"WHAT SHALL I DO WITH THIS SWORD?" "A Film By João César Monteiro" "With the Co-Operation Of" "Laboratories" "Production" "Out with NATO!" "National independence!" "Out with NATO!" "National independence!" "Long live the working class!" " It's my first time." " Your first time?" "Yes." " Are you coming again?" " I don't know." " Have you been ashore?" " Yes." " Where are you from?" " Oklahoma." "Thank you!" " Do you believe in democracy?" " Democracy?" "I don't know." "You don't know?" "Right, thank you." "Our ship is the best ship in the whole world." "In operation "Locked Gate"" "we sank three English submarines and we sank once." "But the operation hadn't started yet." "I think Portugal is a great country..." "And that the revolution is a good thing because I'm totally against fascism." "What it's doing is making us spend a bit more and also starve a bit more." "I used to buy, for instance, say  an orange for five cents, and now it's gone up to 10 or 15." "And they get hold of all our fruit, obviously and we..." "The whole lot, eggs, fishes, fruits, greens, they take everything, and we go hungry." "It's a lot of people, you see." "A lot of boats there, and a lot of people, and they need stuff too." "But they also bring stuff, but you see, they'll have to go to sea from here, they're on the move, in manoeuvres, and of course they have to eat." "And if there's a port, here or some other place, they just stock themselves with diesel oil, oil, water, all the necessities." "Of course, the guys here..." "Take me for instance." "I go out there fishing and then I come by the ships and set the tow-lines, the tow goes on the ship's prow," "I run the cables through the walls..." "To let the ships enter..." "Carry the cargo, things like tin drums or supplies, take them aboard and serve the foreigners." "We have no choice, have we?" "And other things like that, 'cause we have bosses, you see, and so on." " I've never been here." " This is my first trip to Portugal." "Seems like a real nice country." "The thing that impresses me is the age, that it's so old." "It's much older than anything back in the States." "The States seems really new compared to..." "Looking at all the buildings and sites in Portugal." "Well..." "I was back home..." "I was back home in September a couple of days before... before we left for here, for Europe, and in the made area." "I think it's kind of Ionesome every once in a while, you get kind of lonely because moving here to countries where most people speak a different language." "In the United States there isn't much use..." "We don't speak..." "They teach different languages, but English is so well spoken and everything like that, that everybody just sticks to it." "You see, we always move about so much..." "Like..." "We've been to Italy, Turkey..." "Spain, we go to Spain quite often." "Here..." "Then I think we go to Morocco, don't we?" "We come back to Spain..." "No, we go from here to Spain, to Morocco, back to Spain..." " If anything happens, we stay." "If anything..." "You know, troubles in which our country has some influence  as far as..." "Well, I don't know how to explain it but..." "If anything comes up, then we usually have to stay over here until the little trouble or whatever happens..." "Can I take your photo?" "Go to hell." "Do you want to come aboard our ship tonight?" "I don't think so." " Why not?" " I haven't got time." "Are you from the NATO ships?" "Yes." "What do people say about us?" "I don't know." "I haven't a clue." "A lot of people in Portugal criticise NATO." "Fair enough but it's our job." "It's not a nice one, but it can't be helped." "Don't think you'll get a warmer welcome." "Why are you afraid to talk to us?" "We're Portuguese, we're not foreigners." "We're Portuguese." "We're Dutch." "From the submarines." "This one?" "Why are you wearing that t-shirt if you're at war?" "Why not?" "I'm not at war now." "Open it up a bit more." "We hope for the best." "We'll see if it works out that way or..." " It can only get better, right?" " If it gets worse, it's not worth it." "I walk up to the foreigners and ask for a cigarette straight away." ""One cigarette for me?"" "And "Yes"." "They give me one." "Then, of course, we ask them to buy us a drink." ""You pay a drink to me?", "Yes, ok, you drink for you", and I drink it." "Then we dance." "We dance and whatnot, and you know, we don't want to waste any time," "I'm the one that, we're the ones that turn to them and..." "Sometimes it's them that ask us if we want to "focky-focky"..." "Other times it's us that ask them if they want to go out, you know, if focky-focky." ""Yes." "How much want?" "500 escudos, you pay hotel."" ""Ok, yes go."" "Then we go out and go to the boarding house." "If I came home and found 500 escudos on my bedside table everyday, it wouldn't bother me." "What I'd like is for the fella to write down his name." ""I, so-and-so, came to your house." It's all the same to me." "That's what you're saying now, but if you knew about it, you know darn well the woman