Carvalho, Otelo Saraiva de

(1934- )

   Army major who planned and managed the military operational aspects of the military coup that overthrew the Estado Novo. A career army officer who entered his profession in the 1950s, he held important positions in several of the colonial wars in Portugal's African territories during 1961-74. Saraiva de Carvalho was born in Mozambique in 1934, and made it his life's ambition to become a stage actor. In his career, he was influenced by service with Portugal's most senior army officer, General Antônio de Spínola, who served the Estado Novo both as commissioner and commanding general of armed forces in the colony of Guinea- Bissau. Contact with African nationalist elements, as well as familiarity with increasi ngly available Marxist-Leninist literature both in Africa and in Portugal, transformed Saraiva de Carvalho into a maverick and revolutionary who sought to overthrow the Portuguese dictatorship at home by means of military intervention in politics through the Revolution of 25 April 1974.

   Known as "Otelo" (Othello) in the media and to much of the Portuguese public, Saraiva de Carvalho played a significant role in the period of 25 April 1974-25 November 1975, when the country experienced a leftist revolution and a trend toward a dictatorship of the Left. Eventually the head of COPCON, the Armed Forces Movement's special unit for enforcing "law and order" and for ensuring that the government was not overthrown by military insur-rectionism, Saraiva de Carvalho became a political personality in his own right. This somberly handsome figure became the darling of the radical Left, including anarchist factions.

   With the swing of the political pendulum away from the radical Left after the abortive leftist coup of 25 November 1975, Carvalho's military career was ended and his role in politics shifted. He was dismissed from the COPCON command, arrested, and held in prison for a period. After his release, he entered the political wilderness, unhappy that the unorthodox Marxist-Leninist revolution he envisioned for Portugal, was not happening. Still carrying the torch for the notion of a "Socialist paradise" in which the state would play only a small role, the hero of the Revolution of 25 April 1974 reentered politics and ran for president of the republic on two occasions. In 1976, he received a respectable 16 percent of the vote, but in the 1981 elections his vote was negligible. Accused of involvement in several terrorist factions' conspiracies and violence, Carvalho was arrested and imprisoned. After a long and sensational trial, "Otelo" was released and acquitted. Of all the memoirs of the 1974 Revolution, Alvorada em Abril (Reveille in April), his contribution, was the most charming and revealing.

   See also Captains, Movement of the.