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Etnografias da revolução em revista

Emigration and its implications for the revolution in Northern Portugal

Caroline B. Brettell
p. pp-pp

Texto integral

Preface to “Emigration and its implications for the revolution in Northern Portugal

  • 1 E.N.: Etnográfica would like to thank Luísa Gonçalves, anthropology student of Nova FCSH, which con (...)

1In October of 1973, the newly organized International Conference Group on Modern Portugal, spearheaded by Douglas Wheeler (historian), Joyce Riegelhaupt (anthropologist) and others, held its first meeting on the campus of the University of New Hampshire.1 At that time, I was beginning my third year of graduate school in the Department of Anthropology at Brown University. I was invited to attend the meeting because I was developing a project to study Portuguese migrant women in France. As Harry Makler and Lawrence S. Graham (1979: xx) have written, “the main objective of the conference – as well as of the two others that followed – was to encourage research on Portugal’s recent history, its politics and government, its (then) colonial system, its class structure and its economic processes”. Unpredicted by anyone at the time, and just over six months later, on April 25, 1974, the so-called Carnation Revolution occurred, forever transforming Portugal and setting it on a new path.

2It was in the aftermath of this revolution that I departed for a year of field research in Paris (with Portuguese families) followed up by six months of research in the north of Portugal where I settled into a village in Minho to study not only the women who remained behind while their husbands were abroad, but also the way of life in rural Portugal. It was not my intention to focus on politics, but given the timing of my stay (from July 1975 to January of 1976), politics, the revolution, and the impact of retornados from Portuguese colonial Africa all came up in the informal conversations that are an inevitable part of ethnographic field research.

3The paper that is republished in this special issue of Etnográfica was written for the third meeting of the Conference Group on Modern Portugal, which took place in Toronto in April of 1976 (the second meeting was in March of 1975 when I was in France). It was scheduled on a panel on “the cultural response” in “post-revolutionary” Portugal. The only other anthropologist presenting a paper on that program was Joyce Riegelhaupt who contributed with a paper titled “Peasants and politics in Salazar’s Portugal: the corporate state and village ‘non politics’ ” (also published in Graham and Makler 1979).

4Like most work in anthropology, my paper “Emigration and its implications for the Revolution in Northern Portugal” presented an “emic” or insider’s view (from the bottom up and inside looking outward) of the more important forces of stasis and change impacting local and rural communities and of how rural populations were being brought into politics for the first time. It is an essay that captured a moment in Portuguese history and must partially be read that way 50 years later. It is an essay that, through the lens of life in one Minhotan freguesia, emphasizes the tempering of the impact of the Revolution in the north (in its immediate aftermath) as a consequence of the powerful influence of the Catholic church, the minifundia system of land-tenure, and the escape valve for poverty that emigration provided. For centuries the populations in this part of Portugal sought to change their lives by leaving the county rather than working in projects of collective action and social and political change at home. And here there are deep structural and economic contrasts with the more rural proletarian south of Portugal (at the time) – something I discuss in this essay as I analyze what I call “the revolutionary potential” of the north versus the south.

5Of interest to me as I reread the article is the emphasis that I placed on comparison. As anthropologists who engage in “on-the-ground” field research we often become immersed in a localized place, but insight, understanding, and explanation often derive from comparison (see Brettell 2013, 2020). The essay republished here draws comparisons not only with southern Portugal, but also between Portugal and Mexico (at the time of its revolution early in the 20th century). The essay also captures my interest at the time in combining ethnographic data with more quantitative data derived from either primary or secondary sources in order to delineate broad trends over time or illuminate more richly the local context. This interest developed further as I explored, in subsequent years, the field of historical demography (Brettell 1986). Finally, I am struck by how early I captured what has more recently been referred to as a “culture of emigration” (Cohen and Sirkeci 2011) that permeated a local community such as the one captured in this essay, shaping and influencing attitudes and behaviours across generations. Fifty years after the Revolution of 1974, the question now is how this community has changed further and how it has not. We are several generations beyond the pioneer emigrant population that went to France in the late 1950’s, 1960’s, and early 1970’s; and Portugal is part of the European Union and with close to 50 years of democratic government. Although studying European rural communities is no longer in vogue within anthropology, as it was in the 60’s and 70’s, perhaps a restudy of this localized place is warranted to re-evaluate the place of emigration, the impact of the Catholic church, and the nature of political activity and ideology.

6References cited:

7BRETTELL, Caroline B., 1986, Men Who Migrate, Women Who Wait: Population and History in a Portuguese Parish. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

8BRETTELL, Caroline B., 2013, “Anthropology, migration, and comparative consciousness”, in Rita Felski and Susan Stanford Friedman (eds.), Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

9BRETTELL, Caroline B., 2020, “Thinking with comparison in the Anthropology / historical Anthropology of migration”, in Michael Schnegg and Edward Lowe (eds.), Comparing Cultures: Innovations in Comparative Ethnography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10COHEN, Jeffrey, and Ibrahim SIRKECI, 2011, Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Mobility. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

11GRAHAM, Lawrence S., and Harry M. MAKLER (eds.), 1979, Contemporary Portugal: The Revolution and Its Antecedents. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

*

  • 2 I would like to thank the Canada Council and the Social Science Research Council for making it poss (...)

