'PORTUGAL; IT'S NOT LOST YET', THE ECONOMIST, 21 DECEMBER 1974. 'PORTUGAL'S HALF REVOLUTION', BY CHRISTOPHER JONES, THE PROGRESSIVE, JANUARY 1975.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-01194A000100440001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 1998
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 16, 1975
• Content Type: REPORT

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CPYRGHT
December 21, 1974,
9 When the balloon goes up
10 The French reconnection
11 Vorster can see it
12 Make more room at the top
13 The long distance runners
Britain 17 Mind your manners, Harold-or the lords may
play up; Economic debate; Chief whip; Shrewrs?
bury pickets; Children's bill: Coliseum strikrr
T'he World 25 International Report: Smith's three cards
against the Africans' ace; Greece; Who's lVhs
in black Rhodesia; China; Germany; France;
Italy Aggression; Poland and Russia; Ireland;
Egypt; Hongkong and China; Malta; Brazil,
Canada
40 Portugal: It's not lost yet
43 American Survey: France, the odd man in; Aid;
Ambassadors; New Jersey; Shoppers' new
worlds; Americans abroad; Walter Lipamann;
Ringing in the Buycentennial
51 Europe: Will France now renegotiate with the
EEC on energy?; Wilson and Europe; Sugar;
Australia; Employment; Germany and Britain;
Britain's just not trying; Capital movements;
Transport; Farms; Insurance
Business 61 This Week: Hark the Opec angels
65 Towards the siege economy
67 Grow on regardless
68 Sweet politics
73 International: Is gold just any old metal^.;.
Italy; French nuclear programme: The recover,
will be a little late next year, Japan; Bougainville
83 Britain: They've turned the price cone into a
bipsses' compact; Unemployment; Steel; North
Sett oil; !forth Sea jnhs; Tares; Bread
91 Investment: Should British Leyland have mote
worker-shareholders?; . Crown Agents; Union
Corporation; Oldham Estates; Internationai
Property Development; Le Nickel
% World Shares and Money
Books 99 Samuel Johnson; HG Wells; Francis Galion;
Nw-v-ell Froude; Dr Reynolds Hole; Caroline
Lawns
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 CPYRGHT
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It's not lost yet
General Fabiao, who is. the chief' of
staff of Portugal's army, puts the
genuine puzzlement of many Portu-
guese succinctly:
For almost half a century the Portuguese
people suffered under a fierce despotism that
deprived them of all their liberties, without
the governments of friendly countries feeling
very disturbed. . . . Now that by our own
efforts we free ourselves and break the chains
that once bound us, there appears a whole
movement, on almost a world scale, anxious
about our future, frightened that we might
fall into a dictatorship of the proletariat that
will rob us of the freedom we have only now
attained.
General Fabiao did not mention the
other main cause for. concern among
Nato countries, Portugal's strategic
position in western Europe, but he has
a point. It seems unfair to carp about
the occasional departure from demo-
cratic norms when Portugal is, after all,
gearing itself up for its first free elec-
tion in 40 years. The United States
has apparently decided to stop carping:
last weekend the Americans announced
an aid programme for Portugal which,
though modest in scale, is a major de-
parture from the attitude of anxious
disapproval they have shown ever since
the moderate President Spinola was
made to resign in September. But the
disturbing fact is that Portugal's future
is much likelier to be decided by the
outcome of two other power struggles
now under way, in the army and the
trade unions, than in the election for a
constituent assembly due to take place
in March.
It is premature to talk of an immedi-
ate communist takeover. The Communist
party started off with a considerable
tactical advantage after the April coup
as the only organised underground
opposition to the old Salazar-Caetano
dictatorship. The Communist-dominated
trade union federation, Intersindical,
took firm control of the existing
workers' organisations and set about
unionising the rest of the labour
movement. In addition, .the Commu-
nists encouraged the Socialist and
Popular Democratic parties, their
present coalition partners, to join them
in an amorphous organisation called
the Portuguese Democratic Movement,
which proceeded to take over four-
fifths of all Portuguese local councils.
en, too a e, e
Popular Democrats withdrew from the
Movement, alleging that it was under
Communist control, the Communists
were left in full command of the
councils. It also seems fairly clear that
power over the press and broadcasting
services has passed from editors and
proprietors to unions of journalists,
more often than not under Communist
leadership. On December 5th all the,
Socialist journalists resigned from the
nominally independent television ser-
vice, on the ground that programmes
were censored to favour Communists.
