Legacy of a revolution

Shiva Naipaul

Lisbon Poised atop his tall, traffic-besieged column, companioned by a lion, the Marques de Pombal, 18th-century strong man of Portugal, gazes southward down the elegantly graded slope of the Avenida da Liberdade — the imposing thoroughfare slicing through the heart of central Lisbon — to the broad, glinting Tagus framed, on its farther shore, by a line of misty hills. He is looking towards his own creation, the Baixa or lower quarter of the city, a dour, militaristic grid of streets adorned with a regimented architecture of precise, virtually prefabricated symmetry: the new Lisbon he had planned — following the disastrous earthquake and tidal wave which had struck the city on All Saints Day 1755 — to give expression to the rigorous rationalism of the Enlightenment then flourishing in the more advanced lands across the Pyrenees. It has been estimated that between 15 and 20 thousand people were killed in the Lisbon earthquake; many of them, on so sacred a day, trapped in the city's crowded churches. Voltaire was not slow in pro- viding an ironic commentary on the event: his ingenuous Candide happens to be in Lisbon when the catastrophe strikes.

Pombal had spent many years abroad. He had been Portuguese ambassador in London and Vienna. During his travels, he had absorbed many of the more advanced ideas and hostilities of his day. In 1750 he was recalled home and appointed a Minister. The earthquake was, in a sense, his great opportunity. When the king asked him what was to be done, his reply was brusque. 'Bury the dead and feed the living,' he replied. Pombal buried the dead, fed the living and razed the ravaged city. In the affected area he levelled even those buildings which had remained intact: he would start anew. The ruthless energy he displayed secured his ascendancy.

From then on for roughly the next 25 years it was Pombal who ruled Portugal; who, seizing his chance, used it to impose his visions of 'progress' on Western Europe's most fallen, most backward socie- ty. The reconstruction of Lisbon was only the most visible aspect of his programme. Suspicious of their power and, in par- ticular, of their near-monopoly on educa- tion, he expelled the Jesuits — a move that was to encourage the eventual dissolution of the Order; he humiliated the feudal aristocracy, setting up a royal depotism which modelled itself on the practices of Europe's more 'progressive' monarchs; he subverted the powers of the Inquisition; he reorganised the University at Coimbra, sweeping away the traditional pietistic cur- riculum, founding instead schools of mathematics and natural science; he abolished slavery — though not, let it be said, in Brazil; he sought — without great success — to promote an industrial revolu- tion and to weaken the commercial strangle- hold of the long-settled English merchants.

He was one of the great figures of the period, an embodiment of its impatience and its optimism. His type remains familiar in our own century — the intolerant moder- niser seeking to rescue his country from dereliction and decay. It seemed ap- propriate that, on his pedestal, he should be escorted by a lion and look towards the Baixa — that Enlightenment dream of order, of rationality, of unclouded light; of a new dawn. Pombal was, in some ways, the exact opposite of his 20th-century suc- cessor — the reclusive Dr Antonio de Oliveira Salazar — whose distrust of inter- national influence was so deep-seated that he even discouraged the formation of a BOY Scout movement in Portugal. The Marques struggled to kick and drag his society into the world of the late 18th century. Salazar locked the doors against the ideological in- cursions of the 20th and did his best, with the help of his secret police, to lose the key.

To the east of the Baixa rises the Alfama, Lisbon's mediaeval Moorish quarter. Strangely, it was unharmed by the earth- quake; and survived the subsequent tida1M- undation. Nor was it affected by Pombal 's city-planning. What he can see of it today from the summit of his column is probably much the same as he would have seen 200 years ago. Only the television aerials might ,. puzzle him. Westward, in the direction 01 the open sea, Lisbon sprawls along the nor- thern shore of the Tagus. A vertiginous suspension bridge looms triumphally over the river. When it was opened in 1966, a grateful nation dedicated it to Dr Salazar. i But then times changed. Portugal decided t wasn't so grateful to its dictator after all. Now it is dedicated to the Revolution of 1974 which overthrew all that Dr Salazar had ever symbolised. With the Portuguese fondness for dates it was rechristened Polite 25 Abril, commemorating the daY despotism was said to have ended for ever. On the distant side of the bridge, dimmed by the haze, robed arms spanned out like some prodigious bird of prey, rears the giant effigy of Christ the King. Beyond the Ponte 25 Abril — the sun-bleached spiel" dours of Belem, imbued with evocations, ancient and modern, of vanished grandeur of Empires gained and lost . . Belem low its rattling commuter trains, its slogan' daubed walls, its dreary suburban slopes climbing away from the water. Further along the shoreline, the Tagus by now lost in the Atlantic ocean, are the resort towns of Estoril and Cascais, Lisbon's Sunday retreats. Along this shoreline, turquoise waves hiss and foam among the roek,s„' sand-dunes drift across the highway. .1,1' high summer, the pine groves and win°, blown grass smoulder. Ash spreads like greyish snowfall up the barren slopes yell° with gorse. Along the roadside, stalls offer, for sale sheepskins, blankets, all kinds °I trinkets. The wind slices off the sea. At Cabo da Roca, Eurasia's western-most Pro- jection, tourists buzz about the gift-shoP. 'Portugal Is For Lovers' say the tote-bags and T-shirts. The stele marking the site

