Article: The “sad grandmother”, the “simple but honest Portuguese” and the “good son of the Fatherland”: letters of denunciation in the final decade of the Salazar regime (2018)

I used the ‘sad grandmother letter’ featured in the previous post in an article I published last year.

Fundamentally, the aim of the article was to show the ordinary Portuguese citizens during the Salazar regime in a different light than the usual status of ‘passive victims’ ascribed to them in the historiography of the PIDE. The article also aimed to provide a typology of denunciations in the final decade of the Estado Novo and to produce a first assessment of the role of self-policing in the accomplishment of the PIDE’s mission. Finally, the article looked at the role of the PIDE as an economic opportunity for the poor. For some of them at least, the PIDE, in a society devoid of economic opportunities, was seen as a State institution susceptible of being made to work toward the resolution of their most urgent necessities, rather than as a threat to their ‘freedom’ and ‘well-being’. The article can be read here: http://analisesocial.ics.ul.pt/documentos/n226a01.pdf