Exhibition
展覽
The Silenced Years
失聲的年代
Aug 23 -
Aug 24
8月23日 - 8月24日
12:00 pm - 6:00 pm
About the Program
Taiwan once endured 38 years of martial law — one of the longest periods of such rule in global history. Similarly, Portugal experienced its own era of imposed silence under the authoritarian Estado Novo regime, which relied on religion, order, and nationalist myth to construct a closed and repressive system. In both contexts, when regimes built invisible walls of control, anyone who tried to speak out risked being labeled a threat — subject to surveillance, imprisonment, or even disappearance.
In 1987, Taiwan formally lifted martial law. Yet the National Security Law passed the year before, along with various “emergency-era” statutes, allowed a system of “legalized silence” to persist into the 1990s. In Portugal, even after the 1974 Carnation Revolution, the struggle against colonial wars and the remnants of authoritarian rule continued. Freedom, in both cases, was never instantly achieved through a single declaration — it had to be gradually won in the slow loosening of repressive systems.
This exhibition invites you to move through the cracks in Taiwanese and Portuguese history — to listen to the unfinished newspapers of underground print shops, the names that could not be spoken, the coded messages on the streets, and the whispered resistance of silenced women.
Freedom does not begin with the ability to speak, but when a society is willing to listen to those who were once forced into silence.
*Exhibition curated by Luna Wang and Angela Chiu.
From the Curating Team
This exhibition addresses sensitive subjects related to trauma and oppression.
Parental guidance is recommended; Viewer discretion is advised.
2. Click photos to view the context.
本展含有部分觸及創傷與壓迫經驗的圖文內容，建議觀展時由成人陪同兒童，或事先說明展覽背景。
2.點擊照片以查看故事內容
A Dance Initiative with Faces Painted Black
To Remember Is to Acknowledge History and Admit Past Wrongs
During the 228 Incident, a woman named Pan Ying-xue lost her father. Later, during the White Terror era, she herself became a political prisoner.
Years later, due to long-term trauma, Pan Ying-xue suffered a mental breakdown and lost most of her memory.
And yet, one face remained in her mind—that of her younger brother, Pan Xin-xing.
With courage and determination, she painted her face black and walked from Puli to Taipei. Her only goal was to see her brother one more time.
She said to him:
“Bang-fu (Xin-xing’s nickname), don’t be afraid. I’m your second sister. I’ve disguised myself with a black face so that no one will recognize me. Don’t be afraid!”
In 2024, Taiwan’s Executive Yuan officially designated May 19 as “White Terror Memorial Day.”
But in 2025, this memorial day was removed by political parties.
At present, Taiwan only recognizes February 28 as an official day of remembrance.
Yet the White Terror—longer in duration and larger in scale—still has no dedicated day of commemoration.
In response, nearly 40 civil organizations, including the Tsai Jui-yueh Cultural Foundation and the Koo Kuan-min Foundation, launched the “Recovering the Forgotten Women: Black Face Action.” With Pan Ying-xue’s story as a starting point, the campaign calls for greater public awareness of those who remain “trapped” in that period of history.
The goal is to make the horrors and human rights abuses of the White Terror a shared memory in Taiwan’s collective consciousness.
This painful history must not be erased—it must be remembered as part of our national identity, and a reminder of those who suffered and were silenced.
