secretPOL · The PIDE and Portuguese Society under the Salazar Dictatorship 1945-1974: Fear, Self-Policing, Accommodation.

The PIDE and Portuguese Society under the Salazar Dictatorship 1945-1974: Fear, Self-Policing, Accommodation.

The Salazar regime was the longest dictatorship in Western Europe in the twentieth century. If the military dictatorship from which it emerged is taken into account, it lasted 48 years, from 1926 to 1974. This research programme centres on the institutional and social mechanisms that contributed to the regime’s longevity. In continuation of my doctoral research on the institutional alliance between the Estado Novo and the Catholic Church, it focuses on the second of the regime’s pillars of support, the political police (PIDE). The scholarly studies dedicated exclusively to the PIDE are rare. According to the dominant interpretation, the PIDE served two purposes: to repress, forcefully but selectively, any political opposition to the regime; to prevent any such opposition from emerging by fomenting a dissuasive climate of fear in society. Notwithstanding recent innovative research engaged in unraveling the intricacies of the PIDE’s operation on the ground, the political police’s repressive impact on society, in particular the violent persecution of oppositionists, has been heavily emphasised in the subject area. Combined with the continuing prevalence of references to an ill-defined state of “generalized fear” gripping Portuguese society, the established interpretative framework has tended to limit the interrelations between society and the PIDE to a dichotomic opposition between violent repression (or the threat of it) on one side, and “passive victims paralysed by fear” on the other. This project aims to reconceptualise the relation between society and Salazar’s political police, overcoming the current over-emphasis on processes of top-down repression and instead looking at the PIDE “from below”. It argues that the framework of interaction between society and the PIDE must be apprehended with recourse to a novel analytical prism (focusing on “ordinary citizens” rather than the minority of oppositionists), new research methodologies, and original archival material. It draws on the international historiography of totalitarianism, where a far greater degree of complexity has been introduced in the study of the interrelations between dictatorial states and the societies under their control. It also draws on the international bibliography of accusatory practices and everyday life, which have uncovered the diversity (and ambiguity) of societal responses to dictatorship. Overall, my research has allowed me to show that the relation between the PIDE and society was far more interactive and multifaceted than has been acknowledged until now. Society adapted to the institutional framework imposed by the regime - including the PIDE -, acting on the opportunities that opened up rather than remaining passive.The Salazarist system was in effect normalised by most Portuguese citizens as part of the structure of everyday life. As such, the action has allowed me to put forward a more complex understanding of the perpetuation of the dictatorial order, rooted in the role of common citizens, and to question the notion of the “people as victim” that currently dominates the collective memory of the PIDE.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз