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Contrary to what was supposed, the coup d’état of April 25 did not bring a political solution to the transatlantic problem. The political decision involved the involvement of the population in the process of participation and decision-making. That’s not what happened. The coup d’état predetermined, on the contrary, a military solution, that is, the solution of the overseas problem through a simple understanding between the Portuguese military leadership and the leadership of the armed parties, in which, not least, the leaders also had the weight of more and more operational, to the detriment of politicians. The reason for this result was that the coup d’état had led to the disintegration of the Portuguese military apparatus abroad.

Contrary to what the legend says, the prospect of a “military collapse” overseas was not the cause of April 25, but its consequence. There are many explanations for this. Spinola still took the “political solution” seriously. Costa Gomes explained in May in Angola that the war would continue if the independence parties did not disarm. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs must not have liked it. The captains could not allow a return to war, as this could restore the military hierarchy and jeopardize the dominance of the MFA in the armed forces. Thus, they tried to present Spinola with a fait accompli abroad.

In Guinea, on April 26, a military coup took place with the arrest of the commander-in-chief. A few weeks later, the only disciplined fighting force left in Guinea was the PAIGC. Nothing else could be done but his will. On the ground, as well as the maneuvers of the captains, the lack of purpose for the forces that were mobilized to carry out the mission, the task of protecting the integrity of the homeland, which, as she saw, suddenly ended without receiving another task, weighed heavily.

From July 1974, it became clear that the path would be one way or another to independence. Who since then wanted to be the last soldier to die abroad? However, agitation against the war grew in the capital. In order to continue operations, it would be necessary to restore the restriction of political activity, to which no one, for these reasons, was willing to agree. And then, how was it possible to continue the war with the leaders of the left parties in the government? The war had to end.

In the summer of 1974, when they realized that the Portuguese army no longer had the will to fight, some of the armed groups decided to act tough. More or less undermined and unmotivated military units became easy prey. In Mozambique, the Portuguese army lost twice as many casualties in the four months after 25 April as in the first four months of 1974. More Portuguese soldiers died in Angola from May to August 1974 than in the entire year. 1973 Only then did the prospect of a kind of “military collapse” really arise. Since then, the concern of the Portuguese military command was a quick retreat in order to avoid “disgrace”. The war had to be stopped, and the only way to stop the war was through mutual understanding with those who waged it. As little as they represented the armed groups, they were the weapon the Portuguese military needed to calm down. Why talk to someone else?

The great horror of the military command in 1974 was any “Rhodesian” independence, which would create a situation of confrontation in which, even out of a simple instinct of ethnic solidarity, the metropolitan troops would be forced to side with the whites. population against armed groups. It is unlikely that they prevented the white settlers from demonstrating. The discontent between the military and the European population abroad was old.

Unlike what happened in Algiers, the Portuguese civilian population abroad, after the UPA attack in 1961, kept out of the war. They viewed it as a task for the armed forces, and when they were hit again, as happened from time to time in Mozambique in January 1974, they blamed the military. The truth is that few people in the Portuguese army tried to imitate the French soldiers who rebelled along with the colonists in Algeria. The dominant feeling seemed to be the rush to leave, which soon infected the settlers. It also played the fact that the Portuguese settlers were, for the most part, representatives of the first generation. Almost all the settlers had a country to which they could return, unlike the Boers in South Africa.

For their part, the military lost interest in transitions that could only be guaranteed by force, such as multi-party elections, and bet on a simple transfer of power to armed parties. It was later suspected that they did so as an ideological choice. Probably ideology came later to justify expediency. Just as military action needed a cover for integrationism, the withdrawal of troops needed a justification for revolutionary internationalism.

MFA captains were not just “cowards” or “traitors” in the service of the Soviet Union, as the ultramarines later claimed. Among them were several war heroes. Now the act of surrender negated everything that had motivated them during twelve years of hostilities. Moreover, he refuted the promise of 25 April that the coup on that day represented a liberation for all those who lived under Portuguese rule, not only in Europe but also in Africa. Worse, as it turned out later, he betrayed the African soldiers of the Portuguese army to the most terrible persecution.

For all this, the Foreign Ministry needed reasons, reasons that not only explained, but also justified and legitimized. Major Melo Antunes, the Foreign Office man most committed to the “decolonization” talks in 1974, when he had to defend himself, cited necessity: since the war could not continue, there was no alternative. But since when did the mere awareness of fatality give rise to a good conscience in those who were agents of this fatality? Only the mythology of the left could give the people of the Foreign Ministry a clear conscience. Only the left could imagine the bloodthirsty and corrupt dictatorships of PAIGC, MPLA or FRELIMO as “liberation”, or call the occupation of Angola by the Cuban expeditionary army “decolonization”.

In order to be able to see freedom in despotism, the captains and majors turned to the left: and in this conversion they gave to the left in Portugal for two years a power and influence which the left had never dared to aspire to.

Only recently has the true meaning of the Portuguese withdrawal begun to be understood. More Africans fought on the side of the Portuguese than on the side of the armed groups: 42% of the personnel of the Portuguese army in 1973, or about 61,000 soldiers, were recruited locally. This number does not include second line units such as local militias.

In Guinea, half of the clashes with PAIGC were caused by these militias. Spinola promised them the building of an African civil society, pluralistic and free, against the Soviet-type revolutionary state envisaged by the PAIGC. It is likely that a dictatorship such as the Portuguese one was not the most reliable system for financing such a project. It is also likely that everything started too late. In any case, in 1974 the war in Africa was no longer just a colonial war between the Portuguese and independence, but a civil war between Africans with the participation of the Portuguese – what is Eurocentrism (and in some cases racial prejudice) “anti-colonialists” prevented from noticing. Only the Portuguese could choose between staying or leaving. They decided to leave. The rest should have stayed. The war continued for them.

In the latest release of the program And the rest is history, I spoke with Joao Miguel Tavares about the Discoveries and why they are not so famous outside of Portugal, or why Columbus is much more famous than Vasco da Gama. Listen to the podcast here.

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Rui Ramos historian, university professor, co-author of the podcast E o Resto é História [ver o perfil completo].