“Carnation Revolution” in Portugal – 50 years
The government of Portugal, once one of the world’s largest colonial powers, recently refused to pay reparations to its former African colonies for atrocities committed by the Portuguese colonialists from the 15th century to the mid-1970s. As Reuters notes, citing Portuguese and African sources, from the 15th century to the mid-19th century inclusive, at least 6 million Africans in the colonies of Portugal were kidnapped and forcibly transported by the Portuguese to other regions, including Brazil for subsequent sale into slavery to Western Europeans. Spanish and North American companies.
Portuguese President de Sousa
On the need for compensation for damage to African and other former colonies of Lisbon, April 24. said Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, admitting that his “country is responsible for crimes during the long colonial era” and calling for “the bills to be paid in order to somehow compensate the people for the consequences of the crimes committed.” According to the head of state, “several methods of paying reparations are being prepared, among them is writing off the debts of the former colonies.” This statement was made on the 50th anniversary of the overthrow in Portugal of the semi-fascist colonial regime of Salazar-Caetano, which ruled the Pyrenees country for over 40 years, from the early 1930s (1).
However, the Portuguese government did not support the president’s initiative. The corresponding statement noted that the authorities of the former metropolis and its former colonies “need to deepen mutual relations, respect for historical truth, democracy” and “more intensively, more closely cooperate on the basis of reconciliation of fraternal peoples.” In other words, it’s time for the former colonialists and the peoples who suffered from them – especially the “brotherly” ones – to reconcile with each other…
As for compensation, the government has stated that “there is currently no program of concrete action” on this issue. And that “ previous governments of the country also followed this line .” Such a “weighty” argument shows that the Portuguese authorities are not at all concerned about the consequences — virtually indefinite — of their colonial policy in many African countries.
Portugal had extensive colonies in Africa and Asia until the mid-1970s
Meanwhile, Lisbon has been trying to maintain its influence in the former colonies since the mid-1990s, in particular through the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries, established on the initiative of Portugal and Brazil in 1996. Almost all of Lisbon’s former colonies participate in this unification, with the exception of Macau Macao in southern China. There is a free trade regime here, and bilateral and multilateral programs on the environment, personnel training, development of agriculture and manufacturing, education and healthcare are being implemented. Sometimes there are reports of preparations in the Community for a project to create an interstate currency — the escudo (the traditional currency of almost all Portuguese colonies and Portugal itself before its entry into the eurozone in 2002).
However, the first violin in the trade of Portugal and Brazil with the ex-Portuguese colonies in Africa and in investments there is played by Brazil, a member of the BRICS interstate association, whose trade with these countries is approximately twice as large as its trade with Portugal. The share of Brazilian investments there (in the volume of foreign investments) is over 15% versus approximately 12% share of capital investments of the ex-metropolis.
By the way, the Portuguese-speaking Community is a joint initiative dating back to the mid-1960s by Brazilian President O. de Castelo and Portuguese Prime Minister A. O. Salazar. But then, several decades ago, Washington put severe pressure on both sides, suspecting this project was aimed against the United States, and therefore it was not implemented. Portugal’s accession to the European Union in 1986 convinced its allies that Lisbon did not plan to form an ideological and, accordingly, political-economic “Portugualophony” with its former colonies. Therefore, in the 1990s, the establishment of the Portuguese-speaking Community no longer encountered obstacles from Washington and Brussels.
Let us remember that the era of the Portuguese empire lasted more than five centuries, and all continents were included in its colonial register. Until 1822, Brazil was a colony of Lisbon, occupying almost half of the territory of South America. In Africa, such Portuguese colonies were until 1961 inclusive — Ajuda (on the coast of ex-French West African Dahomey); until 1974 — Angola, Mozambique, rich in natural resources and a favorable climate, the islands of Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe.
In Asia, the Portuguese colonies until 1975 included the island of East Timor in Southeast Asia (near Australia); before 1961 4 districts including Goa in western India. The South Chinese enclave of Macau (Macao), Hong Kong’s geographic neighbor, remained Portuguese even until 1999.
The territory of all colonies of Lisbon reached 10.4 million square meters. km, second in the 20th century only to the total territory of overseas Britain, the largest colonial power. Interestingly, in the 1950s–1970s. The Portuguese colonial “empire” remained the only one in the world, tens of times larger than the territory of Portugal itself and the size of its population. According to UN estimates, the total contribution of the Portuguese colonies to the GDP of this European country by the mid-1970s. was a record high, exceeding 65%!
Carnation Revolution
The decolonization of African countries and East Timor, controlled by Lisbon, began half a century ago, in 1974, when the “Carnation Revolution” overthrew the semi-fascist dictatorship of the hapless successors of Prime Minister Antonio de Salazar, who had died four years earlier. During the colonial wars of Lisbon in the 1960s — mid-1970s. in Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique, up to 20% of the entire indigenous population of the Portuguese colonies died. Taking into account the forced emigration and missing Africans during those wars, their losses in general reach almost a third!
“The fascist regime in Portugal was as misanthropic as any fascist regime. But it was also a regime of suppression of the national identity of the peoples who were under its colonial yoke, thereby distorting the soul of the Portuguese themselves. It is clear in whose interests he did this: big capital, corrupted by the permissiveness of the elite,” notes Mikhail Demurin, a Soviet and Russian diplomat who worked in Mozambique for a long time. Large-scale military-technical assistance to Lisbon in these wars was provided by its allies in the imperialist NATO bloc, as well as Israel, Taiwan, and the racist regimes of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. This is understandable: colossal resources of strategic metals, uranium, diamonds, gold, platinum, oil, high-value timber, and other types of raw materials in the African colonies of Lisbon belonged to corporations of Western countries. Most Portuguese companies in these colonies were largely servants of Western corporations. These unique resources were obtained by slave labor of Africans.
It is symptomatic that Portugal’s attempts to create there in the 1960s. in Africa, “pro-Portuguese” political organizations received almost no local support. In addition, Brazil began to oppose Lisbon’s colonial policy in Africa around the same time. Only in miniature Ajuda (on the coast of present-day Benin) and Macau was colonial status abolished peacefully.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Africans from the same colonies were brought to the metropolis for many decades due to banal savings: the average monthly salary in Portugal for an emigrant from its African and Asian colonies was at least 4 times lower than for a “native” Portuguese. These emigrants lived mainly in reserves near some Portuguese cities or enterprises, being deprived of any social guarantees.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the collective West in the 1960s and 1970s. blocked proposals from the USSR, China, other socialist countries, Scandinavian countries, and many developing countries to impose UN sanctions against Portugal for its bloody colonialism, as well as for all kinds of discrimination against emigrants from the Portuguese colonies in Africa on the territory of the mother country.
So it turns out that paying colonial bills means, as the Portuguese media note, not without alarm, to forever bankrupt the now former metropolis…
Note
(1) In 1933, a special Colonial Law was adopted, legally establishing the superiority of Europeans over the aborigines.
Der Friedensstifter 