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Evading the War: Deserters and Draft Evaders from the Portuguese Army during the Colonial War1 Miguel Cardina2 Abstract
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Resumo
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The question of disobedience in the context of Portugal’s colonial war remains a little known and relatively undiscussed topic. Regarding the subject of desertion in particular, Irene Pimentel called it a “controversial, almost taboo theme in Portugal” (Pimentel 2014b), while Rui Bebiano speaks of its elusive and marginal status in the country’s collective memory (Bebiano 2016). Nonetheless, there has been a renewed interest in recent years, with references to the theme of desertion to be found in a variety of books, articles, reports, and plays written about the opposition to war and about exile.4 Admittedly, in recent times, this inhibition has been challenged by the creation of associative structures dedicated to recovering the memory of desertion and by the promotion of events aimed at discussing its historical relevance.5 But the public echoes of such events have also revealed a sense of unease—widely displayed in comment boxes, blogs, and social media such as Facebook—on the part of social sectors that still see the gestures of disaffection about the war as a morally unacceptable stance and consider the discussion and scrutiny of the theme as irrelevant. The sociopolitical context that has emerged in post-dictatorial Portugal should be taken into account when analyzing the subject of the refusal to take part in the war. First of all, the active participation of members of the military in the process of political change set in motion in Portugal by the events of April 25, 1974—and in the dynamics of the ensuing revolutionary period—led to the development of a rigid view about this question, due to the distinction that was made between a dictatorship bent on waging a war in order to maintain possession and control of the colonies and the military men who fought the war on the ground. Notwithstanding the role played by the military in overthrowing the dictatorship and creating the conditions for bringing the war to an end, the years that followed failed to generate the appropriate climate for addressing two critical dimensions of that event: the violence of war and of its modes of expression, still known about today, but in a somewhat fragmentary fashion, and viewed not so much within the framework of colonial domination as from the viewpoint of the logic of military action-reaction; and the importance of disobedience to the military structure as a gesture that needs to be questioned as both a cause and effect of the weakening of the war’s social legitimacy. On the other hand, the notion of a “patriotic duty” to be honored by young men, even in circumstances of extreme physical and psychological danger, remained a determining factor. Cultural motives linked to honor, pride and masculinity all pointed in the same direction, and they still have currency today when it comes to assessing the various gestures of dissent in relation to the war. In this article, we focus on those types of refusal of the war that involved failing to report for military service or removing oneself from the military altogether. Our analysis centers on the deserters and the draft evaders from the Portuguese army. Some new data is presented on the subject, resulting from recent archival research, and complemented with analytical observations for a better historical contextualization. The Opposition to the Dictatorship and the Theme of Desertion As the main organized force of anti-fascist opposition to the regime, the PCP (Portuguese Communist Party) developed an anti-war discourse as early as 1961 with Avante!, the party’s official newspaper, inciting soldiers to refuse to embark on the ships taking the troops to war and to reject the role of oppressors of the Angolan people.6 In 1965 and 1966, appeals to collective desertion were common, accompanied by a discourse that emphasized the impact of war as highly costly in terms of human lives and national resources.7 But it was not until July 1967 that a Central Committee resolution clarified the party’s official position: Communist militants “must not desert, unless they have to join a collective desertion or are in imminent danger of being arrested as a result of their revolutionary activities.” In short, the party advised its members against deserting individually (see also Cardina 2011: 251-279; Madeira 2013 and Cordeiro 2017)8. During the 1960s, dissent against the war within Portugal remained mostly circumscribed to a few circles of reflection and activism. This anticolonial activism began to make itself felt especially among the more politicized members of the student youth, whether because it was more permeable to such structures as the “Casa de Estudantes do Império” [House of the Students of the Empire] (Castelo and Jerónimo 2017), or because of the haunting specter of conscription. This