Survival and resistance, the price of liberty and the necessity of solidarity, the fragility of power and the futility of tyrannies of force and control before the unanswerable power of refusal to submit or obey, the redemptive power of love as community and the alliance of autonomous peoples in a free society of equals, and the transformational nature of freedom as the choice to remain unconquered; on this day of the twin anniversaries of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and Italian Liberation Day we celebrate the glorious triumph of our forebears as antifascists and the lessons we can learn from our history.
In the glorious victory for all humankind of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, which we celebrate today in Portugal and throughout her former colonies also liberated by this historic act of solidarity by the citizens of a colonial empire with the peoples of her dominion, we find affirmation of our universal human rights of sovereignty, independence, and self-determination, of our humanity, of the inevitability of liberation under imposed conditions of struggle of force and control, falsification, commodification, and dehumanization, and the strategies of division of those who would enslave us.
Here upon the stage of history and the world, unerasable and indelibly written in our flesh as truths we have together dreamed and made real, the people of Portugal have demonstrated for us all the power of solidarity.
What can we learn from the Carnation Revolution as antifascists, revolutionaries, truth tellers, and bearers of the Promethean Fire which is democracy?
The great secret of power is that it is fragile and brittle; force and control fail at the point of disobedience and disbelief.
Law serves power, order appropriates, and there is no just Authority.
Who cannot be compelled by force is free. In resistance and refusal to submit to authority we become Unconquered.
To resist is to be free, and this is a kind of victory which cannot be taken from us. Refusal to submit is the defining human act and seizure of power, and this is the first revolution in which we all must fight; the struggle for ownership of ourselves.
In this we are all brothers, sisters, and others; all of us a United Humankind with a duty of care for each other beyond all differences.
Time to make an end to the age of empires, to monarchies and to tyrannies of force and control, to hegemonies of elite wealth, power, and privilege, to fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, and to divisions of elite belonging and exclusionary otherness; let us throw open the gates of our prisons and our borders, and be free.
As written by Fernando Camacho Padilla in The Conversation, in an article entitled The 50th anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution – the peaceful uprising that toppled a dictatorship and ended a decade of colonial war; “Across Portugal, a number of photography exhibitions are currently on display that commemorate the ousting of the Estado Novo, the dictatorial, authoritarian and corporatist political regime that had ruled the country since 1933.
The work of photographer Alfredo Cunha features prominently in many – he authored a book compiling the most emblematic images of this period. Many of those who organised the revolution are still alive today and have been present at events to mark the anniversary.
The roots of the revolution
In April 1974, over a decade of colonial wars had left Portugal’s army fatigued, yet Marcelo Caetano – who succeeded prime minister António de Oliveira Salazar in 1968 – was still unwilling to let go of African territories. This led a section of the country’s army to rise up.
Carlos de Almada Contreiras, a captain in the Portuguese navy, played a prominent role in the revolution. It was he who instructed that the song “Grândola Vila Morena”, an ode to fraternity, be the signal to commence the military operation that morning.
De Almada Contreiras has said that the idea of using a song as a signal to the troops came from the coup staged by Pinochet in 1973, which they had learned about from the Libro Blanco del cambio de gobierno en Chile (White Paper on the Change of Government in Chile). This document had just been published by the Chilean armed forces to justify their actions against Salvador Allende’s democratic government on 11 September 1973.
Interestingly, the reforms implemented in Portugal from the revolution on 25 April 1973 to November of the same year bore many similarities to the Popular Unity movement in Chile (1970-1973), especially its agrarian reforms.
International support
Though the Portuguese revolution caused uproar and turmoil in Spanish society, there has been little reflection on Salazar’s relationship with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Some researchers have recently published books on Spanish-Portuguese relations before and during the revolution which demonstrate its historical impact and relevance. María José Tiscar, for example, argues that Franco repaid Salazar’s help during the Spanish civil war with political, military and diplomatic support during the Portuguese colonial war (1961-1974), sometimes covertly.
Even less attention has been paid to Cuba’s role in the Carnation Revolution: while the Caribbean nation was not directly involved in the events, it did play an indirect part. From 1965 onward, Cuba provided support in training guerrilla forces from the colonial liberation movements fighting the Estado Novo, first in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, and then in Angola and Mozambique.
In addition, around 600 Cuban internationalists fought alongside the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) in Guinea Bissau against the Portuguese army, and a smaller group in Angola for a short period.
