A Whiff of Freedom for the Oldest Empire

The signals on the Lisbon radio station sounded innocent enough one night last week. At 10:55 p.m. the air waves hummed with the popular ballad After We Say Goodbye. Two hours later the transmitters beamed another popular song, the lyrics of which included the phrase "dark land." To junior army officers throughout Portugal, soured by the nation's debilitating 13-year war against guerrillas in three African colonies, the messages could not have been clearer. After We Say Goodbye was an alert that this was the night the army would move against the totalitarian regime of Premier Marcello Caetano. "Dark land" meant that this was the moment to launch the coup. Thus began one of the few coups in which military officers threw out a totalitarian regime and declared their intention to establish a democratic government--instead of vice versa. In time, the shock waves sent out by the coup may be felt more strongly in Africa than in Lisbon itself, and the end of the Lisbon dictatorship signaled profound changes for Portugal's vast colonial holdings, the first--and the last--great European empire.

By first light the army was firmly in control of its own barracks, the Atlantic harbors, the airports, the radio and television stations and even the national bank. Though a few companies of the paramilitary National Republican Guard held out, together with the detested D.G.S. (Direcc,ao Geral de Seguranc,a) secret police, the army was clearly superior. "We have all the tanks, and we have the military experience we learned in Africa," said one rebel officer with casual contempt. "The police and the National Republican Guard have only a few obsolete armored vehicles."

Going Over. In Lisbon's main square, the Prac,a do Comercio, the 7th Cavalry Regiment was called upon to crush the rebels. The first contingent, led by a lieutenant, responded by going over to the other side. The second also joined it after its commander, a lieutenant colonel, was arrested. The third, led by a brigadier general, fought for a few minutes, then broke ranks. By that time the rebels were firmly in control.

In the takeover itself, only one person, a civilian, was killed, and 20 were wounded. But in a desperate, irrational outburst, a group of D.G.S. police fired wildly into a crowd of civilians, killing five and injuring 40 more before retreating to temporary safety. The D.G.S., a longtime opponent of the army, provided the only real resistance to the takeover. Still, no more than a dozen people were reported dead at week's end.

Premier Caetano sought refuge in the Lisbon Republican National Guard headquarters, and Portugal's 79-year-old President, Americo Thomaz, retreated to the barracks of a loyal regiment of lancers. Before surrendering, Caetano, in an effort to preserve the dignity of the state, asked if he could formally turn over the powers of his office to General Antonio de Spinola, the spiritual leader of the rebellion, rather than let the government "fall in the streets." Spinola, who claimed to be aloof from the plotting, replied that he would have to consult the junior officers who had led the coup. "I am not the leader of this movement," he maintained. "I did not act against the government." He added: "If the government has the good sense to find a solution, I think I will be doing a service by speaking to the rebels." Though he may not have actually helped plan the coup,Spinola was obviously prepared to act as its leader once it succeeded. Both Spinola and his boss. Army Chief of Staff General Francisco Costa Gomez, were kicked out in March because of their antiwar views on the African conflict.

To the cheers of a waiting crowd, Spinola, who had been one of the country's best guerrilla fighters, entered Republican National Guard headquarters for what was reportedly a polite, even friendly talk with Caetano, who had governed Portugal since 1968 when Dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar suffered a stroke. (Salazar died in 1970.) To emphasize the continuity of power despite the coup, the general went to Lisbon's Portela Airport the next morning to bid farewell to Caetano, Thomaz and their senior Cabinet Ministers; they were jetted to exile on the tourist island of Madeira.

All told, it took only 14 hours to smash the dictatorship established by Salazar 45 years ago and set the 8 million people of Portugal on what the army promised would be a new, democratic course. But it was not a quest for freedom that had motivated the rebels as much as the desire to stop the bloody and costly guerrilla war in the African colonies. The war consumed more than 40% of the nation's $1.3 billion annual budget, claimed the lives of some 250 Portuguese troops every year, and caused profound frustration in the army, which felt that it was trapped in an unwinnable battle. Disenchantment with the Caetano government's colonial policy climaxed in February when Spinola added his prestigious name to those of the dissenters with his book against the war. Young officers enthusiastically echoed Spinola's criticisms and in March even attempted an ineffectual coup that was smashed within hours. They were better prepared this time.

Red Carnations. Lisbon reacted like a liberated city. People joked with the soldiers guarding the main streets and squares, and long stemmed red carnations, a symbol of support for the army, appeared everywhere. Cheers and hurrahs greeted every mention of Spinola's name. Appointed to the seven-man ruling junta group that he clearly dominated, Spinola went on television with his colleagues to promise free elections "as soon as possible," a phrase later defined as some time within the next year. They also pledged to abolish the hated secret police in Portugal itself and grant full civil liberties. Censorship was lifted, and the Lisbon newspaper Republica placed a red box on its front page to announce the first uncensored edition anyone could recall.

