“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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  • rafflesia [she/her, doe/deer]
    ·
    6 months ago

    It's super fucked up that the national weather service, or who the fuck ever, decided to name the two statuses watch and warning, two words which kinda mean around the same thing and both start with the same letter. All my life, no matter how many cute mnemonics people come up with I cannot differentiate them. Was it so hard to just do something like "tornado conditions" and "tornado alert/warning/imminent/anything else"? we wouldn't need all this nursery rhyme bullshit in the first place. Not in danger btw, just saw someone mention these terms and it awoke my primal rage.