《紀念，是在記取歷史與承認錯誤》
在二二八事件時，一位叫潘英雪的女性失去了她的父親，而在白色恐怖時，她成為了黑囚。多年後，她因為長期創傷而精神崩潰，已失去大部分記憶的她，卻仍記得弟弟潘信行的臉，靠著堅毅與勇氣，她將自己的臉塗黑，因為這樣就沒有人知道她是誰，從埔里到台北，只想再見弟弟一面。潘英雪對的弟弟說，「邦夫（信行的小名），不要怕，我是二姊，我已變裝成黑臉，大家認不出我，你別怕！」
2024年，行政院制定了「519白色恐怖記憶日」但在2025年時遭到政黨刪除。臺灣目前僅有二二八紀念日，而時間更長、規模更大的白色恐怖卻沒有紀念日。蔡瑞月文化基金會、辜寬敏基金會等近 40 個民間團體在同年5月19日共同發起「找回消失的她們・黑臉行動」，以潘英雪的故事為起點，希望更多人看見那些仍留在當年的人們的故事，希望讓這段恐怖、殘害人權的歷史成為集體印象。這樣一段不能抹滅的過往，必須成為台灣人民共同的記憶，也提醒著我們還有這樣一群層遭受迫害的受難者。
A Rose That Bloomed Through Thorns – Su Hong-Yueh-Chiao
In 1961, the “Su Dong-chi Incident” broke out. Yunlin County Councilor Su Dong-chi was arrested by the Taiwan Garrison Command and accused of organizing a pro-independence rebellion. Along with Chen Geng-xin and Chang Mao-chung, he was sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, and Su spent 15 years in prison. Over 300 people were implicated in the case.
Notably, this was the only case during martial law in which Chiang Kai-shek personally commuted a death sentence.
During the four months between Su Dong-chi’s arrest and formal indictment, his wife, Su Hong-Yueh-Chiao, used her connections to petition local officials, submitted appeals to the Control Yuan, and published the injustice in Democratic China. Her efforts drew international attention, with reports appearing in The New York Times, Agence France-Presse, Taiwan Youth, and The Vancouver Sun. These stories were even compiled and sent to the U.S. Embassy in Japan. Her efforts ultimately saved her husband’s life.
Su was intellectually and physically gifted from a young age. At 28, in 1958, she was elected a township representative. After her husband’s arrest, she fought tirelessly for his release, despite being arrested four times herself. She was subjected to harsh interrogations and physical threats. Many friends and relatives distanced themselves out of fear, but she never gave up.
After Su Dong-chi’s sentence was commuted, Su Hong-Yueh-Chiao was herself sentenced to two years in prison for “failing to report” the case. She served her sentence while carrying her infant son, who was less than five months old. Her other five children were left to be raised by relatives.
Upon her release, Su returned to a life of hardship—her family’s assets had been confiscated, her husband remained imprisoned, and she was in debt from standing surety at the bank. Despite having no income, she bore the responsibility of raising her children. In 1963, she was elected Yunlin County Councilor with the highest vote in the county—and nationwide—becoming the first political victim in Taiwan to successfully return to public office.
Her struggles continued. Wherever she worked, intelligence officers would follow. She and her children were forced to move constantly, and she even knelt before relatives to borrow money for their education.
When Chiang Kai-shek died in 1976, Su Dong-chi was released from prison but stripped of all civil rights—he could neither run for office nor legally work without a guarantor.
In 1977, under heavy Kuomintang suppression, Su Hong-Yueh-Chiao ran as an independent and was elected to the Taiwan Provincial Assembly with the highest number of votes nationwide. She served four consecutive terms over 17 years until 1994. In the Assembly, she was fearless, sharp, and unrelenting—drawing constant attacks from state-controlled media and political lawsuits. Her campaign vehicles were vandalized, and she narrowly escaped wrongful imprisonment multiple times.
Despite this, Su never gave up. She remained committed to the people and to Taiwan, seen by those in power as a thorn in their side—but by the people of her county, she was beloved and revered as the “Mazu of Yunlin.”
