Celeste Caeiro, responsible for giving its name to the Portuguese Revolution of 1974, has died at the age of 91
Often isolated on the other side of the Atlantic, we forget our historical Portuguese roots. As much as we learn about the great navigations, colonial Brazil and our independence, where in fact the history of Brazil and Brazil were two pages from the same book, much of what happened in Portugal after 1822 is ignored by us Brazilians. I could list a series of episodes relevant to Portuguese people from the 19th century to today, but no chapter is as important for Portugal today as .
If in the 20th century we experienced a few decades of civil and democratic rule, the reality of our Portuguese brothers was also very similar. In 1933 we saw the establishment of the Estado Novo in Portugal led by Antônio de Oliveira Salazar, an authoritarian regime with strong influences from Italian fascism, adopting the single-party model and state corporatism.
For 41 uninterrupted years, Portugal remained a rural country, quite behind in the industrial aspect in relation to its European neighbors, but still a nation that had inherited the territory of a great empire, with colonies in and, like Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Macau and East Timor. For four decades, press censorship, the ban on forming political groups, the complete restriction on freedom of expression and strong militarism permeated Portuguese society, which saw many of its compatriots involved in political and social causes being abused and even even killed by state forces.
Portugal maintained its neutrality during World War II. Unlike other colonial powers that got rid of their empires and granted independence to their colonies in the 1950s and 1960s, the Portuguese, despite their nation’s explicit technological backwardness, maintained a vast empire across the planet. Watching all their neighbors become free nations, Angolans, Mozambicans, Cape Verdeans and Guineans, with the help of the protagonists of the Cold War, embarked on a military confrontation against the colonial administration. In this context, since 1961 the Portuguese Colonial War has been fought for more than 13 years, victimizing thousands and bringing enormous internal strain to the Estado Novo government.
Underpaid soldiers, exhausted from fighting in the 20th century for ideals that died in the 19th century, together with civil society tired of having their basic rights curtailed for more than 40 years, began to rebel. On April 25, 1974, the most recent revolution in the great Portuguese history took place, which would put an end to the dictatorship peacefully, a spontaneous, organic movement of civilians and military personnel to establish a liberal democracy in the country, which would also put an end to Portuguese colonialism after almost five centuries. Worldwide, the April 25th Revolution gained a symbol, a color, a shape. Red carnations, which to this day are distributed and placed in decorations in all Portuguese cities in celebrations of the anniversary of the revolution, carry with them an origin as Portuguese as the custard tarts.
Born in the year of the establishment of the Estado Novo in 1933, Celeste Caeiro had humble origins and, at the beginning of her 40s, on an ordinary day at work, she went to the restaurant in the center of Lisbon for another part of a life she had never known. another reality other than that of the Salazar dictatorship. The moment of political turmoil in Portugal brought turmoil to Lisbon’s commerce, causing Celeste’s boss to choose to close his establishment on April 25, 1974. The restaurant was completing a year of operation and the decorative flowers, red carnations, and white ones that would be used to decorate the interior of the venue and give gifts to customers, ended up not being used for this purpose, but for a much greater purpose. Responsible for taking the flowers with her, Celeste decided to give gifts to soldiers and civilians on the streets of the capital in a gesture that would later be immortalized for generations. The carnations went to the lapels of soldiers and civilians, were placed in the barrels of rifles and then became popular as the materialization of a coup d’état, a civic-military revolution, without the shedding of a drop of blood.
From Grândola, a dark village, to Luanda, from the former imperial capital Lisbon to Maputo, Celeste’s carnations represented the search for freedom, the end of a dictatorship, the end of Portuguese colonialism and the beginning of one of the most successful democratic transitions in history. history of our species. On every corner, a friend, on every face, equality. Since April 25th, carnations have been hope for a freer world, a fairer society and a more fraternal relationship between institutions and citizens. On Friday (15), at the age of 91, Celeste Caeiro, the ‘Lady of Carnations’ left us, but her unpretentious gesture of kindness and her carnations will forever be the symbol of our hope in democracy.
*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Jovem Pan.
