In April 1975, the first free elections were held to elect the
Constituent Assembly, won by the Socialist Party, which thus went on toclaim the status of majority party. Despite this, in the fragile balance
between the social forces and the "street", the paths of the
revolutionary crisis were not yet clear. The PREC had its support in the
so-called Hot Summer of 1975, when the political confrontation became
increasingly threatening. Conservatives and the far right, linked to the
Catholic Church, staged demonstrations, especially in the north of the
country, which resulted in attacks on the headquarters of left-wing and
far-left forces, an initiative in which the action of two far-right
organizations was not unrelated, the Portuguese Liberation Army (ELP)
and the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal (MDLP), which
brought together former members of the dictatorship's political police,
military supporters of Spinola and businessmen exiled in Spain, relying
on the protection of the Spanish police and secret services, which
allowed them to carry out terrorist actions in Portugal. At the same
time, in the Lisbon region, far-left organizations attempted to create a
common front with the Communist Party, which the PCP, however, abandoned
shortly thereafter, in any case failing to prevent the radical left from
creating the FUR, the Revolutionary Unity Front. One of the main actors
that articulated the initiative was the PRP-BR, close to a councilist
conception that tended to condition the group of military men that
revolved around Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho (a leading figure of April 25;
ed.) by pressuring the "closest" military sectors to proceed in the
direction of a revolutionary break. The libertarian militant exiled in
France, Jorge Valadas, would define these maneuvers of the revolutionary
left as "a coup-plotting conception of the social revolution".
The idea of insurrection did not, in the meantime, unite those
different organizations, each with its own tactics and very distinct
visions of what the Revolution meant, and, above all, lacking a plan,
courage and social support that would allow them to advance in that
direction, despite the fact that these formations had accumulated
armaments by diverting them from the barracks during the previous
months. As for the Communist Party, it seems quite clear today that it
could never have ventured into a seizure of power with the old Leninist
methods: its relationship and dependence on the Soviet Union would not
have allowed it. Brezhnev, who "calmed down" Western leaders on numerous
occasions, and the most conservative Portuguese military sectors were
certainly not willing to violate the Helsinki agreements and thus
jeopardize the negotiations that were underway at the time with the USA.
But even taking all this into account, it must be remembered that some
basic sectors, some cadres and various leaders of the PCP, still trained
in Leninist mysticism, were tempted to put pressure on and/or openly
support a logic of confrontation with the aforementioned conservative
sectors. Instead, it was the liberal military, the conservatives and the
far-right front, joined by certain Maoist groups, grouped around what
was called the "document of nine", who went on the offensive on November
25, 1975, under the operational command of then Lieutenant Colonel
Ramalho Eanes, against the left-wing and far-left military sectors,
disarming them and seizing their political-military influence; which was
configured as the classic "coup of mercy" to the so-called Revolutionary
Process. This preventive counter-revolution had been planned for months
and had received the approval of the American ambassador, Frank
Carlucci, who, years later, would take over the direction of the CIA and
the "guardianship" of the main Western countries. Reconstructing the
whole, it can be taken for granted that the plan envisaged, if
necessary, the recourse to civil war and that, in the event of a defeat
in Lisbon, the government would retreat to the north of the country from
where it would organize the offensive on what it called the Comuna of
Lisbon. The support for this military plan was already guaranteed by the
English government. The next pretext for the coup would be an
insubordination of the paratroopers which has been characterized as a
precursor to the attempt by the communists to seize power. The pretext
for the coup was the insubordination of the paratroopers which was
characterized by the announcement of an attempt by the communists to
seize power.
The victory of this plan in Lisbon proved surprisingly easy, as neither
the various organizations nor the parties had prepared a resistance
plan; not even, in particular, the military sectors most closely linked
to the PCP and the more radical circles where Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho
pontificated, resolved to confront the conservative forces, even in the
presence of a clear military superiority in the Lisbon region. It is
possible that the fear of the outbreak of a civil war was the
determining factor in the "contained" attitude shown on the occasion by
the so-called revolutionary, political and military left.
The consequences of the defeat proved definitive; the most radical
military men were imprisoned, expelled from the armed forces or removed
from command posts; in this way the armed forces were purged of all
left-wing elements, reorganized, brought back to discipline, thus
reconstructing all the chains of command through the insertion of
trusted elements of the victorious military group, and in compliance
with the conventional pillars supervised by NATO. The organs of power,
both civil and military, were also reorganized in light of these new
balances of power. As for the social movements, it remained clear that,
although they were not outlawed, they ceased to enjoy the support of
military sectors, as had been the case up to that point, and would be
controlled and contained by resorting to repression, all coinciding with
the project of restructuring the police force and rapid intervention. In
June 1976, Ramalho Eanes, head of operations of the coup d'état of
November 25 of the previous year, was elected as the first president of
the republic. Immediately afterwards, the first constitutional
government was established, headed by the socialist Mario Soares, who
proved decisive in terms of the political articulation of the coup
d'état. It was now clear that, from then on, the political, social and
economic situation would change profoundly; the Ongoing Revolutionary
Process (PREC) was already a thing of the past, the country would be
stabilized by force, with the support of Western countries, which were
also decisive for the victory of the conservative coup of November 25, 1975.