Despite their early successes, how-
ever, the Communists seem to have
made little headway in the country
as a whole. Their support in opinion
polls has hovered between 15 and 18
per cent, although the vast reserve of
uncommitted votes makes any firm
prediction impossible. Traditional anti-
communism runs so deep in the country-
side, particularly among smallholders
in the north, that the Portuguese Demo-
cratic Movement has now been launched
on a new career, as a political party
in its own right, designed to attract
voters who night otherwise shy away
from the hammer and sickle.
The Communists' anxiety about the
possible outcome of the March elec-
tion has made them concentrate on
strengthening their position outside the
party system. Their trump card is un-
doubtedly their control of the unions,
and the power this gives them to slow
down inflation or let it rip. For that reason
alone both the Socialists and the Popular
Democrats insist they have no alterna-
tive to continuing their coalition with
the Communists after the election. But
meanwhile both of them are trying to
set up rival trade union organisations
of their own. The Socialists claim sup-
port from 18 unions, compared with the
Communists' 22, but most of them
are in small industries. Anyway, the
Socialists' advance seems to have been
largely made by their own left wing,
which, together with maoist and other
extreme-left parties, has been exploiting
discontent about the wage-restraint
policy followed by the Communists.
The Popular Democrats have so far
only an embryonic union organisation;
they reckon it will take three or four
e price of moderation
o unless the Socialists and opular
mocrats change their line, it 1 oks as
the Communists will still be in the
overnment after March. But at price.
f they continue to preach wage re traint,
ey stand to lose much of their hold
ver the unions to less resp nsible
arties. And the Socialists and opular
emocrats are using the threat f their
thdrawal from the goverment which
inevitably bring about its fall, as
po erful moderating influen a over
he C mmunists. Indeed, the ec nomic
Ian hose publication .is expec ed any
ay n w stops very far short, ac ording
o firs reports, of laying the foun ations
f a s ialist society.
Tr , the plan is said to inclu a pro-
sal for the nationalisation f key
ndus ies, including oil .and stee . True,
t att cks the 20 or 30 famili s that
have dominated much of Po ugal's
und; ev'.oped indus~r ial bas . But
along icie tale state sector it ap arently
pr p ses to set up a competitive private
secto based on principles tha would
war any capitalist's heart: n inter-
venti n to rescue lame ducks; the re-
orga 'cation and amalgamat on of
small scale firms into effectiv com-
petiti e units; and an open oor to
forei investment. These ideas re one
good test of the government' inten-
tions. If they have been watere down
when the plan finally appears, or left
out a together, that will show wh ch way
thew d is blowing.
Communists can hardly b happy
with he plan as it was described to'your
corre pondent. Yet their leader, Senhor
Cun al, is all reasonableness. " We can
conti ue to co-operate with th bour-
geois parties for as long as is n cessary
to c nsolidate the freedom e won
on_ ril 25th. And we must co operate
afte ards." Marxism, it seems should
live ide by side with capitali m -after
all. ut that hardly squares wi h what
Senh r Cunhal has to say a out the
dicta orship of the proletariat:
Di atorship is the role of a class. n Britain
bo geois democracy is the dictator ip of the
bo geoisie. Dictatorship of the pr letariat is
I
Inve ing in the army
We now the difference betwe n bour-
geois and people's democraci s. The
shee 's clothing seems thread are. So
why year it? Because plainly t e Com-
muni ts' strength in the union is not
enou to give them real po er. The
lesso the disaster in Chiles ems to
have taught every Communist party in
west rn Europe is that power lie neither
in th ballot box, nor even with o ganised
labo r, but in the army; and it !is to the
arm that the Portuguese Co unist
part has turned as a long-te invest-
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but stable junta in Portugal, with its
nuisance value to the western alliance,
to a precarious Allende-type leap for
socialism which might call the whole
concept of detente into doubt. And
Sanhor Cunhai, who leads the most
unreconstructed Communist party in
western Europe, is not likely to be deaf
to the interests of the Soviet Union.
The stories one hears in Lisbon say
thai the Communist party made its
decision to infiltrate the army early in
the 19~Os. Whether teat is true or not,
the Communists were closely involved
in the planning of the April coup,
notabl}~ at a meeting with some radical
army officers at Monte do Sobraa in
September last year. Those officers now
dominate the Co-ordinating Committee,
the guiding body of the Armed Farces
Movement. The social and political
ideas of men such as Brigadier
Goncalves, the prime minister, and
Brigadier Carvalho, the military gover-
nor of Lisbon, can only be described
as marxist. But although these men
control some important units, such as
Copcon, the internal security force
of commandos and paratroops, they do
not dominate the whole of the armed
forces. The majority of Portuguese
officers aze, as in most armies, largely
apolitical, imbued only with a vague
commitment to democracy and an
instinctive hostility to communism.
