PORTUGAL NO At the time of his induguration ceremony, Portuguese Prime Minister Pinheiro de Azevedo announced with great assurance his intention to restore authority and discipline in the army. On September 26, seven days later, he renewed his appeal, this time with some apprehension, in these terms: "Only the discipline and cohesion of the armed forces and their alliance with the progressive parties and laboring classes can isolate our enemies so as to defeat them more easily. * In the name of the struggle against reaction and the "defense of the revalution, " the Portuguese prime minister wants to halt the independent organization of the soldiers and restore respect for the military hierarchy! The Socialist party daily A Luta revealed the real meaning of these appeals: "Things are very serious; the armed forces have been eroded by politics, from the simple soldiers up through the generals. Instead of being 12 by C. MICHALOUX & AUDRY a factor of order in society, they are taking the most contradictory positions, without inspiring among citizens the indispensable confidence and minimal security that every community mus* possess in order to do effective and productive work. " (Editorial in the September 26 issue.) The growing crisis in the Portuguese army is breaking down the whole project of the sixth government, which looks more and more provisional. Nevertheless, this government tried to accelerate the pace of its decisions and make itself look firm and effective. Because of the extreme difficulty involved in using the Copcon as an instrument of repression, the government created the AMI (Military Intervention Group). In face of the development of the SUV (Soldados Unidos Vencerão -Soldiers United Will Win), it ordered the arrest of two soldiers and the drawing up of a list of "ringleoders." In face of the demonstration of the AFA (Association of Wounded Armed Forces Veterans), the government
ordered the intervention of the shock troops of the Amadora commandos. But the government has suffered failure after failure. The majority of the units assigned to the AMI refused to participate. The two arrested soldiers were liberated by a demonstration of soldiers and workers on the night of September 25-26, The already massive support for the AFA took a leap forward after the attempt at repression. The army, cornerstone of the government's project, is crumbling. The movement of soldiers, which arose out of the interaction of the rise of struggles, the movement of self-organization, and the crisis of the hierarchical structure, and which initially lagged behind the civilian mobilization, is now outstripping the workers and people's mobilizations. The very existence of this movement con facilitate a new workers upsurge. In such a situafion, the lack of a revolutionary leadership capable of presenting a political road out of the crisis and of unifying broad sectors of the working class is now being directly feit by significant layers of workers. Hands off the SUV! The general staff understood the danger it was facing after the September 10 demonstration in Porto. (See the interview with the SUV member published in this issue of INPRECOR.) It was not enough simply to place the problem of the SUV on the agenda of the Council of the Revolution or even to drow up a list of all the soldiers who had marched in the Porto demonstration. It was decided to strike at the soldiers, to make an example of them. The two soldiers were arrested under the flimsy pretext that they were in possession of SUV leaflets. The general staff had chosen to make its move in a barracks in which the level of mobilization of the soldiers was relatively low. But this tactic failed completely. The very day after the arrest of the two, Corporal Pinto and Sergeant Figueiredo of the EPI (Infantry Training School) in Mafra, the soldiers of the barracks assembled in the courtyard and shouted "Free our comrades!" and "Reactionaries out of the barracks!" Not knowing that their two comrades had been transferred to the Trafaria fort near Lisbon, they advanced toward the barracks stockade to turn Pinto and Figueiredo loose. The officers who tried to stop them felt the determination of the soldiers - physically. They were thrown out of the way. The commander had to convoke a general assembly of the barracks; he was met with chants of "Fascists out of the barracks!" The solidarity with the two arrested soldiers soon spread beyond the walls of Mafra, Support motions were voted in many barracks and telegrams were sent to the general staff and the Council of the Revolution demanding the immediate release of the arrested soldiers. In MoscavideSacavem, a region where Figueiredo was well known as an antifascist militant, a demonstration organized by the workers and tenants commissions in collaboration with the soldiers was held in front of the EPSM (Proctical Service and Matériel School of Sacavem). The soldiers of the EPSM and the workers called for the immediate release of Pinto and Figueiredo. The EPSM commander asserted his solidarity with this initiative. Nevertheless, several days later, he circulated a motion among the career officers calling for the removal of the radicalized militia officers and noncoms and for the restructuring of the regiment. When the soldiers heard about this motion, they demanded that a general assembly be held; then, right in front of the commander and the