strikes a more poetic note. It is inscribed with a quotation plucked from the work of Luis de Camoes. 'Aqui . . Onde a Terra se Acaba . E 0 Mar Comeca . . .' Here the earth ends . . . here the ocean begins . . . The wind scythes through the grass. Buf- feted tourists flee to the warmth of the shop.

Pomba] gazes south. Northwards, behind his back, towards the airport, wide avenues sweep between featureless banks of apart- ment blocks, circle round bleak housing estates that have sprung up within the last 20 Years; and pass within the shadow of shanty towns, promontories of rural restlessness trespassing close to the heart of the city. Maize grows in gardens; chickens scuttle along muddy lanes; bare-footed girls fill water buckets at a communal pipe; pea- sant faces stare from windows and ram- shackle verandas.

But Pombal and his lion see nothing of this

Lisbon, I had been told, was sometimes compared with San Francisco. It had not occurred to me to compare the two places — despite the fact that I knew San Francisco fairly well, having once spent several months there. The similarities were listed: the proximity to the ocean; the Ponte. 25 Abril — an admittedly somewhat less elegant replica of the Golden Gate; the fog Or Mist that now and again creeps over the Water; the survival of trams; the hilliness Lisbon, like Rome, is alleged to have been built on seven hills; the abiding fear of earth- quakes. Even the increasing prevalence of homosexuality had been cited. After that c,atalogue, I could appreciate the tempta- ion to draw the parallel. But the similarities having been listed, there, so to speak, all snnalarity ended. At bottom, the coincid- ences were no more than arresting curiosities, offered up as a kind of ,yoke at Lisbon's expense. You have come to the Third World,' an Ilecluaintance had remarked sourly. It was a Point of view prompted by exasperation. But there was also truth in the statement. Portugal remains, despite everything, the Poorest country in Europe. It tends to be either at or near the bottom of just about eve!Y index of 'development' — agncultural yield, industrial production, per capita income, etc, etc. As late as 1960, Or instance, only about 35 per cent of the population had received a primary educa- tion. Under the Salazar regime, university education was the preserve of the wealthy, the state offering virtually no scholarships or any kind of assistance to those who were not well-off. In 1967 this elite made up less than 0.5 per cent of the population. One in every four or five Portuguese was probably an illiterate. The situation has improved since then, but Portugal must harbour in°rIg its population the highest propor- tion of illiterates in Western Europe. Exact- ly what that proportion is remains a matter °if dispute, There are those who would

factual on grounds more emotional than

actual that the problem has been eradicated. When one reflects on all of this,

San Francisco seems very far away.

Portugal, when the Revolution arrived in 1974, was 'European' merely in a geographical sense; an essentially agrarian society governed by feudal attitudes, riven to its foundations by class privilege, vain- gloriously battling to preserve her 'overseas provinces' in Africa and maintain the long outmoded doctrine of her 'civilising mis- sion'. 'Authority and liberty,' Salazar had said, 'are two incompatible ideas... Liberty diminishes in proportion as man progresses and becomes civilised.' The atmosphere on the eve of the Revolution must have been surreal.

Symptoms of backwardness are to be found in the beggars who frequent the open-air cafes of Lisbon, in the cripples seeking alms near church entrances, in the roughly typed hard-luck stories which, oc- casionally, are flourished in one's face (the same technique of drawing attention to per- sonal suffering is used in India), in the shanty towns teeming with refugees from the countryside, in the thousands who transform themselves into 'guest workers' and take themselves off to France and Ger- many in search of work. As happens all over the Third World, you get nowhere without 'influence', without knowing the 'right people' and being able to exploit a system of relationships based on family ties, on favours given in the expectation that, in due course, some return will be made. He who naively confronts the Portuguese bureaucracy is, they say, doomed to futile expenditures of energy. A Sisyphean labour can ensue.

