The car is parked next to the pier that connects the town of Alcoutim with Spain. The path is always uphill along the cobbled road entering the castle. The occasion is special: Carlos Brito, the host who welcomes us in his house, right on the hill of the castle, turns 90 the next day [o aniversário foi dia 9]. That is why he will be honored this Saturday at 3 p.m. at the City Council with the inauguration of a photobiographical exhibition and the pre-presentation of his new book, Present (the official presentation will take place on February 15 in Lisbon, at Associação 25 de Abril).
“All you have to do is open the gate, it can open,” you hear after completing the climb and the frustrated attempts to ring the doorbell that didn’t work. So be it, let’s go inside. Inside the gate stands Carlos Brito, a historical communist militant, today expelled from the party, who welcomes us to his country (he was not born, but lived most of his life in the border village). “Where do you want to talk?” he asks. He chooses the office, overlooking the river, where we are surrounded by planks. There are discs with interpretations of Mozart, photographs, diplomas. There are books, lots of books. Not all, but some about politics. Or Carlos Brito was not a political man and himself of politics.
We sit down, the tape recorder is on. “It’s been a long journey. Looking back, it was worth it. I was happy, I did a lot. I did what I wanted and what I liked to do,” he reflects, looking at the round age he reaches. He was born in 1933, in Mozambique, but came to Alcoutim “at the age of 3 or 4”. “It was my maternal grandmother’s country. She had her roots here. Due to various circumstances, she dragged my mother along and we came too,” he recalls. From an early age life was marked by living with the political strife as his father was a “political deportee” in Africa because he “participated in the 1927 Republican Revolution”. He was then arrested, tried and sent to Lourenço Marques [atual Maputo]where Carlos Brito would be born.
Located in the interior of the Algarve, right next to Spain, Alcoutim is a small town, with the Guadiana as the border between the two countries. So what memories do you have of living there? First, the river that “never ends” and which, he says, “is permanent” in his memory. “Fishing, swimming, sailing, rowing. It was a lot of work for a young man”. Then “the whole life, that was a great happiness”. The family, he says with a smile on his face, was “cured”. That is, “We are neither rich nor poor, we are well off” – which, he admits, gave him “a very happy childhood”.
Throughout his life, Carlos Brito was arrested three times, in different prisons: Caxias, Aljube and Peniche. He also lived underground and was elected deputy of the Constituent Assembly.
And beyond Alcoutim? First came the course. Accounting, at the Lisbon Commercial Institute [o atual ISCAL, Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração de Lisboa]. Then the profession: “I’m an accountant. I worked. I liked it too”. In between there was another already adopted and transversal passion: poetry. “I started writing my poems when I was 15 years old. I sent them to some friends and that was it,” he summarizes with a laugh. The writing continues to this day. Present, the book that was presented in advance during the ceremony, is an example of this. He classifies it as “a series of reflections” made on the banks of the Guadiana, “on the porch” of his house.
Poetry was, in fact, the gateway to another great dimension of Carlos Brito’s life: political and partisan militancy. “I was led by a group of young people who wrote, we even had a group there that collaborated with newspapers in the province,” he recalls. But politics was always lurking: “For as long as I can remember, I was against the dictatorship government. First for my father and then for my mother, who was also a republican militant. She had her own inclination to go into politics.With another smile on his face, Carlos Brito recalls that it was therefore “enthusiasm” when he started to make contact with young people associated with associations. dedicated to the cause of the youth world,” he says.
Thus was born the connection with what he calls the “MUDJ”, the youth of the Democratic Unity Movement (MUD). “He already had enough influence in the schools. It was a very happy meeting,” he recalls.
The PIDE, the prison and the escape
With his entry into the MUDJ, Carlos Brito recalls, “duties began to take on more responsibility.” So much so that one of the headquarters that the MUDJ opened, “during an electoral masquerade”, was rented by you, under an assumed name – Alfredo.
