interview with a member of the secretar-
¡at of Soldados Unidos Vencerdo (SUV - Soldiers United
Will Win) wos taken in Porto on September 23. INPRECOR. The SUV made its first public appearance during a press conference in Porto. That was the conference that issued the call for the September 10 demonstration. Can you tell us how the SUV originated? SUV. The SUV emerged in the northern military region for reasons that are peculiar to this area. In the North it was quite clear who the enemy was; the rise of reacfion was obvious. That enabled us to develop unity of action in the barracks as a response to the reactionaries. Thus, in the beginning, unity in action was established among the militants of the Portuguese Communist party, the for-left (that is, the MES, FSP, PRP-BR, LCI, and LUAR), and the UDP.* The first steps in this movement go back to mid-July, when the political-military crisis broke out full force. Some soldiers, sergeants, and militia officers began to get together to organize exchange of information about the growing counterrevolutionary activity of the officers among various units in the North. Essentially, these officers were trying to get the soldiers and militia officers who had distinguished themselves in struggle thrown out of the barracks. This purge, for which the reactionary officers were not even bothering to look for disciplinary pretexts, was directed against what they called "partisan and divisive elements, which means revolutionary militants. This is what happened, for example, in the CICA (Instruction Center for Vehicle Drivers), the RIP (Infantry Regiment of Porto), and the CIOE (Instruction Center for Special Operations) in Lamego. When this offensive broke out, it become clear that the soldiers were not organized to oppose it. * MES: Movimento Esquerdo Socialista - Left Socialist Movement; FSP: Frente Socialista Popular - Popular Socialist Front; PRP-BR: Partido Revolucionário do Proletoriado-Brigadas Revolucionárias — Revolutionary party of the Proletariat-Revolutionary Brigades; LCI: Liga Comunista Internacionalista — Internationalist Communist League, Portuguese sympathizing organization of the Fourth International; LUAR: Liga de União e Acção Revolucionária - League of Revolutionary Union and Action; UDP: União Democrático Popular - Popular Democratic Union. 18
The first initiative was to draw up a complete list of all the instances of repression in order to work out how to respond. Brigadier General Corvacho became the target of the right. He was the commander of the northern military region. The right accused him of being a communist. In fact, he had supported the organs of "popular power" more consistently than most of the lefrist officers in the MFA (Armed Forces Movement). For example, he had protected the Porto Municipal Council, which in reality is an organ of control of the Administrative Commission (the mayoralty). It is composed of representatives of the workers commissions, tenants commissions, trade-union representatives, and delegates of the ADUs (Assemblies of Unit Delegates in the army). In addition, Corvacho had set up a vigilance apparatus within the army that was linked to the workers commissions and tenants commissions; its task was to struggle against the fascist commandos of the ELP and MDLP, which are rather active in the North. (The ELP, Portuguese Liberation Army, and MDLP, Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal, led by Spínola, are rightist paramilitary outfits - INPRECOR.) Thus, by taking aim at Corvacho the reactionaries were actually taking aim at the autonomous popular organs and the struggles of the soldiers. They understood that the presence of Corvacho made this task more difficult. The coordinating body that we set up enabled us to gather information; we thus became totally convinced that reaction had set up a real parallel command center, which included secret meetings of career officers. We found out that in the course of one of these meetings (in which almost all the officers of the region had participated) it had been decided to remove Corvacho from the military region; this had been decided by a majority of around 80 percent. The career officers presented this decision as coming from all the units of the North. To show their opposition to Corvacho and put pressure on the general staff they decided to confine seven northern units to barracks while Corvacho was in Lisbon to participate in the Council of the Revolution. Now, according to the rules,
such an order cannot be given except by the commander of the military region, that is, by Corvacho himself. We immediately reacted against their claim to be speaking in the name of the military region when 95 percent of the forces of the region (soldiers, militia officers, and sergeants! had not been consulted in any way.and for good reason! Also, we were aware that the order consigning troops to barracks could have led to confrontations for which the soldiers would have borne the costs. Because of all this, we had to organize on a higher level. We had no intention of serving as cannon fodder in settling dissension among cliques of officers, the partisans and stakes of which had been hidden from us. We rejected the idea of the officers speaking in the name of the military region without having gone before the unit general assemblies or a general assembly of the military region, which is the only body that could have expressed the position of the military region and made decisions. It was around this theme that the first SUV leaflet appeared. We emphasized the fact that one of the objectives of reaction was to establish discipline in the army by concentrating its offensive in the North, which it considered as a solid base. You have to remember that along with the purge measures a reactionary wave was also developing; it was getting social support from various layers of the petty bourgeoisie, the small-holding peasantry among others. These fascist affacks were hitting the CP, the revolutionary organizations, the trode unions, and the organs of "popular power" too. In Braga, for instance, the foscists attacked the peoples' market, which is where the self-managed factories sell their products. In other words, reaction was developing a real strategy on a regional scale. The reactionaries were totally determined to reintroduce iron discipline in the barracks in order to be able to more easily use the soldiers against the workers and even against their own organizations. INPRECOR. How did the soldiers react to this fascist wave during the summer?