Even considering all this, a society that had just entered an
accelerated rhythm of conflict and social struggle could not be
paralyzed from one moment to the next, and the new military and
governmental reality could not prevent Portugal from maintaining a high
level of social conflict in the immediate years that followed and until
the early 1980s, also because the economic crisis and the attempts to
dismantle the Agrarian Reform still generated an adequate and strong
reaction from the trade union and social movement. In the meantime,
however, the spontaneous and autonomous struggle of the workers will
weaken and practically disappear, while the role of the PCP and the
Intersindacale will consolidate, as privileged representatives of the
proletariat within the framework of a parliamentary democracy.
The Socialist Party, the great winner of November 25, will assume the
role of government force and that of the main person responsible for the
dismantling of the Agrarian Reform as well as the devolution of the
lands, as well as the nationalized companies, to the bourgeoisie that
had fled the country.
It will also be (the Socialist Party; ed.) the main strategist of
Portugal's accession to the EEC, which will prove fundamental to
definitively frame this peripheral country in the European capitalist
logic. But the legal and constitutional framework, influenced by the
social mobilizations and by April 25, will remain for several decades.
By the end of the 1980s, anarchism had made no progress since its
resurgence in 1974. The old generation was disappearing; the inevitable
biological fatality was presenting itself; the hope for the rebirth of
anarchism in Spain during the years of transition had not materialized
and the new generation had to suffer, as did other anti-capitalist
political and social subjects, the disappointment resulting from the
failure of the revolutionary hypothesis and the contemporary weakening
of social movements. Torn between the old anarchism and
anarcho-syndicalism of the early twentieth century and a more "modern"
expression of post-1968 anarchism, anarchism in Portugal has never again
managed to identify its organizational form, nor its capacity to
converge in unity in action, and even less in the plan to penetrate the
bosom of the popular classes, the latter largely co-opted by party
organizations of Marxist-Leninist origin throughout the PREC period.
Moreover, the Portuguese revolution possessed all the characteristics to
deserve the distrust of the libertarians: it was born with a military
coup; the military became the determining actors in the social struggles
that followed; prevalent for the presence in countless Leninist
organizations; the trade union movement was framed by the communist
party and finally, it must be admitted, the anarchist movement was
insignificant and impotent for the purpose of influencing events. Even
considering all this, however, during the Portuguese revolution there
was at various times a spontaneity and a self-organization of a genuine
libertarian brand within the popular movements that could not fail to
generate sympathy on the part of the Portuguese anarchists and also on
the part of other foreign anarchists who passed through Portugal at that
time. The end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s would be even more
conditioned by the consequences of the Portuguese revolution. A sector
of the insurrectional far left, mainly one of those coming from the most
radicalized areas and characteristic of formations such as the PRP-BR
and LUAR, gave life to a clandestine organization, the Popular Forces of
April 25 (FP25), which was joined by some libertarians who came to carry
out armed actions during the 1980s and 1990s.
Now without military and popular support, this desperate attempt to
hinder the capitalist reorganization in Portugal was doomed to disaster;
a large majority of its militants were arrested in the mid-1980s and
sentenced to heavy prison terms.
Only in the 1990s were they released thanks to an amnesty measure,
according to a typical political agreement of social pacification "à la
Portuguese".
Among the members of these formations, there were former leaders of the
PRP-BR, Marxists with some councilist influence, April military men,
such as Lieutenant Colonel Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, the strategist of
the military coup of April 25, and, among those who died, the name of
António Guerreiro appeared, one of the militia officers who surrounded
and captured the last Prime Minister of the dictatorship.
The Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974 (also known as such following
a real and documented episode of distribution of this flower to soldiers
and the ready use that they made of it by placing them in the "mouths"
of weapons and armored vehicles; ed.) was, for many of those who lived
it, the unique experience of a quasi-revolution, a revolution that
failed due to the responsibility of others, or an impossible revolution,
as defined by Phil Mailer, the Irish libertarian who lived it closely.
Even for historians of the most conservative orientation, April 25
cannot be reduced to a mere military coup, but also represented a
revolutionary social crisis and, if you like, the last great
anti-capitalist mobilization in Europe in the twentieth century. In the
ironic words of Colonel Varela Gomes, a rebel soldier who participated
in an attempt to overthrow the dictatorship in 1961, who was reinstated
in the army only after April 25 and who was a direct and active
participant in the PREC, which cost him exile following the coup d'état
of November 25, 1975, one can read the meaning; Varela Gomes declared
that April 25, 1974 was the "biggest shit that the Portuguese
bourgeoisie took in the 20th century". Even if it were only for this,
and it was not, because it defeated an old and rotten dictatorship, put
an end to the colonial war thus giving rise to the birth of new
countries, contributed to the epilogue of other dictatorships and
finally because it demonstrated that, in an unexpected way, power can
fall by the wayside and the people can assume themselves as the
subject-protagonist of history.
Even if it were only for this, we repeat, it was worth living through
that era.
End
First part in “il CANTIERE” n. September 28, 2024
Translated from Portuguese by Virgilio Caletti
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL
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