It was to this group that President
Spinola was chiefly aiming his appeal
on September 28th for a "silent
majority" to check the leftward drift
of events, and it was these moderate
officers' failure to respond that finally
overthrew him. But most of them are
still around the place, and next time
they might not be so lethargic in their
willingness to trust the Co-ordinating
Committee.
The real Spinolists have been all but
eliminated from the army in the purges
that followed September 28th, and
General Spinola himself has been re-
tired after the retirement age was azbit-
rarily lowered to 62 (he is 64). But most
moderates in uniform have been left.
almost untouched, presumably because
the Co-ordinating Committee feels it
would be too dangerous to take ther.i on,
The election is still scheduled for Mardi,
although it could be delayed a month
at the behest of the Communists. So
far the radicals on the Co-0rdinating
Committee have confined themselves
to discouraging the one major party
that stands outside the government,
the moderately conservative Centre
Democrats. A large vote for the Centre
Democrats in March would be a grave
embarrassment to the radicals both in
and nut of uniform.
The half-silenced opposition
One form this discouragement takes
is the late arrival of the army an the
scene, sometimes apparently. deliberately,
when -the Centre Democrats' meetings
are attacked by left-~~~ing extremists.
Two big rallies, and several smaller
meetings, have been broken up in this
way; on one occasion it took soldiers
three -hours to arrive. The Centre Demo-
crats' leader, Professor Freitas do
Amaral,- has suspended some plans for
future rallies. And no more than lip-
service is paid to the principle of equal
time on the. air by the broadcasting
services, which have largely managed
to avoid mentioning the Centre Demo-
crats. General Fabiao and the army's
moderates seem mildly disturbed about
this. On December 6th they secured,
for the first time, a plenary session of
the Armed Forces Movement, which is
thought to contaui a moderate majority,
to consider decisions taken on its behalf
by the Co-ordinating Committee. No-
thing dramatic seems to have happened,
but the Fact that the meeting took place
at all reaffirms the principle of the sup-
remacy ofthe plenary meeting.
The test. is likely to come over the
question of what rose the Armed Forces
Movement intends to play in the con-
stitution-making process after the Mazch
election. Some disturbing noises have
been coming from the Co-ordinating.
Committee. Its Information Bulletin
had an editorial on November 26th with
distinctly anti-democratic overtones:
'The state of repression to which the working.
class has been subjected, especially in the
countryside, and its limited understanding of
its own condition of repression and exploitation,
mean that it could be manipulated in an
electoral process for which the necessary
political experience is lacking.
The article concluded that the AFM
"will have to guazantee ...that the
new constitution is imbued with the
same progressive spirit as (the AFM's]
programme". The only democratic
vote is a vote for our ideas?
Major Vitor Alves, the minister
responsible for defence and information,
put it even more bluntly at a press con-
ference in London on November 15th;
he admitted it might be necessary to act
against the constituent assembly "if the
people press for it". In this he evidently
differs from General Fabiao, for whom
another military intervention would be
"ts fall into the sterile game of low
politicking, revolution following counter-
revolution". It remains to be seen
whether the Co-ordinating .Committee
will heed General Fabiiio's warning
when the time comes. An economic
crisis and industrial unrest could
provide Major Alves with his excuse.
14f` the present coalition survives next
.year's elections, the Communists' Ionger-
term hopes will rest on a steady increase
in the power of the radicals in the army
at the. expense of the moderates. The
other parties hope the moderates will
prevail, and the army withdraw from
politics. General Spinola is due to pro-
duce another book before the election
which may be the same sort of rallying-
point for moderates as his "Portugal
and the Future" was for those who
wanted to get Portugal out of Africa.
The struggle within the Armed Forces
Movement could yet spill out into the
open again. For the forces of modera-
tion ~ are stronger than General Spinola
had reason to fear they were on
September 28th.
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CPYRGHT
=PROGRESSIVE
JANUARY 1975
VOLUME 39 NUMBER 1
t~auncled iri 1009 tw Robert h1, t.af ullette, Sr.
Comment
1 he Editors and /udith Miller,
Charles Conconi, 7homvs Lond,
5
Portugal's Half Revolution
Christopher /ones
34
and Edtvin Newman
The Word from Washington
12
Portugal; The Chile Treatment?
Tami Hultman, Charles Ebel,
oifd Reed Kramer
37
The Food Monopolies
Daniel hverdliny
13
Now the Blood
!_ouis A. Perez /r.
