“The People are no longer afraid” was the cover of one of the newspapers published on the 12th of May of 1974. On April 25, 1974 a coup carried out by the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), in disagreement with the colonial war that had been going on for thirteen years in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea, put an end to the Portuguese dictatorship, which lasted 48 years under the direction of Antonio Salazar and under the leadership of Marcelo Caetano (after 1968).
Thousands of people immediately left their homes, against the appeal of the military who led the coup – which insisted on the radio for people to stay at home -, especially in Lisbon and Porto, and it was with the people at their front door, shouting "death to fascism”, that the Government was surrounded in the Quartel do Carmo (Barracks of Carmo) in Lisbon; the doors of the prisons of Peniche and Caxias were opened for release all political prisoners; PIDE / DGS, the political police, was dismantled; the headquarters of newspaper of the regime, The Age, was attacked and the censorship was abolished.
The Portuguese empire would fall later in 1974, after mobilizing nearly two million forced workers (in the mines in South Africa, cotton plantations in Angola, among others) and a 13 year war – 1961-1974 – to prevent the independence of the African countries of Angola, Cabo Verde, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau. Having been built to increase the profit of monopolies, as well as to discipline the workforce, the Portuguese dictatorship fell in the hands of the workers in April of 1974. A significant part of the property owners had to flee the country after the nationalizations which were meant to put an end to the workers’ control, which had become generalized starting February of 1975, especially in the banking sector, large metallomechanical factories, etc.
The ankylose structure of the empire – as well as that of its Bonapartist regime – led to the most important social rupture in post-war Europe – so great was the rupture and the length of it that no historian to this day has managed to determine how many workers’ meetings happened during the week after the coup by the MFA because there were hundreds, maybe thousands, and countrywide.
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Few things are as uninteresting as listening to someone else's dream, but this one felt different. I had a scary realistic dream last night that the skyscrapers in Helsinki were destroyed by some kind of fucked up artillery shells that burned them to a husk in an instant, and only left the burned out skeleton of the buildings standing. It was during a fireworks display, and three of the boomy sounds were a lot more ominous and deep, and then a few moments later the shells came and hit the buildings at the same time.
That was scary enough, but I remember being more scared about what the potential reaction will be. Everyone will blame the russians, of course. People were already frothing with bloodlust in the direct aftermath, including the friends I was with. That felt fucked up. But wait a minute, the shells clearly came from the northwest? And why did I hear the artillery firing? Must have been fairly close, how would the russians have gotten there? This was obviously planned to coincide with the fireworks to, idk, mask the sounds? Then I woke up relieved as heck that it was only a dream. Not looking particularly much forward to when this kind of scenario inevitably plays out in the not-too-distant future.