Duncan Simpson, "I am pleased to inform the director: letters from Portuguese people to PIDE (1958-1968)" (Silveira, BookBuilders, 2022)

New Books in European Politics

Today I talked to Duncan Simpson about his book Tenho o prazer de informar o senhor director: cartas de portugueses à PIDE (1958-1968) ("I am pleased to inform the director: letters from Portuguese people to PIDE (1958-1968)")

Were the Portuguese mere victims of the PIDE and the oppressive policies it imposed or, in reality, as under any authoritarian regime, did they interact with this police force by serving it or making use of it?

Created in 1945, in a merely cosmetic reformulation of its predecessor (the PVDE), as it was too closely associated with the “fascist era”, the PIDE (acronym for International and State Defense Police) maintained the extensive arbitrary powers of the PVDE in its triple mission: guaranteeing “state security” (eliminating political dissent), controlling borders and acting as an intelligence service. To this end, it was necessary to create a network of informants.

To this day, the bibliography dedicated exclusively to PIDE continues to focus on the mechanisms of repression exercised over the small minority of opponents to the regime, as if this were the only form of relationship between society and PIDE. The main consequence of this type of approach was to reduce the bulk of the population to the status of “victim people”, who passively endured the repression carried out by PIDE.

However, the reality is much more complex, as this work aims to demonstrate. The relationship between Portuguese society and PIDE has always been much more active and multifaceted than has been recognized to date. The Portuguese were never a simple “victim people” passively and fearfully enduring the repressive impetus of the PIDE. On the contrary, Portuguese society actively adapted to the presence of the political police and this book aims to illustrate the ways in which ordinary citizens interacted freely with the PIDE, often (but not always) using it to fulfill personal interests or satisfy basic needs. of everyday life.

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