Letter from Lisbon

...Although the daily distribution of an Oporto morning newspaper should arrive in Lisbon by eight o'clock every morning, the Portuguese capital's few uberai readers must content themselves with a breakfast reading of official versions of the day's news, and wait till noon for a mildly heretical rehash of the same material...

...The American or the British point of view-on an issue such as that of Angola, for instance-will be expressed by the BBC or the Voice of America only when those governments actually take an official stand on the matter in the United Nations...

...PUBLIC OPINION IS 'AN ALMOST HYPOTHETICAL ENTITY' Letter from Lisbon By Edouard Roditi Lisbon A normally inquisitive American visitor to Portugal, who understands enough Portuguese to converse with natives of his own social and educational standing, will find most of them very friendly and well-mannered...

...Some years ago, I was surprised to find only one Chinese restaurant in Lisbon, and a very mediocre one at that, considering that Macao has been a Portuguese colony for several centuries...

...In fact, public opinion in Portugal is still an almost hypothetical entity, with no direct way of expressing itself, and practically none of the means of informing itself that are availableexcept for Spain-throughout the rest of Western Europe...

...A Portuguesespeaking commonwealth, or union of sovereign nations, would then be established, which Brazil would be invited to join in order to share with Portugal the responsibility of providing technical aid to Angola, Mozambique and other former colonies for their development...

...if the fighting in Angola lasts much longer, a final military catastrophe there might affect the Lisbon financial market as little as France's defeat in Indochina once affected the Paris Bourse...

...But the point is that it appears Portuguese workers who wish to emigrate in order to find work or freedom cannot obtain passports to leave their country legally, and therefore must use the same devices as fugitives from a Communist dictatorship...

...Such sensational news of course made the headlines in all the Lisbon dailies, but appeared only on page five of the city of Oporto's Primeiro de Janeiro, the one exception to all generalizations that can be made about the Portuguese press...

...This applies even to the programs of the BBC and the Voice of America, though some domestic French programs can also be heard fairly easily on medium-wave in northern Portugal, where they find regular listeners if only because they offer better entertainment than anything available in Portuguese domestic broadcasts...

...After more than 30 years of paternalistic dictatorship, Dr...

...Generally, Lisbon's dailies briefly discuss those few items of international news which cannot possibly be ignored...

...Those few Portuguese listeners who really want to hear the other side of this question, or of any other question that vitally affects their country's future, must therefore listen to broadcasts in Portuguese from Moscow and other stations behind the Iron Curtain...

...Switzerland, for instance, has no common frontier with Communist China, as Portugal does in Macao...

...In Cabeceiras de Basto, a small town in the north, the national security police arrested some 15 illegal emigrants...

...The same day, moreover, Primeiro de Janeiro reported a peculiar item of domestic news that escaped the attention of all other Portuguese dailies...

...Antonio de Oliveira Salazar's Portugal seems destined to experience a rude awakening in the near future...

...Yet it is now obvious that Nehru might not have dared undertake the annexation of Goa and the rest of Portuguese India by military occupation if Salazar had previously granted these territories their independence, thus enabling them to become full-fledged members of the United Nations...

...On Asian and African issues in particular, one is likely to hear more vapid and ill-informed opinions in Portugal than in Sweden or Switzerland, neutral nations which have no territorial interests at stake in either of these continents...

...While Lisbon's slums are to some extent being cleared and their population resettled in more sanitary housing projects, the poverty of Oporto's slums is still grim enough to shock any foreign tourist...

...These it turns out, are the only ones from abroad that can be regularly relied upon to give a complete, though biased, coverage to whatever news items the Portuguese authorities may have decided to withhold...

...Though Indonesia may now be expected to invade Portuguese Timor at any moment, even the best informed Portuguese readers have little awareness of either Indonesian Irredentism or of Washington's recent decision to bow to it in New Guinea...

...But had Salazar been less stubborn in his colonial policies, he might at least have gained a point, and for a while delayed the inevitable showdown...

