the last book I ever read (Amália Rodrigues’s Amália at the Olympia (33 1/3 Europe), excerpt seven)

from Amália Rodrigues’s Amália at the Olympia (33 1/3 Europe) by Lila Ellen Gray:

Portugal joined NATO in 1949, included in the alliance even though António de Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo (New State) regime was a dictatorship. From the perspective of the U.S. and NATO, two possible motivations for Portuguese inclusion: (1) Portugal’s Azores Islands are in a strategic location, halfway between the United States and Europe (and Allied forced had already made use of a base in the Azores during World War II, although Portugal officially began the war as “neutral”); (2) through legitimizing and aiding the Estado Novo, NATO inclusion might help to suppress communism in Portugal. “Antipathy to communism” was something also shared by the Portuguese regime and helped to fuel Portugal’s political cold-war engagement with the USA. In 1974 when a bloodless coup led by the Portuguese military toppled the regime, communist organizing would play a key role. The city of Lisbon would host a critical meeting for the restructuring of the alliance in 1952 (and in 1955, Portugal joined the United Nations). “Introducing Portugal” is one of several documentaries on individual countries in the alliance produced as part of NATO’s information campaign to introduce member states to one another.