Professional Documents
Culture Documents
22, 1946
The real news from Portugal was that another European dictatorship had
failed, though it might hang on for years. In the way of dictatorships, it
had stunned and shackled the wholesome forces that might have replaced
it. Not only was Portugal at a new low point, it showed every sign of
changing for the worse, perhaps slowly, perhaps by violent upheaval.
If Portuguese had felt boastful instead of wistful, there was material for
self-congratulation about their Government and their way of life. Britain,
their old ally, banker and protector, now owed them £80,000.000.
Spain, their old rival, was in the United Nations' doghouse, while Salazar,
in spite of his anti-democratic sympathies, had pursued throughout
World War II a serpentine policy whose final tack was enough in the
Allies' direction to earn their tolerance, if not their approval. The
Portuguese national budget, thanks to Salazar, was always balanced these
days. (It had shown a deficit in 68 of the 70 years before 1928.) Portugal's
exports were much higher than before the war; her merchant marine was
about to double its tonnage and her fishing fleet was expanding.
Portugal's shop windows were full of luxury goods unobtainable in most
of Europe. Her currency unit, the escudo, was steady at four U.S. cents.
Unhappy Ending. Behind this glossy exterior of success, decay eats away
at Portugal. Financial Wizard Salazar has not balanced the budgets of
Portuguese families. Food prices have nearly doubled since 1939. One
typical family with a monthly income of 1,200 escudos in May paid out
1,663 escudos for rent, food, clothing, water and light. Strictly controlled
wages lag far behind. Government workers, especially important to a
dictatorship, got a 25% increase in 1944 to meet a 112% rise in the retail
price index.
Plain Portuguese obviously are not buying the luxury goods in the shops.
The incidence of tuberculosis, venereal disease and insanity is high, and
there is an acute shortage of doctors & nurses. In one month last year,
5,800 new mental cases needing hospital treatment were reported, of
whom only 1,118 were treated.
The red tape that keeps patients out of hospitals permits Lisbon's
director of public health to gain credit with budget-minded Salazar by
returning part of his appropriation to the national treasury each year.
The same bureaucracy lets the older half of Lisbon (which had survived
the 1755 earthquake) wallow. A few blocks from the grandiose and
spotless Rocio, Lisbon's counterpart of Times Square, the Old Town's
slums have no electricity, running water or sewage. Once a day street
cleaners climb up & down Castello de Sao Jorge hill, where generations
of shuffling bare feet have polished the cobbles satin-smooth. An hour
after the cleaners have passed, the same steep, crooked passages are foul
with refuse.
The minority who can read are little better off than those who cannot.
Contemporary-Portuguese literary efforts are scarcely worth the paper
they are written on. Portuguese are kept in ignorance of some of the
most important world news. Salazar will not let any paper print news
about Russia or about Communist activity anywhere. No Portuguese
paper mentioned the recent wave of strikes in the U.S. nor any other
labor conflict. The United Nations is barely mentioned, because Portugal
is not a member. Since there is sometimes courtesy, if not honor, among
dictators, Salazar has permitted no mention of the controversy between
U.N. and Caudillo Francisco Franco.
The Little Priest. Other modern dictators had been men so evil that their
personalities obscured the inherent evil of dictatorship. Franco was a
barrack-room bully, Mussolini a strutting iiar, Hitler a ranting sadist, and
Stalin a bloody-minded professor of the art of power. But Salazar was a
virtuous man—selfless, intelligent, efficient. If despotism could be
benevolent, Salazar's character was ideal material for "the good
dictator." Born at Santa Comba Dao, not far from Europe's second oldest
university, in a typical pink-walled Portuguese Village, he had made such
good marks in grade school that his peasant mother, whom he
worshiped, called him "the little priest." He entered a seminary, but later
decided he had no vocation for the priesthood and became an economics
instructor at Coimbra University.
The Quiet Life. It is doubtful if Salazar likes either the salute or the
slogan. Unlike all other modern dictators, he hates parades, pomp or
cheers. When he rides to ceremonies with President Carmona, the old
soldier preens and beams; Salazar slinks back in the car, a scowl on his
handsome face with the Savonarola-hard mouth. Asked why he refused
to respond to cheers, Salazar gave a characteristic answer: "I could not
flatter the people without being a traitor to my own conscience. Our
regime is popular but it is not a government of the masses, being neither
influenced nor directed by them. These good people who, moved by the
excitement of the occasion, cheer me one day, may rise in rebellion the
next day for equally passing reasons. . . ."
