Never serve those who served – Expresso

André Ventura is too young to have known firsthand what was, in his suffocating day-to-day life, the Estado Novo, by Oliveira Salazar. But that’s not a good excuse: I didn’t experience Nazism either, but I don’t pretend not to know what it was. André Ventura is not unaware — he is just lying, omitting the facts — that the previous regime was corrupt to the core, it was corrupt by nature and in the most amoral way possible. Corruption was not usually paid in money, it was paid with jobs or business opportunities, on the one hand, and political loyalty, on the other. The “wedge”, the “commitment”, the “little word”, was what the corruptor from below was looking for, giving in exchange oaths of loyalty to Salazar. This was how, for example, PIDE recruited many of its members, who came to it through the efforts of the minister’s cousin, the local head of the Legion or the single party, or even the village priest. Coming to Lisbon to work at PIDE was more than a job: it was a form of personal and social advancement and a place of power and intimidation. In return, the new recruits began their “internship” by “voluntarily” participating in the beating sessions of political prisoners, then moving up the ladder of loyalty and scoundrels (which is why on April 25, 74 there were no innocent suspects). But there was also high corruption, that reserved exclusively for the faithful of the regime, not only for the highest positions in the Public Administration (which could only be accessed through an oath of loyalty), but also for big business, on the continent and in the colonies, after sufficiently demonstrating unquestionable obedience to Salazar. António Champalimaud dared to disagree and paid for it with years of exile. Salazar, an intellectually cowardly man, incapable of facing disagreement and even debate, was the great corrupter of the nation, a corrupter of souls and consciences, the worst type of corruption (“The old vulture is wise and smoothes his feathers/rot pleases him and his speeches/have the gift of making souls smaller.”)