opposition to the war was made clear in February 1968, with the rally against the Vietnam War held in front of the US Embassy in Lisbon, largely organized by sectors of the emerging far left. On the other hand, the list of demands of the student movement that swept across Coimbra in 1969 still made no explicit mention of the colonial war (Bebiano 2003; Cardina 2010). The political far left, and the Maoist camp in particular, openly advocated desertion as a legitimate political gesture (Cardina 2011).9 Groups like O Comunista / O Grito do Povo [“The Communist / The People’s Outcry”] (which in 1973 merged to form the Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Communist Organization) called for armed desertion at the end of the training period. In this way, refusal of the colonial war could be combined with a knowledge of the use of weapons and related material, deemed essential for starting the revolution.10 Viewing desertion as a “lesser evil,” the PCP(m-l) (Communist Party of Portugal, Marxist-Leninist) believed that the correct move consisted in carrying out “anticolonialist agitprop work among the soldiers who were about to leave for the war.”11 Created in September 1970, the Movement for the Reorganization of the Party of the Proletariat (MRPP) called for the establishment of “centers of anti-colonial resistance aimed at organizing anti-conscription strikes, the sabotage of equipment, collective disobedience and desertion, and permanent anti-war agitation.”12 The recognition of the right of all peoples to self-determination and independence, the denunciation of the war, and the affirmation of the close link between the anti-fascist and anti-colonialist struggles had actually been championed by the National Liberation Patriotic Front (FPLN), a unitary movement that since its inception in late 1962 had brought together communists, socialists of different shades, and delgadistas, old supporters of Humberto Delgado (Martins 2018). The establishment of a FPLN secretariat in newly-independent Algeria was a clear indication that some of the political sectors represented in this organization saw the colonial question as a priority and sought a rapprochement with the nationalist movements of the Portuguese colonies. The young country saw the establishment of an important anti-colonialist, revolutionary platform that included official delegations from the various nationalist movements of the Portuguese colonies (see also Simon 2011). Desertion as an “objective form of active cooperation with the Africans” was first mentioned in the context of solidarity with the anti-colonial struggle.13 Albeit without offering an elaborate theory on the subject, the FPLN press—not only Voz da Liberdade [Voice of Liberty] radio, but also the periodicals and other propaganda printed by it—made insistent calls for resistance against the war. As Passa Palavra [Word of Mouth], the official mouthpiece of the FPLN troops, explained, this included “refusal to participate in military operations, disobedience of criminal orders, and, in certain cases, rebellion.”14 In fact, defectors from the Portuguese Armed Forces had been arriving in the Algerian capital since 1963, some of them handed over to the FPLN by the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) after expressing interest in cooperating with the opposition’s struggle.15 The handing over of prisoners, amidst much publicity, became relatively frequent in the years that followed, with a major role being played by the various liberation movements and with the Algerian Red Crescent serving as mediator. Equally significant was the activism of some small groups of Catholics, who disseminated alternative information about the war. The first issue of Direito à Informação [“Right to Information”], a clandestine newspaper that openly claimed to be against the regime and the colonial war, came out in 1963 (Almeida 2008). In the 18 issues published until its demise in 1969, the war was one of the newspaper’s most discussed topics, with growing prominence being given to the denunciation of the economic and political interests working behind the scenes, colonial violence against the native peoples, and the misinformation provided by the Portuguese authorities. An even greater coverage could be found in the editorial projects Sete Cadernos sobre a Guerra Colonial—Colonialismo e Lutas de Libertação [Seven Booklets on the Colonial War—Colonialism and Liberation Struggles] (issued in 1971) and BAC—Boletim Anti-Colonial [BAC—Anti-Colonial Bulletin] (from 1972 onwards). The same group of activists was behind the organization, in Lisbon, of two vigils for peace that had a powerful impact on national public opinion: one in the church of São Domingos in 1969, the other in the Rato Chapel in 1973. The anti-war propaganda, with its impact on the troops’ morale and on the population at large, made the military authorities uneasy. According to an army document, the growing visibility of the war in the repertoire of student protests after 1969/70, the presence of the theme in the 1969 election