Closer to the World

As Antonio Salazar's life ticked away in a Lisbon clinic, his successor, Premier Marcello Caetano, was cautiously trying to revive the political life of Portugal that has been comatose for the past 40 years under Salazar.

His most startling move was permitting Dr. Mario Soares to return from exile. A lawyer and left-wing democrat, Soares was so persistent a foe of Dictator Salazar that he was jailed twelve times, mostly without trial or charges. His wife, Maria Barroso, one of Portugal's finest actresses, was dismissed from the national theater and could only perform with special government authorization. During his investigation of the mysterious 1965 murder of Humberto Delgado,* Soares publicly incriminated a member of the Portuguese secret police. Later, when Soares was unjustly suspected of feeding details to foreign newsmen about a teen-age vice ring patronized by government officials, Salazar had him exiled "indefinitely" to the equatorial island of Sao Tome.

Respectful Question. At government insistence, Soares' return was almost stealthy. At first, not a word appeared in press or radio, and his every move in Lisbon was under police surveillance. Soares himself had little to say, except: "I am planning now to resume fully my professional and political activities, but legally. You know my position: I have always worked within the law."

Caetano's partisans at first explained that the peculiar circumstances of Soares' release were caused by "the ghost of Salazar. Caetano cannot publicly announce Soares' return as long as Salazar lives. It is a question of respect." Yet a week later, the news got through the press censorship, which has become more liberal, if erratically so. Last week--only five months late--the Portuguese public was told that the accused murderer of Martin Luther King had been hiding out in Lisbon for nine days in May. Newspapers were being bought in record numbers just for the unaccustomed pleasure of reading editorials that called for "liberty to express one's thoughts, liberty to disagree, liberty to act without running the risk of being deprived physically of that liberty without valid reasons."

Even the police seemed tamer and less visible. Though hedged with restrictions, demonstrations could be held without being put to rout by police dogs, shock troops and water cannon, which used to be the rule. Controversy found its voice, as in the case of Father Jose da Felicidade, a parish priest who demands the "deStalinization" of the Roman Catholic Church in Portugal.

Ruling Style. Yet Caetano must walk a delicate line. He is probably in more danger from the right than from the splintered left. Portugal's great landowners and ultra-conservatives have a tendency toward panic, and if they thought Caetano were slipping even fractionally leftward, they might appeal to their army allies to intervene.

Under all these watchful eyes, Caetano is creating his own style of ruling. Salazar's travels never took him farther than Spain, but Caetano has already scheduled trips to Portugal's overseas possessions and to Brazil. Where Salazar kept to the seclusion of his Lisbon home in an annex of the controlled National Assembly, Caetano manages to get out and about: he even toured the Sorraia Valley, a region officially regarded as "strongly under Communist influence."

The opposition democrats feel the biggest test will come next week when Caetano presents his government's program to the National Assembly. Said Soares: "This will show whether Caetano really intends to give us liberalization or just show us samples of the real thing." A truer reflection of the national mood was indicated by a government official who said: "Since Caetano has taken over, we feel closer to the rest of the world."

*Delgado won brief international notoriety in 1961 when he masterminded the capture of the Portuguese cruise ship Santa Maria, which was hijacked at sea by a party of rebels, eluded pursuing Portuguese warships, and finally made port in Recife, Brazil, where the vessel was interned.

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