《行過荊棘並綻放的玫瑰－蘇洪月嬌》
1961年發生了蘇東啟案，當時雲林縣議員蘇東啟被警備總部以「台獨叛亂組織」罪名逮捕，與陳庚辛、張茂鐘一同被判決唯一死刑，後來改判無期徒刑，坐牢15年，此案也牽連了三百餘人。
但你知道這次的改判是戒嚴時期蔣介石唯一的一次改判嗎？
蘇東啟入獄至起訴間四個月期間，其妻蘇洪月嬌利用人脈聯絡地方主席、向監察院題去請願，再透過《民主中國》刊登，將此不合理之事公諸於大眾。透過蘇洪月嬌的努力，使國際注意到這件案子，《紐約時報》、法新社、《台灣青年》、《溫哥華太陽報》等紛紛報導，消息也被彙整去駐日美國大使館和各大報社，蘇洪月嬌的努力使國際情勢關注到蘇東啟案，也因此保住了她丈夫的性命。
蘇洪月嬌從小智體雙全，早在1958年，28歲時就出任鎮民代表，在政治上貢獻與努力。1961年發生「蘇東啟案」，她不斷陳情、力爭、營救，還因而被逮捕四次，多次以強光照眼、被帶到刑求現場被威脅不准在外找人營救蘇東啟，其他親戚朋友也怕被波及而阻止她，但她仍積極奔走營救。在蘇東啟被改為無期徒刑之後，蘇洪月嬌被以「知情不報」判刑兩年徒刑，甚至抱著不足五個月的孩子一起服刑兩年，而其他一子四女則流離四處依親戚生活。
她出獄後，一肩扛起因為財產充公、丈夫在獄中、因銀行作保而負債、沒有經濟來源的家。1964年以全縣/全國最高票當選雲林縣議員，也創下政治受難者參政成功的第一人。但因為薪水微薄，加上她不論做什麼工作，只要前腳離開，警調後腳就跟上，不論在哪個縣市這些事情都不斷地發生，她也需帶著孩子不斷地搬家、找工作，甚至需要下跪跟親戚朋友借錢讓孩子受教育。
1976年，因蔣介石逝世減刑，蘇東啟出獄，被褫奪公權終身，不得參選也不得助選，上班被要求要有保證人，因此也無法工作。1977年11月，蘇洪月嬌在國民黨層層封殺下以全國最高票當選省議員，以獨立女性問鼎政壇，其後每四年連選連任，歷經擔任四屆省議員，至1994年達17年之久。她在省議會問政犀利，風波迭起。每每引起獨裁者一手箝制的媒體輿論一片撻伐，更惹來許多不義官司的纏訟，儘管這17年受到不斷地審問、砸助選車、也多次差點被陷害入獄。但蘇洪月嬌不放棄且永保正直的為人民、為台灣服務，在當權者心目中，她是強悍不馴的眼中釘，但在人民的口中，她卻是有求必應、對雲林無所不知的「雲林人的媽祖婆」。
Pens Against Power: Political Cartoons and the Legacy of Yufu During Martial Law
Under Taiwan’s martial law regime, comics were co-opted as tools of political propaganda—used to promote anti-communism, national restoration, and glorification of political leaders. Through visual storytelling, historical allegories, and heroic myths, the government reinforced national identity and moral conformity. Newspaper cartoons typically dressed political ideology in the guise of traditional values and historical figures, supporting cultural “cleansing” and anti-communist policies to create a singular political narrative.
Yet, a group of cartoonists chose to go against the current, wielding satire and subversion as weapons against authoritarianism. Political cartoons became a form of guerrilla resistance, using exaggeration, irony, and metaphor to depict the absurdity of reality and speak for the voiceless. These works, often tucked into the margins of newspapers or the corners of magazines, delivered the sharpest critiques of those in power.
Yufu (real name Lin Kui-yu) was a leading figure among them. In the 1980s, he published political cartoons in opposition magazines, portraying political figures in chibi style to expose systemic rigidity and social injustice. While contributing to publications by pro-democracy activist Cheng Nan-jung, he had to evade surveillance and deliver his work in secret. “Drawing in fear, fearing as I draw,” he once said, capturing the perilous nature of cartooning under authoritarian rule.
Around the time martial law was lifted in 1987, Yufu published “Chiang Ching-kuo Opens the Way” in The Independence Evening Post, a cartoon that shattered the taboo against depicting the highest political leader. It marked the first time in Taiwan’s press history that a cartoon directly targeted the head of state. Yufu read more than ten newspapers a day and published across nineteen media outlets, unflinchingly satirizing lifetime legislators, entrenched party politics, and factional infighting. His bold critiques resonated with readers and raised concern among those in power.
