Silence as a Weapon of Power Within the Context of the Portuguese Dictatorship

In history, the voice of silence is sometimes the unheard shout, the forgetfulness and the bleaching of truth, the sound of the loser and of the dead. Hearing the voice of silence is only possible with the conquest of freedom. Freedom that the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar undermined, destroying it for the others with his own tyrannical freedom.

In this chapter, I shall briefly analyse three institutions that imposed silence in Portugal: The political police against political opponents; the censorship directed to the Portuguese in general; and the “Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina” (“Portuguese Female Youth”), the compulsory organization intended to silence women.