Politically, the new regime's hastily sketched program sounded rather mild and unexceptionable by non-Portuguese standards. Apart from a change in Africa, foreign policy will probably remain the same; and Portugal's membership in NATO will most likely still be a cornerstone of the country's military policy, with the U.S. retaining use of the invaluable airbase in the Azores. The military junta will no doubt try, as Caetano also tried, to speed economic development. It will immediately be confronted, however, with the obstacle of one of Europe's most virulent cases of inflation--a staggering 30% increase last year--and with possible opposition from the famous "100 families" that have long controlled the country's economy through interlocking cartels and conglomerates.

Almost like a magnet, the Bastille-like Caxias prison, which stands high on a hill southwest of Lisbon, drew huge throngs of friends and relatives of the political prisoners inside. All had been freed on orders of the junta. TIME's Martha de la Cal witnessed the scene and reported that the crowds, alternately laughing and crying, waited for 73 prisoners to walk--or be carried--out. One man had been in Caxias 21 years, but about 50 were among a group of influential leftists that had been locked up only one week before in the government's frenzied attempt to quash dissent. One ugly rumor about Caxias was confirmed when liberating soldiers discovered a torture building, mute evidence that will no doubt back up the testimony of the prisoners who visited it. "Every night we would hear the trucks rumbling past our windows, taking prisoners to the torture building," said the wife of one prison worker. "Then we would hear them come back, and we would see the result in the hospital."

After the first euphoric outbursts, the residents of Lisbon reacted with some confusion to their new-found freedom. Several hundred youthful leftists, who had been more harshly suppressed than any other group, held a demonstration in Rossio Square and carried banners calling for freedom to form unions and strike. Red hammers and sickles dotted the surface of some monuments, together with hand-scrawled announcements of a demonstration scheduled this week for May 1--the traditional day of Communist celebration. "Our long, long night is over," one of the students exulted to TIME's Steve Englund. "Portugal is free."

Older bystanders watched the demonstrators with as much wonder and surprise as they might have observed visitors from Mars, looking over their shoulders with the ingrained habit of decades to see what the police or the soldiers would do. For the moment the authorities did nothing. The city police had been withdrawn for their own protection, so that mobs would not mistake them for the odious D.G.S. men and lynch them, and army troops stood idly by. It was doubtful, however, that Spinola, who was somewhat alarmed at the city's mood, would let the leftists do more than march and sing. There seemed little chance that the army's coup would be captured by the left.

In Africa, where Portugal has an army of 160,000 men stationed in its major three colonies, the course of the coup was followed as eagerly as it was in Lisbon. In Lourenc,o Marques, capital of Mozambique, crowds gathered outside newspaper offices to buy up papers as they came off the presses. There was some concern in Lisbon that the hawkish commanders of either Angola or Mozambique might join with white settlers in defiance of the new dovish regime. But when they were fired, both men submitted quietly.

In Rhodesia and South Africa, the reaction was one of extreme nervousness at the possibility that Lisbon might find some accommodation with black guerrillas and break the solid front of white governments in the southern half of the continent. Rhodesia's position might become untenable if Mozambique turned hostile and its lifeline to the sea were broken; South Africa could only shudder at the possibility of unfriendly black governments on its northern borders. To forestall that possibility, Johannesburg might even send its efficient military into both territories. "We cannot make big concessions here, even if Lisbon orders them," one Portuguese official in Mozambique argues. "If we did, the South Africans would be across the border tomorrow in force, uninvited, and simply take over." In Johannesburg, the gold-share index dropped 9% in two days in response to the unwelcome news of the coup.

Exactly what the new government in Lisbon will do in Africa is unclear, but if it follows the prescription of Spinola's book, it will not simply dismantle the empire it began 500 years ago, following the discoveries of the great Portuguese explorers* who were first sent out by Prince Henry the Navigator. Spinola, instead, talks of a federation of Portugal and its territories, with real autonomy--but not independence--for the Black African majorities. "Self-determination should not be confused with independence," he said last week. How such an arrangement would work in practice and whether the white settlers would accept black majority rule are, of course, significant question marks.

The three major African territories have little in common except their relation to Portugal, as TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs reports:

PORTUGUESE GUINEA, a small (14,000 sq. mi.) enclave on the west coast, could be relinquished without any hurt at all except to the Portuguese ego. There are only 2,000 white civilians living in the whole territory, and the swampy land provides nothing that Portugal needs. The war with the rebels is stalemated; there is no hope at all of pacification. The rebels are well armed with Soviet, Czech and Chinese arms, including SAM7 ground-to-air missiles, and most U.N. members have already recognized the nationalist regime.