would get it in the neck..." "No way, we all know it's not the woman's fault." "There was this time when I got out of the house," "I have to come up with some sort of excuse." "I ran into this very posh gentleman." "He came up to me and asked how much I charged to go a few laps around the track." "And I said I wanted 50." "And he said: "OK, let's do it."" "I followed him and as soon as I got to the bedroom I put down my handbag." "Imagine my surprise when I noticed, when he took off his hat and dropped his suitcase," "that he had a rosary on him." "I was brought up in a religious environment," "I felt embarrassed and I grabbed my handbag to leave." "Then he begged me to stay and asked why I wanted to leave." "And I said: "I'm leaving because you're a priest."" "And then he said:" ""Well, I'm a priest" ""and I have my religion inside the church," ""outside I'm just like the next guy."" "And then I, in that case, stayed." "We took off our clothes, you know, and when I was naked, he told me to lie down on the bed." "He told me to lie down sideways." "I do it and in a wink he kneels on the carpet" "and starts kissing me." "And it tickled really badly, I break up laughing and he, of course, I'm going to say it," "he goes down on me." "So, that thing, it was the first time anyone did it to me, and because of it I couldn't have sex at all for three months, because when he was doing it, he gave me a love bite so hard" "I was in treatment for three months." "And during those three months I was in treatment, our doctor, Marcelo Chaves, an acquaintance of mine, even wanted to have me stay at the Palhavã Hospital, where I asked for half a dozen more shots." "He gave them to me, he prescribed them and so I took that half a dozen shots and it kind of got better." "And that's how I got to know sexual intercourse with a priest." "I think of this as a  an illness or something." "Because once I met this guy, he asked me the same thing, if I fancied getting into his car, and I said yes." "As we went past a dairy, he went in to buy an ice cream." "And of course, since he didn't eat it on the way, we got to the room, I took off my clothes and asked him, out of curiosity, what was the ice cream for, since he wouldn't eat it," "and he said: "Wait and see."" "And so I lied down, lied down on the bed, and he puts the ice cream down there..." "He puts the ice cream down there, and it started to melt because of the heat, and I got all fidgety, and then he starts to lick it." "So, in any of these things, I had to..." "I didn't like that way of having sex." "All I know is that we need to stick together, and, before everybody, build up the Portugal we all hope for." "Perhaps not for myself, but for my children and everyone's children." "So they don't get to my age oppressed like I was." "I lost my mother when I was seven, and often - this is no lie, people here can bear me out " "I had to join a queue at 3 a.m." "With a ticket worth half a kilo of rice and half a kilo of sugar." "It got to a point we chimed the bell to round up the people and not let the corn be taken away, not let the onions be taken away, not let what we needed be taken away, and I was just a kid, a child." "And that was because of those, those..." "And now that I'm beginning to see the sun come up and go down, those were the ones that tortured us, our bones, and ribs, and pulled out our fingernails." "Mine were taken out from these two fingers, but that was down there, in front of Rossio, it was midnight." "But that was just my job." "They just got crushed." "Because I think any woman, if she has the money, if she works and earns enough to feed herself and her children, pay the rent, make ends meet, she wouldn't need to get in the sack with every Tom, Dick and Harry." "I think that maybe there wouldn't be as many as there are, and there's more by the day." "I've come to a conclusion, and I'm still waiting, and I have faith that it'll all come true, for the good of us all, myself and thousands of women, that have to work the street to make a living." "We won't stand by while imperialism gets its paws in our country because we must, as workers, fight for national independence, and not remain dependent." "Because, if we were once a colonising country, now we are and continue to be colonised by American imperialism." "American aggressions to our country, like the aggression against our comrades in Cergal..." "We must put a definite end to the presence of American imperialism in our country." "It's an offence to genuine patriots, it's an offence to those who fight for real national independence." "American aggression to our country is more than just military aggression." "It's also carried out through intellectual aggression, moral aggression, oppressive aggression, which they impose through their secret treaties, which the Portuguese know nothing of, which our ministers sign without the workers' knowledge." "That is, they sign agreements behind the backs of the working class." "The working class has to give a united response and to kick