25 de Abril 1974

Today is the 35th Anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, which overthrew the fascist dictatorship and began the transition to democracy. It also marks the beginning of the end of the Portuguese Empire and the start of what political scientist Samuel Huntington called 'the Third Wave of Democracy.'



It's a small, but significant point in history that is overlooked. When we think about fascism, we think it died after World War II, forgetting that Portugal and Spain were under the boot heels of Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal until the early 1980s. After Portugal returned to democracy, Spain followed suit, the Colonels in Greece were overthrown-- all the dictators of Southern Europe came tumbling down, and then the wall of Communism began to crack, and the decade of the 1980s saw a surge of democratization around the world. A tsunami of freedom, if you like...

And it started in Portugal, where the people, holding carnations, persuaded the regime's police not to resist.

There were consequences to the Revolution that I disapprove of: essentially, once the regime was overthrown, Portugal quit it's colonies and allowed them independence in a scant six months- and as white residents of their colonies fled, chaos was left behind in their wake. Angola is only just now emerging from Civil War and it took Mozambique years to recover from theirs. East Timor is the newest independent country in the world, after a thirty year occupation by Indonesia and a bloody revolt for their freedom. Imperialism, for all it's faults, does come with a price tag: responsibility. And while the end of the dictatorship was wonderful, freedom is good, there was a responsibility to the people of those colonies that was unmet. Haste was required after a ten year colonial war, but care was required as well. The chaos of the end of the Portuguese Empire is probably the only tarnish to the legacy of the Carnation Revolution.

Oh, and the song playing in the video- it's called 'Grandola Vila Morena'-- when it started playing on the radio early that morning, it was a signal to the anti-regime forces to begin advancing into Lisbon.