12As the days and months after the April 25th coup have unfolded, the divisions within Portuguese society have become increasingly clear.2 Among the people, the split follows a geographical boundary which divides north from south and rural from urban. This “dualism” is not new to Portugal, but has, perhaps, been enhanced by post-revolution politics. The results of two major elections, held a year and two years to the day after the 1974 coup, clearly follow the lines of geographical fission. As Hammond has illustrated in his case study of the 1975 election, the north votes PPD; the south, socialist and communist.

13The major focus of this article is upon the northern, rural sector of Portugal. The aim is modest – to try to outline some of the problems which have so far been ignored by the makers and assessors of the Portuguese revolution, problems which must be con­sidered if the north is not to find itself still further behind in Portugal’s march toward economic and social development.

  • 3 Neither the revolution nor political attitudes in general were the focus of my research. “Political (...)

14I will begin my discussion by contrasting what I call the “revolutionary potentials” of the rural sectors of northern and southern Portugal. From there I will turn to a consideration of the political attitude and activity – or non-activity – of the rural people of northern Portugal, basing my discussion upon conversations I had in 1974 and 1975 with emigrants from the north in Paris and with villagers in Portugal.3 I do this primarily to present some of the major opinions held by these people about the process of revolution. Finally, I will turn to a discussion of two factors which have deep historical and traditional roots in the modus vivendi of northern Portugal – the Church and emigration – and will attempt to show how these two factors hinder in some ways the florescence of the spring buds of the April 25 revolution.

Revolutionary potential – the North versus the South

  • 4 Even Silva Martins, in a recent article on agrarian reforms in Portugal, focuses most of his discus (...)
  • 5 As far as my contacts extended in the village, no one had participated in the events in Ponte de Li (...)

15My decision to discuss the “revolutionary potential” of northern and southern Portugal, however briefly, is prompted by a series of inquiries and a jarring incident. While I was working at the village level, I received several letters from outsiders asking about peasant mobilization and the organization of cooperatives. In all cases, I was forced to respond negatively – that I had seen nothing,4 except of course reading about the massive pro-Church demonstrations in the provincial towns of Aveiro, Lamego, and Braga (farther south than I was) and the attacks on communist headquarters in Famalicão (closer to home) and Ponte de Lima (only a few miles away).5 But not only was the activity of revolution blatantly absent, so too was the rhetoric. This was made most clear to me on a brief trip through the Alentejo in mid-December 1975. We had stopped to visit the hilltop castle at Montemor-o-Novo, off the road between Lisbon and Évora. As we left, several barefooted children in tattered clothes gathered around and sent us on our way with a chorus of, “Fascista! Fascista! Fascista!”. In the north one must draw that word out of people and, even then, they will say that they hardly know what it means.

  • 6 Note particularly the figures for the district of Viana do Castelo, where most of the research upon (...)

16Included here are data (tables 1-4) which help to summarize those economic contrasts between northern and southern Portugal which are crucial to an explanation of a revolutionary south and a non-revolutionary north. The statistics show two clear distinctions: the contrast between latifundia and minifundia, and the higher population of salaried laborers (jornaleiros) in the agricultural system of the north.6

Table 1 – Percentage of proprietors in the active agricultural population

District

%

District

%

Aveiro

48

Leiria

39

Beja

8

Lisbon

23

Braga

33

Portalegre

7

Bragança

38

Porto

23

Castelo Branco

21

Santarém

24

Coimbra

41

Setúbal

13

Évora

6

Viana do Castelo

50

Faro

32

Vila Real

34

Guarda

34

Viseu

38

Source: Eugénio Castro Caldas and Manuel de Santos Loureiro, Níveis de Desenvolvimento Agrícola no Continente Português (Lisbon: Gulbenkian, 1963).

Table 2 – Percentage of family enterprises in the active agricultural population

District

%

District

%

Aveiro

46

Leiria

32

Beja

12

Lisbon

19

Braga

43

Portalegre

8

Bragança

35

Porto

40

Castelo Branco

21

Santarém

19

Coimbra

38

Setúbal

12

Évora

6

Viana do Castelo

64

Faro

30

Vila Real

32

Guarda

36

Viseu

42

Source: Caldas and Santos Loureiro, Níveis de Desenvolvimento Agrícola.

Table 3 – Percentage of individual farming enterprises with more than six parcels of land

District

%

District

%

Aveiro

40

Leiria

42

Beja

10

Lisbon

15

Braga

19

Portalegre

11

Bragança

63

Porto

18

Castelo Branco

27

Santarém

24

Coimbra

42

Setúbal

2

Évora

8

Viana do Castelo

45

Faro

24

Vila Real

48

Guarda

35

Viseu

41

Source: Caldas and Santos Loureiro, Níveis de Desenvolvimento Agrícola. The figures in Estatísticas Agrícolas (Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Estatística) for 1975 are based on the Inquérito às Explorações Agrícolas do Continente (Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Estatística, 1968) and show no marked changes in the agricultural structure of Portugal as it is represented in tables 1, 2, and 3.

  • 7 A high level of emigration is not unusual in areas with parcelized land and a system of partible in (...)

17Tables 5 and 6 provide figures on emigration and demonstrate a clear divergence between north and south for over a century.7 Emigration from the Algarve has also been historically important, but emigration from the Alentejo, particularly in recent years, has been directed largely to Lisbon. This is an extremely important point.

Table 4 – Salaried rural laborers by district

District

No

%

District

No.

