Norton de Matos

He was born in Ponte de Lima on 23 March 1867. A general and politician of the First Republic, he was governor-general of Angola and Minister for the Colonies, and from 1930 to 1935 grand master of the Grande Oriente Lusitano Unido (United Lusitanian Grand Orient).³

In July 1948 he came forward as a candidate in the presidential election of 13 February 1949, against Marshal Óscar Carmona. The programme called for the abolition of the political police and of censorship, an amnesty for political prisoners and freedom for political parties. But if the line was progressive at home, on the colonial front the position was “quite different”.² The platform brought together republicans, Freemasons, socialists, communists and Catholics, among others. The campaign began in January 1949, with the candidate’s house under surveillance and supporters being arrested.²

In Lisbon, the campaign held rallies at A Voz do Operário. A photograph of 28 January 1949 shows him there with Isabel Aboim Inglez;⁵ others, from February, show Maria Lamas and Cesina Bermudes.²

The regime refused his minimum demands, such as freedom of propaganda and the scrutiny of the vote count, and Norton de Matos withdrew on the eve of the election.³²⁴ Like many republicans and opponents of the Estado Novo (“New State”), he advocated a colonialist policy. In 1953, in the book África Nossa (Our Africa), he wrote that Portugal had to “populate those lands, intensely and rapidly, with white Portuguese families” and to go on “assimilating the coloured inhabitants we find there”.³ He died in Ponte de Lima on 2 January 1955.³