WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
The revolt began in January, when workers at an extensive cotton plantation in the Baixa de Cassanje region went on strike, burning their identification cards and attacking Portuguese managers. The Portuguese military responded on February 4 with a bombing campaign and used napalm indiscriminately on the villagers, killing as many as 7,000.
The response to the MPLA attack in Luanda was equally savage. “The Portuguese vengeance was awesome,” according to one account. “The police helped civilian vigilantes organize nightly slaughters in the Luanda slums. The whites hauled Africans from their flimsy one-room huts, shot them and left their bodies in the streets.” Hundreds were killed.
Angola had been ruled by Portugal since the 1500s, when it was a center of the Atlantic slave trade and much of its population was brutally shipped off to the plantations of the new world. After WWII, the Portuguese empire continued as an ally to US imperialism under the quasi-fascist Estado Novo of António de Oliveira Salazar. Salazar was committed to keeping Mozambique and Angola, which was rich in oil and diamonds, as colonies. He promoted them to the status of Portuguese provinces in 1951.
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