Otelo Nuno Romão Saraiva de Carvalho, GCL (; 31 August 1936 – 25 July 2021) was a Portuguese military officer and revolutionary. He was the chief strategist of the 1974 Carnation Revolution, he was a key figure during the Ongoing Revolutionary Process (PREC) and later became accused of being a militant leader.
The Movement of Armed Forces (MFA) started with the Portuguese military serving in Portuguese Guinea including Otelo to gather hundreds of officials. The military coup against the 48 year old dictatorship was being prepared in Lisbon, but the coordinator was deployed to Azores by Estado Novo. Otelo stepped in as chief strategist. From the evening of 24 April 1974 to 26 April, he and his colleagues coordinated the military coup, which gathered strong popular support.
After the Revolution, Otelo assumed an influential role as the head of military defense force COPCON, alongside Portuguese Provisional Governments Prime-minister Vasco Gonçalves and President Francisco da Costa Gomes. His military force supported workers' claims against rural landowners, urban landlords, and employers, in contrast to the previous protection of Estado Novo to the latter. After 25 November 1975, he would be dismissed from his role.
In 1976, as a politician Otelo ran in the first Portuguese presidential election, in which he placed second with the base of his support coming from the far-left. The third would be José Pinheiro de Azevedo, Admiral and former provisional prime-minister, and Octávio Pato, candidate for the Communist Party. The winning candidate would be António Ramalho Eanes, also a military, that would win over Otelo again in December, 1980.
By then, Otelo had founded a new political party to work as an electoral front joining various political organisations in 1980: Força de Unidade Popular (FUP). The signature was filmed by the National Portuguese Television. However, FUP would be accused of being a political front for Forças Populares 25 de Abril and Otelo the leader of everything. He was tried and sentenced at lower courts, but the Constitutional Court reverted the sentence due to unconstitutionality.
To solve the impasse, the Portuguese Parliament voted an amnesty for political crimes in 1996 as there was no perspective of juridical solution in "useful time". Besides this reasoning, the amnesty was promoted by President Mário Soares as a gesture of democratic reconciliation as it erased the political crimes by far left and far right. He was further trialled for the assassinations, but was acquitted in 2001 and 2003.
Thousands of persons paid respect at his funeral in 2021, including the president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the prime-minister António Costa and the president of the parliament Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues. At the time, the parliament highlighted his role in April 1974 as a "liberator of Portugal" given his major role in the preparation of the Carnation Revolution.
Early life Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho was born in Lourenço Marques, Portuguese Mozambique (now Maputo, Mozambique) on 31 August 1936, to a Portuguese father, Eduardo Saraiva de Carvalho, and a Goan mother, Fernanda Aurea Pegado Romao, who was born in Goa, Portuguese India. Named by his theatre-minded parents after Shakespeare's Othello, he completed his secondary education at a state school in Lourenço Marques. His father was a civil servant and his mother a railway clerk. He entered the Military Academy in Lisbon in 1955, at the age of nineteen.Moura, Paulo. Otelo: o Revolucionário. Dom Quixote, 2012.
On 5 November 1960, he married Maria Dina Afonso Alambre with whom he had two daughters and a son.
Otelo spent many years in the colonial wars in Africa. He served in Portuguese Angola from 1961 to 1963 as a second lieutenant, and as a captain from 1965 to 1967. He was posted to Portuguese Guinea in 1970 as a captain, under General António de Spínola, in charge of civilian affairs and the propaganda campaign Hearts and Minds.
In 1970, Otelo attended the funeral of António de Oliveira Salazar, the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. At the funeral, Otelo was seen weeping over the casket of Salazar."Portugal: a Twentieth-Century Interpretation." Portugal: a Twentieth-Century Interpretation, by Tom Gallagher, Manchester University Press, 1983, p. 200.
Carnation Revolution
Otelo joined the underground Movement of Armed Forces (MFA), which carried out a coup d'état in Lisbon on 25 April 1974, in which he played a directing role.
The movement of captains (MFA) started with the Portuguese military serving in Portuguese Guinea, the hardest war scenario in the Portuguese colonial war. Soon, the movement gathered hundreds of officials. The military coup was being prepared against the 48 year old dictatorship, but Vasco Lourenço, one of the coordinators, was deployed to Azores by Estado Novo, hoping to diffuse the plot.
Otelo, also involved from the beginning, stepped in as chief strategist. From the evening of 24 April 1974 to 26 April, he and his colleagues coordinated the military coup from the outskirts of Lisbon, in Pontinha. The military coup gathered strong popular support.Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2004). A Fita do Tempo da Revolução. A noite que mudou Portugal. [S.l.]: Edições Afrontamento.