SUV. At the time, the reaction of various units was far from positive. For example, the soldiers of the RIB
(Infantry Regiment of Braga), who the fascists were inciting by telling them that the communists wanted to confiscate the peasants" land, marched behind the fascist ringleaders, sacked the headquarters of the CP, and even attacked some CP militants. I want to stress that on the one hand the recruitment of troops for this was done on a regional basis (that is, most of the soldiers are sons of the peasants in the region) and on the other hand at that time the training of the soldiers, including of the militia officers, was strongly reactionary in character.
The Braga barracks of the RIB was commanded by an officer who stood at the heart of the reactionary conspiracy against Corvacho. His name was Colonel Soures.
the soldiers coming from the northern peasantry have no tradition of struggle, unlike the peasants of the Alentejo. Finally, after April 25, 1974, the lot of the peasants and their families hardly improved and even got worse in some cases. Nevertheless, many of these soldiers participated in the September 10 SUV demonstration in Porto. INPRECOR. How do you explain this change? I can understand how the most radicalized and politicized soldiers immediately took up the struggle against reoction, but how can you explain the rapid radicalization of these nonpoliticized soldiers who are strongly influenced by reaction, like the soldiers at Braga for example? SUV. Since April of last year the soldiers have made their gains in a very uneven way. These gains have been made practically on a barracks-by-barracks basis. In some barracks, for example, where the soldiers are proletarian in composition and have a tradition of struggle and organization linked to the workers moverent, things went pretty for toward a real transformation of the internal life of the barracks. Especially in Lisbon the soldiers were even able to impose their own forms of organization. But that sort of development is still strongly limited. In the North and in the interior of the country there has been no substantial change in most of the barracks since April 1974; sometimes there has been no change or all! Braga represents one of these types of barracks. The differences among various barracks are enormous. At first, the SUV was linked to the initiative of vanguard elements who were often militants of the revolutionary organizations and did not have on immediate mass influence. The radicalization fook place on the basis of the soidiers' need to respond to the oppression resulting from militarist discipline and from a hierarchical system inherited from fascism, as well as the miserable material living conditions. The SUV became established as a mass organization because of its ability to express these aspirations in terms of concrete demands and to link them to the struggle against reaction.
Up to the beginning of 1975 it was the workers commissions and the tenants commissions that held the initiafive in struggles. In a certain sense, the soldiers were lagging behind. In large part that was due to the misleading prestige of the MFA. This wos expressed, among other ways, in the myth that "all of us, MFA officers and soldiers, are revolutionaries and have to respect discipline, for that is our strength." This prestige was an obstacle to the movement of the soldiers in favor of their own demands.