Salazar has never married and, until very recently, there has been no
woman in his life. Several years ago he adopted two little girls. He rises at
6:30 every morning, has a roll and coffee and attends Mass, then goes to
his office, where his first chore is to arrange the flowers on his desk. He
works until 1 p.m. With a light lunch he has port, usually diluted, and
never more than three-quarters of a glass. After lunch he rests and takes
an hour's walk, sometimes with his adopted daughters, sometimes alone
and unguarded on Lisbon's streets. At 4 he returns to his office and works
till 7:30. All important decisions of all Ministries are made by Salazar.
Woman in the Garden. Salazar relieves this dull routine by tending his
magnificent flower garden at Santa Comba. It was there, and through the
medium of the flowers he loves, that he met the woman who has in the
last few months made an extraordinary difference in his life. When he
decided to give a reception for Dona Amelia de Orleans e Braganga,
mother of Don Duarte Nufio, the pretender to Portugal's throne, his
advisers suggested that the Countess de la Seca, a widow with two young
children, should act as hostess. When the Countess took over the flower
arrangement for the party, Salazar was so impressed by her taste that he
wrote her a short note. She replied with a long letter and Salazar asked
permission to call on her. The Countess received him at tea. Since then
she has been official hostess at his social affairs, which have increased in
number, and his manner has become less introspective and austere. He
takes more interest in clothes and food, and even in the pomp and
trappings of office.
The most significant fact about Salazar's relationship with the Countess is
that not even the gossipy Portuguese, not even Salazar's thousands of
enemies, sug gest that she is his mistress. His reputation for piety is so
great that a liaison is considered unthinkable. Many Portuguese hope the
rumors that he intends to marry are true; they say marriage might
humanize the man whom most of them fear, but whom few love.
The Lust for Power. In recent months Salazar has seemed to need a
mellowing influence more than ever. He was so disillusioned by the
adverse criticism in last fall's brief interlude of freedom that he almost
quit his job. His attitude toward public office lost much of its humility; he
felt now that he really understood the worst in his people, that he had
plumbed the depths of popular perfidy and ingratitude. He used to think
that he had been called by Providence to save his country; he now feels a
martyr condemned (because he alone is right) to save Portugal in spite of
herself. A touch of arrogance always present in his make-up (he never lets
associates or even visitors smoke in his presence) has been growing
noticeably. Now he seems to enjoy the power to suppress criticism.
This tendency spells more influence for the extreme right wing of
Salazar's Cabinet. The Army clique, headed by bull-necked Lieut. Colonel
Santos Costa, a fanatic totalitarian, is important, although Portugal's
military prowess has been dormant for four centuries; in World War I
the Portugese soldiers were considered by many critics to have been the
least effective of the 16 fighting nationalities. Costa and the Interior
Minister, Lieut. Colonel Julio Botelho Moniz, who bosses the political
police, work on Salazar's fear of "chaos" (the familiar justification of
dictators) to get his permission for more & more restrictive measures
against possible rebels.
A relatively liberal wing in the Cabinet took heart during the period of
freedom. The cleavage between it and Costa's followers is widening, and
Salazar may soon have to choose between them.
But they have never been masters of this land, and Salazar seems to think
they never will be. He has said they were "excessively sentimental . . .
have a horror of all discipline . . . lack continuity of effort and tenacity
[but with] proper discipline and control, there is nothing they cannot be
taught."
Teacher Salazar is aware that there are other teachers with other ideas of
discipline and control. He has recently said: "The world, weary and
disillusioned, is sweeping half-measures from the political field . . .
forming up clearly on the Right or on the Left." Salazar's own policies
have encouraged both the disillusionment and the drift to the Right and
Left extremes. Last month in Lisbon an old streetcar motorman, who
earns $30 a month after 25 years' service, summed it up: "I ask only for
the minimum to enable me and my family to live. Salazar gives us only
the right to die. . . . Yes, I belong to the Anti-Fascist Unity Council ... I
can't tell you how. The M.U.D.? Too much lawyers, too many words, too
afraid of the law.
"We are working with the Army. It is composed of workers, too—and our
day will come. Are we Communists? I do not know ... we are for liberty
and decent human life."
It looked as if the good dictator, like the bad ones, only created what he
wanted most to destroy.