Return of the Colonials

The first TAP Airline jumbo jets begin arriving at Lisbon's Portela de Sacavem International Airport at 7:55 in the morning. By 10 o'clock customs and immigration offices are overflowing: upper-middle-class professional men with their well-dressed families "on holiday," civil servants "on extended leave," students looking for places at Lisbon University, shopkeepers, farmers, nuns, Asians, mulattoes and frightened old people. Pushing a cart piled high with 14 suitcases and carrying a bicycle, Joao Tudo Bern, a civil servant from the Angolan capital of Luanda expressed the prevailing sentiment: "I have six months vacation now, but I will go back and work for the new government--if they don't throw us out."

No Brass Bands. At Lisbon's port, the scene was much the same last week as the troopship Niassa arrived, carrying 1,400 soldiers from Guinea-Bissau. There were no brass bands, nor for that matter were there any high-ranking government officials. One by one, as the soldiers were demobilized on ship, they walked off carrying homemade guitars, cardboard boxes or cheap suitcases with their belongings. Many sported T shuts with pictures of Amilcar Cabral, the assassinated Guinea liberation leader against whose cause they had so recently been fighting. Some, but by no means all, were enthusiastic about returning home. Says Joaquim Pinedo Martins, 22: "The war was a fascist disaster, but I don't plan to emigrate. I will find my future in Portugal."

The reverse diaspora from newly independent Guinea-Bissau and the soon-to-be-freed Portuguese territories of Angola and Mozambique could well amount to half a million people before it ends. In addition to thousands of white colonials who are fleeing the territories for fear of violence in the transitional months while political power is being transferred to the liberation movements, 150,000 Portuguese troops are slated to come home over the next two years.

Work Force. Their future in Portugal is very much in doubt. The home-bound exodus could hardly have occurred at a worse time for the country's faltering economy. The country's work force is only about 3 million, and unemployment has been rising rapidly. Hundreds of small businesses have closed, and large companies are not expanding. Says one Lisbon businessman with companies in Africa: "We could not employ in Portugal more than a fraction of our people from down there who have asked us for jobs."

Nor will it be easy to find work elsewhere. France and Germany have been tightening up on immigration from countries outside the Common Market. The government is giving top priority to finding jobs for returning soldiers, but, says one economist, "after the first few weeks of euphoria, the soldiers who returned home as heroes will start looking for jobs and finding there aren't any."

Unlike the exodus of Algeria's piedsnoirs to France after the Algerian war, the Portuguese colonials are not seen as a serious threat to political stability. Some wealthy businessmen may be expected to swell the ranks of right-wing movements opposed to the new regime in Lisbon. An even larger number of returning soldiers may well support the government. In Algeria, a reactionary army backed the cause of the piedsnoirs and colonialism. In Portuguese Africa, by contrast, the military is leading the drive for independence of the African territories. Says one leftist leader in Lisbon: "This is not the Fifth Republic."

Perhaps the brightest portent lies in the desire on the part of most white colonials to return to Africa. "We will always go back to Angola," said Virgilio Antunes de Carvalho, a lawyer from Luanda, who arrived at Lisbon's airport with his wife and daughter last week. Equally determined is Oscar Manuel Jesus Almeida, 13. After telling TIME'S Martha de la Cal how his father's car was stoned by angry blacks on the way to the Lourenc,o Marques Airport, Oscar echoed his family's determination to go back. "We are not afraid," he said. "Everything will be all right." There are many in Portugal these days who profoundly hope so. Much will depend, however, on whether Lisbon and the liberation forces will cooperate to prevent racial conflicts and achieve a smooth, relatively peaceful transition of power. That is still very much an open question.

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