%

Aveiro

24,291

37

Leiria

45,119

56

Beja

66,727

86

Lisbon

56,059

73

Braga

30,448

36

Portalegre

43, 408

89

Bragança

30,840

50

Porto

31,097

43

Castelo Branco

45,338

70

Santarém

73,237

77

Coimbra

44,358

57

Setúbal

39,434

86

Évora

49,164

92

Viana do Castelo

12,310

21

Faro

38,691

61

Vila Real

45,162

52

Guarda

38,847

60

Viseu

55,917

48

Continental Portugal

770,447

59

Source: Carlos Almeida and António Barreto, Capitalismo e Imigração em Portugal, 2nd ed., Cadernos de Hoje, no. 10 (Lisbon: Prelo Editora, 1974).

Table 5 – Emigration from Continental Portugal according to district, 1890-1967

District

Emigrants (in thousands)

Emigration (% of total)

Aveiro

234.6

9.5%

Beja

12.6

0.5

Braga

154.6

6.3

Bragança

135.9

5.5

Castelo Branco

50.6

2.1

Coimbra

166.3

6.7

Évora

4.7

0.2

Faro

58.9

2.4

Guarda

158.9

6.4

Leiria

139.4

5.7

Lisbon

96.8

3.9

Portalegre

6.3

0.3

Porto

271.9

11.0

Santarém

47.4

1.9

Setúbal

11.9

0.5

Viana do Castelo

102.6

4.2

Vila Real

155.1

6.3

Viseu

259.8

10.5

Source: Almeida and Barreto, Capitalismo e Emigração.

Table 6 – Emigrants from the Continent according to destination (percentage of total)

Destination

1901-30

1931-50

1951-60

1961-67

Argentina

2.1%

5.9%

3.7%

0.4%

Brazil

69.5

74.5

65.7

9.9

Canada

4.5

5.8

Holland

0.4

South Africa

0.4

1.9

2.4

USA

15.7

5.6

5.8

6.8

Venezuela

2.3

10.4

4.8

Others

12.7

10.8

3.0

3.0

Source: Almeida and Barreto, Capitalismo e Emigração.

  • 8 E. J. Hobsbawm, 1973, “Peasants and politics”, Journal of Peasant Studies 1 (1): 7.

18Whereas in the south the jornaleiros have tended to move into the urban proletariat class of Portugal itself, the peasants from the north have moved into the proletariat of foreign countries and – as I will show later – because of the international, rather than intranational, character of emigration and urbanization, emigrants from the north are, in fact, only minimally “part of” a proletariat and therefore are not exposed in any significant way to the “politicization” which “proletarianization” tends to imply. Emigration, by removing individuals from both national and foreign proletariats, reduces the tendency to class solidification and the development of class consciousness. So too does a minifundia system of land tenure. Such a system tends to create minute scales of difference among rural peoples, enhancing competition at the expense of intraclass cooperation and interclass conflict. “A full peasant class-consciousness is conceivable in so far as differentiation within the peasantry is secondary to the common characteristics of all peasantry and their common interests against other groups and insofar as the distinction between them and other groups is sufficiently clear.” 8

  • 9 Ronald Waterbury, “Non revolutionary peasants: Oaxaca compared to Morelos in the Mexican revolution (...)

19Essentially, the point I wish to emphasize here is that for a variety of reasons, based upon different systems of land tenure (though naturally not explained completely by this difference), there has always been more “revolutionary potential” (even the possibility of the establishment of cooperatives) in southern Portugal. One of the best comparisons to be made is with Mexico. In a recent article on the Mexican revolution, Ronald Waterbury has noted a regional variation in peasant involvement in the 1910 revolution. He contrasts the states of Morelos and Oaxaca. Morelos was where the revolution started. The peasants of the state of Oaxaca, on the other hand, remained relatively uninvolved if not outrightly reactionary. “The peasants of Morelos fought and died for change albeit a change back to a traditional community-oriented agrarian way of life. The peasants of Oaxaca for the most part remained passive or joined the fight to defend the status quo.” 9

  • 10 The conceptual distinction between “peasant” and “rural proletarian” is itself indicative of an imp (...)

20Waterbury bases much of his argument upon the land tenure systems and the political status accorded to the peasants or the “rural proletarians” as a result of these systems.10 Morelos was dominated by the hacienda (latifundia) system (43.9% of all landholding units) and was characterized by capitalistic farming and incipient indus­trialization. Oaxaca had a higher population, had little industrialization, and was dominated by peasant landowners (only 13.8% of all landholding units were haciendas). The few haciendas in Oaxaca were smaller, were poorer and occupied less land surface (8.1% in Oaxaca vs. 40% in Morelos). The state of Oaxaca with its predominantly peasant form of exploitation experienced what Waterbury calls “indirect exploitation”, that is, the appropriation of the products of peasant labor rather than the labor itself. A direct ex­ploitation of labor was more characteristic of the state of Morelos. The implications of this distinction between direct and indirect forms of exploitation are enormous for the development of the kind of “class consciousness” necessary for revolution as it is described by Hobsbawm (quoted above).

21The parallels between Mexico and Portugal are self-evident and sufficient to give one general explanation for northern conservatism. But, as I will show later, the individualism and independence which are implied in a system of small proprietorships and “peasant” exploitation are compounded by emigration and the fruits that emigration brings.

Political attitudes of northern peasants and emigrants from the North

  • 11 To contrast “the north” with “the south” is of course acceptable only to a certain extent. More det (...)