“The writer Maria Lamas was writing a book called The woman in the world [publicado em 1952]and visited several countries, including the Soviet Union”, which, he recalls, cost him a prison sentence as soon as he landed in Portugal. This brought the MUDJ militants to the airport … but the plane was delayed and, then, PIDE took advantage of this and “brings about 50 people to Caxias”. In prison he is interrogated and “then the PIDE says: so you are Mr. Alfredo!”. He laughs and remembers, “That made me stay a few days longer than the others. I came in in December [de 1953] and I didn’t leave until February, the day after my birthday”.
It would be the first of three arrests: Aljube followed (in October 1956), from which he managed to escape – something he fondly recalls. When he was arrested in Aljube, he was already part of the PCP staff – where he entered at the invitation of the sculptor José Dias Coelho, killed by the PIDE in 1961. ‘It was a bit of a risky escape’ranks. Why? “We have left [Carlos Brito e mais dois reclusos] from the top floor of Aljube, which is quite high, we sawed the grating and then routed it through a downspout. We walked past it and then down a rope of slabs to the roof of the building next door.”, which they crossed and where “a floor with an attic” was available for rent, which eventually served as a shelter for the fugitives, who were “barefoot”, with their shoes “belted like this” and their coats over their shoulders – something that even helped at the end of the escape, which was made “over the sentinel”. “When we went out on the street, they thought we were three young bohemian early risers out for a walk,” he says.
After Aljube escaped, he went underground “because that’s how the party understood it”. He returned to prison, this time in Peniche, in 1959, where he remained until 1966.
The PREC and the Constituent Assembly
Looking out the window again at the river, the conversation moves to more recent times: after April 25. In the end, the devised questions are not asked and the conversation flows naturally. We begin in the Current Revolutionary Period (PREC), a time Carlos Brito remembers as “a very complex period”. “You had to be very strict in the guidelines. There were the soldiers of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) and on the other side there was the [General] António de Spínola”, who supported the MFA army, but had “his own ideas”, which led to a clash with the army, which was later followed by “a rift within the MFA itself complex”, Carlos Brito sums up .
This while at the same time the work of the Constituent Assembly – of which the former PCP militant was a member – was taking place. You would then always be elected to the Assembly of the Republic until the fifth legislature, in 1987. What was that time like? “It is extraordinary how the Constitution came about. The country is in a state of turmoil and the deputies are doing their job,” which, he says, “has led to a great misunderstanding on both the left and the right.” about the building process of the Basic Law. Among the skeptics was Álvaro Cunhal. “Never believed that with that composition of the voter [sem maioria, PS era o partido mais votado] if we had a good constitution,” he laughs. He looks out the window and then remembers: “It’s almost on the eve of the approval that he reads the text and is completely in love with the Constitution. Everyone in the different benches had a patriotic feeling.”
The departure of the PCP and the present
Carlos Brito, a staunch leftist, clashed with the PCP in 2002 when he was suspended for a year by the communist leadership – after that period he maintained this suspension himself.
The reason, he recalls towards the end of the conversation, was the difficulty the party showed in “renewing” its ideals and policies and the “climate of suspicion” prevailing within the communist governing bodies. This led him to found the Associação Renovação Comunista with other former PCP militants, despite “a deep identification” with the party, as he had been associated with the communists practically all his life.
“It’s been a long journey. Looking back, it was worth it. I was happy, I did a lot. I did what I wanted and I enjoyed doing it.”
But the withdrawal from life in the PCP did not necessarily mean the loss of sense and civic duty. Since moving to Alcoutim, Carlos Brito has been working with local institutions (“There’s even a neighborhood named after me!”) and even served as a member of the city council. Today, at the age of 90, life is calmer… but no less committed to the claims and causes of the local population, such as the bridge that will connect the village to Spain, which has been requested by the Alcoutenejos “for many years “. . “It’s one of my great goals and one of the great struggles. These people deserve the bridge,” he says.
In the end, the question remains: with two awards from the Presidency of the Republic (awarded in 1997 and 2004) and also from the Municipality of Alcoutim, what else does this honor mean? Carlos Brito smiles. He then replies, “It touches me deeply. All these tributes are very satisfying, not least because of the deep connection I have with the people of this country. It couldn’t be more captivating.”
Source: DN