officers, they tore up the motion! The commander then began to understand the limits of demagogy. The SUV has won, the SUV will win! In face of this solidarity movement and the reaction of the Mafra soldiers themselves, General Fabião, the chief of staff, supported and justified the decision of the EPI commander to arrest Pinto and Figueiredo. In so doing, he revealed his real objective: the liquidation of the SUV. Fabio declared, "The SUV is an organization foreign to the organs that structure the MFA (Armed Forces Movement) in the military units. The punishment inflicted by the EPI commander on the two soldiers of this unit falls within the disciplinary norms of the armed forces. This sanction was motivated by the fact that these soldiers were corrying on propaganda and distributing leaflets in the barracks, leaflets of on organization foreign to the structures of the MFA within the unit. The cohesion and discipline of the armed forces are indispensable elements in the existence of the armed forces and their capacity to operate in the service of a truly socialist revolution." The 4,000 soldiers and 40, 000 workers who marched through the streets of Lisbon on the night of September 25 in response to the call of the SUV showed Fabiac what they thought of his line. They proclaimed loud and clear that it is the MFA and not the SUV that is foreign to a truly socialist revolution. There was no reference to the MFA among the slogans of this demonstration. The slogan inscribed on the front banner, which was symbolically carried by workers, peasants, and soldiers, read: "Workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors, united we will win." That slogan replaced the habitual "People-MFA Alliance." When the demonstrators arrived at the Eduard VIl Square, a SUV speaker asked them to go to the gates of the Trafaria fort (about ten miles away) the following day to demand the release of the two soldiers of Mafra. But there was a spontaneous and unanimous response: "Today! Right now!" The SUV speakers then asked the bus drivers of the Corris company, who were at the demonstration, and the military truck drivers to come forward to take the wheels of some buses that the demonstrators requisitioned from a nearby depot. Several thousand demonstrators were then driven to Trafaria. At 2:30 in the morning, Otelo de Carvalho had to sign an order releasing the two soldiers, an order that was met by the chant, "The SUV has won; the SUV will win!"
PORTUGAL This first victory inevitably had deep repercussions -in Mafra in the first place. On October 1 a general ossembly of soldiers discussed a proposal to exclude all reactionary officers from the barracks, remove the commander, and elect a new commander. Thus, the slogan of the SUV "Reactionaries out of the barracks," first taken up by the Mafra soldiers on September 23, moved a step closer to actual realization. This trend is already being felt in other barracks. At the RPM (the Military Police in Lisbon), a unit in which many officers are very radicalized, a general assembly was held on September 24 and voted a resolution containing the following point, among others: "The assembly accepts, with full satisfaction, the proposal to oust reactionary officers who are desperately trying to provoke division in the army." The revolutionary soldiers and officers of the RPM thus responded to the charges of divisiveness that had been made by Fabião and Carvalho. Wounded veterans sequester the government On September 29 the prime minister decided to send troops to occupy Portuguese Radio- Television (RTP), Radio Renascença, Radio Clube Português, and Emisora Nacional. Officially, this was the major reason for the military occupation: "What began by presenting itself as a simple movement for demands and which deserved to be treated justly, ended up by culminating. in the occupation of the installations of the national radio station (the official broadcasting station) and in an attempt to sequester the government itself, which was meeting in a working session in the residence of the prime minister. In the wake of this escalation, it was planned, according to the statements of the spokesmen of the movement itself, to paralyze all life in the capital." Here the governHociation tah melate ment was alluding to the struggle waged by the soldiers and officers of the AFA, an association that includes 30,000 veterans wounded in the Portuguese colonial wars. These veterans, exasperated by the lack of any social measures on their behalf, launched a movement for their own demands on September 13. The only way open to these seriously wounded veterans in making themselves heard was to resort to spectacular actions that would alert the population. For example, they used their wheelchairs to block off the three toll gates on the highways leading into Lisbon and let all the cars go through free. Then they occupied Emisora Nacional. The workers of this radio station allowed them to speak and drew them into the process of editing news bulletins on a regular basis. Finally, they decided to occupy the So Benito palace, the seat of the Constituent Assembly and the government. Throughout their struggle, the ADFA militants received support from many military units, and they got special material assistance from the 14 military police (cars, food, clothing, lodging). Thus, it was these seriously wounded war veterans, most of