“A good political cartoon should make people laugh and think—not split them apart in pain,” he said. For Yufu, cartoons were not merely a vehicle for critique but a form of public dialogue. He also contributed to early Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) campaigns, with his cartoons widely used in street protests and election flyers.
Beyond cartooning, Yufu was active in television, radio, and political commentary, playing a key role in Taiwan’s democratization and civic engagement. As democracy progressed, he gradually shifted his focus to art and food culture writing. Though he stepped away from political cartooning, he insisted: “Cartoonist—that’s the identity I want on my tombstone.”
Yufu’s cartoons were not only products of their time but enduring records of history. With seemingly light strokes, he carved cracks into the silence of authoritarianism and let freedom seep through. He passed away from liver cancer on December 30, 2024, at the age of 65. His legacy of artistic defiance and political critique remains deeply embedded in Taiwan’s democratic memory, continuing to inspire those who follow.
《筆鋒對抗威權：戒嚴時期的政治漫畫與魚夫》
在戒嚴體制下，漫畫被官方納入政治宣傳工具，成為反共、復國、頌揚領袖的戰鬥文藝。透過視覺敘事、歷史典故與英雄神話，強化國族認同與國民道德。報刊中的漫畫多以歷史人物、傳統價值包裝政治意識形態，配合文化清潔與反共國策，塑造單一的政治敘事。
然而，也有一群漫畫家選擇逆流而行，在極權陰影中以諷刺之筆，試圖突破審查與禁忌。政治漫畫成為一種游擊式的抵抗工具，憑藉誇張、嘲諷與隱喻，描繪現實荒謬，為無聲者發聲。這些作品通常藏身在報紙邊欄、雜誌角落，卻是對權力最銳利的質疑。
魚夫（本名林奎佑）是其中的代表人物。他在1980年代於黨外雜誌發表政治漫畫，筆下常以二頭身角色呈現政壇人物，揭露制度僵化與社會不公。為鄭南榕刊物繪製作品時，必須躲避監控、秘密交稿。他曾自述「邊畫邊怕，邊怕邊畫」，反映出當時創作的風險與壓力。
1987年解嚴前後，魚夫在《自立晚報》刊出將蔣經國漫畫化的〈蔣經國開路〉，打破領袖神聖不可侵犯的形象，成為台灣新聞史上首次以漫畫直指最高權力者。他每日閱讀十餘份報紙，筆耕不輟，作品橫跨十九家刊物，筆下的老國代、萬年國會、派系鬥爭皆一針見血，深受讀者共鳴，也引發權力階層戒心。
他曾說：「好的政治漫畫，應該讓人笑著思考，而不是痛苦地分裂。」對他而言，漫畫不只是批判，更是一種公共溝通。他參與過民進黨早期的文宣工作，其漫畫也曾廣泛運用於街頭運動與選舉傳單。
除了漫畫創作，他也活躍於電視、廣播與政論節目，是民主運動與公民參與的積極推動者。隨著民主化進程，魚夫逐步轉向藝術創作與飲食文化記錄。雖然淡出政治漫畫圈，但他始終強調：「漫畫家，會是我墓誌銘上最重要的身分。」
魚夫的漫畫既是時代產物，也是歷史紀錄。那些看似輕盈的筆觸，曾在封鎖的年代裡，擊出自由的一道裂縫。
他於2024年12月30日因肝癌辭世，享壽65歲，他的漫畫作品與政治批判精神仍將深植台灣民主記憶，繼續啟發後來者前行。
Standing Tall Amidst Uprooted Roots — The Tragic Resistance of Tang Shou-ren and Taiwan’s Indigenous People
In the 1950s under Taiwan’s White Terror, even the mountain forests fell silent. Tang Shou-ren, a young Tsou man from Alishan, was once a hunter and revered inheritor of his tribe’s traditional knowledge—an elite of his community. Yet his name ultimately became part of the collective trauma inflicted on Indigenous peoples by the authoritarian regime.
