The Lusiad of the Santa Maria
By PETER BENENSON
URING the last week as many miles of news- print have been covered with profiles of Captain Galvao and General Delgado, as the Santa Maria sailed. Such is the trend to 'person- alise' politics that the impression is being given that the cruise ship's seizure is part of a personal struggle for power between Delgado and Salazar. Just as Lumumba is a phenomenon thrown up by racial upheaval in the Congo, so Delgado's sudden pre-eminence is the result, not the cause, of stirrings in Portuguese African territories. He himself is the disappointed supporter and latter- day rival of Salazar, but to Portuguese Africans he has become the symbol of 'liberation towards whom all eyes are turned. - General Delgado has carefully avoided making. any pledges to liberate what Salazar has, since 1951, styled Portugal's `overSeas provinces.' He says that this is a question which must- be left to the Portuguese Parliament to decide after free elections. So far as can be judged, he is not particularly interested in 'the wind of change' except in so far as it may blow Salazar out of office. His supporters scattered across the world, in Brazil, Canada, Britain, France, Senegal and Guinea, have different ideas; but many of them have been away from Portugal for years, and some have intermarried or are the children of mixed marriages, and the General knows full well that a call for the independence of Angola stirs few hearts among the Portuguese peasantry, or even among the middle class. It is the irony of history that Portugal, which 800 years ago had the most cosmopolitan popula- tion and outlook of all parts of Europe, should have today become an intellectual backwater. To understand why, provides the key to the present Portuguese political situation. Under Moorish 'You see, my position is between the Sunday Telegraph and the posh papers rather than between the sensational and the posh ones.'
rule Portugal enjoyed a liberal renaissance which attracted talent from all over Europe and the Near East. The Jews came in considerable num- bers, and prospered as nowhere else in Europe. After the expulsion of the Moors, intermarriage took place on a large scale between Moors, Jews and the indigenous Iberian stock. Although Christian by religion, great numbers continued to use Moorish language and habits. The children of this mixed blood became the renowned navi- gators who founded the Portuguese Empire 500 years ago. To them colour prejudice was un- known, and they intermarried with native Africans, and even more with the attractive and rich daughters of Indian merchants and princes. By the eighteenth century it is said that as much as a quarter of Lisbon's population were people of pure brown or black colour, and a good pro- portion of the remainder had some African or Asian blood added to the mixed Moorish-Jewish- Iberian corpuscles. From then on Portugal slowly declined as a maritime nation, while retaining her colonies—with the single exception of Brazil, with which she has roughly the same relationship as Britain with the United States.
What first strikes the curious visitor to Portu- gal is that there is little of the Latin effervescence among the inhabitants. They are an industrious, undemonstrative people whose character is best conveyed by their haunting and plaintive fado songs. There is a non-European, certainly a non- Latin, quality of acceptance of life in Portugal; and greater poverty than anywhere in Europe, probably greater extremes of wealth, and cer- tainly greater illiteracy—the figure is around 40 per cent. Yet it would be quite wrong to infer from the dramatic events on the Santa Maria that there is bubbling political fermentation in- side the country likely to break out into revolu- tion tomorrow.
Dr. Salazar has been the undisputed ruler of Portugal for the last thirty-four years, restoring economic sanity and maintaining good order, an achievement not to be underestimated. And although it is to be regretted that he kept on
good terms with Hitler and Mussolini during the war, it is as well to remember that even the Irish thought it wise to permit a German legation to function in Dublin. Considering that Salazar was the originator of the concept of the Corporate g'tate, it speaks a lot for the old alliance with England, the Port trade and his own sense that he did not swing right over to the Axis. But Salazar and his one party, Uniao Nacional, bear responsibility for the continuing backward con- ditions in Portugal's colonies. His determined refusal to allow the United Nations to set foot in his 'provinces' has cut off the possibility of large-scale economic and technical aid. At the last General Assembly sixty-eight nations voted to condemn Portugal for refusing to provide information about her colonies; Britain and America even showed their disapproval by abstaining.
Draconian laws and an economic system based on 'contract labour,' which amounts to slavery in all but name (and which has led to widespread emigration), have not prevented a number of independence movements growing up during the last years; but although the distances in the African colonies are great and the police few on the ground, ruthless suppression is succeeding where rapid detection fails. The last bunch of Angolan nationalists are reliably reported to have been pushed out of an aeroplane flying at 18,000 feet. As soon as the International Com- mission of Jurists showed an interest in a trial of fifty Angolans last year, it was postponed in- definitely.
At home in Portugal the police are both more numerous, especially the plain-clothes PIDE, and more efficient. No political opponent can receive letters or telephone calls without their being intercepted. No opposition body, no matter how innocently disguised as a literary society, can last long before it is disbanded. Every association has by law to supply not only its members' names to the police, but also the addresses of their dependants. No person who is unsympathetic to the ideology of the regime can receive higher education. By a decree of March 12, 1956, any person can be kept in prison indefinitely as a security measure. The last possibility for the expression of public discontent disappeared after General Delgado, despite every official hind- rance, managed to secure 236,658 votes in November, 1958. There are to be no more direct elections for President.
The situation in Portugal today is strikingly similar to that in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. There is a general assumption, especially abroad, that the regime has outlived its time, and that the out- lying parts must be allowed self-determination. But at home there is a listless and fatalistic population, not greatly interested in politics; and in the Empire the nationalist movements are continuously suppressed by a bureaucracy that has the pride and ruthlessness of many centuries ser- vice. If the likelihood of a successful internal change, voluntary on the part of Dr. Salazar or involuntary, following a coup d'etat, is small, the probability of the structure collapsing during the next world social upheaval is great.
The `Lusiad' of the Santa Maria may one day have the same position in history as the tragedy at Mayerling: a wild, desperate and rather sad protest against a fossilised personal despotism. In the pages of the next chapter will be the story of the assassination which blew up the Empire, and altered the map of the world.
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