“The 25th of April resulted more from the need to end the war and decolonize than from a desire to democratize the country,” stated Luís Reis Torgal today in a statement to the Lusa agency.
The author of the book ‘Four Characters in Search of April,’ which is set to be presented in Coimbra and Lisbon on April 8 and 10, respectively, served as a military officer in Guinea-Bissau between 1968 and 1969, during a period when António de Spínola succeeded Arnaldo Schulz as the governor of the former colony.
Recalling that Guinea “practically had no colonization,” he highlighted the “total war” occurring in the territory between the guerrillas of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and the Portuguese troops, noting that during those years, Bissau, the capital, “was a militarized city.”
“Guinea, with about 30 ethnic groups, was not a wealthy territory. There was no effective and deep colonization as in Angola, for example,” he remarked.
Particularly in Guinea, “that war was completely lost,” emphasized Luís Reis Torgal, aged 83.
“We were almost afraid to speak openly with senior officers,” he recalled, noting his close relationship with then-Major Carlos Fabião, later a member of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), which spearheaded the April 25 coup.
The need to end the colonial war on the three fronts of Angola, Guinea, and Mozambique and to promote decolonization was a frequent topic in his conversations with the future member of the Revolutionary Council.
“Fabião was my direct superior in Guinea and [also through him] by 1973 I realized some movement was underway to overthrow the regime,” he mentioned.
In ‘Four Characters in Search of April’, Reis Torgal wrote about writer Luís Sttau Monteiro, educator Joaquim Santos Simões, theologian Mário Oliveira, also known as Padre da Lixa, and Colonel Carlos Fabião.
“They are personalities sometimes forgotten or only episodically remembered, as they accompanied the victory of April but were also, in different ways in each case, defeated, by the principles they assumed, their character and temperament, circumstances and time,” he explained in the book.
He further emphasized that “Guinea was the starting point of everything” in the genesis of the MFA and the April 25 revolution and that Portugal persisted “in a lost war, there is no doubt.”
At the time, holding a degree in History from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra, from which he is now retired as a professor, the researcher served as a transmissions officer in the battalion based in Mansoa, communicating daily with other units of the Portuguese Army in the territory.
Five years before the PAIGC’s unilateral declaration of independence for Guinea-Bissau in 1973, he foresaw that “there was nothing to be done” and that it was necessary to end the war with Africa’s liberation movements.
“With a truly sentimental aspect, I owed this book to myself as well, I don’t want to explain anything about April 25. I wanted to refer mostly to people who told me something,” he declared.
In Mansoa, Carlos Fabião regularly mingled with other military personnel, which was rare among officers.
“We sang Zeca Afonso and Adriano, and he always said: ‘I am not here,'” recalled Luís Reis Torgal.
In the Municipal Cultural House of Coimbra on the 8th and at the headquarters of the 25th of April Association in Lisbon on the 10th, both at 6:00 p.m., the book, published by Temas e Debates, will be presented by historian Maria Inácia Rezola, executive commissioner of the Structure of Mission for the Celebrations of the 50th Anniversary of the Carnation Revolution.
