Operation Autumn: how the PIDE murdered General Humberto Delgado, 1965

It was a Saturday in Badajoz, the Spanish city just across the border from the Portuguese Alentejo. Shortly before three in the afternoon of 13 February 1965 a man in dark glasses, with a scarf pulled up over part of his face, waited at the railway station with a woman in her thirties. There was no sun to shade his eyes from. The glasses were a disguise.1 source1 source

The man was Humberto Delgado, a 58-year-old air force general who had run for president of Portugal in 1958 and had lived in exile ever since. The woman was Arajaryr Campos, his Brazilian secretary. They were waiting for “Dr Castro e Sousa”, presented to Delgado as an opposition lawyer from Portugal, who was to drive them to a meeting with army officers ready to rise against the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar.3 sources3 sources

The “lawyer” arrived and led them to a Renault Caravelle parked nearby. Delgado sat beside the driver; Campos sat in the back and tried to ease the tension with small talk. The driver was in fact Ernesto Lopes Ramos, a sub-inspector of the PIDE, Salazar's political police. Ahead of them, on the road to Olivença, three more PIDE officers were waiting.2 sources2 sources

Delgado had been a man of the regime. Born in Torres Novas on 15 May 1906, he fought on the side of the military coup of 28 May 1926 that ended Portugal's First Republic, served in the regime's youth and militia organisations, headed civil aviation, helped found the national airline TAP in 1945 and was military attaché in Washington. At 47 he was the youngest general in the Portuguese forces.2 sources2 sources

In 1958 he broke with it. As the opposition candidate for president he drew huge crowds; the official count gave him 236,528 votes against 758,998 for the regime's Américo Tomás, a result the Panteão Nacional, the state body that now holds his tomb, calls fraudulent. Suspended from the army in January 1959, he took refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Lisbon and left for Rio de Janeiro on 21 April.2 sources2 sources

From exile Delgado called for armed revolt. He slipped into Portugal on a false passport for the failed attack on the Beja barracks on New Year's night 1962, told in its own article, and got out again. He moved to Algeria, where the exiled opposition had its base, and in June 1964 became president of the Patriotic Front for National Liberation (FPLN).2 sources2 sources

The front was a quarrelsome coalition of communists, Delgado's followers and smaller revolutionary groups, divided over armed struggle, the colonies and the general's own temperament. Delgado broke with it in October 1964 and on 12 January 1965 founded his own Portuguese National Liberation Front in Algiers. He was isolated, impatient and looking for officers inside Portugal who would act.2 sources2 sources

Arajaryr Moreira Campos was Brazilian, the daughter of a Portuguese mother and a Spanish father, and thought of herself first as a Carioca, a native of Rio de Janeiro. She was 28, separated from her husband and had a young daughter, Rosângela. She had followed his 1958 campaign in the Brazilian papers. On 27 May 1959, at a birthday party at the home of Horácio Ribeiro, a supporter who had sounded her out about the job a few days before, she met Delgado and became his secretary.1 source1 source

She typed, took shorthand and spoke English, French, German and Italian. She soon did more than paperwork. For the Beja rising she travelled with Delgado through Morocco and Spain and into Portugal on her own Brazilian passport, carrying his dress uniform and the proclamation he meant to read if Salazar fell. She paid her own fares and took no salary.1 source1 source

She wrote often to her daughter under her own name and address, promising they would soon live together again, and she always travelled on her real passport. She made no secret of who she was.1 source1 source

According to the historian Luís Farinha, a former director of the Museu do Aljube, the plan to lure Delgado to the border was drawn up after Beja by the three men who ran the PIDE: its director, Major Fernando da Silva Pais, his deputy Agostinho Barbieri Cardoso, and Álvaro Pereira de Carvalho of the information service. The Museu do Aljube also dates the plan to the beginning of 1962.2 sources2 sources

