Movimento das Forças Armadas
The Movimento das Forças Armadas ( MFA , Portuguese for Movement of the Armed Forces ) was a left-wing movement within the Portuguese armed forces that was responsible for the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974 .
Foundation and goals
The MFA was founded in Portugal in the early 1970s as the Movimento dos Capitães ( Movement of the Captains ) and was an association of 200 to 300 young officers who waged the colonial war in the African overseas provinces of Angola , Mozambique , Guinea-Bissau , Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe opposed the liberation movements.
The goals of the MFA were the immediate end of the colonial war, the withdrawal from Africa, free elections in Portugal and the abolition of the secret police PIDE / DGS .
The leading figures of the MFA included Francisco da Costa Gomes , Vasco Lourenço , Vasco Gonçalves , Ernesto Melo Antunes and, as the "strategic head", Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho .
Carnation Revolution
Since the end of 1973 the MFA had been planning to overthrow the Estado Novo , the 47-year-old dictatorship of Portugal. After a failed attempt in March 1974, in the morning hours of April 25, the coup that became known as the “ Carnation Revolution ” finally took place . Within a few hours, all of Lisbon was occupied by MFA-loyal troops led by Captain Salgueiro Maia . That evening, the dictator Marcelo Caetano declared himself ready to abdicate and hand over power to the moderate General António de Spínola , who did not belong to the MFA. In order to achieve a bloodless transfer of power, the MFA leaders around Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho accepted the offer. Caetano left the barracks and was taken to the Lisbon military airfield in a troop transport car. From there he first flew to Madeira , later into exile in Brazil .
Follow-up time
As a result of April 25, 1974, the MFA mobilized the army and proclaimed the three big "D": democratization , decolonization and development ( Portuguese desenvolvimento ). Soldiers and students, including many from Germany and France, moved to the countryside to distribute fallow goods and to teach the largely non- literate population to read and write. One year after the Carnation Revolution , Portugal was seen by many as a country that was on the way to " socialism with a human face". This “ Third Way ” excited many of the Western European left who distrusted the Soviet system. The Portuguese Communist Party under Álvaro Cunhal co- ruled, NATO no longer allowed Portuguese military personnel to participate in the nuclear planning group .
President Spinola resigned in September 1974 after confrontations with the left wing of the MFA. He was followed by Francisco da Costa Gomes as interim president. Struggles for power and direction within the Movimento das Forças Armadas subsequently led to the fact that the leftmost wing around Otelo de Carvalho and his COPCON (Comando Operacional do Continente) was eliminated on November 25, 1975 in a military action under António Ramalho Eanes .
In 1976 candidate Otelo de Carvalho for president against Eanes and was subject to much. The vote for the Constituent Assembly on April 25, 1975 and the parliamentary elections on April 25, 1976 were won by the social-democratically oriented socialists from Mário Soares , a friend of Willy Brandt .
The influence of the MFA and the military on Portuguese politics finally came to an end when the Revolutionary Council was abolished in 1982.
In Portugal, the term Movimento das Forças Armadas is often used synonymously with Capitães de Abril (“Captains of April”) and Movimento dos Capitães . The feature film Carnations for Freedom by Maria de Medeiros, for example, which vividly depicts the events of the Carnation Revolution, was called Capitães de Abril in the Portuguese original .
literature
- Manuel von Rahden: Military and parties during the Carnation Revolution (1974-1975) . In: Marko Golder, Manuel von Rahden: Studies on the contemporary history of Portugal. Hamburger Ibero-Amerika Studien Vol. 10, LIT Verlag, 1998, pp. 107-218.
- Douglas Porch: The Portuguese Armed Forces and the Revolution , London 1977. (Eng.)
Individual evidence
- ^ Regine Warth: Carnation Revolution in Portugal. Stuttgarter Nachrichten , April 25, 2014, accessed on April 24, 2019 .
- ↑ António Ribeiro de Spínola , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 50/1996 of December 2, 1996, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of the article freely accessible).
- ^ Resultados Eleitorais: Presidência da República, June 27, 1976. Comissão Nacional de Eleições (Portuguese).