Volunteer of Solitude

He was an unlikely dictator, a donnish, reclusive man with sharp eyes and a high-pitched voice who shunned publicity, made few speeches or public appearances, and rarely traveled outside his own country. "One cannot entertain the crowd and govern them all at the same time," he was fond of saying. "The state does not pay me to lead a social life." He preferred to cloister himself with his books and papers in his high-walled home behind the National Assembly in Lisbon. He never married.

Almost two years ago, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. He was shielded from the news that Marcello Caetano had replaced him as Premier. Several times the figurehead President, Americo Thomaz, approached him with the firm intention of telling him the truth, but could never find the words. Occasionally his housekeeper of more than 40 years, Dona Maria de Jesus Caetano Freire, would try to persuade him to "resign" because of his health, but each time he would reply: "I cannot go. There is no one else." When Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, dictator of Portugal for 36 years, died at 81 last week from the effects of a heart attack and a kidney infection, he was still unaware that he had lost his authority.

Hiqh-Button Boots. The son of the bailiff of a large farm in the Santa Comba Dao country of central Portugal, Salazar studied for a law degree at the University of Coimbra and stayed on to become a professor of economics and finance. In 1928 he became Finance Minister with extremely broad powers to control the economy and government as well, but he still looked like a provincial schoolteacher in his bowler hat and high-button boots.

Appointed Premier in 1932, he set out to create an Estado Novo, a corporate state modeled on Mussolini's Italy. He forcibly imposed unity on the nation and created a secret police organization, PIDE, that harshly repressed dissent. He ran the economy with a stern, conservative hand, but his country remained the poorest in Western Europe. At the time of his retirement, Portugal's annual per-capita income was $454 (v. Spain's $663), and 40% of its 9,000,000 people were illiterate.

Colonial Power. During the Spanish Civil War, Salazar backed Franco against the Republicans. In World War II, he remained nominally neutral but sympathized with Hitler and Mussolini. After it became clear that the Axis powers were losing, he shrewdly granted the U.S. and Britain the right to build bases in the Azores. It was an investment that paid off in a postwar seat in NATO for Portugal.

Throughout his career, Salazar spoke proudly of his little country as "a great colonial power" and clung stubbornly to the remnants of the Portuguese Empire. For eight years, he conducted a series of wars against black nationalist guerrillas in his African colonies of Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea. He never visited the colonies, however, promising to go to Angola "only when the last terrorist has been dominated or expelled."

Since Salazar's 1968 retirement, Premier Caetano has loosened the reins a bit. He relaxed press censorship slightly, allowed government-controlled sindicatos some freedom in choosing their labor leaders, and changed the name of the dread PIDE to the Directorate General of Security. But the politically powerful army has been allowed to continue Salazar's African wars, even though they pin down 130,000 troops and consume 40% of the national budget. That immense drain may preserve for a time longer Portugal's status as a colonial power, but it will also perpetuate the country's position as Europe's pauper.

A special train carried Salazar's coffin from Lisbon to his birthplace in Santa Comba Dao. He was buried there, according to his austere wish, in a simple grave beside his parents and sister Elisa, the hand of the weeping Dona Maria on his coffin to the end. In the eulogy, Salazar was likened to Prince Henry the Navigator--"a volunteer of solitude." So he was, and so, in a way, will Portugal remain until his successors rid it of his narrow legacy.

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