Carnation Revolution

Independence movements in Portugal's African possessions

Independence movements started operations in the African colonies of Portuguese Mozambique, Portuguese Congo, Portuguese Angola, and Portuguese Guinea. The various conflicts forced the Salazar and Caetano regimes to spend more of the country's budget on colonial administration and military expenditures, and Portugal soon found itself increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. Throughout the war period Portugal faced increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions imposed by most of the international community.^[13]

For Portuguese society the war was becoming even more unpopular due to its length and financial costs, the worsening of diplomatic relations with other United Nations members, and the role it had always played as a factor of perpetuation of the Estado Novo regime. It was this escalation that would lead directly to the mutiny of members of the FAP in the Carnation Revolution in 1974 – an event that would lead to the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa. Atrocities, such as that at Wiriyamu in Mozambique, undermined the war's popularity and the government's diplomatic position – although some details of the Wiriyamu case remain disputed.^{[13][14][15][16][17][18][19]}

After Caetano succeeded to the presidency, colonial war became a major cause of dissent and a focus for anti-government forces in Portuguese society. Many left-wing students and anti-war activists were forced to leave the country so they could escape conscription, imprisonment and torture by government forces. However, between 1945 and 1974, there were also three generations of militants of the radical right at the Portuguese universities and schools, guided by a revolutionary nationalism partly influenced by the political sub-culture of European neofascism. The core of these radical students' struggle lay in an uncompromising defense of the Portuguese Empire in the days of the authoritarian regime.^[20]

Economic conditions

The economy of Portugal and its colonies on the eve of the Carnation Revolution was growing well above the European average. Average family purchasing power was rising together with new consumption patterns and trends and this was promoting both investment in new capital equipment and consumption expenditure for durable and nondurable consumer goods. The Estado Novo regime economic policy encouraged and created conditions for the formation of large business conglomerates. The regime maintained a policy of corporatism that resulted in the placement of a big part of the Portuguese economy in the hands of a number of strong conglomerates, including those founded by the families of António Champalimaud (Banco Totta & Açores, Banco Pinto & Sotto Mayor, Secil, Cimpor), José Manuel de Mello (CUF – Companhia União Fabril), Américo Amorim (Corticeira Amorim) and the dos Santos family (Jerónimo Martins).

Those Portuguese conglomerates had a business model with similarities to South Korean chaebols and Japanese keiretsus and zaibatsus. The Companhia União Fabril (CUF) was one of the largest and most diversified Portuguese conglomerates with its core businesses (cement, chemicals, petrochemicals, agrochemicals, textiles, beer, beverages, metallurgy, naval engineering, electrical engineering, insurance, banking, paper, tourism, mining, etc.) and corporate headquarters located in mainland Portugal, but also with branches, plants and several developing business projects all around the Portuguese Empire, especially in the Portuguese territories of Cabinda, Angola and Mozambique.

Other medium-sized family companies specialized in textiles (for instance those located in the city of Covilhã and the northwest), ceramics, porcelain, glass and crystal (like those of Alcobaça, Caldas da Rainha and Marinha Grande), engineered wood (like SONAE near Porto), canned fish (like those of Algarve and the northwest), fishing, food and beverages (alcoholic beverages, from liqueurs like Licor Beirão and Ginjinha, to beer like Sagres, were produced across the entire country, but Port Wine was one of its most reputed and exported alcoholic beverages), tourism (well established in Estoril/Cascais/Sintra and growing as an international attraction in the Algarve since the 1960s) and in agriculture (like the ones scattered around the Alentejo – known as the breadbasket of Portugal) completed the panorama of the national economy by the early 1970s. In addition, rural areas' populations were committed to agrarianism that was of great importance for a majority of the total population, with many families living exclusively from agriculture or complementing their salaries with farming, husbandry and forestry yields.

Portuguese colonies in Africa during the Estado Novo regime: Angola and Mozambique were by far the two largest of those territories.