22Although I by no means concentrated upon political issues during my brief stay in Portugal and my year in Paris, I was able to ask a few informants about the new politics in Portugal and especially about the changes they saw as a result of the revolution of the 25th of April. In Portugal, I spent four months in one village. This village might be considered representative, not necessarily of the north as a whole,11 but certainly of the district of Viana do Castelo, which itself makes up a good portion of the northwestern province of Minho.

  • 12 In accordance with anthropological practice, I have disguised the name of the village although all (...)
  • 13 The official census figures of 1970 are at variance with these later village figures. A high level (...)
  • 14 One quinta is 81,284 m2. A piece of this (5,232 m2) has been rented since 1972 by a French emigrant (...)

23The village of Santa Eulália is situated in the Lima river valley in the concelho of Viana do Castelo.12 It is by no means the most isolated of Portuguese villages but a rather large village (a freguesia rather than an aldeia) with a population of 2,295 in 394 households, according to a village census of 1973.13 A fifth to a third of the population is away during the year, most of them in France, but some also in Germany, Brazil, Africa, the United States, and Canada. The land is very parcelized, although there are several large quintas (comparatively speaking) within the territorial limits of the village.14 Polyculture predominates, with an emphasis on the cultivation of corn, potatoes, beans, grape vines, and other vegetables, especially the long-stemmed cabbage known as couve gallego. The agricultural work is carried out primarily by women (probably a result of high-level, continuous male emigration). Most of the village people over 50, especially women, are illiterate or barely literate. In the 1975 elections there were 1048 registered voters. Of these, over 50% voted for the Popular Democratic Party (PPD). Approximately 18% voted for the Social Democratic Center (CDS) and the Socialist Party (PS). Only 2% voted for the Communist Party (PCP). These figures follow the trend for the concelho as a whole, although the overall percentages are higher for the right-wing parties and lower for the left-wing parties. The number of emigrants living in France who actually voted in this election is too insignificant to be worthy of consideration.

  • 15 During the month of August there were numerous forest fires throughout the north of Portugal, inclu (...)

24A year and a half after the April coup, villagers and emigrants had gained a certain degree of perspective, and a great deal of criticism was brewing. It is by now nothing new to note the strong anticommunist sentiments which prevail in northern Portuga1.15 Santa Eulalians were no different in their views. In fact, “Não quero o comunismo (I do not want communism) was the most frequent, if not the only “political” statement heard. One man commented that he thought the best solution would be to let the communists into the government palace to run the country for a month and then to burn the palace down with them inside! This was the most extreme criticism I’ve ever heard. Others quite simply said they did not want communism because communism meant to them that they would no longer have control over the small plots of land which had been in their families for generations.

  • 16 For children ages ten to 13, roughly, much of their education is transmitted over national televisi (...)

25“I voted for the PPD”, one illiterate 75 year-old woman said “because ‘they’ say it is the party of the Church.” Indeed, anticommunist ideas are still nourished in the Church as are general antirevolutionary sentiments. In Santa Eulália, these sentiments are also nourished in the village school, which is under the direction of the village priest. One day, the priest complained to me that the national education programs are now all “communist oriented”.16 He mistrusted the recent coup, pointed to the impending economic crisis, likening it to the pre-Salazar period of the 1920’s, and supported a protestant work-ethic approach to life. “We cannot all be equal”, he told a classroom full of pre-adolescents one morning. “Those who work more and save will be better off. I work for myself and you work for yourselves. It is the people who do not want to work who are poor.”

  • 17 In the August 30th 1975 issue of Vida Rural, a magazine on agrarian reform, there was an article in (...)

26But it is not only the Church which engenders these strong anticommunist, antirevolutionary, and pro-work-ethic sentiments. The life goals of the northern peasants and the basic motives for which they emigrate stand in sharp contrast to what they believe to be the major tenets of communism. In emigrating, they have found a means of self-improvement. They work hard, in a foreign country, scrimping and saving at every corner in order to buy a house or a bigger and better plot of land. Communism is a threat to this “capitalistic” spirit of self-improvement and acquisition. One of the greatest fears among emigrants in France is that their new houses, built with the French francs they have spent years accumulating, will be taken over by the communists or inhabited by Angolan refugees.17 The very idea of taking over someone else’s property is abhorrent to them. I asked a girl one day what she and others thought about some of the wealthier quinta-owning families in the village. “No one resents them for what they have”, she insisted. “It is their property and they are entitled to it.” In fact, those individuals who have been successful abroad, accumulating what appear to villagers to be vast resources of wealth, are looked upon with respect. They are the stimuli for others to leave as well. The wealth and lifestyle of the ennobled and the nouveau riche are to be emulated, not criticized or challenged.

27Although fear of communism is the political opinion expressed, there are a few other common attitudes worth mentioning. Many villagers and emigrants believed that there was too much freedom (muita liberdade) in Portugal. They believed that they were not ready for the freedom that the revolution had bestowed upon them. They accused one another of not knowing how to behave. One rather intelligent emigrant, returned for the summer, phrased it this way: “People in the villages cannot rule themselves. People from outside must come in to help but they also have trouble because they are strangers. The lavrador is ignorant. Operários are more informed and much better able to take stands and lead the people. People who work the land do not know what to do with this new liberty.” A teenage girl noted that people think the new liberty means they can do whatever they want or feel like doing. This “excess” of liberty led her to regret the downfall of Salazarism. She was a serious student and went on that afternoon to tell me about the new “regime” which had been imposed in the school because of the disciplinary problems which were developing as a result of this “misunderstood” liberty. No smoking, no talking, no interrupting the teacher, no “namoradoing (going steady). The parents of the village had given the priest carte blanche to institute this new “regime” and she was glad of it.

