My parents grew up under a repressive regime that valued OBEDIENCE to authority above all. And Antonio Salazar [left] was the Grand Patriarch, the ultimate AUTHORITY. His right-wing state effectively kept Portugal out of the Modern Age.
Approximately 90% of the population was illiterate. My parents were the first generation in our family to go to public schools. My paternal grandmother was illiterate. And my father's siblings, who hadn't finished primary school, were functionally illiterate as young adults.
Jeronimo Vazao: family scholar
My dad was the family scholar. He completed the fourth grade. And he continued his education by joining the Army. My father got teased for his "intellectualism."
"My first year in school," my dad tells me. "The teacher asked us questions. And I answered them. After school, the boys were waiting for me. They beat me up. I learned not to answer questions."
But there were consequences. "If you didn't know an answer, the teacher would smack you with a ruler. But the boys hit harder," says Father. So he learned the Art of Silence.
Church & State, Yes. Civil Liberties, No.
The STATE was allied with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. What Portuguese Catholic bishops said, effectively, became the law of the land. As long as priests remained obedient to Salazar. See how Portuguese rural life paralleled life in the Middle Ages?
Life under a police state, sanctioned by the moral authority of the Catholic Church, was the only political reality my parents had ever known. That is, before we came to America.
I don't take American Civil Liberties for granted. I grew up watching and learning re: What Happens to People schooled in Repression.
My dad was a bit of a rebel, intellectually, if not openly. In the 1960s, he used a short-wave radio to pick up a Communist radio station that broadcast from abroad.
Says my father, "It was the only way to find out what was really happening in the country."
wikicommons: Symbol of PIDE, Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, the International Police for the Defense of the State. They were rumored to have secret informants in even the smallest villages.
There was no freedom of the press. Or freedom of assembly. The "press" would never announce where Salazar was scheduled to appear. They feared protesters, says my Dad. The News only reported where Salazar had been, and how "welcomed" he was by the Portuguese people.
Mother: Someone is Always Watching
My mother's case, however, is different. She fears the secret police. Even today. And has a generalized fear of neighbors, who could report you to the authorities. THEY would come and get you at night. And, if you didn't have well-connected patrons, you would, quite simply, disappear.
When I was a teenager, my political activism, as minor as it was, terrified my mother. Even today, she acts as though Someone is Always Watching You.
"Life is theater," she says, "and you have to be seen doing the right thing."
My take: you have to act as though you are "right in the head." And, how do people know whether you are thinking the right things, if you don't say the right things? Old cultural beliefs die hard.
Love it! What's next?
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