Besides that, the colonies were also displaying impressive economic growth and development rates from the 1920s onwards. Even during the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974), a counterinsurgency war against independentist guerrilla and terrorism, Portuguese Congo, Portuguese Angola and Portuguese Mozambique (colonies at the time) had continuous economic growth rates and several sectors of its local economies were booming. They were internationally notable centres of production of oil, coffee, cotton, cashew, coconut, timber, minerals (like diamonds), metals (like iron and aluminium), banana, citrus, tea, sisal, beer (Cuca and Laurentina were successful beer brands produced locally), cement, fish and other sea products, beef and textiles. Tourism was also a fast developing activity in Portuguese Africa both by the growing development of and demand for beach resorts and wildlife reserves.

Labour unions were not allowed and a minimum wage policy was not enforced. However, in a context of an expanding economy, bringing better living conditions for the Portuguese population in the 1960s, the outbreak of the colonial wars in Africa set off significant social changes, among them the rapid incorporation of more and more women into the labour market. Marcelo Caetano moved on to foster economic growth and some social improvements, such as the awarding of a monthly pension to rural workers who had never had the chance to pay social security. The objectives of Caetano's pension reform were threefold: enhancing equity, reducing fiscal and actuarial imbalance, and achieving more efficiency for the economy as a whole, for example, by establishing contributions which distorted labour markets less, or by allowing the savings generated by pension funds to increase the investments in the economy.

After Salazar's stroke in 1968, Caetano had taken over the office of Prime Minister. His main slogan was "evolution in continuity", suggesting that there would be a reform of the Salazarist system. His so-called "political spring" (also called Marcelist Spring – Primavera Marcelista) included greater political tolerance and freedom of the press and was regarded as an opportunity by the opposition to gain concessions from the regime. In 1969, the Estado Novo-controlled nation got indeed a very slight taste of democracy and Caetano allowed the establishment of the first democratic labour union movement since the 1920s. Nevertheless, after the elections of 1969 and 1973 it was clear that the past practices of political repression would continue against communists, anti-colonialists and other oppositionists. In 1973, Caetano was pressured by the ultra-right faction inside the Salazarist élite to abandon his reform experiment.

Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho rose to mainstream popularity in the mid-1970s due to his leading role in the Carnation Revolution. However, he performed poorly in elections for the Presidency of the country.

By the early 1970s, the Portuguese Colonial War continued to rage on, requiring a steadily increasing budget. The Portuguese military was overstretched and there was no political solution or end in sight. While the human losses were relatively small, the war as whole had already entered its second decade. The Portuguese ruling regime of Estado Novo faced criticism from the international community and was becoming increasingly isolated.

The colonial war had a profound impact on Portugal—thousands of young men avoided conscription by emigrating illegally, mainly to France and the US. In addition, the other revolutionary Armed Forces Movement (MFA)'s goals were not in the strict interest of the people of Portugal or its colonies, since the movement was initiated not only as an attempt to liberate Portugal from the authoritarian Estado Novo regime, but as an attempt of rebellion against the new Military Laws that were to be presented next year.^[21][22]

The Revolution and the whole movement were also a way to work against Laws that would reduce military costs and would reformulate the whole Portuguese Military Branch (Decree Law: Decretos-Leis n.os 353, de 13 de Julho de 1973, e 409, de 20 de Agosto). Younger military academy graduates resented a program introduced by Marcello Caetano whereby militia officers who completed a brief training program and had served in the colonies' defensive campaigns, could be commissioned at the same rank as military academy graduates. As the war in the colonies was becoming increasingly unpopular in Portugal itself with the people becoming weary of war and balking at its ever-rising expense, the military insurgents took advantage of it and got some momentum.