28The freedom of speech was welcomed but not at the expense of peace. Another man commented: “It was true that before we could not say anything bad about the government or we would be in prison, but at least then we lived in peace. I would rather be poor but live in peace than rich and live in war. And in Portugal now, ‘é a Guerra! ” The loss of peace was lamented as was the loss of respect for authority. “No one respects policemen anymore”, one man noted. “Everyone thinks they can all be equal. But there always have to be rich and poor.”

  • 18 The Financial Times of London, December 18, 1975, began an article on Portugal by referring to an a (...)

29Some even went so far as to question what freedom they did have. One man, working in Montreal now, though he had previously spent ten years in France, wondered if he really was free when his wife had trouble taking the money he earned out of their own bank account.18 If things became worse and communism gained force, he told me, he would immediately call his wife and four children to Canada to join him.

  • 19 An inquiry into the attitudes of Portuguese emigrants toward French politics published two years ag (...)

30At the time of my conversations with the villagers, one of the most widespread beliefs was that politics was for the people of Lisbon and that the revolution was Lisbon’s revolution. “Não percebo nada de política is the common response to many politically framed questions. “Politics never meant anything to me before”, they said. “Why should I start now?”19 On the contrary, their lives had improved despite Salazarism, and through the grace of emigration. This improvement disguised the ills of the old regime, covering them with all the delightful trimmings which an emigrant salary could buy. The revolution was a threat to a continued good standard of living or to further advancement because prices were rising and their hard-earned francs were buying less.

  • 20 It should be noted that to emigrate requires a certain amount of initial capital. Such capital is m (...)
  • 21 Presença Portuguesa is a monthly magazine published by the inter-diocesan council (SITI) of the Reg (...)

31Emigration has provided a way out for the northern peasant, a way out which, through the quirks of history and historical tradition, has not been available to southern laborers.20 Can we call these northern peasants “resistant to change and innovation, fatal­istic and politically apathetic”, as those who hold a traditional view of “the peasantry” would tend to do? Resistance to changes of one kind may be counteracted by full-fledged adoption of other changes. Political apathy does not necessarily imply total apathy. Apathy itself implies indifference and a lack of emotional involvement. The people of Santa Eulália and the Portuguese immigrants in France were not indifferent to the changes that were occurring in their country. But they perceived these changes in a distinct way. Their concerns were economic rather than political. They were raised to find solutions to their economic problems not through political pressuring and collective action but through individual initiative and emigration. In terminating this section, I quote from a letter written by a Portuguese immigrant in France to the editors of the publication Presença Portuguesa: “I was in Portugal in August of last year. It seemed to me that we were freer but what use is freedom if there is no work and no bread to eat. What I ask for Portugal is peace, work, and harmony. April, 1975.” 21

The Church and emigration – opposing forces

32I have already mentioned briefly some of the ways in which the Church and emigration might be considered as two major forces in the northern Portuguese countryside which act in opposition to the general thrust of the revolution of the 25th of April. I would like to elaborate here.

  • 22 Rocha Trindade notes a similar role for the priest of the village of Queiriga in the district of Vi (...)
  • 23 There are several televisions in the village and most households have radios. But most often I hear (...)

33In Santa Eulália, the priest speaks from the pulpit to village adults, in the classroom to village children, and through the monthly newspaper to villagers abroad.22 Like Presença Portuguesa, a magazine published for Portuguese immigrants in France, the Voz de Santa Eulália has assumed a political role since the 25th of April – essentially a role as interpreter of political events and party positions. Although national newspapers are available in small supply in the village, only a few villagers buy or read them. The major source of information is the village paper.23

34The information contained in this paper has been fairly objective with regard to the process of revolution, but the voice of the Church is always present, as if it were “in the running” as well. In the pre-election issue (March-April 1975) several pages were devoted to the electoral process (including simple information on how to vote) and to the respective party platforms. The summary of these platforms was quite noncommittal, although the LCI, PUP, UDP, and FEC were criticized for the “violent means” by which they proposed to attain their political objectives. The emphasis was upon peace, and the article terminated with a quote from Pius XII: “Salvation and justice are not found in revolution but in well-directed evolution. Violence always destroys, never builds; it excites rather than calms passions; it stimulates hate and ruin, not fraternity and reconciliation.”

  • 24 The article was entitled “A liberdade que não queremos” and suggested that Portugal did not want su (...)

35In several issues there were small articles on “a liberdade”, including an excerpt from the Diário do Minho of September 1974.24 In the July 1975 issue (about the time the Church began to feel itself under strong criticism from communists and leftists) there was a piece entitled “Sou reaccionário” (I am reactionary) – a defense of the Church and religion. In the October-November 1975 issue there was an article entitled “Que revolução é esta?” (What kind of a revolution is this?). The answer is contained quite forcefully in the text: “The majority of Portuguese people are subjected to the dictums of ‘progressive’ Lisbon and ‘her’ revolution. There they lay down the ‘revolutionary laws’; there they organize large street demonstrations to support this or that government; there they play with an entire people; there they carry out the most incredible purges (always in the name of the so-called revolutionary process); there they make demagogic speeches; there are the organs of social communication which massacre daily the norms of living and the conscience of the Portuguese people.”

