April’s captainVasco Lourenço said today that the Government should be ashamed of creating a “façade” commission for the 25th of November, regretting seeing “friend” Alípio Tomé Pinto at the head of the organization.
At your book launch session “The 25th of November” – Memoirs of an April Captain (Âncora Editora), which took place this afternoon at the headquarters of the Associação 25 de Abril, in Lisbon, Vasco Lourenço insisted on the criticism of the commission created by the Government to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 25th of November, considering it a “clown” and asking the executive to be ashamed of this decision.
“They have the nerve to say that it is an independent, non-partisan commission, but who are they kidding? And, as I say, look in the mirror and be ashamed of the face you see reflected in the mirror. (…) They are not good people”, he said.
Vasco Lourenço also said he could not “look at the Republic Assembly as suitable and responsible” when he appointed “three representatives to this façade commission”.
The April soldier also regretted that his “friend” Alípio Tomé Pinto presides over the organizing committee for the date that marked the end of PREC, revealing that he sent him a message conveying his regret for seeing him involved in this Government initiative.
Vasco Lourenço revealed have been invited to a tribute of the elements of the so-called ‘group of nine’ who are still alive, but who He has already informed the organization that he will not be present.
The colonel stressed that, despite the divisions that followed the Carnation Revolution, the “barrier of the 25th of April” is, for him, “much higher than the barrier of the 25th of November”, and recalled a story with a socialist history Mario Soares to explain your position.
“When we created the 25 de Abril Association, of which he is an honorary member (…), he contested our existence and said to me: ‘but Vasco Lourenço, you on the 25 de Novembro were on one side and the communists on the other and you are now with them in the Association’. And I said to him: ‘Mário, on the 25 de Abril, you were on one side and the fascists were on the other and Have you already formed a government with the party most on the right of the spectrum, one that, theoretically, at least the fascists will be there”, he said.
Before, Vasco Lourenço spoke of what is reported in his work, such as the thesis that Othello Saraiva de Carvalho, in fact, and contrary to what is often said, having been betrayed by the PCP on November 25th.
Captain de Abril also mentioned the idea, which he says still persists among “many communists”, that the party’s former general secretary, Álvaro Cunhal was a traitor on November 25th.
“Even today, there are many people, many communists, calling the then secretary-general a traitor Álvaro Cunhal, the communists themselves call it, because he retreated at a certain pointafter ordering to advance, retreated. And, as I say in the book, Álvaro Cunhal justified himself by saying that ‘Careca got it wrong’. Baldy was Rosa Coutinho. Why? Because they misread the situation, they said they were going to have the marines intervene, they advanced, and then that didn’t happen”, he detailed.
Vasco Lourenço also admitted that he was forced to read other works to write this memoir because “there were theories that had passed him by”, although he had been at the “center of events”.
“For example, the theory of Pires Veloso and Pinheiro de Azevedo who defend, standing together, that the November 25th was a coup led by the PCP through Melo Antunes and Ramalho Eanes. That had never crossed my mind. But what is fact is written in their books”, he explained.
In addition to the author, the historian Maria Inácia Rezola, who heads the Commemorative Commission for the 50th anniversary of the Revolution of April 25, 1974, and Colonel Aniceto Afonso participated in this session.
The events of November 25, 1975, in which antagonistic military forces clashed on the ground, and about which there is no consensual version, marked the end of the so-called Revolutionary Process Underway (PREC).