Identity Suppressed: Forbidden Language, Stripped Identity
At school, Tang was forbidden to speak his native Tsou language. Forced to speak Mandarin and learn “correct” history, he lost the ability to express himself in his mother tongue. The loss of language wasn’t merely cultural erasure—it was an erasure of identity. His youth was shaped by humiliation and cultural degradation, reflecting the broader fate of an entire generation of Indigenous youth forced into assimilation and excluded by nationalist narratives.
Land Erased: Ancestral Territory Reclassified as State Forest
Growing up among the forest and rivers of Alishan, Tang knew his ancestral land intimately. But after the KMT retreated to Taiwan, vast swaths of the highlands were designated “national forests” or “protected zones.” The Forestry Bureau and military took control of ancestral lands, branding Tsou people as “illegal intruders.” Hunting and farming became criminal acts. Traditional territory became forbidden ground—a painful displacement embedded within state policy. Tang witnessed his homeland sealed off and his people displaced. Meeting to speak out for Indigenous rights, he became a figure of suspect in the eyes of authorities.
Historical Misfit: Indigenous Participation in the 228 Incident
After the February 28 Incident in 1947, Tang and Tsou elder Kao Yi-sheng descended from the mountains at the invitation of a friend in Chiayi to help calm unrest. What seemed like a peaceful effort to preserve order was later branded as participation in “rebellion,” forming the basis for state surveillance and charges against Tang. Military and Interior Ministry documents indicate authorities feared that violent suppression of the Tsou could ignite ethnic conflict. Instead, they used tactics of “co-opt then arrest” to neutralize Indigenous resistance. Tang was placed under long-term surveillance before eventual arrest.
Underground Connections: Indigenous Nationalism Meets Leftist Ideals
Tang not only represented tribal identity but also engaged with left-wing intellectuals such as Jian Ji and Cai Xiao-qian. Accused in the so-called “Mountain Affairs Committee Case,” he sought self-determination for Indigenous communities. Tang was eventually convicted of “participating in a rebellion organization,” arrested in 1952, sentenced to death, and executed at Xindian Ankang Prison in 1953 at the age of 30. His body, returned to his community, bore scars and missing teeth—and his family was denied the right to verify or mourn his death.
A Death of Deprivation: Erased from History
Tang’s death brought no recognition, no compensation. His family never saw his complete remains, no inquiry was made. Virtually erased from historical narratives, his story stands as a tragic symbol—one overlooked cog in Taiwan’s modernization machine, yet central to its historical fabric.
“Our land was taken, our language banned, our life stolen—and we were forbidden even the right to speak.”
Tang Shou-ren embodies the experience of oppressed Indigenous Taiwanese under martial law. He endured three forms of violence: as an Indigenous person stripped of land and language, as a political actor imprisoned for rebellion, and as a victim whose death was hidden, with no truth ever revealed. In the aftermath, his story became taboo—unspoken and deeply wounded.
He was not alone. Among countless young Indigenous people criminalized, silenced, and forgotten under authoritarian rule, Tang remains one of the few whose name has survived. His story is our collective history—one we must remember.
