Luis Moita

in Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos, n. 8 (October 1986)

The last 10-12 years have undoubtedly been the most turbulent in Portuguese history, already eight centuries long. It has been a period of profound convulsions, in which revolution and crisis, popular agitation and the demobilisation of the masses, the exacerbation of social conflicts and the establishment of new institutions have mingled. This phase, therefore, is particularly suggestive for analysing the way in which peoples’ rights were experienced in the Portuguese case.
Firstly, with the end of 48 years of police and military dictatorship, this period is characterised by the recovery of fundamental rights and democratic freedoms. The only truly surprising fact of this process is that the final blow against the dictatorship was delivered by the military, thus transforming the armed forces from a repressive to a permissive instrument, sometimes even an ally of the popular forces.
However, the collapse of the dictatorship is intrinsically linked to the end of the colonial war. The regaining of democratic freedoms is inseparable from the process of opening up to the world and in particular decolonisation. As we said then, one people to be free cannot oppress another. This relationship shows that internal democracy is closely linked to the form of international relations: the rights of peoples are indivisible, and a people’s respect for itself is proven by the way it respects other peoples.
With the re-establishment of democratic rule and the elimination of the last great colonial empire, Portugal pioneered new paths. But in the years that followed, the right of a people to freely determine its own destiny was seriously compromised. At different levels and in different directions, the Portuguese situation favoured the multiplication of external pressures.
Initially, the political-strategic influences made themselves felt the most. External interference, from German-Federal to Soviet, but above all North American, followed one after the other. Given the strategic importance of the Portuguese area, and in particular of the Azores archipelago, where the United States has a veritable aircraft carrier stationed in the middle of the Atlantic, the Lages base, it is not surprising that this occurred. Pressure, blackmail, and threats weighed heavily on Portuguese options during these years, considerably diminishing the margin of national autonomy. The subtle forms of such foreign interference do not mitigate the widespread perception that the international situation and the play of the great powers severely limit the right of peoples to freely decide their own future.
Subsequently, it was mainly economic constraints that took over. More than once Portugal experienced the humiliation of seeing its economic policies dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Portugal’s foreign debt reached some of the highest per capita values in the world. The mechanisms of financial domination, which we were used to seeing befall Third World countries, do not spare industrialised societies. The imposition of ‘austerity’ policies seriously compromised internal development and had unprecedented social consequences: more than half a million unemployed, hundreds of thousands of workers with wages in arrears, the wage bill with purchasing power reduced by 10% within a few years.
These indications lead to the conclusion that a country on the periphery of Europe, a member of the European Community since the beginning of 1986, suffers the consequences of an international reality dominated by power relations. A small country like Portugal knows from experience the need to democratise international life. It is clearly not a question of denying the fabric of interdependencies in which all societies are integrated. But it is a matter of claiming respect for national sovereignties and the non-subordination of peoples’ interests to the advantages of the powerful.
An in-depth study of the subject of peoples’ rights cannot therefore be limited to the analysis of distant situations, as if its violations were confined to ‘exotic’ or ‘peripheral’ societies. The rights of peoples are something ‘interminable’, that is, a constant dynamism connected to the whole of humanity. The struggle for these rights is not a matter of the ‘others’ we are interested in from a more or less charitable perspective, it is a struggle that begins with ourselves. Only those who are sensitive to the clamour of their own people can feel solidarity with the universal clamour, in the relentless pursuit of dignity for peoples.

Moita, Luis
in: Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos, n. 8 (October 1986)