Portugal, in 1974, resembled, to a certain extent, a country that had just been granted an unexpected and dubious Independence: panic-stricken, skill and capital immediate- ly fled abroad to more congenial havens chiefly Brazil. And, after seven years of tur- bulent democracy, the rich remain anxious and fearful of further change. Some, when they let themselves go, assume the outraged demeanour of expatriates complaining about the spoiled natives. 'You know,' one affluent woman said to me, 'nobody wants to work any more. You cannot fire anybody any more.' Her lovely face con-

tracted with indignation. 'Why,' she ex- claimed, 'after these women have their babies, they have to be given so many hours off for each breast.' I looked flabbergasted. 'It is true,' she cried. 'It is there in the labour regulations. For each breast, so many hours. That is what we have come to in Portugal.' I could have been in almost any newly independent African state listen- ing in to vulgar Club conversation.

VOTA APU . . SOCIALISMO EM LIBERDADE . . . CONTRA D' FASCISM° CONTRA A MISERIA . . REPRESSA NAO! VIVA REFORMA AGRAIUA . . The charged atmosphere of the 1974 Revolution lives on, to some extent, in the slogans defacing the walls of Lisbon. These slogans are one of the first things to draw the attention of the freshly arrived visitor. Daubed on virtually every available surface, they assume, after a while, the ap- pearance of a disfiguring lichenous growth. The Left makes most of the running in this wall war. Apart from the occasional swastika, I saw few overtly 'fascist' pro- clamations and symbols: these, in fact, are a much commoner sight in London. The Communists seem to be the masters of the art. Some of their efforts are quite elaborate pictorial compositions, showing the 'people' — the povo — heroically ad- vancing towards lurid skylines serrated by the roofs of factories and smoking chimneys.

- In the euphorically blurred period that had followed the stirring events of April 1974, the Communists had swiftly shown themselves to be the best organised political party in the country — virtually the only party. Throughout the years of suppression the Party, though invisible, had managed to maintain itself and preserve a coherent identity. It was a seed frozen into im- potence by the Salazarian ice-age but with its capacity for germination still intact. The Communists emerged .from their hiberna- tion united around their exiled leader Alvaro Cunhal: who, on his return home, was given a hero's welcome by an ecstatic Lisbon. He was even made a Minister. For a while, it was not entirely inconceivable that the country might fall into the Party's 'I think he should have stuck to comedy.'

waiting, well-prepared hands. Anything seemed possible in a Portugal suddenly loosed from its leading strings, suddenly on course for the previously unutterable and unthinkable — voluntary relinquishment of its cherished 'overseas provinces' in Africa and the long martyrdom they had entailed.

Angola, Mozambique and Guinea were indeed surrendered one by one. After 500 years, the Portuguese Empire was dead. But the Communists did not seize power. Cunhal's hero's welcome did not signal love of his doctrines. It was a celebration; a festa. He was a symbol, not a saviour. In the seven years that have since gone by the Party has declined steadily in popularity: in the last elections they received a modest 13 per cent of the vote. The Revolution's novelty, its excitement, has, inevitably, been dulled with the passage of time. Por- tugal, meandering through a succession of ephemeral coalitions, has gradually drifted rightward, towards what one might describe as the conservative-centre. 'The revolution is screwed,' lamented a Canadian folk- singer of unspecified leftist persuasion and a long-time resident. 'If tomorrow Salazar should be raised from the dead, these peo- ple would fall at his feet. They don't care for freedom any more.' That is too bitter and uncharitable a judgment. There is no evidence that surviving Salazarist nostalgia is anything more than idle fantasy. Too much has happened in Portugal, too much has been overturned, for so naive a rever- sion to occur.

Whatever the discontents, the fruits of democracy remain real. One Saturday even- ing I went out to Belem to have a look at a lavish festa sponsored by the Communist Party: the colourful posters advertising the event — to be held over three days — were freely displayed all over Lisbon. It seemed at a glance that the whole city was wending its way to the fairground. The nearby streets were jammed with cars, buses, trams. Serpentine queues fermented about the turnstiles. It was a long time since I had seen such swarms of people. On distant stages bands performed. Red, blue, yellow and green flags fluttered from tall poles. Scattered loudspeakers broadcast snatches of music and exhortation. Dust rose from the beaten earth, fogging the noisy, fluores- cent night. Young men and women danced among the eddying multitudes, holding aloft flags adorned with the hammer and sickle.

'Sixty Years of Struggle' proclaimed the banners. I wandered in and out of booths — the Communist Party of Cape Verde sent fraternal greetings to their Portuguese comrades; so did the Angolans, the Poles, the Cubans, the Italians; so too did Pravda. Militant internationalism scented the Lisbon air that evening. By no means all or even a majority — of these people were Communists. For most, no doubt, it was a night out, one unmarred by ideological commitment. Yet, whatever their motives, each, by his mere presence, was an emblem of the new Portugal. Salazar ('We are op- posed to all forms of internationalism,

Communism, Socialism, syndicalism . .

he had once proudly declared) . Salazar, so apprehensive of the Boy Scout move- ment, had been well and truly buried.

