Doca de Alcântara (the attack on the freighter “Cunene”)

Armed Revolutionary Action (ARA) was the armed wing of the Portuguese Communist Party, active from 1970 to 1973, to fight against the colonial war, overthrow the dictatorship and win freedom. Its first action, studied and decided on in the central command by Jaime Serra, Francisco Miguel and Raimundo Narciso, targeted the freighter Cunene, which supplied the colonial troops with weapons and other goods.¹

According to Wikipedia, the original target was the liner Vera Cruz. On the night of 26 October 1970, Carlos Coutinho and Gabriel Pedro — an old communist activist, aged 72, who had spent years in prison at Tarrafal — rowed out of the Poço do Bispo dock, disguised as fishermen. A maritime police patrol appeared near the liner; with the bombs’ timers set for five in the morning, they decided to place the charges underwater, on the hull of the Cunene.²

The ARA communiqué, dated 26 October, announced that the 16,000-ton Cunene, “used to feed the colonial war”, had been left “flooded and immobilised in the Alcântara dock, in Lisbon, with a large hole”.¹² The next day, the newspapers reported an explosion on the ship — O Século (The Century) published a photograph of the hole — and the captain put it down to “a diesel pipe or gases in the hold”.²

Other actions followed: the destruction, in the port of Lisbon, of equipment bound for the colonial army; that of the cultural centre of the United States embassy; that of the helicopter fleet at the Tancos air base; the cutting of radio-telegraph and telephone communications; and the destruction of part of the NATO headquarters in Oeiras.¹