out for good and all every form of imperialism, whatever its colours." "Because in our own country we can't let people go on allowing that treaties, agreements, that our military facilities be later on used for a military aggression like the one our proletarian comrades in Chile have witnessed," "and now the example of the issue in Chile... in Peru." "Therefore, I think I'm expressing..." "By expressing my opinion, I'm expressing the feeling of the working class towards the permanence of NATO in Portugal which had hostile intents, intents to offend the true feelings of the Portuguese working class." "The way I see it, the working class aims at transforming society, being as it is a revolutionary class." "And knowing, as we do, that NATO is the corner stone of a certain form of society absolutely at odds with the interests of the working class;" "knowing, as we do, that NATO is the corner stone of the economic imperialism that has ruled so many peoples around the world, so many working classes, we, workers, can't be indifferent to the presence of that force" "that has controlled everything and everyone." "American capitalism, in particular, is the one that has most exploited our labour force." "NATO's presence in Portugal is an aggression to the revolutionary moment that the working class is trying to carry out in Portugal at present." "Workers must demand that the government leave NATO." "Because, if up to now, the government justified the permanence of NATO as a way to better control and exploit the African peoples and workers in general, now the workers' money can be put to a lot of things in Portugal," "and should not go to NATO and be used to exploit brother peoples and the working class." ""American Cultural Center"" "First of all," "I'd like to salute the gentlemen and the ladies here present." "Secondly, I salute the military youth." "And thirdly, I salute my 72 years." "And hurray for communism!" "Hurray for communism!" "Hurray for youth!" "Down with fascism!" "Hurray!" "I was one of the men persecuted by fascism." "In 1940, I came close to being imprisoned." "In 1941, I came close to being imprisoned." "And a man has to react!" "A man has to react!" "I saw, clear as day, what they did to us, we can't back out, we have to push on." "Hurray for youth, down with that fascism!" "Hurray for working people, because I've always worked earnestly." "And one time there was this employer..." "We must never back down because employers..." "Just look at me, what they did to me." "After I had an accident, I couldn't work anymore, they promised me a wage of 250 escudos a month." "Then he cut down 150 and gave me 100 escudos." "I told him to buy a rod with these 100 escudos and it would be the end of it." "So down with fascism!" "We have to..." "No need to look any further, just look at me!" "Look at me!" "A man that worked earnestly his whole life, I raised six children." "I raised six children earnestly!" "And only to be persecuted by those..." "I can't say anymore, although I wanted to." "In 1958, at the time of the Salgado elections," "I'd cut my lip shaving." "A certain fascist man approached me, he's still around these days, and said to me: "You kept your moustache because that fellow lost."" "No way!" "I kept my moustache because I have a calamity here, here on my lip." "And I never bowed," "I never bowed to fascism, down with fascism!" "Hurray for youth, they're the future men of tomorrow!" "And for those that work for the progress of the nation!" "And even today, I'm an old man, and people still value me because I still work." "And so we all have to respond, so that we can defend ourselves against that bunch of parasites walking about, they're a bunch of parasites!" "There's no other name for it." "We need to have what all men should have, to beat them every time." "We are..." "They walk up to us these days and lift their hats." "I still remember the days when they made us walk around almost barefoot, and seeing my children cutting furze barefoot, that's what made them happy, that made them happy." "But, thanks to the military youth, now we can defend ourselves from all that!" "Hurray for youth!" "And hurray for the Communist Party!" "Victory comes hard, but it's ours, every day, every day!" "And hurray for the working youth!" "But you mustn't sell yourselves for a beer, don't sell yourselves for a pile of timber, don't sell yourselves for a fat pig!" "We need to push this thing forward!" "Take me, for instance." "I was a servant for 30... 29 years, 65 days, 4 hours in a company..." "Or rather 39 years, 65 days and 4 hours in a company, and when I had an accident and couldn't work anymore they threw me a big party." "You can't work anymore, so get lost." "Nice." "Now, thanks to the military youth," "we stand where we stand." "Hurray for master Antonio!" "Hurray!" "We've got our response ready to finish of that bunch of scoundrels, take them all down." "Hurray!" "I had a lot to say, I've got a lot to say." "But..." "We all have a lot to say!" "I only wish that all youngsters, all workers, be friends, and realise that they have to stick together." "That all of them stick together, together with the military forces, so that we can all deal with these fellows." "Don't back down, don't back down!" "Just a few days ago I saw the torment many had to go through." "They set out from here, walked 10 miles with a saddlebag on their backs." "On their backs, a load weighing 11 pounds on their backs." "They'd get there 10 minutes too late and they wouldn't get work, they'd lose a whole day." "It wasn't fair to do that to humanity." "It wasn't fair to do that to humanity." "It was bad enough they had to go through all that torment." "So we, as young people..." "You as young people and me as an old man, we're about to give up, but to give up on them." "Just because they carry a hat on their heads and ride cars," "I've walked all my life..." "I've walked all my life and I'm as much of a man as they are." "So you ride a bike, or a motorcycle, and go about your lives, if they ride a car, we just ignore them, we abandon them, we repudiate them!" "It's our right, to repudiate!" "And hurray for communism!" "We confirm that culture is the basis for the liberation movement, and that only societies capable of preserving their culture can mobilise and organise themselves and fight against foreign rule." "Whatever the ideological or idealistic traits of its expression, culture is an essential factor in the historical process of the oppressed society." "Inevitably, it is also the negation of its cultural process." "Therefore..." "Therefore, and because all societies that truly liberate themselves from foreign rule will follow the routes intrinsic to their own culture, the fight for liberation is, above all, a cultural act." "The former fascist government, what did it teach us by saying that some of us are worth more than the others." "And in fact we're not." "But they were trying to divide men, who allowed the government, more and more, to live of exploitation." "That's why now, after the 25th of April, we should also, as best we can, bring down these fascists." "What have they done?" "What have they given to the people in the colonies, particularly in Cape Verde and Guinea?" "For a while, I was over there working, man, and all I could see was people out there filling their pockets, man." "I didn't see any development, and the people there were..." "We were the ones who did all the work, man." "I worked for almost a month, man, a guy would work for a month, man, with a sack on his back, working with your hands, man, and when at the end of the month, you know what the wages were?" "Guess what were the wages any of us got." "I can't guess, but I can, how can I..." "But go ahead, in your mind, how much were the wages a worker could get there." "4 escudos a month, or a day..." "No, it wasn't 4 escudos a day." "We had a salary of 50 escudos a month." "But I don't know how much that is by day..." "I worked for seven years over there, man." "And when you got back, how much did you have in your pockets?" "Me?" "I worked for seven years and when I went back home, when I joined my parents, I had 2.100 escudos." " For seven years?" " For seven years." "And what about the black men there, living there?" "On the contrary, man, a white man went there from Portugal, he got there and I was already there." "I'd already..." "I could do any job a lot better than that white man." "I was out in the woods working, you know," "I'd even use an axe to cut off a crocodile's tail, or a plant," "I taught him, I taught him how to do the work." "And at the end of the month, man, the guy got 4.500 escudos and I got a 50 escudos note, man." "That guy worked in S. Tomé for three years." "He got rich, he had bikes, Hondas, worth more than 20.000 escudos," "28.000 or something, man, after three years." "And I worked for seven years and got back home with only 2.000 escudos." "And you couldn't buy a Honda, like he did?" "With what?" "If all my work went to him," "I couldn't buy a thing, I ran out of money and had to scrape by, you know." "Because I did the working and he did the earning, because he practically didn't move a finger, he just bossed us around." "Of the people living there, the black men from S. Tomé also lived like the Cape Verdians?" " They were worse-off, worse-off." " What were their monthly wages?" " Their monthly wages?" "They got..." "They used to get 30 escudos, man, depending on how much they could pay, they gave them as much as they wanted to." "How was your nourishment back in S. Tomé?" " Our nourishment?" " Yes." "Yes, your food, what you ate over there." " I can't say that on TV." " You can say it, man." "Now that we've been through the 25th of April, things..." "We must let the world know how we used to live, how we used to live back then, for many centuries, from the 60s till now or..." "How we lived, especially in S. Tomé and Angola." "How they used to beat the black people in Angola and S. Tomé." "They forced them to dig the earth against their will, and they built