Word: spinola
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
From the balmy streets of the Mozambique capital of Lourenço Marques on the Indian Ocean to the jungles of Guinea-Bissau on the Atlantic to the porticoed halls of Lisbon's presidential palace, the news announced last week by Portuguese President Antonio de Spinola was for the most part greeted with shouts and demonstrations...
Magical Transformations. Thousands of ecstatic blacks danced through the streets of Mozambique, shouting "Viva Spinola! Viva Spinola!" Out in the bush, where there had been bitter fighting only days before, guerrillas and Portuguese soldiers laid down their arms and shook hands in a spontaneous ceasefire. In the northern province of Tete, a stronghold of the Mozambique Liberation Front [Frelimo] and scene of the war's worst civilian massacres, hatred seemed magically transformed into brotherhood. A rebel leader high on Portugal's "wanted" list exhorted a throng of blacks and whites "to live in harmony." Frelimo guerrillas were feted...
...everyone was cheering. Even as Spinola was announcing Lisbon's new policy, the liner Infante Dom Henrique pulled out of Lourengo Marques with 1,100 tearful whites and their personal possessions. Airlines flying from Mozambique to Portugal were reported booked up until October. Those who have fled, either because they feared the uncertainties of the months ahead or retribution from a new black government, still represent less than 1% of the white population. But to many onlookers, the sailing of the Dom Henrique seemed a historic Portuguese retreat. Observed Joaquim Peres, a white businessman who will stay...
...provisional government set up after the coup and a minister in charge of Portugal's overseas colonies, as reported in The New York Times of May 23, conceded that "there is no doubt that the majority of the people of Mozambique will choose independence." At that time the Spinola junta was smarting under the illusion that plebiscites could decide the issue of independence; but when African nationalists asserted that the quest for independence was irreversible, Portuguese pretensions were exposed. In Mozambique FRELIMO demonstrated its military prowess by launching the Tete offensive, which paralyzed several railway networks and enhanced its prestige...
...Angola have, through the urgings of the Organization of African Unity, recently agreed to band together to fight for their independence. All in all the story of African resistance against Portuguese colonialism reveals remarkable indigenous initiative throughout the period of belligerency. To attribute the looming African victory to Spinola's reflections in his book ("Portugal and the Future") is to suggest that effects are more important than, or even unrelated to, causes. Surely Portugal's inability to dislodge African liberation movements is more significant than Spinola's admission of that fact! If Spinola's book does achieve a measure...