ep 3/18 part 2/7

[Hermínio Sena - Mucaba Outpost Commander, 1961] Liutenant Colonel Neto managed to break through the curtain and fly below it, and then started chasing them down along the road and broke up with it all. [Álvaro Silva Tavares - Governor-General of Angola 1960/61] He told me that he saw (that) they were preparing themselves to attack at dawn and (that) he bombed and machine-gunned (them). Later, hundreds were founded dead, more than a hundred dead. Mucaba didn't fall! [audio: National Broadcaster] Militarily indefensible, land of little economic value, Mucaba lived under threat for a month, almost constantly surrounded. And when it was said to the 25 heroes that it was unlikely that they would receive effective military assistance, they didn't change their attitudes, they stayed. Received by Salazar and promoted in his career, Hermínio de Sena is the hero of Mucaba that is commented nationwide. The other various cases like this, represented suffering and willingness but also the surprise and fear of the portuguese before what was happening in Angola: Something that they had failed to predict and that they didn't seemed prepared to understand. [Hermínio Sena - Mucaba Outpost Commander, 1961] For us it was painful, their cries of: "Kill! Their bullets are water, they don't kill" and then they would advance towards our shots with "open arms". "With open arms". And we shot down what we could. It looked like many of them were on drugs... and then they had those songs... [Cosmo Manuel - UPA fighter in 1961] (We, from Angola, are people like the children of Israel.) (It was so in ancient times and it was then that God gave us hope.) (Let us all be strong and pray.) UPA, we will win, because this land was given to us by our grandparents and in the future we don't want more slavery. (reenactment made by the Cartographic Service of the Portuguese Army) With their war rituals, the rebels tried to compensate for the limitations of their weapons and (they also) attacked in large groups, convincing themselves of the ineffectiveness of the enemy bullets. [Brandão de Melo - March 1961] We grabbed a pistol and a rifle and came downstairs to see what was that noise and (that's when) we see some 400 men. At that time everyone was unknown to us, but later on we recognized 2 or 3, the others were all strangers, most of them coming from the Belgian Congo. (reenactment made by the Cartographic Service of the Portuguese Army) [José Mapoyokele - UPA fighter in 1961] When we were attacking a farm, we were advised to yell: "UPA! UPA! Maza! Maza! Maza!", because we had been told that by holding a piece of clay in the hand the bullets (shot by) the whites wouldn't hit us. [Alberto Trindade, 88th Batallion - Damba, June 1961] After the shots then began a deafening noise, all the blacks start yelling something that I figured was: "Kill! Kill!" first (they were yelling) "Mata (Kill)" but when the machine-guns "started to work" against those figures, they began to yell "Maza". Because they said that the bullets shot by the whites are water and that they didn't hurt. [José Mateus Lelo - UPA fighter in 1961] We knew perfectly well that, for example, the bombs killed a lot of people, and that the bullets also killed. But for us to gain courage we yelled: "UPA! Maza! and (Mata! Mata!) Kill! Kill!" [Manuel Cruz Alegre - Merchant in Carmona, 1961] All of them came drugged. For them to commit the crimes they committed, they had to be on drugs. [João César Correia - UPA fighter in 1961] Smoking dope? ... Look... there was not enough drugs for everyone. If some of them smoked... but not all of them... You know that in war everything is possible... When one makes war everything is possible... [José Mapoyokele - UPA fighter in 1961] We yelled "Maza! Maza!" Which meant that the bullet became water... and that it would not hit us because water doesn't penetrate the body. There were also people who believed that a small stick, the blessing of a special water and the cries of "Maza" turned the bullets and the bombs from the portuguese airplanes into harmless water. [António Gomes - Former "Flechas" Commander] How was that the (people in the) villages come to know that the water and the stick didn't work? Resulting in them realizing that they had to flee the villages because otherwise they would die. It was in the Suanza-Congo (?), (in) a village called Quimbuenda (?). One morning the airplanes that were bombing the villages showed up... All these people, everyone was in the village. When the plane was approaching everyone in the village began to say: "UPA! Maza! UPA! Maza!" and the plane dropped the bombs that decimated the entire village. ( - Did you really believed that the whites' bullets didn't kill?) [José Mapoyokele - UPA fighter in 1961] - (Those bullets) didn't hit us, that is the truth! - The portuguese soldiers and policemen did fire but with that prayer: "God show us the wonder in front of us, put Yourself in front of us", we were counting that God, or Jesus, or an angel would put Himself in front of us. [Angolan refugees - Congo 1961] Hallelujah! Hallelujah! You are our supreme guide! The same religious faith accompanied rebels and war refugees. The rebellion had mostly the strength of a belief, ideology was little more than the idea of independence that for the rebels was a right recognized to them by divine justice. [José Mapoyokele - UPA fighter in 1961] The only bullets that hit us were those fired by the blacks that fought alongside the portuguese army. But the ones shot by the guns of the portuguese didn't hit us. Because we were asking for peace, freedom and independence. Because we were enslaved. That's why their guns didn't harm us, but ours did harm them because they were the ones doing wrong to us. [Cosmo Manuel - UPA fighter in 1961] Before leaving for combat, we prayed. The pastors were always close to us, and in the days of combat they would be called to pray with us. We worked always with God. [José Mateus Lelo - UPA fighter in 1961] (We are fighting with Christ on our side, so everything is going very well!) (Going very well! Going very well!) (We are fighting with Christ on our side, so everything is going very well!) (Peace until we die (?)) A political prayer originated by the nationalism thought by the independence of Congo and by the Chirstianity learned in Protestant missions. [Luanda - March 1961] To the despair and revolt of incredulous settlers, the same Christianity that the portuguese had brought with them to Angola, was now an important leaven in the fight against their presence. To that fight that started with grisly and indiscriminate massacres, the official position by the portuguese removes the political component from it and opposes it with a patriotic mobilization of the settlers. [Adriano Moreira – Overseas Minister - May 1961] We are facing a terrorist action that cannot be addressed with the traditional methods of defense, which requires the mobilization of the entire population and from which neither individuals nor the civil authorities nor even the militarized forces had previous experience. [Adriano Moreira – Overseas Minister, 1961/62] A mobilization of the population, who committed excesses, of course, but that did nothing comparable to what it suffered. Certainly, there must have been (some) mistakes, (some) misjudgments and victims of the reactions that didn't reach the previous aggressor. [Horácio Caio – RTP Journalist in 1961] There was actually a retaliation that was also very violent. And there is no news, no pictures, no memory because... it was on the other side, it was not (our job)... We weren't the ones who were going to shoot that, nor could we... nor could we... [NBC White Paper #7 - "Angola: Journey to a War", 1961]