a place and brought it down if they felt like it, because they were the bosses, they had all the power, they called the shots, man." "You can clarify what you used to eat there." "That's another story..." "But now I want to know what you ate, man." " If it was dried fish or bananas..." " Well, you're guessing right, man, that's exactly what it was..." " So you ate dried fish?" " It wasn't dried, it was rotten." " Rotten fish, was it?" "It'd be nice if it was dried, because codfish is a dried fish." " Yes, codfish is a dried fish." " Right." "But ours was not only dried but also rotten." "Right." "They'd give us the worse fish they'd caught." " What about olive oil?" " Olive oil?" " You didn't have any of that?" " All we had was palm tree oil." "Was it as good as the oil here in Portugal?" " I don't know." " And in Cape Verde?" "I don't know either, because I came back here, man." "I can't describe it, but I can describe how our ancient people, until 1947, what they ate was dried corn and manioc." "And when that crisis broke in 1947," "they dug holes 40 metres deep, and sometimes they buried people alive in them." "And those who could save them went to the audience in search of something to eat instead." "And they sometimes buried the invalids alive." "And I don't know any more about Cape Verde." "Because I hadn't been born yet." "Yes, man." "All I have to say is that the people who keep a distance, who don't believe in the independence..." "Those guys..." "Of course, they are not well informed, but since the 25th of April a lot of action has taken place." "Because we know perfectly well that our comrade Amílcar Cabral went to war for the liberation of his people." "Both the people of Guinea and of Cape Verde." "And he lost his life in the war against the oppression of the people." "And Amílcar Cabral, in fact, had no need for it, because he earned enough to get along with his life." "But, realising that men can't live alone..." "Because all men, once they're born, have a right to live." "He earned enough, but he saw that his peoples were slaved and slaughtered at that moment." "They didn't earn enough to eat, or to put some clothes on, or anything, they had just enough for some bread and wine, to grease down, that's all." "They could barely feed themselves and all that, and so he decided to launch that struggle against exploitation and against those colonialists that were there just to exploit us and did nothing for the progress..." " Of our country." "Of our country, yes." "And so we all know that he lost his life fighting for the liberation of his peoples." "This is enough, more than enough for us to look inside our conscience, just on account of the life lost by our comrade Amílcar Cabral." "You don't need to..." "Nobody asked for anything else." "Just thinking about that man's death for the liberation of the people of his country, that was enough for a man to wonder what did Amílcar Cabral die for." "Why did Amílcar Cabral found a party and launch a struggle?" "For what?" "He had no need for it, but his peoples did." "Because he didn't want to live on his own." "Fascism was the opposite, they wanted to live by themselves." "He founded the party, not only to liberate the African peoples, but even for the liberation of all peoples." "Because he always said, before he died, that the struggle  that the struggle for liberation served not only the African peoples, but also the Portuguese people." "And, above all, quite the opposite, he didn't fight against the Portuguese people." "He fought against the colonialists and against the exploitation of man by man." "What shall I do with this sword?" "Fascists, the people is up in arms!" "Because this land, it hasn't been worked on for 12 or 13 years, and we're working on it to get bread for our Portugal." "A property like this one..." "With only one man, more than 1500 acres..." "Now we're 30 something men and we still can't handle it." "So this land belongs to those who work it, and the fascists will eat straw." "And that's all there is to it." "How old are you, Mr. Francisco?" " How old are you?" " Fifty-nine." "Fifty-nine." "And how many vacation days have you had?" "The first one's yet to come." "I don't know what vacations are." "I don't know what that is." "I've had them, but that's when I'm out of work, but then I don't have any money to eat or to travel." "I've had plenty of vacations, but no money to go along with them, nothing to eat or drink." "I've been through that, and it's no picnic." "We do it in the bees' fashion:" "When you can't put the bees in one place, we get them another." "And with properties we do the same thing, because a lot of them are covered in wild growth, uncultivated, and we're keen on working." "Workers, peasants, united we shall overcome!" "Workers, peasants, united we shall overcome!" "We must stick together in our fight until we obtain victory." "If we're not together, we won't obtain victory." ""Proletarians of all countries, unite!"" ""Unite!"" "Subtitles Ana Rita Matos / CRISTBET, Lda."