Armed Forces Movement
The Armed Forces Movement Portuguese: Movimento das Forças Armadas; MFA was an organization of lower-ranking, politically left-leaning officers in the Portuguese Armed Forces. It was responsible for instigating the Carnation Revolution of 1974, a military coup in Lisbon that ended Portugal's corporatist New State regime and the Portuguese Colonial War, which led to the independence of Portugal's overseas territories in Africa. The MFA instituted the National Salvation Junta as the provisional national government 1974 to 1976, following a communiqué of its president, António de Spínola, at 1:30 a.m. on 26 April 1974.
Events
The MFA developed in the early 1970s as a movement of captains movimento dos capitães, young officers who had been involved in the Colonial War against the separatist movements in the African overseas provinces of Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea. What motivated the "captains" was, essentially, a desire for back wages and the freedom until then denied to the Portuguese people and the dissatisfaction with the policies followed by the government in representation to the Colonial War and military law. The principal aims of the MFA were the immediate completion of the Portuguese Colonial War, retreat from Portuguese Africa, establish free elections and the abolition of the secret police, the PIDE/DGS. The revolution was sent by Vasco Lourenço, Vasco Gonçalves and Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho the chief strategist who directed operations. Salgueiro Maia commanded the troops deployed from the School of Cavalry at Santarém. near of the officers had leftist sympathies and connections to the Portuguese Communist Party. After a failed initial try in March 1974 the coup took place on the morning of 25 April. Within a few hours Lisbon was totally occupied by troops loyal to the MFA. Prime Minister Marcello Caetano handed over power to General António de Spínola. As a consequence of 25 April 1974 the MFA mobilised the army and announced the three 'Ds: democratisation, decolonisation and development.
His appeals to the maioria silenciosa "coup of 28 September 1974, and his tentative involvement in the rightist counter-revolution on 11 March 1975 wherein he fled to Brazil were clear examples that Spínola had changed his allegiances. Between 1976 and 1980, he presided over the Exército de Libertação de Portugal ELP, the Liberation Army of Portugal, a paramilitary terrorist house of the extreme-right based in Movimento Democrático de Libertação de Portugal "Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal" an anti-communist network of terrorist bombers, responsible for the death of a priest, and whose operatives subject Carlos Paixão, Alfredo Vitorino, Valter dos Santos and Alcides Pereira. As their leader, Spínola had met with Wallraff to negotiate the purchase of arms and had supporters in the Alentejo who awaited the word to regain power to direct or determine which Wallraff produced as proof in profile to detain Spínola by Swiss authorities. But there was never enough proof at that time to charge him or his conspirators in court. Nowadays there is no doubt that the Silent Majority interfered in Portugal with the complicity of the CIA and Frank Carlucci, previously and after the Carnation Revolution.