campaign, and the activities organized at the end of that year in connection with World Peace Day were unequivocal signs of the “deterioration of the population’s state of mind in metropolitan Portugal.” The mood was “especially noticeable in student and progressive circles,” and had been forged “for political ends by a variety of partisan factions.”16 Months later, Sá Viana Rebelo, the Minister of National Defense and the army, went so far as to accuse the universities of being “veritable centers of subversion.” He regarded the attendance of higher education courses as being the cause of the desertion to Sweden of six non-career lieutenants who had “received the inspiration required to betray the motherland and launch a vile campaign abroad against their country and their comrades in the Army, which they had never truly served” (Cardeira 2016: 109-110). The conditions for the induction of this radicalized influx was another source of concern for the military authorities. Normally, recruits labeled as “activists” by the political police would be directed to the Disciplinary Company in Penamacor, where they would be kept under better control and thus be prevented from politicizing other military units. But the significant rise in the number of young men thus labeled forced a reassessment of that option. In 1970, the Army Minister himself warned the political police about the possible repercussions of sending to Penamacor “31 individuals with a university background, including two medical doctors, one engineer and 12 medical students.”17 The Director-General for Security heeded the warning, admitting that it would “be more prudent and advisable to alter the contents of the information already provided,” and changing the categorization from “activists” to “suspicious characters.” That would make normal induction possible, although the young men would remain subject to “special [surveillance] measures.”18 In the area of culture, a major role was played by what were known as “protest songs”19 and by such cultural structures as the Teatro Operário [Workers’ Theater], a collective of emigrants living in France who used the theater to convey powerful political messages. One of their plays—O Soldado [The Soldier], which first opened in 1972—portrayed with great accuracy the life of a soldier who, after being captured in Angola by the liberation movements, had been sent to France, where he had received assistance from the Deserters’ Committees. There he met a former comrade from training camp who had “deserted with weapons,” and both finally agreed that the war was iniquitous and that it was important to fight it head-on (Costa 1980). The theme of desertion thus became a kind of litmus test for the opposition groups. Contrary to what happened in the case of other conflicts in other latitudes, it had no connection—at least not explicitly—with organized demonstrations in favor of pacifism, but was rather imbued with anticolonial rhetoric or language condemning colonial war as unjust. The political debates on desertion and some of the practices to which they gave rise (such as having spurred a number of desertions or the establishment of Deserter Committees) should not, however, be confused with desertion per se. In fact, the concrete phenomenon of desertion entailed personal choices and personal trajectories that were considerably more pluralistic and multifaceted, marked by specific circumstances that made (or failed to make) those actions possible, and driven by motives that frequently could not be subsumed into what might hastily be perceived as an ideologized gesture.20 The Deserter—Categories and Quantifications The legal-military definition differentiated between deserters, draft evaders, “compelled” and defaulters, each category involving a specific penal framework. In its explanation of the categorization system in peacetime, the Law on Conscription and Military Service identified as a defaulter the person who failed to appear for the military medical inspection, as a draft evader the young man who had been passed fit but who failed to report to the conscription district or the unit to which he had been assigned, and as “compelled” the individual under the age of 45 who failed to present himself for reclassification (or re-inspection).21 In turn, the Code of Military Justice defined as a deserter the serviceman who, having abandoned his post, remained unlawfully absent for more than eight consecutive days.22 In the event of war, the deserter status was significantly extended in order to encompass all the above-mentioned categories—defaulter, draft evader, and compelled—with the tolerance period for unlawful absence while on military duty being reduced to three days.23 Non-compliance with any of the forms described above led to action being taken to capture the offenders, either by the military authorities or by the police forces.24 It was then up to the Military Courts to punish deserters, regardless of whether they had voluntarily surrendered or been captured. As was the case with categorization, punishment by the courts differed in times of peace and in times of war, not to mention the fact that sentences were correlated with the offender’s respective rank, with officers receiving the heaviest punishments.25 It is interesting to note that, although Portugal sustained a substantial war effort between the years 1961 and 1974, compliance with these legal instruments followed peacetime provisions with respect to the period of time after which a serviceman was considered a “deserter.” Up to now, the data available on desertion was very disparate and do not allowed for the formation of a comprehensive picture of this phenomenon. As early as 1977, África. A Vitória Traída [Africa. The Betrayed Victory], written by Generals Luz Cunha, Kaúlza de Arriaga, Bethencourt Rodrigues, and Silvino Silvério Marques, put the number of cases until 1973 at 181. These figures refer to desertions occurring in the colonies and have been extrapolated from a total of 103 desertions reported for the 1961-1969 period. Although this was the official total, it was impossible to arrive at an “exact number” (1977: 78-87). The same figure was given in 1994 by João Paulo Guerra, who mentioned 101 desertions in Angola, 59 in Guinea and 21 in Mozambique (1994: 387). These figures diverge from those mentioned in Resenha Histórico-Militar das Campanhas de África (1961-1974) [Historical-Military Review of the African Campaigns (1961-1974)], a publication of the Army Staff, which put the number of deserters at 227 in 1969 alone, although this figure actually included both continental Portugal and the colonies (1988: I, 247). Both this figure, pertaining to just one year of the war, and the lower figures mentioned by the authors of A Vitória Traída corroborated the notion that this was a “rather exceptional practice” that never really became “a serious concern” for the military leadership, and which ultimately could be regarded as indirect proof that the Portuguese government enjoyed popular consent with regard to the continuation of the war in Africa (1977: 78-87). However, such a reading seems to be belied by the classified documents circulating among the military and police leadership, on which this present analysis is based. The documentation in question makes constant references not only to the figures for desertion and unlawful absenteeism, but also to the frequent efforts to determine the circumstances under which these situations occurred—especially in the event of concerted action or if career personnel were involved—and to monitor very closely the opposition’s pronouncements and activities in relation to this question.26 In addition, a Deserters’ Section was created in 1964 within the Military Police, entrusted with the specific mission of dealing with deserters and draft evaders. The military authorities stressed the effectiveness of this section, as after only 17 months of activity it was already holding a total of 170 deserters and 60 draft evaders in detention.27 Although fragmentary, the collected data indicate that from February 1961 to December 1973 there were 8,639 desertions in the regular army.28 This figure is, however, incomplete, as it fails to consider the navy29 and air force data in an exhaustive manner and does not cover the entire war period in all the territories.30 On the other hand, it basically refers to successful desertions only, which ultimately amounted to actual losses for the Portuguese Armed Forces. In other words, the figure leaves out the failed attempts, i.e. the undoubtedly greater number of deserters who voluntarily surrendered to the military authorities or were soon captured.31 In fact, according to Supintrep data, from 1970 to 1973, the number of actual desertions accounted for between 42 and 51 percent of all unlawful absences recorded. Furthermore, the numbers are dependent on the information provided and gathered by the military authorities.32 Such gaps notwithstanding, the compiled data suggest an overall steady increase in desertions over the 13 years of the war (see Chart 1). While, in the first three years, the number of instances remained below 100, in 1964, they rose to 300. The phenomenon continued to rise in the years 1966-1967, with the number of cases reaching almost 550. The next two years saw another significant increase, with 718 cases in 1968, and 949 in 1969. In 1970, the total number of occurrences remained at about the same level as in 1969, but there was a fresh rise in 1971, with more than 1,000 cases (1,040, to be precise). In 1972, desertions totaled 1,300, and in 1973, they reached 1,405 cases. The total thus established comprises very significant differences, depending on the location under analysis: more than half of the desertions occurred in mainland Portugal and the islands of the Azores and Madeira (4,941 cases), whereas there were 2,257 occurrences in Angola, 1,227 in Mozambique, and 214 in Guinea. With regard to the cases recorded in the African territories, it should also be pointed out that the vast majority involved local contingents of the regular army. This is suggested by data for the years 1971 and 1972 from the Command-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Angola, which placed the number of deserters from the Provincial Conscription at 293 and 428 respectively, while those from the Mainland Conscription serving in the territory did not exceed ninety-eight in 1971 and eighty-five in the following year.33 A similar scenario was to be found in Mozambique, where 106 desertions were reported for local conscription in 1971 as against twelve for Mainland Conscription, and this disproportion continued into the following year, with two hundred cases among the local troops and thirty-four among the “continental” servicemen.34 Finally, it is important to note that the overwhelming majority of deserters were privates and recruits, although, in metropolitan Portugal there was a significant increase, from 1968 onwards, of cases involving officers. The total number of occurrences rose from four to sixteen during that year and remained at about the same level in 1969. There was a new, more significant leap between 1969 and 1970, with that figure rising to thirty, and thereafter remaining stable until 1973. Disobedience as a Problem Although each desertion followed its own unique path, they can still be grouped together into three main types. In the first group, deserters and draft evaders were based in metropolitan Portugal and for their most part headed for (“dão o salto,” “leaped to,” as the expression then went) other parts of Europe, to live there as emigrants. The second, more restricted, group was comprised of Portuguese young men who had deserted from Africa in exceptional situations and under very hostile circumstances. They either surrendered voluntarily to the nationalist movements or fled to the countries bordering the Portuguese colonies where they happened to be stationed. In this case, they would usually be steered towards Algeria, where they then joined the Portuguese community of exiles or awaited transfer to a European destination. The third group was made up of the deserters from local recruitment who formed part of the Portuguese armed forces. They followed a variety of routes, with some returning (sometimes temporarily) to their communities of origin, others fleeing to neighboring countries, and yet others joining the ranks of the liberation movements. Thus, the circumstances of desertion could vary a lot. On metropolitan soil, it tended to occur either during the military leave granted immediately prior to embarkation to one of the various “theaters of operations,” involving young soldiers with no war experience in the colonies, or else when returning home for a leave of absence during a tour of duty. A common expedient used to effect the desertion consisted in requesting permission to leave the country temporarily.35 Besides immediately arousing suspicion on the part of the authorities, this path was not always a viable option, and so the majority of deserters chose to be smuggled out of the country. But this also involved obvious problems, beginning with how difficult it was to have the political connections or the necessary amount of money to make contact with the networks of smugglers—the passadores. Things became even more difficult for those fighting in the colonial spaces, where the surveillance was tightest, local contacts virtually nonexistent, and the terrain particularly adverse. The risk of being shot dead by the enemy (or even by the Portuguese troops) further aggravated the extreme uncertainty that potential deserters already felt about the reaction of the neighboring countries, where they could well be faced with incarceration and a charge of clandestine immigration or, worse still, the prospect of being returned to the Portuguese authorities.36 As the colonial war extended over time, the Portuguese forces underwent a process of “Africanization” (Gomes 2013). At the same time, increasingly urgent warnings were being sent to the military commands, stressing the need to exercise stricter control over the local contingents, accompanied by systematic counter-propaganda programs. One of the recommendations consisted in identifying listeners to radio stations broadcasting from “countries hostile to us” and monitoring their connections and activities,37 since it was imperative “to avoid desertions, whose frequency has increased, and which most of the time result in information of interest being leaked to the En. [Enemy].”38 On the other hand, the act of deserting could take place in very diverse contexts. While, in some cases, a deserter might flee the barracks, at other times, soldiers escaped from prison or a military hospital, for example. In the latter case, it would often happen that wounded soldiers, forced into long periods of internment and painful treatment without adequate psychological support and deprived of any family or social interaction, would extend their leaves or even absent themselves without authorization from the facilities to which they had been committed, thus ending up being considered deserters.39 The fact