But the soldiers began to get tired of this "revolutionary"
phraseology, which wos preventing them from develop-
PORTUGAL ing their own instruments for advancing demands, and expressing themselves within the army, and from putting forward their own positions on the main political quesfions on the agendo. Thus, demands came up around pay increases and free transport. In fact, for many soldiers a single trip to see their family was enough to almost completely wipe out their pay. Also, demands were raised about the quality of the food, the differences between the food eaten by the soldiers, noncoms, and officers. On the basis of such demands, the struggle and the methods of combat of the workers were able to penetrate the army, taking advantage of the generolized crisis of authority. The officers then began talking about "agitaffon" in the army. This type of radicalization set the stage for challenging the MFA - and that was essential. INPRECOR. Why. and how did this break with the MFA take place? SUV. When we soldiers raised demands, we found ourselves running up against the officers, some of whom were members of the MFA. These officers were not only frequently applying militarist discipline; they were also proving to be incapable of satisfying our demands. This resulted in the soldiers in uniform toking some distance from the MEA; this was not felt so clearly by the civilian workers, who had moved into struggle earlier on.
All this made our task easier and increased our audience among broad layers of soldiers in the region (in the
North). This distrust was also built up around the theme:
"We have been wronged; the officers are speaking in our name, but we were never consulted." This was important in denouncing the attempts of the right to Use the soldiers against the workers and against other soldiers. These explonations were combined with propoganda about the need to respond to the conspiracies of reaction.
INPRECOR. You have talked about the basis for the creation of the SUV. But how was the threshold crossed from a sort of coordinating body of militants exchanging information to a real mass movement?
SUV. We quickly noticed that the soldiers were sensitive to the themes we were roising. But we did not offer any organizational guarantee assuring them that our movement could really take up these demands and defend them agoinst the hierarchy. It was therefore necessary to work out some way to express this latent combativity, something that would give the soldiers confidence in their own strength and their own capacity for selforganization.
30
A central demonstration in Porto capable of tapping all the forces of the military region seemed to be the most effective way to do this. We organized the demonstrotion over a two-week period. The call for the demonstration was not restricted to the barracks. We directly oddressed the independent organizations of the workers, calling on them to support our movement. The response we got from these organizations indicated how much they had been hoping for this kind of initiative. They were waiting for a response to the reactionary danger, which they saw was coming closer and closer, apparently without any opposition. A certain fear began to spread among the workers. The September 10 demonstration in Porto altered this atmosphere, and the soldiers would no longer act as they had in You have to understand that in two months, after June, the atmosphere in the North changed very fast, Whereas previously the members of the PPD (Partido Popular Democrático - Popular Democratic party, the largest bourgeois party in Portugal - INPRECOR) and especially of the CDS (Centro Democrático Social - Democratic Social Center, a rightist party - INPRECOR) had found it difficult to publicly demonstrate their political adherence to reaction, in August they were promenoding through the streets of Porto openly wearing the insignia of their parties. In order to hang up their posters, the militants of the workers parties had to organize to defend themselves agoinst attocks by rightist goons, literature stands of the CP and the MDP (Movimento Democrático Popular - Popular Democratic Movement - INPRECOR) were burned in Delgado Square, and provocateurs were trying to prevent sales of newspapers in the city itself.
The response of the soldiers has broken this reactionary offensive, at least for the moment.
After our press conference on September 7, the workers commissions naively went to the general headquarters and said, "We heard the SUV appeal on the radio and we've come to support the demonstration and to find out what we can do to help prepare it." They were going to say that to reactionary officers!
INPRECOR. Had you planned on getting such a massive response from both the soldiers and the workers?
SUV. It was the biggest demonstration in Porto since the first of May 1974. The response went considerably beyond what we had hoped for. There were around
30,000 workers; mony people thought it was even more than that. There were about 1,500 soldiers, That made it the largest demonstration of soldiers in all Portugal.
