Miguel Afonso Caetano

"Burchett would go on to interview some of the main protagonists of the Portuguese Revolution, including MFA leaders like Vasco Gonçalves, Ernesto de Melo Antunes and Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho. He zigzagged across the country, venturing into the inland northern region of Trás-os-Montes, to fishing towns like Peniche, and into the heart of the Alentejo region, in the south. His narrative is colourful and rich in detail, discussing the Portuguese Revolution in its national and international dimensions with the skill that only an experienced international correspondent could achieve. After decades of reporting from hotspots like China, Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, the journalist was well positioned to understand the magnitude of the Portuguese revolutionary process and the disintegration of empire in the global context of the Cold War.

In a style reminiscent of George Orwell’s journalistic output in books like Homage to Catalonia or The Road to Wigan Pier, Burchett offers a mixture of reflection, analysis and intimate interviews with important historical protagonists of the revolutionary process in the capital, Lisbon, but also with average people in the provinces – farmers, fishermen, factory workers. As a result, he captured the zeitgeist of the revolution like few could. He unapologetically revealed his enthusiasm for the captains who led the coup and for the social mobilisations taking place in the streets, factories and farms around the country.

Burchett’s journalistic output during the Cold War was often labelled by his detractors as communist propaganda against the West. But Burchett always vehemently denied being a member of a communist party."

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/journalism-from-a-remarkable-outsider-wilfred-burchett-s-lens-on-the-portuguese-revolution

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Journalism from a ‘Remarkable Outsider’: Wilfred Burchett’s Lens on th

[book-strip index="1"] In the morning hours of 25 April 1974, a movement led by captains and servicemen in the Portuguese Armed Forces set in motion the manoeuvres that, within twenty-four hours, would bring down Europe’s oldest conservative dictatorship and abruptly end more than five centuries of Portuguese coloniali

Verso
Apr 26, 2025 at 11:40amWeb
Show threadMiguel Afonso CaetanoApr 26, 2025

"No, Burchett’s most poignant interviews are not the ones with the officers or party leaders. The most arresting statements in his book come from his descriptions of the countryside, of common folk going about their lives as the revolution is unfolding. Equally fascinating are his interviews with illiterate peasants, which elevated the voices of these individuals in telling their own stories of political and especially economic repression at the hands of landlords and patrões (bosses), and their hopes for the future. The testimonies are powerful: the lack of access to education, to healthcare, to living wages, the ubiquity of child labour . . . it all conjures up an image that only older generations now remember of a Portugal that has completely vanished.

Even so, it is fair to say that Burchett’s interpretation of the Portuguese Revolution is one that is, primarily, elite-centred."

Show threadMiguel Afonso CaetanoApr 26, 2025
"Burchett’s second book also captures the uncertainty and disillusionment that the Communists and far left felt about the revolution in its final weeks. Like the PCP and much of the far left, Burchett entertained the possibility that the 25 November actions were planned by counter- revolutionary forces within the MFA and the parties to the right of the PCP (perhaps even the CIA). He also considered the alternative: that these insurrections were not centrally organised in any way that could lead to a left-wing coup within the provisional institutions. In summary: the centrists and the far-left parties accused the PCP of seeking to mount a coup with the help of rebellious armed forces units; the PCP, in turn, blamed the far left for fomenting insurrection in some armed forces units, denied any PCP role in an attempted coup, and accused the centrists of being counter-revolutionaries; finally, the centrist parties (and the centrist MFA faction) defended their actions, maintaining that they were a response to a coup attempt, and that their consolidation of power was a path correction setting the revolution on the road to democracy (one of the primary original goals of the MFA in overthrowing the Estado Novo)."