Cinderella Colony

For the first time in Portugal's history its ruler last week visited her overseas empire. After calls at the tiny, off-Africa islands of Principe and Sao Tome, a steamer carrying Portuguese President General Antonio Oscar de Fragoso Carmona steamed into the harbor of Loanda, largest city in Portugal's West African colony of Angola. But to the population of Angola the big news last week was not the official visit but the more important fact that in Lisbon tight-fisted Premier and Finance Minister Dr. Antonio Oliveira Salazar had finally loosened up and granted the neglected colony $7,000,000 in relief funds. Although to Angola's 60,000 white and almost 3,000,000 native population this sum represented only $2.30 per head, it was nonetheless important since it was the first sizable Portuguese grant in more than a decade to the 447-year-old colony.

In Portugal's once potent empire, now shrunk to sixth largest in the world, Angola has long been the Cinderella colony. What little Portuguese and private funds were available went to develop Mozambique, on the other side of Africa. Discovered in 1482, Angola came into prominence in the 19th Century when colonists built up a lucrative slave trade, exporting Angola's Bantu blacks to Brazil. When slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1830, colonists gradually turned to agriculture, began to produce coffee, sugar, maize, palm oil, sisal. Meanwhile, at home, Portugal was in a mess. With two exceptions, budgets were unbalanced for three-quarters of a century and between 1910 and 1926 the nation went through 18 revolutions, some 40 changes of government. Finally in 1926 the army took control, later set up a dictatorship. Prime force behind the present rule is Dr. Salazar, who is now Minister of Finance, War and Foreign Affairs as well as Premier.

Under Dr. Salazar's tutelage Angola, beginning in 1930, for the first time made exports exceed her imports. The underprivileged population continued, however, to live in hovels, to scrabble for a living with primitive implements. Discontent was widespread. Angolans appealed for funds from home. Finance Minister Salazar, resolute for balanced budgets, refused to listen. When Governor-designate of Angola, General Joao d'Almeida, three months ago asked for relief funds, Premier Salazar instead sent him into exile.

Lately another problem has become acute. Britons have talked of satisfying Germany's hunger for "colonies by assigning Angola to the Nazis. "The British" as one British paper proclaimed, "are prepared to endure almost unlimited sacrifices of Portuguese territory in their anxiety to secure a more equitable and peaceful share of the world's goods." Encouraged by this sentiment and backed by German funds,

Angola's small clannish German group, which constitutes, next to the Portuguese, the largest white population, built up a strong separatist movement among the natives. Therefore, harried Dr. Salazar concluded it was time "to show the natives of the colonies that Portugal is master of the land, that the flag flies over them with undiluted colors." Hence President Carmona's visit. To make the visit more joyful the Premier agreed to part with $7,000,000 of his prized funds.

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