Signal is an ongoing book series dedicated to documenting and sharing compelling graphics, art projects, and cultural movements of international resistance and liberation struggles. It is edited by Josh MacPhee and Alec Dunn and published by PM Press.
Phil Mailer (author of Portugal: The Impossible Revolution? on PM Press) contributed an article in the new Signal about the murals that were made during the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974. Excerpts are below:
“After the military coup in Portugal on April 25, 1974, and the overthrow of almost fifty years of Fascist rule, there followed eighteen months of intense social transformation which challenged almost every aspect of Portuguese society. What started off as a coup transformed into a profound attempt at social change from the bottom up, making daily headlines in the world media.”
“After the revolution, the streets were taken over by murals, paintings, and stencils—mainly put up by the various political parties. While the Christian and Popular Democrats (right-wing), as well as the Centrist Socialist Party, received ample funding from their sister parties throughout Europe and could afford to print posters—which they duly plastered up all over the country—the Communist Party and the various left-wing groups relied on street murals to get their message across. Portugal was one of the poorest countries in Europe at that time. Agriculture in the south was organized in huge latifundios (ranches) and worked by peasants, while in the north it was divided into tiny holdings in which families eked out a miserable subsistence living. Factory workers were poorly paid and any opposition or union organizing was severely repressed under Fascism. The murals reflected this situation and often showed peasants, workers, and soldiers coming together to oust the big rancher or factory owner. Just about every street, every wall, was covered in these didactic messages, often in brightly colored drawings which covered whole buildings.”
“…anyone could go out, day or night, with paint cans and paint away to their heart’s content, which helped the mural movement to flourish. It was quite a unique popular painting movement, more akin to South America than Europe. The movement started quickly in May ’74 and by the summer of ’75 there was hardly an unpainted wall anywhere in Lisbon or in the rural towns across the country. Generally political groups respected the murals of others, there was an informal protocol that implied that if a group got to a wall first then they had the right to keep it and rework it.”
“While political parties did use paid professional artists, most of the wall murals were spontaneously done by ordinary workers and militants whose hearts and minds were focused on their own revolutions, in which they were passionately involved in their daily lives. There was a certain refreshing naivety (both political and aesthetic) in them, a belief in the revolutionary process and an overall optimism toward class struggle.”
“Unfortunately many of these “political” murals lacked both imagination and humor. The messages were ideological to the extreme, with a complete lack of irony, just giant but bland statements and aspirations of unity and of successful class struggle. There were exceptions, however. One bright graffitist intervened in the doctrinaire messaging, painting the words “Taxi, Taxi!” in a word bubble coming from the image of Maoist leader Arnaldo Matos as he addressed tens of thousands of workers. It made the whole thing seem ridiculous, a moment of true subversion.”
