The Fourth Movement of National Liberation? The MFA and Third-Worldism in the Portuguese Revolution of 1974–1975

In the unexpected revolutionary cycle that started with the fall of Estado Novo in Portugal on 25 April 1974, the middle-ranking movement (MFA) that had carried out the coup became the political protagonist at which everyone was looking. The MFA soldiers, only wielding a vague political programme, set out in search of references that could inspire the Portuguese revolutionary process and the constitution of the new Armed Forces. It was in this sense that, with substantial nuances and variations, the MFA turned its attention to what it regarded as the Third World —a large geopolitical space that in recent times had served as a stage for the most creative and daring revolutionary experiments. If Portugal’s approach to the Third World appears at first to be a foreign policy statement, it soon enters into an intimate dialogue with the direction that the Portuguese revolutionary process will take and becomes a questioning of the core values of national identity: is Portugal a third-world country? Using different archives, this essay maps the trajectory of the MFA’s military rapprochement with the Third World, showing how it was —in its plurality— decisive in the construction of the MFA as a political actor during PREC; and thus seeks to understand how the last colonial empire in Africa abruptly found itself between Europe and the Third World.