Between Anarchy and Reaction

The ads for the Portuguese airline TAP--accurate enough when they were written several weeks ago--were beginning to look as wilted as the red carnations that greeted the April coup. "If right now you were in Portugal," reads one tourist-enticing blurb, "what happiness you would see all around you!" But scarcely one month after the military coup that ousted the right-wing government of Premier Marcello Caetano, Portugal's mood is turning sour. In fact, the hopes of President Antonio de Spinola for a peaceful year of transition are threatened by both left-wing anarchy and the possibility of a right-wing counterrevolution.

In Lisbon, demonstrations and strikes were so common for a time that the 8 a.m. newscast on the state radio dutifully reported the day's schedule of demonstrations. Last week 5,000 transit workers walked out to demand an 80% wage increase, all but immobilizing the capital and its suburbs. Meanwhile, the bread bakers turned off their ovens, depriving thousands of their chief food staple. About 8,000 foot-stomping radical leftists jammed the Lisbon Coliseum to demand an end to capitalism and immediate independence for Portugal's three African territories: Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea.

In the capitals of Angola and Mozambique, Luanda and Lourenc,o Marques, blacks and white leftists rallied to support guerrilla groups. The fac,ade of black-white friendship--one of Portugal's proudest claims for its colonial rule--started to crack under the new pressures of freedom. There were scattered street fights between blacks and whites in Beira, Mozambique's second largest city, and in Luanda (pop. 500,000), where several hundred blacks roamed through the city banging on cars and insulting whites. In both territories, many white settlers were packing for a return to Portugal.

Ingratitude. Alarmed by disorder, the new regime, which until now has tolerated a wide range of political expression, showed that its patience was almost at an end. When 1,000 demonstrators massed outside the Estrela Military Hospital to demand the release of Pedro Peralta, a Cuban army captain who had been caught aiding the Guinean guerrillas, the police called out the Republican National Guard--the paramilitary organization that once bolstered the Caetano regime. In a chilling reprise of tactics used in Caetano's day, the police dispersed the crowd with water cannons and tear gas.

Appearing on national television the day after, a spokesman for the military junta, General Galvao de Melo, denounced the "climate of anarchy that exists at all levels." De Melo noted that the junta was "aware of the way the freedom that was offered the country a month ago is being abused. There are many things that displease us. The ingratitude that is shown by the misuse of something that was offered with such emotion and dignity is almost unbelievable." Later in the week, President Spinola added his own words of caution, warning that disruption was only aiding "reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries" and that violence would be met with force. He also said, "It is not by way of anarchy, economic chaos, disorder and unemployment that we build the Portugal of the future."

Having opened the door to freedom after half a century of stiff repression, the regime is clearly finding it difficult to close that door against a threat of anarchy. The young officers who planned the coup, in apparent idealism and patriotic fervor, are disgusted that Portuguese workers see freedom merely as an opportunity to strike and double their wages. But the military is also frightened by the impossible demands of ultra-leftists, who sneer at even the Communists as representatives of the Establishment.

No Doubt. "The people are pushing too hard and abusing their new freedom," complains one government official. "There will have to be some restraint imposed so that the rights of all are respected." The warnings seemed to have an impact, and at week's end both the transit and bakery workers went back to their jobs. "Those who have waited 48 years for their liberation must not allow all to be lost in 48 days," said one union leader.

Restraint in Portugal is dependent on a resolution of the fighting in Africa. Already the junta has gone beyond what Spinola last month envisioned for the three territories: a loose federation with Lisbon. Full independence is now regarded as inevitable. Talks have already begun in London with the representatives of insurgents in Guinea, smallest of the territories and the one that Portugal finds it easiest to set free.

Angola and Mozambique are more troublesome. Both have large white populations and big Portuguese economic investments. In neither territory, moreover, can the principal guerrilla movements claim, as they can in Guinea, to speak for most blacks. Yet unrest in Portugal makes one thing clear: the country has no more stomach for war in Africa, and the junta will have to grant the African territories freedom, whatever its shape and form. "There is no doubt about it," says Henrique Scares de Melo, a white lawyer in Mozambique who is expected to be named soon to head an interim territorial government. "It may be a Marxist government. It may be a Maoist government. It will be for the people to decide."

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