them amputees, who "sequestered" the government and threatened Lisbon with paralysis! In reality, Pinheiro de Azevedo, Melo Antunes, Fabião, Zenha, and company were afraid that the forms of propaganda used by the ADFA would be taken up by other sectors in struggle. Until recently, the rodio - under the pressure of the station employees - had been extensively informing the population about these various struggles. With the ADFA, however, a threshold was crossed: Those in struggle were speaking in their own names, with the collaboration of the workers of the radio stations. That sort of development could step up the impact of struggles and prevent them from becoming isolated of a time when the government is planning on restoring social peace. Today it is the ADFA. Tomorrow if could be the soldiers of the RALIS (the Lisbon light artillery regiment), the RIOQ (Operational Intervention Regiment of Queluz), the Mafra EPI, or the SUV who would take the floor and speak over the airwaves to hundreds of thousands of workers. That was the sequestering that the government was afraid of. The active solidarity of the military police with the ADA heralded that possibility. So it was no accident that the second major reason the government advanced to justify the military occupation of the radio stations referred to the armed forces: "In all these events, a common denominator could be detected: The intention to undermine the foundations of discipline and order, especially of the level of the armed forces, which constitute the moral reserve of the nation. A country in which the information organs permit the destruction of the civil and moral foundations of a multisecular social pact ceases to exist." These statements, worthy of a de Gaulle, had to be made in the name of defense of "the socialist revolution", that was because of the social situation. "Socialism and social justice, the inviolable duty of the MFA and the government, cannot be built on anarchy, " the government claimed. The juxiaposition of these two assertions says a lot about the forms that can be taken by the conservatism of the ruling class during a period of revolutionary upsurge. Occupation to keep people quiet or let them speak? As soon as the occupation order was announced, resistance began to be manifested in the army - and on a national scale. Ar the CIAAC (Anti-Aircraft Intervention Center of Cascais) an officer rejected an order to move against Radio Renascença, When the commander offered this officer the choice of prison or obedience, he answered: "I am going to join the popular deferse pickets defending the radio station." On the afternoon of September 29 the soldiers of the CIAAC solidarized with the workers of Radio Renascenço. They refused to be replaced
by the PSP (Public Security Police) or by any other troops who "did not share the same ideas as they did. On October 2 they again defended the "revolutionary radio station in the service of the workers, peasants, and soldiers" - side by side with the popular pickets. In order to achieve its objective partially, the government had to call in the Amadora commandos, who occupied the Bucara broadcasting station and prevented the Radio Renascença workers from going on the air. The soldiers of the CIAAC gave a good lesson to all those who, in the name of democratic rights, had been calling for the return of Radio Renascença to it former owners: the reactionary, Salazarist Catholic church. The paratroopers of the DGFA (General Air Force Division), who were sent to occupy Emisora Nacional, also solidarized with the workers of the station, who refused to apply government censorship to the political communiqués of the organs of "popular power." At the Radio Clube Português the RIOQ (Operational Intervention Regiment of Queluz), the military police, and the RTA (Train and Auto Regiment) refused to prevent broadcasts that did not submit to the censorship decree. When the government threatened to replace the RIOQ soldiers with policemen in whom the government had confidence (even though it is dangerous to use the police because of their fascist connotations), the RIOQ soldiers declared: "Only other soldiers from the RIOQ will take our place." At the RTP (the national radio station) the soldiers of the EPAM (Practical Military Administration School) assured the workers of their support. But the influence of the Communist party prevented the establishment of a workers commission functioning on a regular democratic basis. The trade-union delegates did not take any initiative to draw the soldiers into a response against the government censorship, even though the soldiers were prepared for this. It would have been totally possible to produce a special radio broodcast turning the microphones over to the delegates of the workers commission and to the delegates of the soldiers, as was done at Radio Clube Português. Sons of the people In Porto the movement of resistance to the government measures was also felt, even though the government had not decided to occupy the stations in the Porto region. The reaction of the soldiers of the general headquarters of the northern military region was exemplary. The iniflatives taken by the soldiers and the militio officers and the debate that took place between them and the reactionary officers expressed the radicalization and politicization of the most advanced sectors of the anti-militarist movement.