was that there were different factors in play, deriving from the multifaceted and “infrapolitical” (Scott 2013) clashes with discipline, hierarchy, and military duty, from the pressure caused by war as an extreme experience, from the marks inflicted by vivid episodes of violence, and/or from an anti-war, if not anti-colonialist, stance. It should also be noted that the growing “deterioration of military discipline and morale” was sensed by the military authorities and was considered a cause for concern, particularly when it affected the higher ranks. As early as May 1968, in addition to discussing the desertions per se, a confidential note from the Army Chief of Staff highlighted the requests that had been made to be sent to the reserve, the psychoses and nervous diseases that were to be found among commissioned and non-commissioned officers alike, the apathy of some battalion commanders, and the displays of political dissatisfaction on the part of the career officers. The proposed response focused on “intense psychological warfare,” namely by increasing the amount of time spent in “the metropolis” between tours of duty, offering better transportation for the families who moved to the colonies where the war was being waged, and equalizing salaries in the three “theaters of operations.”40 It is important to bear in mind that the definition of the category “deserter” was instituted by the state-military power and that it did not cover the whole question of disobedience in the context of a war. In order to address this question properly, we must also take into account the number of defaulters (i.e. the young men who failed to present themselves for military inspection) and draft evaders (i.e. those who did submit to the inspection but failed to present themselves at the time of conscription). Thus, leaving the country before being conscripted meant dodging training camp, for otherwise desertion would have to be postponed and carried out under greater surveillance. In fact, many of the young men in metropolitan Portugal who had already made the decision in their own minds not to fight in Africa seem to have taken one of these options. This is further suggested by the total numbers of draft evaders in the years 1967-1969, mentioned in an internal document studying the return to the country of young men who had not fulfilled their obligations with regard to military service (see Table 1). As to the defaulters, (i.e. the young men who failed to present themselves for medical inspection), their number in the “metropolis” rose steadily from 11.6% in 1961, when the war first broke out, to over 20 percent by 1970 (see Table 2).41 These figures allow us to infer that about 200,000 out of one million young men registered for military service failed to report for military inspection. It should be pointed out that the high number of defaulters is mostly related with the Portuguese social formation itself, the dynamics of migration, and the country’s historical difficulties in terms of exercising social control. As a matter of fact, military records tell us that the share of defaulters was 16.6% in 1933, compared with 12.7% in 1940 and 9.8% in 1950, and that these figures rose as a result of the war (Resenha, 1998: 268). Such data differ substantially from those cited by the above-mentioned authors of Africa. A Vitória Traída, who mentioned 40% of defaulters in the years 1958-1960 and 29% in the period 1961-1973 (Cunha et al., 1977: 79-80). With their omission of any sources, the latter claims were part of an effort to legitimize the war in the period immediately after the revolution of April 25, 1974. Based on those figures, the authors stated that: “It should be a source of pride to know that as far as defaulters, “compelled” and draft evaders were concerned (and surely also with regard to deserters from Mainland Portugal, for these situations were statistically tracked), the percentages of the drafted contingent improved during the war years compared to the previous period (…) [indicating] a behavior that was probably unparalleled in the world” (Cunha et al., 1977: 83). The reality was different. It seems beyond dispute that the high number of defaulters is linked to the strong migratory flow that the country was experiencing at that time. These very findings were highlighted in a 1968 study carried out by the army staff. The study detected a broad correspondence between the number of absentees and the fluctuations in emigration by region, with higher percentages in the country’s northeastern region and the islands of the Azores and Madeira.42 The perception of that correlation was surely the reason why an amnesty for the crime of illegal emigration was granted towards the end of that year,43 followed soon afterwards (in February 1969) by an amnesty for the defaulters, “compelled” and draft evaders who presented themselves of their own free will to perform military service.44 However, these measures were insufficient to solve the problem. When the situation was reassessed in the first months of 1971, it was admitted