"Operation Cocktail"

In Lisbon last week, the Minister of the Interior belatedly announced that two months ago the government had nipped in the bud a plot to take over the country. The plot bore the preposterous name of "Operation Cocktail," and the people behind it, said the minister, included all classes and were all "most confused." Among those arrested: a priest, nine army officers, 22 civilians. Behind this threat to the 27-year dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, police also saw the features of flamboyant General Humberto Delgado, who in last year's election got a surprising 23% of the votes, even with Salazar's men counting the ballots.

From Rio de Janeiro, where he is living in modest circumstances but lionized by Brazilian intellectuals, Delgado told a TIME correspondent: "It was a small affair, but it frightened the Salazar government to death. I suppose they intended to take over some key points, call on me to abolish the dictatorship. Salazar's Gestapo caught on "to plans because too many people were involved--40 or 50. You Americans don't understand the situation in Portugal. It's a police state under very tight control.

"After decades of Salazar, the Portuguese people are suffocating. The progress he proclaims is pure myth. After so many years I find that my home village still has no road and can be reached only by donkey. The young are still growing up untutored and illiterate. The regime has no popular support. It's like Batista's government in Cuba last New Year's Eve. It's perpetuated in power solely by force. Alas, it is difficult to create a guerrilla campaign like the Fidel Castro movement in Cuba because Portugal is too closely policed, populated and cultivated--it doesn't have Cuba's jungle areas."

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