36The article concludes with a call for cooperation and mutual understanding within the Christian perspective prescribed by the gospel and Christ. This polarization of city and country, of infidels and faithful is, of course, nothing new and underscores many of the political ideas and opinions expressed by the people of the northern countryside themselves (anticommunism, desire for peace, suspicion of liberdade, and Lisbon’s revolution).

  • 25 A tabuleiro is an offering of food and wine given for auction to raise money for the church. Some o (...)
  • 26 Every issue of the village paper contained a list of names, place of residence (Santa Eulália or el (...)

37In addition to its role as political interpreter, the Church has another role to play. It fights for its survival, and one of the best means of doing so is by remaining in contact with village emigrants who have the monetary means to support it. The newspaper is the primary mechanism for keeping villagers abroad in touch with the activities and life of the village. The annual festa, which takes place during the summer when many, if not most, of the emigrants return home, is another. These festas – in Santa Eulália and else­where – have been popularly rechristened “festas dos emigrantes”. The emigrants give their money freely, if not extravagantly, to the operation of the village festa. The prestige accorded to them through these donations is enormous. The sons or daughters of emigrants – in their rich costumes and carrying their abundant tabuleiros – are immediately recognized.25 The church in Santa Eulália was completely renovated with the money that emigrants gave and the newspaper itself survives largely through their contributions.26 This interaction between the Church and the emigrants keeps the emi­grants within the religious fold. But the phenomenon of emigration on its own works in many ways to keep emigrants essentially nonpolitical and relatively conservative.

  • 27 Hermínio Martins, 1971, “Portugal”, in M. Archer and S. Giner (eds.), Contemporary Europe: Class, S (...)

38Emigration has made an essentially closed society open to northern villagers. It has, as noted earlier, always provided a channel for social mobility within Portugal (within the village) through external means. This social mobility does not involve either occupational or educational mobility (necessary for social mobility within the nation as a whole) but is achieved simply through the acquisition of wealth (which for national social mobility may be nothing) by whatever means. Martins has noted the political implications of this “openness”: “The calculus of social and political action is altered… Emigration provides a functional equivalent to openness which, however contrary to fact, mitigates class feeling”.27

  • 28 Ibid., 85.
  • 29 Theodore Zeldin, 1973 (France. 1848-1945: Ambition, Love, and Politics, vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford Univ (...)
  • 30 Jacqueline Minces, 1973, Les travailleurs étrangers en France. Paris: Editions Seuil, 325, cites th (...)
  • 31 Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, 1973, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe. L (...)

39Emigration, he suggests, has made these people into “potential nonmembers of the society or class or both”,28 even if they have not yet emigrated. They may still be physically present in the village, but their ambitions, their future plans, their imaginations are elsewhere. It is this factor of “socialization for emigration” which explains the conservativeness of village youth. I talked to several young men about their prospects and plans for the future and they all told me that if nothing turned up in Portugal itself, they would “just emigrate”. They gave no thought to involving themselves in forms of political action which might bring them employment within Portugal itself. Furthermore, the fruits of emigration have raised their standard of living and created a rather serious disjunction between expectations and possibilities. They do not want factory jobs in Portugal although they would readily take such jobs in France. Many of the young men in Santa Eulália are unemployed at the moment. Their major interests are clothes and soccer. The older generation accuses them of laziness. “They simply live on the well-warmed wallets of their emigrant fathers”, one lady remarked. These village young people have few sympathies with the plight of agricultural workers in the north – the life is hard, dirty, and only worth leaving. But they have even fewer sympathies with the urban proletariat who often live in poorer conditions than they do. Those who have already been in France – young and old – also have little contact with the French proletariat and with French unions, and therefore are hardly exposed to the politically heightened atmosphere which union participation suggests.29 The low level of immigrant participation in French unions is partially the result of an abdication of responsibilities by union organizers and an animosity directed toward foreign workers by native workers.30 It is precisely this “union problem” to which Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack direct their attention in their book on immigrant workers in Western Europe.31 In their final proposals they go so far as to suggest the establishment of separate trade unions for immigrants. Although the immigrants may still be part of the working class (nominally perhaps), they form a distinct stratum within that class. That immigrants form a “distinct stratum” is explained by the reasons for which they emigrate in the first place and by a general lack of knowledge about union activities and political behavior. The life of their place of work is of little interest to them. Some of them may be sympathetic to union demands but they are constantly unsure of their status with regard to direct participation.

40Many male emigrants, especially those working in Renault and Citroën factories, belong to the union – they have their card – but they rarely, if ever, attend union meetings. One man said his boss had informed him once that unions were for men who cannot help themselves. “I decided right then”, he said, “that the union was not for me.”

  • 32 John H. Goldthorpe et al., 1969, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge U (...)

41In short, very few of the Portuguese emigrants are gaining any kind of political experience in France which they might then transport back to rural Portugal. They express no desire to affiliate themselves with the urban working class. John Goldthorpe’s comments on the English working class are quite applicable: “They see their membership of the industrial labor force as being only a transitional phase in a movement of social ascent which will ultimately bring them at least petit bourgeois status. Thus, while greatly concerned with the economic returns from their work, they tend not to adopt the solidaristic class conscious orientation of the established working class. They retain the more individualistic and basically conservative values of their original culture, and are reluctant to define their social position by reference to their present work situation. They are, in other words, in the working class, but not of it.” 32

42This “embourgeoisement” is then realized in Portugal itself. The emigrant is a travailleur in France to be petit bourgeois in Portugal. Embourgeoisement and the suburbanization of the Portuguese countryside are strong counterrevolutionary forces. The people I talked with in Santa Eulália insisted that their lives had improved tremen­dously during the last ten years. “If it were not for France”, sighed one girl, “poor Portugal, where would she be.”

