‘Exiles’, the Portuguese’s secret disobedience – Liberation

Chandeigne’s editions publish thirteen testimonies of underprivileged people who fled their country in the 1960s, before the 1974 Carnation Revolution, to escape dictatorship and conscription in colonial wars.

There are legendary Parisian titles for some of the exiles. Among the Germans fleeing Nazism, 10 Dombasel Street, in the 15th arrondissement, was one. This is where many refugees, including Walter Benjamin, have gathered. In the 1960s and 1970s, the 15 rue du Molins, in the 13th arrondissement, attracted Portuguese fleeing the Salazar regime and war. Under this old dictatorship (since 1932), clashes erupted in what remained of the Portuguese Empire within the more general movement to decolonize Africa. Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau: Sending thousands of young recruits from France and recruiting “colonial” soldiers will plunge a country already wracked with dictatorship – paralyzed society, fear of political police and condemnation – into an even darker time. Fugitives are stigmatized as traitors. In a speech in 1972, Interior Minister Antonio Gonçalves Rapazo advised them to prepare the rope that “They will have to hang themselves.” But the sixties passed, internationalism came into vogue. Algeria’s independence showed the way…