Territorializing Maoism: Dictatorship, War, and Anticolonialism in the Portuguese "Long Sixties"

I n the 1960s and 1970s, the influence of Maoism extended all over the world, although its ideological impact has mainly been associated with certain specific national contexts. The aim of this article is to analyze the projection of Maoism in Portugal in the final years of the Estado Novo dictatorship, focusing on the intervention and discourse of the Movimento Reorganizativo do Partido do Proletariado (MRPP; Movement for the Reorganization of the Party of the Proletariat). The MRPP was not the only organization that claimed an explicit link with Maoism, but it was the one that most clearly combined an imaginary link to the Chinese Cultural Revolution with a particular mix of youth activism, triumphalism and moralism. This article explores the hypothesis that the particular constraints forged by the dictatorship and the significant impact of the colonial war produced a specific territorialization and influence of Maoism in Portugal during the first half the 1970s.