the Spanish Civil War developed into determined political, military and diplomatic support during the Portuguese Colonial War. (1961-1974), sometimes obscured.
The role of Cuba
However, less attention has been paid to examining Cuba’s role in the Carnation Revolution. While it’s true that he wasn’t directly involved, he had a lot to do with it indirectly. Since 1965, Cuba has supported the training of guerrilla cadres of the liberation movements who fought against the Estado Novo. The Cape Verdeans started, followed by Guineans, Angolans and Mozambicans.
In addition, around 600 Cuban internationalists fought alongside the PAIGC (Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) in Guinea-Bissau against the Portuguese army and a smaller group in Angola for a shorter period.
In 1969, the Cuban captain was Pedro Rodríguez Peralta captured by a Portuguese paratroop squad near the Guinea-Conakry border and shortly afterwards transferred to Lisbon, where he remained imprisoned until the collapse of the Estado Novo. He then secured his release and returned to Cuba.
Related to the metropolis Several members of the armed wing of the Portuguese Communist Party were also trained in Cuba.called Armed Revolutionary Action (ARA), which carried out several attacks and acts of sabotage in Portugal at the beginning of the 1970s, an aspect that is hardly known and studied by historians.
A year after the final withdrawal of troops, in 1976, the far right invaded Portugal with the support of the CIA carried out a violent attack on the Cuban embassy in Lisbon in revenge for the Cuban actions against the Estado Novo, which resulted in the deaths of two diplomats.
The war-weariness of the Portuguese army and the unwillingness of Marcelo Caetano, who had succeeded António de Oliveira Salazar in 1968, to secede from the African territories led some of the troops to take up arms.
Carlos de Almada Contreiras, captain of the Portuguese Navy and important protagonist of the revolution –é He was the one who gave the song “Grandola Vila Morena” as the password for the military operation that morning – states that they were inspired by Pinochet’s coup, of which they were informed by the White Paper on the Change of Government in Chile, which had just been published by the Chilean Armed Forces to justify their actions against the democratic government of Salvador Allende of September 11. September 1973.
Furthermore, the The reforms carried out in Portugal after April 25 and until November 1975 had many similarities with the process of popular unity in Chile (1970-1973), especially the agrarian reform.
The democratic revolution
Five decades after the outbreak of the revolution, in which numerous extremely valuable historical studies and numerous testimonies of the protagonists of the time were published, It can be concluded that this process followed the democratic path like no other in the world.
First of all After the dissolution of the Estado Novo and its repressive apparatus, power was quickly handed over to civil society and the military ceased to bear political responsibility.
Regarding the colonial territoriesPortugal kept its commitment to grant them full independencewithout attempting to establish a neo-colonial system through which their country’s companies would not only have exercised political influence but also retained control over the strategic sectors of their respective economies.
Fernando Camacho Padilla, contract professor with a doctorate in the Department of Contemporary History, Autonomous University of Madrid
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