《在失根中挺立的身影——湯守仁與原住民族的失落與抵抗》
1950年代的台灣，在白色恐怖的陰影下，山林也不再安靜。湯守仁，一位來自阿里山的鄒族青年，原本是山中的獵人，是部落裡傳統知識與文化的繼承者、是部落中的菁英。但他的名字，最終卻成為威權體制下原住民族集體受難記憶的一部分。
🔺 身分禁錮：語言被禁、身分被剝奪
在學校裡，他的族語被禁止。他必須說「國語」、學「正確的歷史」，不再能以母語書寫與表達。語言的失落不僅是文化的斷裂，更是身分的被抹除。湯守仁的成長歲月，是在語言羞辱與文化貶抑中堆疊而成的失語人生。
這不只是他個人的困境，而是一整代原住民青年被迫馴化、被國族敘事排除的寫照。
🔺 土地失根：當祖靈之地成為國有林
湯守仁從小生活在嘉義阿里山，熟悉山林、河川與族人的耕作節奏。但當國民政府遷台後，大量山區被劃為「國有林」、「保安林」，林務局、軍方接管了祖靈的土地，鄒族人不但失去狩獵與耕作權，甚至被標籤為「非法入侵者」。傳統領域不再是家，反而成為了不能回去的禁地。
這樣的土地掠奪不是單一事件，而是一整套結構壓迫。湯守仁目睹山林封閉、族人流離，他自己也因參與原住民權益發聲，從部落青年變成了政府眼中的「可疑分子」。
🔺 原住民與二二八的歷史錯位
1947年二二八事件爆發後，湯守仁與鄒族長老高一生在平地朋友盧炳欽邀請下，下山協助平息嘉義混亂、維持秩序。原以為是協助抗爭的和平行動，卻在事後被政府視為參與「叛亂」。這成為日後湯守仁被監控與定罪的主因之一。
根據當時軍方與內政部的評估報告，政府因擔心「直接武力鎮壓鄒族」會引發民族對立，因此對湯守仁等人採取「招安再收押」的策略。他並未立即被捕，而是在長期監控後，等待時間再抓他們入獄。
🔺 連結地下：民族主義與左翼理想的交織
湯守仁不只是族人、原住民青年，他同時也與左翼知識份子簡吉、蔡孝乾有過接觸。他涉及了所謂的「山地工作委員會案」，試圖為原住民爭取自主。
這些接觸使他最終被定罪為「參與叛亂組織」，並在1952年被捕，受審後判處死刑，1953年於新店安坑刑場槍決，年僅30歲。
他的遺體被送返時，滿身傷痕、牙齒盡落。家屬無法驗屍，也無從得知真相。他的死亡如同他的人生，被蓄意地抹去、遺忘在歷史深處。
🔺 湯守仁的死亡，不只是個人悲劇，更是一場民族性剝奪
他的死亡並未換來真相，也未得到補償。他的家人至今未見過他的完整遺體，沒有調查、沒有追究，連名字都幾乎被從歷史中抹去。他的故事像是國族現代化過程中一個不小心遺落的齒輪，但卻是構成我們歷史機器不可或缺的核心。
🔺 「我們的土地被奪走，我們的語言被禁止，我們的生命被帶走，連為自己發聲的權利都沒有。」
湯守仁是台灣歷史中被壓迫原住民族的縮影，他的遭遇同時體現了三重暴力：作為原住民，他的土地與語言被剝奪；作為政治參與者，他被判為叛亂犯遭到槍決；作為白色恐怖受難者，他的死因被掩蓋、真相從未平反。他是無聲的族人，事件發生後，所有故事在部落成為禁忌，族人不想、也不能提起。
但他不是唯一一人。他是那些在戒嚴體制下被定罪、被消音、被忘記的千千萬萬原住民青年中，少數留下名字與痕跡的一位。
他的故事，是我們必須記住的歷史。
Vines of Literature Across the Iron Curtain: The Free Path of Nieh Hualing
Born in Wuhan, China in 1925, Nieh Hualing came of age amidst the Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. In 1949, as the Kuomintang (KMT) retreated to Taiwan with its military and supporters, Nieh Hualing fled to the island with her mother and siblings. This journey was more than a geographical displacement—it marked the beginning of her literary career, political awakening, and international activism.
Upon arriving in Taiwan, Nieh Hualing joined the newly founded Free China Journal as its youngest and only female editor. The magazine, launched by liberal-minded members within the KMT, initially served as a platform for promoting government achievements but gradually distanced itself from authoritarianism due to ideological differences. Nieh Hualing oversaw the literary section, advocating for genuine literary expression and freedom of thought. She actively reduced the space given to anti-Communist propaganda literature and instead promoted sincere writing. “Writings have become like rigid formulas with no emotional resonance,” she once said—a clear act of intellectual resistance in an era of strict censorship, and a testament to her belief in literary autonomy.