...The average reader is expected to remain content with tabloid versions of events in Berlin, the Congo or elsewhere, but to relish a detailed and sensational coverage of catastrophes on land, at sea and in the air, as well as sports news and gossip about the private lives of movie stars, exempresses of Iran and other such cafe-society courtesans...

...Nor can any prophet, however well versed in Portuguese affairs, predict with much certainty which way the cat of Portuguese public opinion is likely to jump when the belated awakening occurs...

...Oporto's Primeiro de Janeiro, bravely keeping its readers as well-informed as it can about national or international events, remains a thorn in the side of Salazar's dictatorship...

...In the long run, he is likely to lose his colonial empire quite ignominiously, without acquiring any of the prestige de Gaulle belatedly gained for France by so magnanimously admitting defeat in Algeria...

...They had paid an average of $300 per head to a local tradesman to be smuggled out of the country and through Spain to France, where they hoped to find employment as unskilled laborers...

...Unlike General de Gaulle, however, Salazar seems to be both stubborn and unimaginative...

...It may already be too late to institute mere long-term programs of reform to correct such shortcomings...

...Salazar's censorship rarely forbids the distribution of a foreign newspaper, unless it is Communist or outspokenly anti-colonialist...

...A year ago, every store in Lisbon prominently displayed in its window at least one patriotic poster proclaiming that Goa or Angola would remain eternally Portuguese...

...But none of these foreign radio stations has a conscious policy of supplying its Portuguese listeners with the kind of news and comment that is so singularly lacking in their own newspapers and broadcasts...

...To be sure, radio continues to be a source of news...

...Only the names of those Portuguese opposition leaders who have already discredited themselves are at all known abroad: General Humberto Delgado or Captain Henrique Galvao, for instance, whose spectacularly unsuccessful actions-organized as revolts on Portuguese territory or as acts of piracy on the high seas-have earned them some notoriety in the daily press abroad, but cost them what little political backing they ever had in Portugal...

...But usually this is given without its proper context, like an indignant reply to an accusation that remains shrouded in mystery...

...Factual news of troubles in Guinea, Angola or Mozambique, however, generally remains scarce...

...Among the reforms proposed was the granting of immediate and full independence to all of Portugal's overseas territories, including Goa and the remainder of Portuguese India...

...But it seems to be Government policy to discourage the reading of most foreign newspapers by the simple device of depriving them-through delay in distribution-of much of their news value...

...yet no provision was made for the rehabilitation or reconversion of the many persons gainfully employed in this reputedly oldest of all professions...

...Were all of Angola to be lost tomorrow, there might be a panic on Lisbon's stock exchange, but scarcely a stir on the downtown cafe terraces where people gather to get their shoes shined, buy lottery tickets or read the latest sports news...

...When Goa was lost to India, the posters gradually began to vanish...

...Such reasonable proposals for decolonization had been discussed publicly in England and France, without being considered treasonable, long before becoming official policy...

...Indeed, in all respects Oporto is a stronghold of liberal or Leftist opposition, like Barcelona or Bilbao in Spain...

...Portugal seems to take its overseas territories very much for granted...

...Such action might antagonize friendly nations like France, Britain or the United States...

...True, Nehru might have tried to prevent the admission of an independent Goa to the UN, much as Morocco tried for a while to prevent the admission of Mauretania...

...Similarly, it took me a long while to discover a Goanese restaurant here, though cooks from the PortugueseIndian city are famous throughout India and East Africa, and their specialties are featured on the menu of most of London's many Indian restaurants...

...And while some feat of typical Portuguese loucura, or madcap masculine protest, may some day actually overthrow Salazar's dictatorship, none of the military men who usually become involved in them ever has any real popular support or is likely to gain more political influence than a star bullfighter...

...He will also find them superficial-if not actually childish-in many of their interests and preoccupations...

...Once in a while an official Portuguese statement about the situation in Angola or about a UN discussion of the country's colonial problems is quoted in full...

...Since most foreign programs in Portuguese are either politically spineless or can be heard well only on good short-wave sets, they have few regular listeners in Portugal...

...This lack of gastronomical interest in the food of its colonies is symptomatic of Portugal's general lack of concern for their culture and political aspirations as well...