In 1969, Cuban army captain Pedro Rodríguez Peralta was captured by Portuguese paratroopers near the border with Guinea-Conakry, and was transferred to Lisbon shortly after. He remained there until the fall of the Estado Novo, when he was released and allowed to return to Cuba.
Several members of the armed wing of the Portuguese Communist Party, known as the Armed Revolutionary Action (ARA), were also trained in Cuba. The ARA committed several attacks and acts of sabotage in Portugal in the early 1970s.
A year after the final departure of Portuguese troops from Africa in 1976, the Portuguese far-right, with the support of the CIA, bombed the Cuban embassy in Lisbon, claiming the lives of two diplomats. This was done in revenge for Cuban actions against the Estado Novo.
Celebrating peace
In recent weeks, Lisbon has been plastered with countless posters commemorating the 50th anniversary of the revolution. Images abound of young soldiers with carnations in their rifles, and of the joyous faces of those celebrating the fall of the Estado Novo. The city’s streets and boulevards are also adorned with many murals paying tribute to the events of 25 April 1974.
Such celebration is unique in Western Europe. No other country in the region has so recently experienced a revolution that gave way to its current democratic government.
Unlike other countries that had conservative dictatorships after the Second World War, the Portuguese Right shows little nostalgia for the days of António de Oliveira Salazar, or for the Estado Novo. This lack of nostalgia is reflected in actions such as the opening of archives housing the dictatorship’s documents to the public.
The only exception can be found among certain leaders of the extremist far-right party Chega, which recently had its strongest ever electoral performance in March this year.
Democratic revolution
Five decades after the revolution erupted, Portugal has followed a unique path to democracy.
Once the Estado Novo and its apparatus of oppression had been dismantled, power was swiftly handed over to civilians, and military officials ceased to hold political positions.
Portugal also fulfilled its pledge to grant full independence to its colonial territories. There were no attempts to establish a system of neocolonial rule which could have allowed the country to maintain political influence, or to grant Portuguese businesses control over sectors of the economy in former colonies.”
Portugal’s Carnation Revolution not only exorcised the ghosts of fascism and dethroned a brutal regime, but did so explicitly in the context of liberating its colonies. A coup led by soldiers who refused to fight for the profits of the wealthy or to oppress their fellow workers in Portugal’s African colonies was embraced by workers in Portugal itself and became a true democratic revolution.
As explained by Raquel Varela in a Jacobin interview with David Broder; “The country spent thirteen years fighting against the anticolonial revolutions in Guinea, Mozambique, and Angola, with more than one million troops mobilized, over eight thousand dead on the Portuguese side and one hundred thousand dead on the African side.”
“What began on April 25 as a coup d’état led immediately to the complete dismantling of the dictatorship’s political regime, but more than that, it was also the seed of a social revolution.
What happened in Portugal in 1974-5 was the last revolution in Europe to call into question the private ownership of the means of production. According to official data, it resulted in a considerable shift in the balance of class forces — some 18 percent of national income was transferred from capital to labor. It achieved gains like the guarantee of the right to a job, living wages (above the level of subsistence or biological reproduction alone), and equal and universal access to education, health, and social security.
What differentiates Portugal’s revolutionary period from a democratic transition process like Spain’s was not the staging of elections or their results, but rather the overall dynamic visible in this period. The holding of elections was, obviously, a major achievement, after forty-eight years of dictatorship: the first contest saw 95 percent of the people turn out to vote! But what sets a revolution apart from other processes is the way the population get stuck in, and directly take their lives into their own hands.
Paul Valéry used to say that politics is the art of turning the citizens away from their own lives. A revolution is precisely the opposite, a unique moment in history. We enacted one of the twentieth century’s most important revolutions. The right to vote was one of its elements, but its most crucial feature was that for nineteen months, three million people directly took part in workers’, residents’, and soldiers’ councils, which decided what to do on a daily basis. People voted and discussed what to do for hours and hours. All of this made it possible for our revolution to accomplish wonderful things. To take just one example, look at the women organized in the residents’ councils, who together with Carris (Lisbon public transport) drivers rerouted the buses so that social housing districts distant from the city center would finally be served by public transit.