Many ethnic Portuguese of the African colonies were also increasingly willing to accept independence if their economic status could be preserved. Following the coup d'état in Portugal in 1974, the new left-wing revolutionary government of Portugal began to negotiate with the African pro-independence guerrillas. The new government in Lisbon was disinclined to prop up Portugal's convulsing and by now very expensive empire. All the Portuguese territories in Africa were rapidly granted their independence.

Decolonisation

Before April 1974, the war in Africa was consuming as much as 40% of the Portuguese budget and there was no end in sight. At a military level, a part of Guinea-Bissau was de facto independent since 1973, but the capital and the major towns were still under Portuguese control. In Angola and Mozambique, independence movements were only active in a few remote countryside areas from which the Portuguese Army had retreated, and the economies of these two territories were booming.

A direct consequence of the military coup at Lisbon was the sudden withdrawal of Portuguese administrative and military personnel from Portugal's overseas colonies. Hundreds of thousands of other Portuguese citizens—workers, small business people, and farmers (often with deep roots in the former colonies)—also returned to Portugal as retornados.

Angola would later enter into a decades-long civil war which involved nations like the Soviet Union, Cuba, South Africa, and the United States. Millions of Angolans would die in the aftermath of independence, due either to the violence of the armed conflict or malnutrition and disease. After a short period of stability, Mozambique would also later enter into a devastating civil war that left it as one of the poorest nations in the world. Since the 1990s, its situation has improved after the war ended and multi-party elections were held.

East Timor was invaded by Indonesia and would later be occupied until 1999. There were an estimated 102,800 conflict-related deaths in the period 1974–99 (approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 'excess' deaths from hunger and illness), the majority of which occurred during the subsequent Indonesian occupation.^[25]

After a long period of one-party rule, Guinea-Bissau endured a brief civil war and a difficult transition to civilian rule in 1998.

Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe, on the other hand, were spared civil war during the decolonization period, and by the early 1990s, they have both established multi-party political systems.

Macau remained a Portuguese colony until 1999 when China took control by agreement and went on to pursue a "one country, two systems" policy similar to Hong Kong's.

Economic issues

The Portuguese economy had changed significantly by 1973 prior to the revolution, compared with its position in 1961. Total output (GDP at factor cost) had grown by 120 percent in real terms. The pre-revolutionary period was characterized by robust annual growth rates for GDP (6.9 percent), industrial production (9 percent), private consumption (6.5 percent), and gross fixed capital formation (7.8 percent). The revolutionary period itself was characterized by a slowly growing economy whose only impetus was the entering of the European Economic Zone. It never reached pre-revolutionary period growth rates. On the other hand, despite the progress in the 1960s and early 1970s, Portugal at the time of the Revolution was still an underdeveloped country with poor infrastructure and inefficient agriculture as well as the worst health and education indicators in Europe.^[26]

However, researchers agree that pre-revolution Portugal increasingly accomplished notable social and economic achievements.^[27] After a long period of economic divergence before 1914, the Portuguese economy recovered slightly until 1950, entering thereafter on a path of strong economic growth leading to some convergence with Western Europe, of which Portugal was and remained until the 1980s the poorest country. Portuguese economic growth in the period 1960–73 under the Estado Novo regime (and even with the effects of an expensive war effort in African territories against independence guerrilla groups), created an opportunity for real integration with the developed economies of Western Europe. Through emigration, trade, tourism and foreign investment, individuals and firms changed their patterns of production and consumption, bringing about a structural transformation. Simultaneously, the increasing complexity of a growing economy raised new technical and organizational challenges, stimulating the formation of modern professional and management teams.^[28][29]