...Both for this reason and because Salazar himself seems to feel nothing but contempt for public opinion, newspapers can no longer be relied upon to exert much influence in any real crisis...

...But, geographically, Portugal is situated out on a limb, and its population is neither educated enough to follow foreign broadcasts nor rich enough to own strong short-wave receiving sets...

...In a magnificent preamble, lofty principles of progress, public morals and national health were invoked...

...In Portugal, they have never even been aired in the press...

...The politicians, joined by a few likeminded university professors, lawyers and physicians, felt the reforms were urgently needed in order to liberalize the present regime and thus avoid a protracted and disastrous colonial war in Africa and an ensuing revolution in Portugal itself...

...Thus, though the Portuguese Communist party has very few active members or supporters, should Salazar's dictatorship suddenly come to an end, it may turn out to have far more sympathizers in key positions-all wealthy enough to own good short-wave radio sets-than anyone at present suspects...

...Of course, Portugal's official travel literature does not invite tourism in the north...

...And because the whole northern part of the country shares many of Oporto's opinions, for some years it has been systematically deprived of the benefits of most of Salazar's somewhat paternalistic and belated programs of social or economic development...

...Such desperately zany ventures are now discussed almost deprecatingly among members of Portugal's more serious-minded political groups...

...For example, should one wish to read a serious contemporary Portuguese novel set in an African background, he would have to purchase it in a Brazilian edition: The only one of its kind-Castro Soromenho's Camaxilo-had to be reprinted in Brazil after having been forbidden in Portugal because of its realistic presentation of the shortcomings of civil administration in a backwoods area of Angola...

...As it is, most Portuguese capitalists have had ample time to sell out their major African investments to foreign companies, mainly West German...

...A few months after obtaining a copy of the Portuguese opposition's political program, I happened to spend a few days in Washington...

...Because Portugal also has no organized political opposition, at the present moment nobody can seriously predict who would be most likely to assume the responsibilities of governing the country should Salazar die or his regime suddenly collapse...

...In those various State Department offices concerned with Portuguese, African, Asian or Brazilian affairs, no one had ever heard of it...

...Although several of the country's most interesting monuments are situated north of Coimbra, which is in the center of the country, one is scarcely encouraged to visit any area north of the boundaries of those southern and central provinces which are loyal to Salazar and regularly rewarded with new roads, Government-sponsored resorts to attract tourists and model housing projects...

...Edouard Roditi, an American poet and art historian now residing in Paris, frequently visits Portugal...

...Oddly enough, though mimeographed copies of the program were widely circulated among the nation's elite, none of those responsible were arrested...

...The Portuguese press, with one notable exception, is completely subservient to Salazar...

...But their radio programs in Portuguese fail to make a point of reporting regularly what straight news from Angola the Portuguese press and radio may have suppressed...

...Nor did anyone seem to have very clear notions about any other opposition to Salazar's regime, though there are certainly other groups in Portugal opposed to his dictatorship, including the secret nucleus of an illegal Communist party...

...Modern communications should also make it possible to purchase in Lisbon a morning newspaper published earlier in the day in Paris, London, Zurich or Frankfurt...

...Some two years ago, a group of liberal-republican opposition leaders-mainly politicians who, to paraphrase Disraeli's definition of a retired businessman, have retired from politics because politics have retired from themdrafted a program of reforms...

...In September of this year, Salazar's Government suddenly published a decree abolishing, as of January 1963, all of Portugal's "tolerated" houses of prostitution...

...Actually, a few copies of such dailies may be available as early as noon at the airport newsstand, far beyond the city limits...

...Otherwise, one can purchase his foreign newspaper in downtown Lisbon only a day later or, at the earliest, late at night...

...The guilty tradesman, of course, had vanished with their money, escaping arrest...

...He may even be puzzled by their apparent lack of personal involvement in most of the major political issues of our age...

...yet an intelligent reader of its daily Neue Z??rcher Zeitung is likely to know more about Chinese affairs than a Far Eastern specialist in the Lisbon Ministry for Overseas Territories...