Seventy-one soldiers came from Coimbra. About thirty soldiers came from Braga, even though we had not carried out any propaganda activity in the barracks there because of organizational weaknesses. These soldiers come fifty miles to attend the demonstration; they left at-5:30 p.m. after they were off duty, even though they
had been ordered to return to the barracks before 10:30 that night. That was one of the greatest victories of the demonstration. Delegations came from all the barracks within a fifty- or sixty-mile rodius of Porto; sometimes they requisitioned military vehicles for transportation to the demonstration. (That happened in Lamego, for instance, fifty miles from Porto.) Mandated delegations from Lisbon came to support us from the RALIS (the Lisbon light artillery regiment), from the military police, and from the BRT (Research and Transmission Brigade). The demonstration did not have simply a regional impact; it affected the whole national situation. Confidence among the soldiers grew rapidly after the demonstration. They came from all barracks to make contact with us and discuss the problems of organizing a SUV in their own barracks. We then moved to set up a real mass organization capable of organizing the soldiers in the barracks and enabling us to coordinate and distribute material there. Obviously, this is only the beginning. Our weaknesses ore still great and the hierarchy is already moving against us, as could have been expected. INPRECOR. What were the consequences of the demonstration in the barracks? SUV. At the CICA 1 in Porto, where we had been unable to respond to the purge measures only a few weeks before and where the officers were very reactionary, there was a really beautiful demonstration in support of the Chilean workers on September 11. At 1:45 in the afternoon 300 soldiers and draftees went to get some arms from the arsenal and assembled in the courtyard of the barracks with these arms, without authorization. They formed up in ranks and held a moment of silence in honor of the Chilean workers, and then they shouted, "Long live the Chilean workers!" The commander then ran up, accompanied by his officers. One of them shouted to the soldiers, "You are now going to go on maneuvers." Then, all together, the soldiers took up one of the slogans of the demonstrations: "Reactionaries out of the barracks!" In the general headquarters of Porto there were three separate mess halls, one for soldiers, one for noncoms, and one for officers. Three days after the Porto demonstration, some soldier calmly walked in and sat down to eat in the officer' mess. The next day all the soldiers occupied the officers' mess. Since that day there has been a struggle to eliminate the separate mess halls and unify them. The reactionary officers were strenuously opposed to this, just as they are opposed to common living quarters. These reactionaries are unable to think up any argument to support this attitude; it was the officers that call themselves leftists who provided the arguments, which said: "These officers must not be shunted to the sidelines; that is very dangerous. We need good tactics. We have to give up these demands, otherwise you're going to definitively push these officers into the camp of reaction."
INPRECOR. How do the structures that have been set up by the MFA, like the ADUs (Assemblies of Unit Delegates), relate to the "soldiers commissions" that the SUM is seeking to set up and stimulate? SUV. The ADU is a body of representation that exists in all the barracks; it's compulsory. This body is composed as follows: 50 percent rank-and-file soldiers, the other half noncoms, militia officers, and professional noncoms and officers. The presence of the commander is compulsory. Inasmuch as these bodies ure composed 50 percent of soldiers, and inasmuch as it is often the most combative soldiers who occupy these posts (in most. cases, they are not elected), the ADUs are a thorn in the side of the officers. They throw the hierarchical system out of balance. Because of this, we are working within the ADUs. We fight within them for pushing forward the demands of the soldiers, and through this experience we are able to make the soldiers understand that these ADUs cannot fully carry out the task of defending the soldiers. Many political currents had big illusions about the possibilities of the ADUs. Today the emergence of the SUV marks a widely understood break with this type of organ, the SUV is struggling for the formation of independent "soldiers commissions, "to use the term used by the workers in the factories and neighborhoods. These commissions must represent the will of the soldiers as expressed in general assemblies; they must be elected and recallable. In Lisbon the links between the soldiers and the workers commissions and tenants commissions had been established, and are still maintained, through the vehicle of the ADUs. There is some ambiguity to this. But because of the combativity of the workers and the very deep crisis of the hierarchy in this region, the linkup between the independent organs of the workers and the ADU nevertheless goes beyond the project of the MFA. In the rest of the country, on the other hand, the ADUs have tended to become instruments for reestablishing discipline. For example, the officers have sought to get the ADUs to take disciplinary measures and they are becoming disciplinary councils. Hence, under these circumstances, they can become channels through which to integrate the workers commissions, tenants commissions, and popular assemblies, in counterposition to the independence of these bodies. If is thus very important to struggle for the creation of real independent bodies of the soldiers. INPRECOR. But don't you risk driving away a layer of officers who have already demonstrated their solidarity with the soldiers? Do you think you can actually win these officers to your project? SUV. Practice has already proven that by appearing as a clear alternative to the hesitations and concessions of the MFA the SUV can convince a not insignificant number of officers to come over to the side of the sol-