MOZAMBIQUE, the big (300,000 sq. mi.) territory on the east coast, will be harder to deal with. Approximately 220,000 whites regard it as their homeland, and they have been panicked by recent Mau Mau-like attacks by the Frelimo guerrillas, who have been carrying the war ever farther into the south. The railroad line from the port of Beira to Rhodesia has been hit half a dozen times since the beginning of the year, and passenger service has virtually halted. The Portuguese army is still in control, however, and while the rebels grow increasingly brave, the army is successfully moving thousands of natives into fortified villages. Financially, the territory is a drain on the home country, with exports of sugar, cotton and coal not matching the sums poured in by Lisbon. The Cabora Bassa hydroelectric dam on the Zambezi River may, however, make the territory more profitable for industry. Now being built by an international consortium, the dam (cost: $350 million) will be Africa's most important when it is completed later this year.

ANGOLA, the largest (480,000 sq. mi.) and most prosperous holding, is the west coast territory where the new government may have the greatest success. With impressive reserves of oil (Gulf Oil alone made a reported $70 million there last year), the territory is a financial plus for Portugal, and Angola's 750,000 whites have developed good relations with its 6 million blacks. Guerrillas have had little support, and Angola is the most secure territory of all. Its very success may, ironically, create problems for Lisbon: the Angolans may reason that Portugal is a drain on them and that they would be better off alone.

Spinola, who saw his own best efforts fail to do much more than hold the Portuguese line in Guinea, realizes better than anyone else the difficulty of finding a solution to the African dilemma. "The problem is how to promote self-determination for the overseas populations within the Portuguese nation," he wrote in his book. "This will not be easy under present circumstances. It will be easier when those populations feel they are completely equal, when they can give expression to their traditional institutions, when they can vote for the laws which apply to their communities, when they can elect their own local governments, when the people who govern them are of local origin."

The African rebels have greeted Spinola with both suspicion and hostility, viewing his ideas for federation as merely a more sophisticated brand of colonialism. If it were to be a true federation, says Luis Cabral, a leader of Guinea's rebels, sheer weight of numbers would give the leadership to blacks. He adds sarcastically: "I'm sure Spinola wouldn't want a black government heading Portugal." Said Dr. Agostino Neto, an Angolan guerrilla leader: "What we want is to be completely free to determine the destiny of our own country. If all Lisbon has in mind is a federation--and not freedom--I think the war will continue."

The struggle to keep the territories has nearly wrecked Portugal. The poorest nation in all of Europe--poorer even than the Communist regimes of the East, with the probable exception of Albania--Portugal has nonetheless allotted more of its national budget to the Africa fighting for the past 13 years than to any other project. As a result, the home country has gone without essential improvements in roads, schools and just about everything else a modern economy needs. Nearly 2 million people have violated restrictions against emigration to find jobs in other countries or to escape the mandatory four-year tour in the army--which usually included service in Africa. In the north, where it is easiest to slip over the border to Spain, whole villages look as if they had been visited by the bubonic plague, with almost all their able-bodied men working in the factories of France and West Germany.

Why did the government go on with a senseless struggle? The answer lies partly in the fact that no matter how colonized the natives may feel, the Portuguese have arrogantly not considered their territories as colonies; they are part of Portugal itself. To give up Mozambique was almost the same, in the minds of the older generation, as giving up the Algarve. For half a millennium the territories had been part of Portugal, romantic symbols of the country's rich past. If the Portuguese should leave now, some hardliners have further insisted, the territories would suffer the same fate that befell the Congo when the Belgians left. "It would be a crime to leave, as the Belgians did," one such rightwinger argues. "The natives would just kill and eat each other."

Spanish Dreams. Many Portuguese also believed--and still believe--that Portugal would be too weak to stand up to other European nations, particularly Spain, if it let go its ancient overseas inheritance. "If we lost our African territories, we would be under the economic influence of Spain," argues Manuel Jose Homen de Mello, former manager of Lisbon's daily A Capital. "We went to sea because we didn't want to be Spaniards." Adds a former Cabinet Minister: "We have only one powerful neighbor, and the Spaniards have always dreamed, as they are dreaming this very day, of marching in and swallowing us up."

That fear seems farfetched in a period when Spain is suffering its own internal dissent with the Basques and liberals. But it is a fear that Spinola and his young captains may find difficult to explain away to Portuguese traditionalists. In the weeks to come, Spinola must not only attempt to find some solution to the African conundrum, but he must also convince the conservative Portuguese that his formula of democracy is not the radicalism they have been warned against for nearly half a century. No one could say last week whether he would succeed, but the Portuguese were at least enjoying their first heady whiff of freedom.

* Portugal's empire also includes half the East Indian island of Timor (the other half belongs to Indonesia), the tiny colony of Macao, just a ferry ride from Hong Kong off the coast of China, and the Sao Tome, Principe and Cape Verde islands in the Atlantic.

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