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Plain Portuguese obviously are not buying the luxury goods in the shops. The incidence of tuberculosis, venereal disease and insanity is high, and there is an acute shortage of doctors & nurses. In one month last year, 5,800 new mental cases needing hospital treatment were reported, of whom only 1,118 were treated.
The red tape that keeps patients out of hospitals permits Lisbon's director of public health to gain credit with budget-minded Salazar by returning part of his appropriation to the national treasury each year.
The same bureaucracy lets the older half of Lisbon (which had survived the 1755 earthquake) wallow. A few blocks from the grandiose and spotless Rocio, Lisbon's counterpart of Times Square, the Old Town's slums have no electricity, running water or sewage. Once a day street cleaners climb up & down Castello de Sao Jorge hill, where generations of shuffling bare feet have polished the cobbles satin-smooth. An hour after the cleaners have passed, the same steep, crooked passages are foul with refuse.
Portugal's literacy rate is 50%, one of the lowest of Western countries—officially. But since those who can barely sign their names are counted as literate, the actual figure is much lower. Despite repeated promises, Salazar, a teacher himself, has achieved little or no improvement in Portuguese education. Teachers make $12-$16 a month; few schools have been built—but Salazar lavishes money on the preservation of public monuments.
The minority who can read are little better off than those who cannot. Contemporary-Portuguese literary efforts are scarcely worth the paper they are written on. Portuguese are kept in ignorance of some of the most important world news. Salazar will not let any paper print news about Russia or about Communist activity anywhere. No Portuguese paper mentioned the recent wave of strikes in the U.S. nor any other labor conflict. The United Nations is barely mentioned, because Portugal is not a member. Since there is sometimes courtesy, if not honor, among dictators, Salazar has permitted no mention of the controversy between U.N. and Caudillo Francisco Franco.
M.U.D.-Slinging. How do the people like their strait jackets? Few dictators ever know. Salazar found out last fall when he suddenly proclaimed freedom of the press and free elections for a new National Assembly. After a few days' hesitation, opposition groups which had scarcely suspected one another's existence came out of the underground. Two weeks after the proclamation, in a rented schoolroom on Lisbon's Rua do Bemformoso, the first meeting of the Movimento Unidade Democratica (M.U.D.) was held. Much to M.U.D.'s surprise, supporters poured in by the thousands. Every paper except two Government sheets supported M.U.D. in a campaign of invective against Salazar, who was shocked by the hatred he had fomented by 20 years of suppression.