PORTUGAL diers and workers. To reach this goal we emphasize the rejection by the officers of any measures of repression against the soldiers and the affirmation that the struggle against reaction can only be the work of the soldiers and workers united. To the extent that the officers respond to these criteria in practice, they offer sufficient assurances to be integrated into our actions, we believe. Dozens of officers have already joined us. INPRECOR. The sixth government has openly asserted its will to restore discipline in the army. What measures are being taken against you? SUV. When the first SUV leaflet came out, an order was given by the chief of staff, General Fabião, calling for the seeking out and compiling of list of SUV "agitators." After the demonstration, a similar message, addressed to all unit commenders, called for the listing of all the participants in the Porto demonstration. Lists are already circulating in the barracks - lists of potenriol "ringleaders." In face of the development of the SUV, and especially the creation of a SUV in Lisbon, the Council of the Revalution immediately put the question of the SUV and the crisis in the army on its agenda. The Council of the Revolution has already indicated what its line of attack will be: The SUV divides the army and serves reaction. We know, for example, that the intelligence branch of the general staff in the North has just made investigation of SUV members its top priority. Investigation of members of the ELP and of their links with the
CDS has been dropped to second priority.
In Mafra two comrades were imprisoned because the of-
Ficers had found SUV leaflets in their footlockers. They were sent to the Trafaria fort near Lisbon. We have already organized a response to free them. That very morning the soldiers of the Mafra Infantry School assembled in the courtyard of the barracks. There was a real pitched battle between the soldiers and the officers, among them the commander, who tried to prevent the soldiers from demonstrating for the release of their two comrades, a sergeant and a soldier. (The SUV demonstration in Lisbon on September 25, just two days ofter this demonstration in Mafra, liberated the two imprisoned soldiers. The September 25 demonstration was attended by 40, 000 people, who marched behind 4, 000 soldiers in uniform - INPRECOR.) Even though the
SUV is a very recent creation, the strength of the response expresses both the soldiers' sensitivity to the demands that have been advanced and their will to defend the SUV. For example, the soldiers of the Coimbra
Center came to the North to get leaflets in order to organize the defense of our two comrades. Identical inifiatives were taken in a whole series of barracks where we didn't have any contacts.
At the general headquarters in Porto the SUV has already begun to respond to the accusation that it is divisive.
We have demanded that a general assembly be held
22 around the essential point: "Why are they drawing up lists of the SUV?" The answer is given in the SUV leaflet that is now being distributed: "They are drawing up lists of the SUV because it is a 'partisan' organization. But the officers are allowed to express themselves endlessly; they can organize, as has been proven in the North. If no accusations are made against them, it is simply because they are members of the top brass. We also demand the right to organize, as workers in uniform." INPRECOR. One of the slogans in the call for the SUV demonstration in Lisbon on September 25 is: "Workers and soldiers, popular self-defense!" Why? SUV. The government wants to restore discipline in the army at any price, because it is already thinking of using the army against the workers so as to restore order in society as a whole and stabilize capitalism. We tell the soldiers that our own organization, the response that we can organize against the government's policy of reestablishing discipline in the army, is possible only if the workers are also capable of resisting on the military level. Our propaganda around seif-defense puts the stress on the central role of the workers commissions and tenonts commissions and their linkup with the soldiers. This task of self-defense is one of the most pressing questions.
INPRECOR. What are your immediate plans?
SUV. For the immediate future the main thing is to set up a national structure for our movement. The Lisbon press conference of September 21 and the demonstration of September 25 should enable us to make this leap forward. Everything suggests that the Lisbon demonstration will be even bigger than the Porto demonstration.
If the SUV emerged first in the North, the reason for that is simple: The need to struggle against reaction was felt more directly in the North. The development of the SUV in the South will allow us to raise the level of the demands, to clarify our overall political positions on the question of a confrontation with the regime, and to utilize and generalize the very advanced experiences of struggle in the barracks of the Lisbon region.
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