The PIDE needed people the general would trust. Barbieri Cardoso and Pereira de Carvalho found them in Rome: a doctor, Ernesto Bisogno, and Professor Mário de Carvalho, who took the code name Oliveira and a PIDE salary of 10,000 escudos a month. In the last days of December 1964, at the Hotel Caumartin in Paris, Mário de Carvalho and a supposed lawyer, Ernesto de Castro e Sousa, persuaded Delgado that soldiers and civilians in Portugal were ready for revolution and wanted to meet him near Badajoz.1 source1 source

No names of the plotters inside Portugal were given. Some of Delgado's friends in Paris warned him of the danger, but he was set on the “decisive action”, and he accepted. Castro e Sousa was Ernesto Lopes Ramos, the PIDE sub-inspector who became his contact in Paris.1 source1 source

Rosa Casaco later said the brigade had been put together behind his back by the PIDE leadership, and that the aim was to kidnap the general, put him under chloroform and drive him in the boot of a car across the border at São Leonardo to stand trial in Portugal for terrorism. Farinha treats the first claim as an alibi. Casaco's own account of the preparations points the other way.1 source1 source

The brigade spent the night of 12 February in a guest house in Reguengos de Monsaraz, in the Alentejo, and crossed into Spain at the São Leonardo border post on the morning of the 13th, every man and every car with false papers. After the meeting in Badajoz, Lopes Ramos drove Delgado and Campos out along the main road from Badajoz to Olivença, towards the officers they expected to meet.1 source1 source

Farinha says they reached the agreed spot at about three in the afternoon. One Portuguese account names it as Los Almerines, near Olivença. The versions of what happened next differ in detail, but Farinha sets out the core: as Delgado got out of the car, Casimiro Monteiro fired at him with a Unique revolver fitted with a silencer, and the shot killed him.2 sources2 sources

Arajaryr Campos was killed moments later. The court that tried the case held that Monteiro alone had fired, so that the same revolver killed her too. Rosa Casaco later said it was Tienza who killed her.2 sources2 sources

The bodies went into the boots of the cars, or into the Opel alone according to the court, and were driven to a lonely spot called Los Malos Pasos, about six kilometres south of Villanueva del Fresno, a town a little over thirty kilometres south of the scene of the killing. There they were stripped of their belongings, covered with sulphuric acid and quicklime and buried in a natural ditch.2 sources2 sources

For ten weeks Delgado was simply missing. On 24 April 1965 two Spanish boys out hunting birds came across the half-buried remains at Los Malos Pasos. Most accounts give that date; one RTP report gives 13 April.3 sources3 sources

Lisbon denied any part in the killing. The official version blamed the opposition and its feuds. In Franco's Spain the investigation went ahead all the same. The lawyer Jaime Cortezo, charged by the Spanish government with the inquiry, sought the extradition of the two informers in Rome, Bisogno and Mário de Carvalho, to be tried in Spain.2 sources2 sources

Nothing came of it in Portugal. The PIDE chiefs kept their posts. Mário de Carvalho's PIDE salary rose to 16,000 escudos. Casimiro Monteiro was sent to Mozambique on special missions and promoted to sub-inspector in 1970.1 source1 source

According to Silva Pais's own account, as Farinha gives it, when he reported to Salazar what had happened at Badajoz, the prime minister asked for the greatest silence about the facts, to save the country from a very grave situation. In Paris the exiled opposition leader Emídio Guerreiro told O Estado de S. Paulo that Portuguese democrats would only thank Spain when it issued an arrest warrant for the man chiefly responsible: Salazar himself.1 source1 source

Only after the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 could the case be tried in Portugal. It went to the 2nd Military Territorial Tribunal of Lisbon, which sat at Santa Clara, as if the killing had been a military crime, and the hearings began in October 1978. Seven men were charged. Three appeared in court: Silva Pais, Pereira de Carvalho and Tienza. Barbieri Cardoso was in Brussels, Lopes Ramos and Rosa Casaco in Brazil, Monteiro in South Africa. They were tried in their absence.3 sources3 sources