The soldiers of the general headquarters were ordered consigned to barracks. The soldiers then learned that the officers, meeting in the saldo nobre (noble salon) were listening to a report from the commander about the reason: for this order. The 150 soldiers, sergeants, and militia officers decided that they should also go to the salão nobre to discuss the report of the commander, a Major Maia. Just as the soldiers entered, one soldier scolded the commander: "We are not animals. We also want to know why we have been confined to barracks." The major replied magnanimously, "I don't know why. I think it's because of the situation in Lisbon. ... The occupation of the radio stations is correct. The radios were bothering a lot of people and disturbing social peace." A soldier stood up: "Now listen to him, Since some people are pissed off about the radio you have to occupy the stations, shut people up, and cut off the voice of the workers. RR (Rodio Renascença) and the other stations let the proletarians speak. Tomorrow, when some people, like an emplayer or a capitalist, get pissed off about a strike, then the army is going to have to occupy the factories. The next day, when the reactionary officers get pissed off about the occupations of the saldes nobres they'll arrest the soldiers." Another soldier: "We are here, os sons of the people, to tell you that we will never fire on the people." Major Maia: "You are sons of the people! What am I, a son of a bitch?" Then, turning to a militia officer, he shouted: "I know you've already accused me of being privileged." The militia officer took that one on the fly: "Not only you, but all the career officers and even us, the militia officers, we're privileged. You con see that all kinds of ways. When we walk into the barracks the soldiers have to salute. In the courtyard they call us "mister" and we call them 'hey you.' They get 250 escudos a month and we get at least 4,700. And 10,000 is not so unusual. But as my comrade soldiers tell me, they don't put all of us on the other side of the barricades. But we're not going to show them we're with them just by making some so-called revolutionary and socialist speeches. We have to prove it in real life, mainly by opposing any kind of militarist repression against the soldiers' struggle." For a while the debate went on like that. The soldiers solemnly declared: "Just so Maia does not make a mistake like Carvalho did, we state right now that we will refuse to carry out any sort of measure against the workers." Maia, who was getting depressed, walked off into the corridor, muttering, "I'm transferring to the reserves. I just can't take it any more. I just con't take it." A first test September 29 was the first time the sixth government made a practical test of the possibilities of actually carrying out its program. They failed in this first test,
is no other instrument. In fact, the measures the government took octually stimulated the radicalization in the army and pushed the army to take a qualitative step forward both in the trend toward self-organization and in the trend toward estabFishing links between the organs of the workers and the organs of the soldiers. This is especially important since this battle - this almost complete defeat for the government - took place around the mass media, which are decisive in a revolutionary crisis. Radio and television could become instruments for centralizing a workers offensive instead of being instruments for centralizing the energies of the counterrevolution. Even the RICQ, a regiment where the majority had voted in favor of the Melo Antunes document, is now holding a general assembly to discuss the election of a "soldiers commission. " On September 30 in the barracks of the RALIS (Lisbon light artillery regiment) there was a meeting of delegates from Lisbon military units to set up a coordinating body assigned to "protect the gains of the workers." (A Capital, October 1, 1975.) The meeting was attended by delegates from the RALIS; the military police (RPM); the Coastal Artillery Regiment (RAC); the Paratroopers, Riflemen, and Sailors of Alfeite; the Research and Transmissions Brigade (BRT), the Infantry Regiment of Setubal (RIS); the General Depot of War Matériel (DGMG); the Air Force Detection, Alert, Control, and Interception Group (GDACI); the Practical Transmissions School (EPT); the Aeronautics Matériel Service (SMA); the Almadea Fort; and the sailors. The government had trouble assembling the troops that were supposed to form the AMl, commanded by Brigadier General Nuno Viriato Tavares de Melo Egidio, a general who was widely known as a torturer in Mozdmbique. In fact, the RIOQ, the EPI of Mafra, the paratroopers, and the sailors have already refused to join the AMI. On the other hand, coordinating bodies of the units of the Lisbon region are now beginning to be set up successfully, outside the normal structures of the army.