that “the number of defaulters has reached worrying proportions, making it impossible in the short term to foresee its decrease or the return of substantial numbers of migrants with an irregular military status.”45 While there is no clear direct link between the increase in the number of defaulters and the anti-colonial sentiment, it is also true that the rigid distinction between evading the war and emigrating—or, to put it differently, between “political” and “economic” emigration—renders this whole issue harder to understand. Rather than seeing these men as victims, it is possible, as Victor Pereira points out, to interpret the Portuguese emigration of the 1960s and 1970s as part of the resistance strategies developed by the popular classes as subjects seeking to expand their social space (Pereira 2007). In fact, the very gesture of emigrating touched upon a variety of issues, with material sustenance and the search for new opportunities abroad often intersecting with the need to escape other types of constraint. Among those constraints, especially with regard to the lives of young men, was the grim specter of being mobilized to fight in a war thousands of miles away from home, in a situation of great physical and psychological danger. Concluding Remarks The figures on the theme of desertion adduced above result from a comparison and cross-analysis of different accessible archival sources. Taken together, they suggest that, although frequently neglected, the refusal to take part in the war was a significant factor during the period of the colonial conflict, and that it should be interpreted within the context of the difficulties felt by the state and the military in maintaining a consensus about the war, combined with the erosion caused by it. The high number of deserters and draft evaders46 may have several explanations, such as: a) the diminished capacity of the military structures and authorities in controlling the young men who were drafted into the war; b) the pervasiveness of family and community channels and networks within the context of European emigration, facilitating the process of migration and social insertion in these other countries; or c) the growing moral and social exhaustion of a long, drawn-out war waged far from the communities of origin of the Portuguese mobilized to fight in it. However, understanding the refusal to participate in the war is a complex problem. Far from focusing simply on the quantification of deserters and draft evaders, we must make a detailed study of the specific scenarios in which the war took place and the diversity of paths, military categories, contexts, and intentions in play. We still need to compile a comprehensive chart of the disobedience episodes for which there exist military records. In fact, the data thus gathered could also shed important light on the erosion of military discipline, both within the military units sent from metropolitan Portugal and among the locally conscripted soldiers. Our own contribution seeks to chart, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the cases of disaffection that occurred among the Portuguese troops during the colonial war, while assessing their relevance and examining their multidimensional nature.
Appendix
Chart 1: Number of Deserters from the Portuguese Armed Forces, 1961-1973
Table 1: Draft Evaders from the Portuguese Armed Forces, 1967-1969 (Source: PT/AHM/FO/006/J/24 cx. 604, 22 – “Amnistia aos emigrados clandestinos” [Amnesty for Clandestine Emigrants])
Table 2: Defaulters at Portuguese Military Inspection, 1961-1972 (Source: Relatórios Anuais de Recrutamento. Resenha Histórico-Militar das Campanhas de África [Annual Draft Reports. Historical-Military Review of the African Campaigns] (1961-1974), Estado-Maior do Exército [Army Staff], volume 1. Enquadramento Geral. Lisbon, 1988, p. 258.47)
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Notes 1 The present article was written in the context of the following projects: “CROME – Crossed Memories, Politics of Silence. The Colonial-Liberation War in Postcolonial Times,” financed by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (StG-ERC-715593); “ECHOES – Historicizing Memories of the Colonial War,” financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology (IF/00757/2013); “Os desertores: recusar a guerra, combater o colonialismo” [“The deserters: refusing war, fighting colonialism”], financed by the Foundation for Sustainability and Innovation and based at the University of Coimbra’s Center for Social Studies and 25 April Documentation Center; “De Rabat a Argel: caminhos cruzados entre a luta antifascista e a luta anticolonial (1961-1974)” [“From Rabat to Algiers: where the antifascist and the anticolonial struggles cross paths”], financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology (BPD/117494/2016). The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions made by the anonymous reviewers. Translation: João Paulo Moreira.
Received for publication: 04 January 2019
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