At a hearing on 20 October 1978, Silva Pais said that when he told Salazar and the interior minister, Alfredo dos Santos Júnior, of the planned operation, Salazar advised “great care” and the minister said with a smile, “let's see if we can lay hands on him”. His written defence said the plan had been “tacitly approved” by both men. Silva Pais died on 27 January 1981, before the verdict.2 sources2 sources

The judgment was read at Santa Clara on the afternoon of 27 July 1981 and took about two hours. The court accepted that Operation Autumn was meant to arrest Delgado and bring him to trial, and that Casimiro Monteiro alone had fired. The others were cleared of the deaths and convicted of lesser crimes such as forgery and using false identities. Many of the other charges, from destroying the cars used in the operation to hiding the bodies, were held to have lapsed or been amnestied.3 sources3 sources

The lawyer Abranches Ferrão, for the private prosecution, appealed at once to the Supreme Military Court. On 8 July 1982 it upheld the sentences, but an amnesty passed for Pope John Paul II's visit to Portugal that year cut them by six months, and an arrest warrant was issued for Barbieri Cardoso.3 sources3 sources

Rosa Casaco stayed out of reach for years. In 1998 the journalist José Pedro Castanheira of Expresso interviewed him in Spain, where he had been living under a false identity; two months later he was detained outside a bank in Madrid. In that interview he said that the plan had been to put the general under chloroform and take him to Portugal, and that the deaths surprised him.3 sources3 sources

Frederico Delgado Rosa, the general's grandson and biographer, called the 1981 verdict Delgado's “second death”, echoing the title of a 1982 book by Manuel Geraldo, the journalist who had covered the trial for Diário de Lisboa. In Delgado Rosa's view the judges deliberately bent the facts to clear the PIDE hierarchy and, beyond it, Salazar.4 sources4 sources

The second question is whether the PIDE meant to kill. Rosa Casaco's chloroform story was what the court accepted. Farinha points to the lime, the pickaxe and the shovel in Tienza's car. The historian Irene Flunser Pimentel told Lusa in 2015 that, almost certainly, part of the brigade and of the PIDE leadership, Barbieri Cardoso above all, already meant simply to eliminate him.2 sources2 sources

The third is Salazar. No written order to kill has come to light. Pimentel does not believe he gave one; she says a dictator tells his followers what he wants and they act with more or less zeal, and that everything important done inside the PIDE had his approval. Farinha writes that it was impossible for Salazar not to know.2 sources2 sources

Even the place is described loosely. Portuguese reports often say Delgado was killed “near Badajoz”, and some say at Villanueva del Fresno, which is where the bodies were found. The plaque at Los Malos Pasos and the Panteão Nacional both say the trap was near Olivença.4 sources4 sources

Delgado was first buried in Spain. His remains were brought to Lisbon in 1975 and moved to the National Pantheon, in the church of Santa Engrácia, in 1990. He was promoted posthumously to marshal, the rank carved on his tomb.2 sources2 sources

Arajaryr Campos was remembered more slowly. Her daughter, seven when she died, was not told the truth and heard it at fourteen from a schoolmate. In 1995, at a tribute organised by the Confederation of Brazilian Women, Delgado's daughter Iva told Rosângela that her mother had been a heroine. Iva Delgado later edited her writings as Uma Brasileira contra Salazar, launched at the Torre do Tombo in February 2006.2 sources2 sources

In April 2016 the municipal assembly of Badajoz voted unanimously to name streets after both of them, at the request of a regional historical memory association that called it an act of reparation. A month later, on 15 May, Lisbon's airport took the name Humberto Delgado.2 sources2 sources

The case file nearly did not survive. In 2007 the general's biographer found it piled on the floor of a basement at the Boa Hora court in Lisbon, where a clerk told him old files like it would one day go to the rubbish. In April 2008 it was handed to the Torre do Tombo, the national archive; he counted 69 appended volumes, against the 45 announced at the handover.1 source1 source