“To win the peasantry for the revolution”. The Portuguese Communist Party and the process of organization of the Northern peasantry (1974-1975)

Abstract

This study scrutinizes the organization of the Northern peasantry promoted by the Portuguese Communist Party during the Carnation Revolution. Based on the review of the party press and newspapers, this paper suggests a path by which several organizational proposals (comissões camponesas, Movimento Livre de Agricultores, Ligas, movimentos) developed by the party before the permanent blockade opposed to that work, appeared, coexisted, and disappeared. In spite of the fast turns and some hesitation, that trajectory suggests a continuity regarding the underlying objective: the construction of a regional mass front.