40
Exporting Food Monopolies
Duniel /. Bulz
18
Whose First Amendment?
Lewis ~l', K~olfson
42
Reflections: On Justice
for the Palestinians
!
F
Stone
20
Movies: Eleven Ten-Best
Kenneth Turon
47
.
.
Washington's World Blueprint
Gary hlucf oin
22
Books
Reviews by Richard /. Barnet
and Robert Manning
49
Letters
56
The Politics of Population
25
/udith Miller
Index for 1974
60
Persian Gulf: The Sub-Empires
Burry Rubin
30
End Game
/zichurd Lipez
66
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Fascism has ended after fifty years, CPYRGHT
but what has begun?
Portugal : The Half Revolution
CHRISTOPHER JONES
Last April's military coup d'etat, motivated initially by
the concern of a group of officers for their own prestige,
has been transformed into half a revolution, a young
communist soldier told me in Lisbon recently. The
political forces released by the termination of the
Salazar-Gaetano regimes revealed themselves to be
surprisingly strong. The people-of Guinea-Bissau,
Mozambique, and Angola, as well as Portugal-have
already carried the Armed Forces Movement and the
governing junta further than they had planned to go
before the elections scheduled for nextMarch. General
Antonio de Spinola was appointed president at the time
of the coup because of his "progressive" outlook on the
resolution of Portugal's colonial problem; he hoped the
colonies would federate -with Portugal but they pre-
ferred independence. He saw his federalist ideas be-
come obsolete and himself deposed in five months,
buried by history catching up to itself in a rush.
The Portuguese Communist Party is to be credited,
to a large degree, for the progressive surge felt
throughout the. country. After the April 25 coup, that
party finally saw the fruits of fifty years of clandestine
struggle. The communists are solid in the industrial
belts around Lisbon and Porto, in the freshly purged
unions in all sectors, and among the rural workers in
the south. In a country of ten million inhabitants, the
party has more than 500,000 inscribed members.
The Socialist Party, headed by Mario Soares, is also
strong, and the only other party of importance is the
liberal Peoples Democratic Party.
The Right has only recently he~un to organize inten-
sit~cly. At first, each r~~~;ion,~l or? indusu ial strongman
n~lievc~d ~l,al h~: cocl.i iurni a her=,,~z~al party. Union is
t,ein~, torcccl ul;.,u thcr7~ by the realizt~tion that much
more sophisticated political structures and techniques
will be necessary to erode-the Left's solid base.
The Right has also been under siege by the Left and
Center, charged with plotting the assassination of
President Spinola, in one of a number of crises that led
to his resignation in September. But the ebb and flow, of
the fortunes of the various factions making up Portu-
gal's "half a revolution" are only the surface manifes-
tations of the workings of a complex society suddenly
freed from two generations of repression by an iron
dictatorship.
The social fabric of Portugal is composed of ex-
tremes. At one extreme is a large mass of people still
encumbered by a feudal heritage; at the other are
several of the largest fortunes in the world. Between
them, and demanding more elbow room, is a dynamic
left movement based in the poorly developed industrial
sector. Taken together, they make an explosive mix-
ture.
The ingredients of this mixture can be identified in
various ways, but some clear distinctions are those
among the cities and the towns and the vi{lages.
There are only two cities, Lisbon and Porto, of one
million and five hundred thousand inhabitants respec-
tively. In the planning stages of the April coup d'etat,
the Armed Farces Movement considered only objec-
tives in the Lisbon and Porto areas, correctly assuming
that the provinces w~n~ld fullow if the urban centers felt.
The two areas a!?c? tlTC: country's heart and lungs, the
centers of wealth and culern?e. They are also the centet?s
of cholera, because of the bnirr?os cfe lata (shanty towns)
which encircle them.
Lisbon is physically charming, built low on a series of
hills-a profile broken only -?ecerniy by the towering
mew Sheraton Hotel. The life of the city is ti:at of any
large city which has existed for millenia--l.-nfathum-
able. Traditional social life goes on in closed circlca
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within rigid social classes, making a web of nearly
impenetrable complexity.
In early September, Lisbon was bustling with com-
merce and politics, the prostitutes had taken to the
streets, and the traditional fado singers were still
holding forth in the old quarters for the benefit of
tourists and the rich. In a small club for poets and
artists, the habitues ignored a Maoist attack and con-
tinued singing satirical songs about the leaders of the
Left. Downtown, a musical called Liberdade, Liberdade
introduced the anomaly of revolutionary theater for the
upper classes into one more Western country.