Ongoing Revolutionary Process (PREC) In July 1974, Otelo was made a brigadier and placed in command of the special military Command for the Continent COPCON, which was set up to secure order in the country and to promote the revolutionary process. In 1975, infighting in the MFA intensified with Otelo representing the left wing of the movement. After the Carnation Revolution, the tension In between communist and noncommunist forces started to increase as MFA was deeply turning left as a consequence of communist party and the extreme left forces were becoming more intervening.
On his attempt to revert President António de Spínola tried to actively intervene appealing to «silent majority» against the political radicalization that was being lived to. On 28 September, He tried to convene a large popular demonstration in Lisbon that aimed to thwart the movement and show to the loss of influence of moderate forces. After the failure of his movement, Spinola resigned, and Costa Gomes was nominee for the role.
However, MFA soldiers and left-wing parties, led by the PCP, blocked access to Lisbon the previous morning, with barricades at various points. The atmosphere was close to civil war and at the end of the day Otelo, then commander of COPCON, announced: "The Armed Forces Movement is in complete control of the situation."
A right-wing putsch attempt, led by António de Spínola, was thwarted by the timely intervention of COPCON in March 1975. Otelo became part of the Council of the Revolution which was created on 14 March 1975. In May 1975 he was temporarily promoted to General and, together with Francisco da Costa Gomes and Vasco Gonçalves, formed the Directório (Directorate).
The prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves decreed "victory over reaction" and the country would live another troubled reddish year. In a memo to American President Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger states that "perhaps the most important lesson from the Portuguese weekend's events is the close coordination between MFA and the Communist Party. Between them their control of the situation was so complete that in all practical respects the country was in their hands" Kissinger wrote to the President.
In July 1975, Otelo visited Cuba with a delegation of Portuguese military officers to meet Fidel Castro. Otelo participated in the Cuban 26 of July celebrations with Castro. During this trip, Castro informed Otelo of his intention to send Cuban troops to Angola to support MPLA. In response, Otelo assured Castro that the Portuguese government would have no objection to the involvement of Cuba there.
The period In between 11 March and 25 November was later called the "Hot Summer of 1975" due to the number of clashes and force measurement between communist and non communists.
Costa Gomes, aligned with the communist party Otelo's success led to his being named the commander of the newly created Continente Operational Command (Comando Operacional do Continente - COPCON) for Lisbon Region. Created in July 1974 by President António Spínola to enforce the MFA program, COPCON brought together soldiers from the various branches of the armed forces and was composed of two divisions: one for Information and the other for operations.
This was a troubled period, with major social and political upheavals, clashes between the military and the emergence of various extreme leftist movements. Otelo told in an interview that, at that time, various social problems began to appear at COPCON, with workers seeing their bosses flee and becoming unemployed, for example. Then they began to receive rural workers who were unhappy with the agrarian reform. All sorts of problems came.
At the head of COPCON, Otelo begins to make controversial decisions. Among these controversial measures are the blank arrest warrants, without the intervention of the judiciary, which Otelo signed and which were later executed by his subordinates, often during the night without the victims even knowing why they were being detained.
In an interview he gave and in response to whether COPCON was concerned about the advance of counter-revolutionary forces, which were assaulting, destroying, burning down the headquarters of left-wing parties, the Communist Party, the MDP, and other left-wing parties, Otelo says a phrase that would also become famous for its controversy: "Look, we are, in fact, very worried. This is growing very fast, and I hope we don't have to put the counter-revolutionaries in Campo Pequeno before they put us there".
On 25 November 1975, an extreme left-wing coup was attempted. Those who took part in the attempt were members of the MFA, the Portuguese Army Commandos, and COPCON. The coup, orchestrated by Otelo, failed to take control of the Portuguese government. Because of this failure, Otelo was imprisoned, COPCON was disbanded, and António Ramalho Eanes rose to power. As punishment for participation in the coup, Otelo was imprisoned for three months.Faye, Jean Pierre. Portugal: the Revolution in the Labyrinth: from the Papers of the Russell Committee for Portugal. Spokesman Books, 1976. pg. 43
1976 presidential campaign and following years
In 1976, Otelo ran unsuccessfully for president against Eanes. Throughout his campaign, Otelo advocated for socialism, national independence, and popular power."Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal = Cenas Da Luta De Classes Em Portugal." New York Cinema Co., 1976. Otelo's support came from the Portuguese working class, specifically in Setúbal and Alentejo. A notable supporter and organizer of Otelo's campaign was Zeca Afonso, a popular Portuguese revolutionary songwriter. Otelo finished second in the election, with 792,760 votes (16.46%) and António Ramalho Eanes was elected president with 61.59%.
Still in the second half of the 70s, Otelo actively participated in the creation of the GDUP (Grupos Dinamizadores de Unidade Popular) popular action groups, similar to what Otelo had seen in Cuba. GDUP grew throughout the country, fueled by Otelo's run for Presidency of the Republic. The majority of members were in favor of armed struggle as a political weapon.