Abroad, Portugese colonialism was ridiculed as anachronistic by the more sophisticated of the neocolonialists. International opinion among those less cynical focused on the forced labor issue. Pressure, like that applied a century earlier against slavery, was brought to bear in the 1950's against Portugese labor policies, and the Portugese responded as they had earlier, by making small changes that appeased the critics.

Yet de-facto forced labor persisted in Angola, much as it did in Protugal itself, where Salazar's police state forbade the right to organize or strike. Angolan workers were even exported to South Africa to work in the diamond mines.

IN 1961, a reckoning with the rank and bestial exploitation emerged spontaneously. A group of Africans being forced to cultivate cotton in Baixa de Cassange in the interior of central Angola stopped working and refused to pay taxes. The cotton workers' families had averaged an annual income of twenty to thirty dollars the year before. The Portugese army was called out to intimidate the striking workers. The rebels would not budge. According to non-Portugese estimates, 10,000 Africans were massacred. The final struggle for liberation was begun.

The night of February 3, 1961, the MPLA-their slogan "Victory is Certain"-responded by attacking a police patrol, the Prison of Sao Paulo, a police barracks, and the radio station of the capital city, Luanda. On the following day, February 4, the infuriated Portugese retaliated with a random massacre of Africans. By March there was a revolt led by another nationalist organization, the UPA, among the black peasants in the northwest of Angola, and liberation forces took control, of more than one third of the country, including the Cabinda enclave, where Gulf Oil Corporation had been making drilling explorations since 1957.

The Portugese responded as if their one eye had been put out. they conducted a savage witch-hunt, arresting and executing any who were suspected of being leaders or potential leaders of the liberation movement. Along the railway line from Luanda to Malanje in the interior, troops, police, and militia massacred Africans at will. Using weapons donated by NATO countries, the Portugese re-won control of most of their colony. Liberation forces scattered to isolated forest areas where they remain in control to this day. All told, up to 50,000 Africans are said to have died in the 1961 fighting, against 500 Portugese.

SOME CHANGES have been made in Portugese policy in Angola since 1961, but only those that have been deemed necessary to ensure Portugal's continued rule. Salazar's foolish old policy of prohibiting foreign investment has been replaced by more modern economic exploitation of the colony. Foreign investment has been encouraged, and profit-hungry American corporations have begun capital intensive production in Angola. The President of the Portugese Council of Ministers rationally admitted, "Economic development was the best foundation for maintaining the defense effort necessary for the nation's survival."

The Portugese have realized that they cannot maintain their colony on their own, and have enticed American capital and foreign exchange. They have been quite cunning in manipulating capitalist corporations and governments to mutually-beneficial deals. When, during the United Nations outcry that followed the slaughter in 1961, the United States voted for a resolution condemning Portugal, the Portugese threatened to withdraw American rights to the highly strategic Azores Islands. By the next year the United States had judiciously reversed its vote of censure, and was supplying the Portugese military with needed arms.

Moreover, the Portugese consolidated their pacification program for the colonies. In late 1961, they abolished the distinction between "civilized" and "non-civilized" Angolans, and announced some further reforms in their labor codes. Bolstered with American arms, capital investment and dollar exchange from multinational corporations, and American economic credits. Portugese colonialism entered the twentieth century, with its own strategic hamlets programs, and napalm, and defoliants.

THERE ARE thirty American corporations now operating in Angola. The largest enterprise is that of the Gulf Oil Corporation, whose Cabinda exploration-disrupted in 1961 by the popular uprising-has paid off very handsomely. In 1966, huge reserves of high quality oil were discovered, and by 1971, production had reached 150,000 barrels per day. Gulf had invested $150 million in exploration, construction and production outlays, and is now considering building a $100 million deep water port to service the oil fields.

The Board members of Gulf Oil are not stupid. They knew from the first that there would be public opposition to their economic links with the Portugese colonialists. They went ahead because, in the words of Cabinda Gulf manager Robert F. Ward, the Cabinda oil strike is "one of the major growth areas of the Corporation." The Cabinda fields are estimated to have reserves of at least 300 million tons, and they will gush at the rate of 150,000 barrels a day for forty years. And given the low labor costs if Portugese rule continues, that will add up to a lot of profit.

Gulf has rewarded Portugal quite dearly for the Cabinda concession. According to a "Working Copy" of the Cabinda Gulf contract of 1966, as amended in 1969 and 1971, which was submitted to a United Nations investigating committee, payments to Portugal totalled $11 million in 1969, rose to $16 million in 1970, and are projected by United Church of Christ officials to rise to between $33 million and $50 million this year.

These American dollars will help to pay a large portion of Portugal's critical expense in Angola, the military budget, which was $50 million in 1970. Gulf payments are made in several ways: there is a surface rent of $70 per square kilometer on the concession land; there is a barrel tax of ten cents a barrel on the extracted oil; there is a royalty of 12.5 per cent on all petroleum produced, which may be taken by Portugal either in foreign currency or in oil, both of which help to fuel the war machine; finally there is an income tax of 50 per cent on all net profits, which must be paid in advance. Bonuses of $350,000 are to be paid on all new or renewed contracts.

The most crucial provision of the contract-in terms of the ongoing suppression of the Angolese and the people of the other white-ruled enclaves of Southern Africa, is the clause specifying the right to purchase of Cabinda oil by Portugal. As the Angolan Governor General said, "In the mechanized wars of our times...petrol plays such a preponderant part that without reserves of this fuel it is not possible to give the Army sufficient means and elasticity of movement. The machine is the infrastructure of modern war, and machines cannot move without fuel. Hence the valuable support of Angolan oils for our armed forces."

The Cabinda Gulf contract specifies that in addition to its 12.5 per cent royalty in kind, the Portugese may purchase up to 37.5 per cent of the Gulf oil, and in event of war, all of it. Moreover, the Cabinda oil is especially crucial to the South African regime, which has almost no oil reserves of its own, and would depend on friendly Portugal and friendly Gulf in the event of an international embargo.

There is a final mysterious provision that may or may not lie in the contract. Portugese law requires that any company with earnings of more than $1.7 million must pay a special defense tax of 28 per cent. Gulf has denied making such payments before the U.N. committee. Yet it seems unlikely that Gulf would stand in violation of Portugese law. And the full text of the contract, and records of all of Gulf's payments, have not yet been made public. Thus the United Church of Christ's proxy campaign has demanded full disclosure of Gulf's Angola transactions. Gulf's consistent refusal to produce its financial records must be taken as a hint that such payments have likely occurred, further binding Gulf to the Portugese war effort.