Word: nola
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first choice of the captains and majors who led the armed forces to head the Junta of National Salvation. After the coup succeeded, he was appointed chief of staff of the armed forces by the new government. When his old friend António de Spínola was ousted as President of the revolutionary government, Costa Gomes was the logical man to take over...
...earned a degree in mathematics from the University of Oporto in 1944, and served two years of NATO duty in Norfolk, Va. He commanded Portuguese forces in Angola from 1970 until 1972 and was armed forces chief of staff until shortly before the coup, when he and Spínola were sacked during the old regime for refusing to sign an oath of allegiance to former Premier Marcello Caetano...
...stockholder and manager of a construction firm. A veteran of the wars in both Mozambique and Angola, he was an early opponent of (and frequent plotter against) the Salazar and Caetano regimes. The leftist ideas he picked up in the military also made him an opponent of Spínola after that conservative general became President. When the M.F.A. decided a year ago that the revolution was not moving fast enough, radical officers readily turned to Gonçalves, who became Premier. He refuses to say whether or not he has ever been a member of the Communist Party...
...tell-u." His power base is COPCON, the 70,000-member military force that after the revolution assumed responsibility for public peace from the discredited Caetano police. His command of COPCON has made Saraiva de Carvalho the fastest rising star in Portugal. Still, he has his detractors. Spínola is reported to have once said that Saraiva de Carvalho "should never have got above sergeant." Many Portuguese regard him as a not-too-bright, womanizing playboy-hence his unflattering sobriquet "O tolo" (the brainless...
Chaotic Takeover. Some accounts from Portugal suggested that Spínola's role was not so passive. Apparently convinced that he could save his country from the chaos and Communist takeover he feared, Spínola reportedly plotted over open telephone lines with ultra-rightists to overthrow the government. Moderate officers, who might conceivably have joined the rebellion, were frightened off by the involvement of members of the old regime and feared that a rightist uprising would end up in a Chilean-style massacre of leftists and plunge the country into civil...