The banks were nationalized and expropriated with no compensation whatsoever. And the right to free time was absolutely pivotal. Take the case of the demonstration by bakers working long hours, whose slogan was “we want to sleep with our wives.” As a slogan, it is very interesting, because nowadays we take it for granted that at eleven at night there are people selling socks in supermarkets or working on Volkswagen assembly lines. People won not just price freezes so that they could have decent meals, but the right to leisure and culture. They also won the right to housing, indeed by occupying vacant houses that were destined for speculation. Even judges sometimes backed them, as in the city of Setúbal. I’ll remind you that today in Portugal there are seven hundred thousand vacant houses, owned by real-estate funds, which do not pay taxes.
As well as four thousand workers’ councils there were 360 companies managed by their own workers. Dryland farming areas tripled, as peasants occupied the land. These occupations are obviously in contrast with what we have today: the stalling of production during the crisis. Amid mass unemployment, people are instead paid to stop producing.
1979 would also see the creation of a National Health Service. However, the unification of a universal health system was introduced on the aftermath of April 25. The first person in charge of that was an absolutely wonderful figure within the Armed Forces Movement, Cruz Oliveira. He took the hospitals out of the charities’ hands and turned them into a single service, and banned the selling of blood — since then, the blood used in hospitals has been donated. All of this happened with the people on the streets, demanding that health access should not be a commodified good, but rather a universal right.”
“Never in Portuguese history have as many people spoken for themselves as they did in those months. Politics ceased to be separated between elites and people, and there was a close connection between manual and intellectual work, between Africa and Europe, between doctors and nurses, men and women, students and teachers.”
“In these two years, human beings were reunited with their humanity. This legacy still lasts today. And it is the only one that can save us from the abyss of the present.”
The 50th anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution – the peaceful uprising that toppled a dictatorship and ended a decade of colonial war
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/04/portugal-carnation-revolution-national-liberation-april
Portuguese
25 de Abril de 2024 50º Aniversário da Revolução dos Cravos em Portugal
A sobrevivência e a resistência, o preço da liberdade e a necessidade de solidariedade, a fragilidade do poder e a futilidade das tiranias de força e controle diante do poder irrespondível da recusa em submeter-se ou obedecer, o poder redentor do amor como comunidade e a aliança de forças autônomas. povos numa sociedade livre de iguais, e a natureza transformacional da liberdade como a escolha de permanecer invicto; neste dia dos dois aniversários da Revolução dos Cravos em Portugal e do Dia da Libertação Italiana, celebramos o glorioso triunfo dos nossos antepassados como antifascistas e as lições que podemos aprender com a nossa história.
Na gloriosa vitória para toda a humanidade da Revolução dos Cravos de Portugal, que hoje celebramos em Portugal e em todas as suas ex-colónias também libertadas por este acto histórico de solidariedade dos cidadãos de um império colonial com os povos do seu domínio, encontramos a afirmação da nossa direitos humanos universais de soberania, independência e autodeterminação, da nossa humanidade, da inevitabilidade da libertação sob condições impostas de luta de força e controle, falsificação, mercantilização e desumanização, e as estratégias de divisão daqueles que nos escravizariam .
Aqui, no palco da história e do mundo, inapagáveis e indelevelmente escritas na nossa carne como verdades que juntos sonhamos e tornamos realidade, o povo de Portugal demonstrou-nos todo o poder da solidariedade.
O que podemos aprender com a Revolução dos Cravos como antifascistas, revolucionários, contadores da verdade e portadores do Fogo Prometeico que é a democracia?
O grande segredo do poder é que ele é frágil e quebradiço; a força e o controle falham no ponto da desobediência e da descrença.
A lei serve o poder, a ordem se apropria e não existe Autoridade justa.
Quem não pode ser compelido pela força é livre. Na resistência e na recusa em nos submeter à autoridade, tornamo-nos Invictos.
Resistir é ser livre, e esta é uma espécie de vitória que não nos pode ser tirada. A recusa em submeter-se é o ato humano definidor e a tomada do poder, e esta é a primeira revolução na qual todos devemos lutar; a luta pela propriedade de nós mesmos.
Nisto somos todos irmãos, irmãs e outros; todos nós, uma Humanidade Unida, com o dever de cuidar uns dos outros, além de todas as diferenças.
É hora de pôr fim à era dos impérios, às monarquias e às tiranias de força e controle, às hegemonias de riqueza, poder e privilégios das elites, aos fascismos de sangue, fé e solo, e às divisões de elite pertencentes e excludentes. alteridade; abramos as portas das nossas prisões e das nossas fronteiras e sejamos livres.
Torch of Liberty 