  • 33 Henry A. Landsberger, 1974, Rural Protests. London: Macmillan.

43The three types of situations which Henry Landsberger 33 cites as stimuli to peasant discontent – status inconsistency, deprivation relative to some other comparable group, and deprivation relative to one’s own past status or one’s expected future status – are all conspicuously absent sentiments in northern Portugal. This absence is largely the result of emigration and the economic advantages and improvements it has brought to the lives of many individuals in northern Portugal.

Conclusion

  • 34 Neal Acherson, 1976, “Room at the bottom”, New York Review of Books, 23.

44The revolution of the 25th of April had an initial impact throughout Portugal. It uprooted a deep-rooted past. But two years later, much of the northern countryside was essentially where it was prior to the day of the revolution. Yet this is not to claim that changes will never occur. They are inevitable, but they will take time. Perhaps without the revolution the seeds of political change might never have been planted. Emigration brought and brings changes but changes of a superficial or partial kind. At the moment, the north of Portugal looks like a rather unsuccessful hybrid of the 19th and 20th centuries with new grafted onto old in haphazard and incomplete fashion. Emigration is a problem that must be tackled by the makers of the 25th of April – whether by expanding local industry or by lending respectability to agricultural work and developing it, for, if not, “the village will never achieve its own prosperity, however many smart new bicycles and wristwatches glitter on its streets. It remains condemned to send its sons away on contract labor”.34

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Notas

1 E.N.: Etnográfica would like to thank Luísa Gonçalves, anthropology student of Nova FCSH, which converted Caroline Brettell’s article to Word. This is a reprint (with minor editorial adjustments) of the original text.

2 I would like to thank the Canada Council and the Social Science Research Council for making it possible to conduct the research on which this article is based.

3 Neither the revolution nor political attitudes in general were the focus of my research. “Political” statements were made off-hand and I pursued them when they came, but I did not expressly seek them out.

4 Even Silva Martins, in a recent article on agrarian reforms in Portugal, focuses most of his discussion on southern Portugal, although he does refer to the laws of the baldios (public land) and arrendamento (rent) to protect northern peasants. See J. Silva Martins, “Reforma Agrária em Portugal”, Seara Nova, 1563 (January 1976): 33-36.

5 As far as my contacts extended in the village, no one had participated in the events in Ponte de Lima and few talked about it. The building still stands as a symbolic shell and was pointed out to me several times by various people.

6 Note particularly the figures for the district of Viana do Castelo, where most of the research upon which this article is based was conducted.

7 A high level of emigration is not unusual in areas with parcelized land and a system of partible inheritance. The high level of emigration from Ireland in the 19th century cannot be explained only by the potato famine, although this indeed had a strong impact. It must also be explained by a sudden switch from a partible to an impartible system of property inheritance. See Conrad Arensberg, 1940, Family and Community in Ireland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

8 E. J. Hobsbawm, 1973, “Peasants and politics”, Journal of Peasant Studies 1 (1): 7.

9 Ronald Waterbury, “Non revolutionary peasants: Oaxaca compared to Morelos in the Mexican revolution”, 1975, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 17 (4): 411.

10 The conceptual distinction between “peasant” and “rural proletarian” is itself indicative of an important difference in potential rural response to revolution. For discussion of the “rural proletariat”, see Sidney W. Mintz, 1953, “The folk urban continuum and the rural proletarian community”, American Journal of Sociology, 59: 136-143; and Mintz, 1974, “The rural proletariat and the problem of rural proletarian communities”, Journal of Peasant Studies, 1 (3): 291-325.

11 To contrast “the north” with “the south” is of course acceptable only to a certain extent. More detailed analysis reveals internal differences of major importance. Thus, one finds traces of “communal villages” in the mountainous areas of Trás-os-Montes but not in the littoral north.

12 In accordance with anthropological practice, I have disguised the name of the village although all the figures are themselves accurate.

13 The official census figures of 1970 are at variance with these later village figures. A high level of emigration, which is frequently clandestine and transitory, complicates population figures enormously. A census taken in December, as the official census was, would find many people in the village who might not be there three months later. According to the files of the village priest, there were 173 individuals or families away at the time the research was conducted. Of these, 97 were families, 45 single men, 22 single women, eight single men, and one couple.

14 One quinta is 81,284 m2. A piece of this (5,232 m2) has been rented since 1972 by a French emigrant. Another quinta is 27,953 m2.

15 During the month of August there were numerous forest fires throughout the north of Portugal, including one on the serra not so far from Santa Eulália. The rumor was that the fires had been set by communists. The preceding spring had been unusually dry – perhaps a more satisfactory explanation.

16 For children ages ten to 13, roughly, much of their education is transmitted over national television. The programs (in languages, science, mathematics, history, and social studies) last about 20 minutes and are then reviewed and discussed in the classroom with a teacher.

17 In the August 30th 1975 issue of Vida Rural, a magazine on agrarian reform, there was an article in response to an inquiry made by a reader on the rights of others to cultivate the lands of emigrants. It comes out in favor of cultivating all good land. Emigrants should rent out their lands rather than leave them uncultivated. In Santa Eulália much of the land owned by emigrant families was tended by members of the extended family who remained in the village.

