When Glória do Ribatejo was central on the US-Portugal axis
Imagine a Ribatejo almost without roads and still without the Vila de Franca de Xira bridge, in which all the transport of people and goods was done on barges down the Tagus, up the Tagus, or on ox carts. A Ribatejo so poor and so lacking in everything (electricity, sanitation, medical care…) that it would become the cradle of Portuguese neo-realism, inspiring authors such as Soeiro Pereira Gomes and Alves Redol. The latter, from Vila Franca, would move for a few months to Glória do Ribatejo, dedicating an ethnographic study to it, full of reflection on the way in which the Glorians each day overcame the oblivion to which they were voted by the central power. An oblivion in such a persistent way that, more than 15 years and a world war after the publication of the book by Redol (Glória, a village of Ribatejo – An ethnographic essay), the emissaries of the American government, in search of a place to the north for such a singular undertaking, could hardly have been in Europe, just 80 km from Lisbon.
And yet, it would be precisely in this close and yet remote place that RARET would be installed, which from the Glória do Ribatejo Broadcasting Center would relay to the countries of the so-called “Iron Curtain” classification as from Radio Free Europe, sponsored by the National Committee Free Europe, founded in the United States in 1949, with funding from the CIA and funds raised by the so-called Freedom Crusade. Objective: to spread anti-communist propaganda and to carry out what, in a war environment, cold or not, is called “psychological action”. Against all odds, Americans stayed in Glory in the 1990s, but most Portuguese (including, as will be seen later, specialists in Contemporary History) would only be alerted to the real dimension of RARET at the end of last year. , premiered on Netflix the Portuguese series Glory.
By chance, at the same time that the screenwriter Pedro Lopes wrote his story at ISCTE, a master’s student, Vitor Madaíl Herdeiro, surprised the professors with a proposal for a dissertation centered on RARET. “We knew it had existed”, says Luís Nuno Rodrigues, professor of History and director of the Center for Studies, “but the truth is that, in most international studies (and there are many) on Portugal’s role in the Cold War or on diplomatic relations with the United States in this period, there is only one of the two on a RARET. On the other hand, there is a lot of bibliography on the establishment of the Americans in the Lajes Base or on the integration of Portugal in the Marshall Plan in support to the configuration of European countries after the Second World War.” It was, therefore, with surprise and I confess the skepticism that both Luís Nuno Rodrigues and the author’s master’s supervisor, Ana Mónica Fonseca, received this proposal. “The topic may be interesting but do you have documentation to support the thesis?” I saw the Heir apparent and located.
“I joined the Air Force in 1989 and was lucky enough to be integrated into the NATO command that was stationed in Oeiras and it was some American comrades who, for the first time, told me about RARET, which for me was a complete novelty. . One day they took me there for lunch and I was very impressed with the scale of it all.”
He had become aware of RARET when it was still working, at the end of the 80’s, as he tells us: Who, for the first time, told me about RARET, which for me was a complete novelty. One day he took me there for lunch and he was very impressed with the scale of it all. It would be years later, when he went to ISCTE to do his degree in History and after his Master’s, that the theme would come back to mind. “I was very interested in Cold War issues, in Portuguese-American relations, but, in fact, when reading about the topic [autores como António Telo, Luís Nunes, Fátima Rollo, Moreira de Sá, etc] Aspects extensively studied, with the exception of RARET. Then, when I went to the internet to see what there was, I just found blogs of people who had worked there, which would be precious because it gave me a lot of tips about the existence of Portuguese and North American sources.” Namely: the Carlos Ribeiro Fund, from Fundação Portuguesa das Comunicações, the Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the period 1974-75, Torre do Tombo (including some elements of Salazar’s diaries) or the Library and Archives of the Hoover Institution. held in Lisbon by Sig Mickelson to various figures from RARET, starting with its vice-president, a key figure in this whole “plot” à la John Le Carré, Gregory Thomas. “Placed in Lisbon as attaché at the Embassy (which, in fact, it was a disguise), got an interview with Salazar thanks to the intermediation of the banker Ricardo Espírito Santo, a man of the utmost confidence of the Chairman of the Board”, says Vítor Herdeiro.
For the screenwriter Gloryhis personal memories (not of his military service but of his family) were his first sources for the history of RARET, as, incidentally, he did not write any preface to this book: “My maternal family also worked at Emissora Nacional, ques corridors, assist a program reduction, concerts by orchestras that were recorded for Antena 2, sitting in a corner of the studio on the old Rua do Quelhas, now in a condominium. to Portugal in Bicycle. its many stories the germ of what would become the series Glorywhich is a fictional work, but anchored in a reality that is a fresco of the society of the time, of its social and previous structures, of the dynamics and of the genre.”
What Pedropes also needs and Vítor Herdeiro confirm “is positive of the North American presence that stands out, in which everything needed, with radios and logistical needs, arriving as impact infrastructures: electricity, sanitation, school, medical assistance, the neighborhood for workers, in addition to the approximately 400 jobs.” For Vítor Herdeiro, “this local importance was so great that it justifies, in itself, that, in the middle of PREC, RARET was not bothered despite spreading anti-communist propaganda. And it is necessary to remember that this area of Ribatejo was in an Intervened by the agrarian reform process.”
“It’s difficult to understand how 200 more complex people from close to 40 children and 5 hectares that worked frequently, but that helped to be unknown to opinion or even historians.”
The thing about this, so long, is how much notice that Pedro Lopes is people like RARET little more than a footnote in the mysteries of history: five hundred, in addition to the children and young people who developed for more than forty years, could be unknown of public opinion or even of historians who have dedicated themselves to the investigation of our recent history.”
For Luís Nuno Rodrigues, the study of Vítor Herdeiro brought this panorama forever: the installation of the Lajes base in the Azores.” The two situations are, in fact, part of the same historical process, as the author writes in the introduction: “It intends to if with this investigation we contribute to the study of Luso-American relations during the Cold War, revealing the role of the author by the Portuguese authorities in From the 2000s onwards, Fazide, from the 2000s onwards, the duration, from the 2000s onwards, 2000. Constituting itself as a backbone of the importance of international broadcasting greater for the merger of the United States in the US foreign policy scenario soft power. The choice of theme is justified as one more element for the understanding that the relations between Portugal and the USA were in the beginning of the War, another element of its inscription and insertion in the sphere of influence of the new western power.”
No, therefore, given the volume and importance of historical sources, the author has already advanced to the doctorate, with the study of RARET post-1963, including, in this, periods of countries generated either by the Colonial War, or by the revolutionary environment post-April 25, 1974.
“I realized, when studying the space of the dissertation, that I was not in the master’s degree for a series of events that were created over the period of more than 40 years in which RARET was in Portugal. more contract until 1996 but until 1996 very different contexts, whether in Portugal or the United States”, he explains.
Apparently, from RARET, abandoned by the Americans in 1996 when the Cold War was no more than pasture for some nostalgia, we can still get many surprises. For History but also for fiction, not least because, softly, Pedro Lopes dropped the possibility of having a second season of Glory.