Nevertheless, those who mourn the past, who suffer from acute withdrawal symp- tons, are not necessarily wicked men hell- bent on destroying the achievements of the last seven years and restoring dictatorship. That is an unjust assumption. The lunatics aside, most will concede that such a restora- tion is not possible. Their sense of loss, their saudade (a visceral Portuguese con- cept, not easy to render into English, com- bining the notions of nostalgia, yearning, deprivation: it finds its purest expression in the fado, those sombre love-songs which, over the last 200 years, have become the distinctive folk music of Portugal), is rooted in a feeling, cloudy but none the less real, that the country has lost its `soul'; that it no longer has a reason to be. 'We have lost our way,' a former ambassador mourn- ed. 'We Portuguese have lost our sense of ourselves. We no longer know why we exist.'

The Revolution of 1974, he went on, had gone even deeper, had been, in its special way, even more devastating than the French and Russian revolutions. Those revolutions might have changed profoundly the struc- ture of their societies but they did not harm their essence. The upheavals in France and Russia, he argued, had enhanced their na- tional destinies: France, under Napoleon, dominated Europe; Russia, under the Com- munists, had transformed itself into the standard-bearer of a new idea of civilisation — one, it went without saying, he abhorred . . . but that was not the point.

In Portugal it had not been like that. Their Revolution had severed the ties link- ing them to their past. What was Portugal without its African territories? Where now was its 'civilising mission'? It was nothing! A cork floating aimlessly on the ocean of history! Overnight, it had shrunk into marginality; a poor, small, shabby country on the fringes of Europe, whose highest ambition was entry into the consumer paradise of the Common Market. Theirs, he concluded, was a tragic fate.

In Belem, a bluish mist hangs over the river. The tide is out, stranding its 16th- century watch-tower, exposing its mossy, barnacled base. Seaweed drapes the rocks. I make the pilgrimage to its summit and look down on the Tagus. The Ponte 25 Abril rises dreamily out of the blue mist. Christ

the King is barely visible in the milky haze obscuring the far shore.

Along these shores. Portugal had embark- ed on its great maritime adventure — when, in 1415, crusading piety fusing with the desire for gold, the armada was assembled that would seize Ceuta in North Africa from the Moors. The success of this expech- non would give birth to the 'civilising ails' sion', to the lust for overseas expansion and the conquest of new worlds. In the far south' of Portugal, on the windy promon' tory of Sagres, that dour and obsessed prince, Henry the Navigator, would, in the years to come, brood over his charts, col- lating rumours of unknown lands, enticing to his presence the most knowledgeable and skilled mariners and navigators of the time. Under his guidance Madeira was discovered and settled; as were the Azores and Canary Islands. It was at his instigation that frail Portuguese ships began their ex- plorations of the African coast and initiated the European trade in slaves. When he died in 1460, the Cape of Good Hope was still to be rounded, the sea-route to India and the Far East yet to be revealed. But the momen' turn had been established. Within 40 years of his death, Vasco da Gama would he dropping anchor off Calicut — the voyage transmuted into legend in Os Lusiadas (the Lusiads), the national epic composed by Portugal's most celebrated poet, Luis de Camoes. On his return from India, da Garna had offered prayers of thanks in Belem, at the Church of Our Lady. King Manuel, carried away by the scale of the discoveries, confer- red on himself the title of 'Lord of the Con- quest, Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India'. In 1502, on the Belem beach where da Gar°, had embarked on his voyage, he ordered the erection of what was to become one of the masterpieces of Portuguese architecture — the Jeronimos Monastery. Nothing bet- ter reflects the self-assurance and magivier cent optimism of Portugal's heroic age. Half a millennium later it stands there, fac" ing the river, its greying, ivoried facade glowing in the white heat of noon. Not far away is the modern monurnerlt raised to the pioneering glories of the, Navigator Prince. He holds himself erect at the stylised prow of a ship, gazing 131-11 across the water. Angled behind him, faces lifted to the sky, are some of those he had gathered about him at Sagres. Etched into the brick pavement of the surrounding plaza is a map of the world. Meticulously, it charts the explorations of the Portuguese along the coasts of the continents. 1-1°W small Portugal! How immense the scope of its endeavour! I stare at the Jeronimos Monastery glow; ing in the sunshine. Gone were the lords of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, India . . • Afric,ai REPRESSA NAO! proclaimed the walls v Belem . . . VIVA REFORMA AGRARIA! The commuter trains sweep past. Below me, the muddy fringes of the Tagus nuzzle t11e,. mossy rocks and stir the tentacles 01 blackened seaweed.