UDP historian Mário Tomé today recalled the objectives of those involved in April 25 to guarantee a “fair life” and end the colonial war, lamenting the current pro-armament discourse.
“From the first moment we celebrated April 25, we always thought it would be possible to create real conditions for a fair life, not a fairer life, a fairer life is unfair in life, it’s a fair life,” he told Lusa, after singing the song “Grândola, Vila Morena”, which has become a symbol of the April Revolution, in Lisbon’s Largo do Carmo, together with more than a thousand pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Mário Tomé, also known as Major Tomé, noted, however, that we are currently witnessing “more subtle or more brutal forms, which are being left in the hands of the same old people”.
“So, right now, I think we should all imagine – what is usually called utopia – a future as it should be, in which politics and the economy are in the hands of the workers. That was the essence, not of April 25 – April 25 existed to end the colonial war – but of the popular struggle that took to the streets through the door opened by the military revolution. And that was always the utopia: a new world, a just world, socialism,” he continued.
Speaking to Lusa in front of the Carmo barracks, the scene of the surrender of the last leader of the Estado Novo, Marcello Caetano, to the men commanded by Salgueiro Maia, the soldier who criticized the colonial war in 1972 said that he continues to take to the streets to make himself heard in defense of what he believes in.
“Always on the streets and doing what the streets ask of us, which is to create the conditions so that those who travel through them to work and to live can live decently, in freedom, and prevent the war that is being spread by the same people who have always waged it,” he said.
Mário Tomé also considered that a discourse defending rearmament is currently being followed when it is said that there is “no money for health, education or study”.
“It’s an absolute disgrace,” he concluded.