18 The Financial Times of London, December 18, 1975, began an article on Portugal by referring to an advertising campaign by one of the state-owned banks. The ad portrays a wad of money stuffed under a mattress threatened by inflation, thieves, rats, and fire, and the caption reads “You know your money is safer with us at nine and a half percent.” The banks have large-scale campaigns to keep the deposits coming and like to keep the money there for use. A notice I picked up in the branch of Banco Português do Atlântico in Viana do Castelo at Christmas time 1975 warned emigrants returned for the holidays to beware of speculators and false currencies. “Do your dealings with us” was the overall message.

19 An inquiry into the attitudes of Portuguese emigrants toward French politics published two years ago in Seara Nova noted a similar reaction. Emigrants felt uninformed and had no understanding of how political demands might improve their lot. See “A vida política francesa vista pelos imigrantes portugueses”, Seara Nova, 1537 (October 1973): 9-10.

20 It should be noted that to emigrate requires a certain amount of initial capital. Such capital is more accessible to small landholding peasants who can always sell some land to raise money. Penniless day laborers have nothing to sell.

21 Presença Portuguesa is a monthly magazine published by the inter-diocesan council (SITI) of the Region Parisienne expressly for Portuguese immigrants.

22 Rocha Trindade notes a similar role for the priest of the village of Queiriga in the district of Viseu. See Maria Beatriz Rocha Trindade, 1973, Immmigrés Portugais. Lisbon: Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Política Ultramarina.

23 There are several televisions in the village and most households have radios. But most often I heard music or, on Sundays, morning masses coming from the radios. Movies and variety shows were the most popular programs to watch on the television in the cafe, but with the general cafe noise level, one could barely hear anything so that those who watched political speeches missed most of what was said. I was with a family on Sunday, the 11th of November 1975, the day of one of the important mass demonstrations in Lisbon. The television was on but little attention was paid to it and the favored topic of discussion was to decide whether Sá Carneiro, the head of the PPD, or Mário Soares, the head of the Socialist Party, was handsomer!

24 The article was entitled “A liberdade que não queremos” and suggested that Portugal did not want such liberties as ridiculing religious beliefs, lying, threatening the life and property of others, exploiting others, prostitution, and pornography. It concludes, “Não queremos esta liberdade porque isto não é liberdade. É antes, libertinagem e abuso da Liberdade” (We do not want this kind of freedom because it is not freedom. It is, above all, libertinism and abuse of freedom).

25 A tabuleiro is an offering of food and wine given for auction to raise money for the church. Some of the girls carry this food in decorated baskets and others in tiered structures which they support on their heads. The principle is for the father or boyfriend of the girl to buy it back for her – thus a father may provide not only food but also money, which sometimes rose to three and four contos ($120-$160 in 1975) in the auction.

26 Every issue of the village paper contained a list of names, place of residence (Santa Eulália or elsewhere, i.e., France, Germany, Africa, etc.), and the sum that had been given. Emigrant contributions were significantly greater than village contributions.

27 Hermínio Martins, 1971, “Portugal”, in M. Archer and S. Giner (eds.), Contemporary Europe: Class, Status and Power. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 85-86.

28 Ibid., 85.

29 Theodore Zeldin, 1973 (France. 1848-1945: Ambition, Love, and Politics, vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 265-266), cites a study by a doctor in the Tarn region. Peasants there had moved into factories or mines but often kept a piece of land on which to grow their food. “Far from reducing their hours of work by going into the mines they now worked much longer because before or after their shift underground, they would carry out about half a peasant’s day of labor on their plots. Friction inevitably arose between them and those who had lost contact with the land, because they, growing a lot of food themselves, could afford to work less. The full proletarianization of these peasants was a slow process.” Zeldin then cites another study carried out in the 1950’s which shows that workers of agricultural origin remained more optimistic about the possibilities of moving up in the world than unskilled workers of urban origin. “They talked politics far less than other workers; they did not see society as ruled by class antagonisms. The very fact that they themselves had escaped from the land showed, as they believed, that individual effort could overcome social obstacles.”

30 Jacqueline Minces, 1973, Les travailleurs étrangers en France. Paris: Editions Seuil, 325, cites the following attitudes: “The national workers only see the migrant workers as strike breakers. In their eyes, they are people who do not need to be defended because they are better off here than at home anyway; because they profit from all the social advantages that France offers; and because they come to eat the bread of the French and to spend French money in their own countries.”

31 Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, 1973, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe. London: Oxford University Press.

32 John H. Goldthorpe et al., 1969, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 12.

33 Henry A. Landsberger, 1974, Rural Protests. London: Macmillan.

34 Neal Acherson, 1976, “Room at the bottom”, New York Review of Books, 23.

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Caroline B. Brettell, «Emigration and its implications for the revolution in Northern Portugal»Etnográfica, número especial | -1, pp-pp.

Referência eletrónica

Caroline B. Brettell, «Emigration and its implications for the revolution in Northern Portugal»Etnográfica [Online], número especial | 2024, posto online no dia 22 abril 2024, consultado o 15 fevereiro 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etnografica/15950; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.15950

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Autor

Caroline B. Brettell

University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emerita, Southern Methodist University
cbrettel@smu.edu

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Apenas o texto pode ser utilizado sob licença CC BY-NC 4.0. Outros elementos (ilustrações, anexos importados) são "Todos os direitos reservados", à exceção de indicação em contrário.

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