Nevertheless, all this must not give rise to complacent optimism. First of all, the establishment of the SUV in the Lisbon region is still only in its beginning stages.
The only guarantee for its continuation is the emergence of "soldiers commissions." And the trend toward the development of these commissions, while certainly visible, is far from generalized. So long as that trend is not fully realized, the danger of sectarian divisions according to political loyalties exists. When the SUV arose, the Communist party, while not openly opposing it, launched its own appendage: the ARPE (Revolutionary
Association of Infantry Soldiers). The UDP (União
Democrático Popular - Popular Democratic Union) is exhibiting more or less declared opposition to the SUV.
The creation of "soldiers commissions" may take place in various ways (transformation of the SUV, emergence of struggle committees against repression, emergence of committees built around material demands, but it
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----- pull-quotes on this page ----- we tell you that we will never fire on the people'
remains an objective that must be attained if broad layers of soldiers are to be won away from the grip of the military hierarchy and its many maneuver. The fact that the deep radicalization in the army and the overall mobilizations of the toiling classes are out of phase is a characteristic feature of the present conjuncture. Some groups that fail to see this and lend too much weight to the existence of the radicalization in the army are tending to develop adventurist and militarist positions. The PRP-BR (Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado-Brigadas Revolucionárias - Revolutionary party of the Proletariat-Revolutionary Brigades) has gone so far as to say that "insurrection is on the agendo," This is combining with the position of the Gonçalvist sectors, for whom the struggle against reaction is above all a military struggle; they leave aside the organization of self-defense, which has to be combined with the development of the organs of "popular power." In the bourgeois camp, the recent defeat will accelerate decisions aimed at consolidating a military striking force that is reliable even if restricted. The only gain that has been made by the government so far has been the shutdown of Radio Renascenço, which was done by occupying the Bucara broadcasting station with troops of the Amadora commandos, directed by the reactionary Jaime Neves. For the bourgeoisie, this points to the road that must be followed. The precipitous return of troops from Angola (a contingent of 5,000 soldiers is supposed to return to Portugal during the next few weeks) may enable the government to construct the skeleton of such a striking force and restore the confidence of the officers in many units. The government still has 20,000 troops in Angola; in principle, they are supposed to be withdrawn before November 16, when Angola becomes independent. These troops could be combined with the police, within which there hove been some shakeups. Among the officer corps the intensification of the crisis of the hierarchical system will stimulate a right-wing crystallization among the large majority, which may make certain government decisions easier. These measures may be combined with civilian mobilizafions, a new rise of paramilitary activities by the foscists in the North, and an increase of terrorism in the Lisbon region, where the "pied-noirs" of Angola will provide a reserve army. Confrontations on a higher level, with more decisive social violence, are drawing closer. The crisis in the army already indicates that the soldiers will stand on the side of the workers. Lisbon, October 2, 1975 PS. On October 3 the hierarchy went over to the offensive. On that day a general assembly in the CICAP (Instruction Center for Vehicle Drivers in Porto) voted unanimously (312 for, 0 against, 6 abstentions) to oppose a purge measure against two lieutenants and five soldiers. The general staff in Lisbon responded by dissolving the CICAP. When the soldiers resisted, Copcon commandos were sent against them.
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- as sons of the people, AO • LADO Do POVO SOLI 20S
an interview with a member of the SUV
The following