With censorship gone, only erotic or politically ori-
ented films were to be found. These were the top ten
best sellers in Lisbon bookstores: three works of Lenin;
an expose of the fascist secret police; histories of
Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique by their respective
nationalist liberation movements; Toward Victory, by
the secretary-general of the Communist Party, Alvaro
Cunhal; The Resistance in Portugal; a book on Albania;
and an expose of 1'arrafal, the infamous political prison
on Cape Verde.
September 4-11 was the Week of Solidarity with the
Chilean People. In Lisbon, ten thousand people
squeezed into the ancient Sports Palace to demonstrate
that solidarity. Inside, the balconies were draped with
red-and-green Portuguese flags with the green half
partly folded out ~f sight, and banners with slogans
like: Allende nao morreu (Allende didn't die); o Chile
Verdes! (Chile will be victorious), and the. Chilean
slogan, which the Portuguese have adopted as their
own-El pueblo unido fames sera vencido/0 povo
unido jamais sera veitcido (The people united will never
be defeated).
The crowd was composed not only of students and
intellectuals; there were also steelworkers, secretaries,
bus drivers, and bank clerks.
It was not a demonstration of intellectual convictions.
The participants knew through gut experience the
meaning of imperialism, and knew as well that the
Chilean tragedy could tomorrow be their own.
Though the new- freedoms are a source of joy and
strength for many, for others they are traumatic. Not
everyone was prepared to shout slogans in the street
which only yesterday would have been considered high
treason against the state and cause for torture and
imprisonment. Of this the city police are the most
visible examples. Though they Formally adhered to the
program of the Armed Forces Movement, their subse-
quent attitude has been: ' `If the Armed Forces now
dictate law, let them worry about order as \\~cli." With
arms tressed they have w~;r~l~~d caps bcinb stolen,
arung arrly w~li~~r~ i:a-~ssnrca icy indignant bystanders.
The resis.t;~r~ce ro chsr~t,~; }s even more apparent when
one }eaves the cities for the interrrrediate commnnit}es,
the town.:;. Figueira da Foz, like many Portuguese
caastal to\y'TrS, depends. orr the f=?hin~; and touurist
industries for survival. Each evening at sunset, ~ large
fleet of sardine boats chugs out of the river p rt and
over the horizon, to return at daybreak low in the water
with the weight of the catch.
The tourist trade functions only in the mo the of
July, August, and September. Then the area's opula-
tiorr jumps from 10,000 to 100,000, the hotels in t e new
quarter spring to life, and the casino is jamme every
night. One resident described the local popula ion as
"lower middle-class people who put on upper-class airs
for the summer season."
But there are surprises. As I sat eating codfl~h in a
local restaurant, a plump little boy came in to j rn his
fam}ly with a portable record player under his arm. A
few minutes later we were all treated to his usical
preference-The Internationale.
Cacao Biscaia is a painter and schoolteacher w o was
considered undesirable by "right-thinking" ociety
under the old regime. Since April 25 he hasi been
elected to the city council. Cacao declared that for four
years he had been a member of the clandestine' Com-
munist Party. He has been a good friend of mire for
five years, and I never knew.
He is one among many. The journalist, the s rdine
fisherman, the shop owner-all had limited them elves
to such cryptic comments as, "It's not good," co cern-
ing the then reigning fascist regime. But all belon ed fo
a web which has now surfaced. The Communist Party
occupies an eight-room headquarters in Figuei~?a da
Foz, just down the street from the Socialist !Party
headquarters and across from the Portuguese emo-
cratic Movement-the old anti-fascist front roue.
The prime barrier to change, however, is the (reluc-
tance of a large part of the population to get involved.
One wonders how many times the. advice of Sellnhot?a
Dias to her daughter has been repeated in the small
stone houses of Figueira da Foz: "Don't get mixed up
in politics. We've always been able to eat. Besi es, if
they succeed in doing something, we'll be efit."
The marks of fifty years of fascism will not disc pear
overnight.
But if there is a noticeable difference in the political
climate of the cities and that of the towns, them is a
vast gulf between both and the villages.
Alguber is a small village in the Extremadura rep ion.
Its only links with the outside world are the twice-daily
buses which wind down the small road into the v (ley,
then turn and wind back out after stopping in Alguber.
There is no through road. There are no newspa~ ers,
television, running water, or adequate sanitary facili-
ties. The bucket-flushed tc;ilets drain onto the; dirt
streets and down the hil} on which il-re few dozen hciuses
are built.
But the vi11aF=,ers arc proud. As Maria. Helena ays:
"~'Ve are just th