On 13 November 1972, a sovereign wealth fund (Fundo do Ultramar – The Overseas Fund) was enacted through the Decree Law Decreto-Lei n.º 448/ /72 and the Ministry of Defense ordinance Portaria 696/72, in order to finance the counterinsurgency effort in the Portuguese colonies.^[30] While the counterinsurgency war was won in Angola, it was less than satisfactorily contained in Mozambique and dangerously stalemated in Portuguese Guinea from the Portuguese point of view, so the Portuguese Government had decided to create sustainability policies in order to allow continuous sources of financing for the war effort in the long run. In addition, new Decree Laws (Decree Law: Decretos-Leis n.os 353, de 13 de Julho de 1973, e 409, de 20 de Agosto) were enforced in order to cut down military expenses and increase the number of officers by incorporating militia and military academy officers in the Army branches as equals.^{[7][21][31][32][33]}

In the agricultural sector, the collective farms, set up in Alentejo after the 1974–75 expropriations due to the leftist military coup of 25 April 1974, proved incapable of modernizing, and their efficiency declined. According to government estimates, about 900,000 hectares (2,200,000 acres) of agricultural land were occupied between April 1974 and December 1975 in the name of land reform; about 32% of the occupations were ruled illegal. In January 1976, the government pledged to restore the illegally occupied land to its owners, and in 1977, it promulgated the Land Reform Review Law. Restoration of illegally occupied land began in 1978.^[34][35]

In 1960, at the initiation of Salazar's more outward-looking economic policy due to the influence of a new wave of technocrats with background in economics (some of whom trained abroad, including in liberal capitalist graduate schools from the USA and the UK), Portugal's per capita GDP was only 38 percent of the EC-12 average; by the end of the Salazar period, in 1968, it had risen to 48 percent; and in 1973, on the eve of the revolution, Portugal's per capita GDP had reached 56.4 percent of the EC-12 average (though the figure is necessarily dampened by the 40% of the budget that went to African wars). In 1975, the year of maximum revolutionary turmoil, Portugal's per capita GDP declined to 52.3 percent of the EC-12 average. Due to the new revolutionary economic policies, oil shocks, recession in Europe, the return of hundreds of thousands of overseas Portuguese from the former colonies, Portugal underwent an economic crisis starting in 1974–75.^[36]

Convergence of real GDP growth toward the EC average occurred as a result of Portugal's economic resurgence since 1985. In 1991 Portugal's GDP per capita climbed to 54.9 percent of the EC average, exceeding by a fraction the level attained during the worst revolutionary period.^[37] After the revolution Portugal's economy would collapse and it took 16 years for the GDP as percentage of the EC-12 average to climb to 54.9 percent again. Portugal had been one of the founding members of EFTA (European Free Trade Association) in 1960. After the fall of the Estado Novo regime and the loss of its colonies in 1974 and 1975, Portugal left EFTA and entered into the European Economic Community in 1986.

A report published in January 2011 by the Diário de Notícias, a right-wing Portuguese tabloid newspaper, attempted to demonstrate that in the period between the Carnation Revolution in 1974 and 2010, the democratic Portuguese Republic governments have encouraged over expenditure and investment bubbles through unclear public-private partnerships. This has funded numerous ineffective and unnecessary external consultancy and advising committees and firms, allowed considerable slippage in state-managed public works, inflated top management and head officers' bonuses and wages, causing a persistent and lasting recruitment policy that has boosted the number of redundant public servants. The economy has also been damaged by risky credit, public debt creation and mismanaged European structural and cohesion funds for almost four decades. Apparently, the Prime Minister Sócrates's cabinet was not able to forecast or prevent any of this when symptoms first appeared in 2005, and later was incapable of doing anything to ameliorate the situation when the country was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2011 and required financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.^[38]

Freedom of religion

The constitution of 1976 guarantees all religions the right to practice their faith. Non-Roman Catholic groups came to be recognized as legal entities with the right to assemble. Portuguese who were both not Roman Catholics and were conscientious objectors had the right to apply for alternative military service. The Roman Catholic Church, however, still sought to place barriers in the way of missionary activities.^[39]

The new authorities abolished the ban on activities of Jehovah's Witnesses. In December 1976, the religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses was registered. In 1978, in Lisbon, they organized their first international convention in Portugal.^[40]