But Free China’s experiment in freedom of speech eventually provoked the authorities. In 1960, the journal was shut down under fabricated charges of espionage, with many staff members arrested or placed under surveillance. Though Nieh Hualing was not imprisoned, she was subject to long-term monitoring by secret police. Her publishing opportunities diminished, and she faced growing hardship. Her literary path seemed all but severed—until 1963, when American poet Paul Engle visited Taiwan. The two connected over their shared ideals and literary passions, beginning a cross-border romance. In 1964, Nieh moved to the United States and married Engle, settling abroad.
Yet Nieh never severed ties with Taiwan. Instead, she transformed her experience into a bridge for international literary exchange. In 1967, the International Writing Program (IWP) was officially founded, becoming one of the U.S.’s cultural strategies during the Cold War. Unlike mere cultural export, the IWP, co-directed by Nieh and Engle, placed special emphasis on inviting writers from authoritarian regimes. From Eastern Europe and Asia to Africa, she welcomed dissident writers to Iowa for residencies, allowing censored literary voices to travel across borders.
She also consistently recommended Taiwanese writers to participate in the IWP—regardless of native-born or mainlander, left-leaning or conservative. Names now central to the canon of Taiwanese literature—Pai Hsien-yung, Wang Wen-hsing, Chi Teng-sheng, Kuo Sung-fen, Wang Chen-ho—were brought onto the international stage through her efforts. These writers found in Iowa a space to rethink the relationship between creativity and politics, and even saw their works translated and published abroad.
In addition to her efforts in literary diplomacy, Nieh never abandoned her own creative writing. In the 1970s, she authored her representative work, Mulberry and Peach, which portrayed war, White Terror, and the experience of female displacement. Banned in Taiwan, the novel was first published in Hong Kong and only reached Taiwanese readers after the lifting of martial law. The book is both a personal narrative and a metaphor for Taiwan’s struggle for survival amid Cold War tensions.
Nieh’s life journey spanned three regions and three political systems—escaping civil war in China, seeking literary space under Taiwan’s dictatorship, and working from within the U.S. Cold War cultural machine to create outlets for repressed writers. She was not only a witness to Taiwanese literary history but a living vine that connected Taiwan with the world, and bridged dictatorship with freedom—telling “forbidden stories” to the world with her pen, her love, and her action.
《穿越鐵幕的文學藤蔓：聶華苓的自由路徑》
聶華苓，1925 年出生於中國武漢，青年時期歷經抗戰與國共內戰。1949 年，國民黨在戰敗撤退的混亂中將其支持者與軍隊大批帶往台灣，聶華苓隨母親與弟妹一同逃難來台。她的避難路徑並不只是地理上的遷徙，更成為她日後文學生涯、政治覺醒與國際行動的起點。
抵台後，聶華苓進入剛創刊的《自由中國》雜誌擔任編輯，成為該刊唯一的女性編輯、也是最年輕的編輯。《自由中國》由國民黨內部的開明派創辦，最初為宣揚政績的喉舌，後來卻因理念之分與威權體制漸行漸遠。她在雜誌中主掌文藝欄，致力推動純文學創作，逐步減少充滿政治標語的反共文學，鼓勵真誠書寫與思想自由。她曾直言：「文章變成八股毫無動人之處」，這樣的觀點，在高度控管言論的時代裡，是一種清醒的反叛，也顯示她對文學自主性的堅持。
然而，《自由中國》的言論自由實驗最終觸怒當局。1960 年，雜誌社被以莫須有的間諜罪名抄社，多數成員遭逮捕或監控。聶華苓雖未被關押，但長期遭到警備特務監視，出版機會驟減，生活陷入困境。文學之路彷彿就此中斷，直到 1963 年，美國詩人保羅・安格爾（Paul Engle）來台參訪，兩人因文學與理想迅速相知，進而展開跨國戀情。聶華苓於 1964 年前往美國，並與安格爾結婚，從此定居異鄉。
但她並未因此割斷與台灣的連結。相反地，她將自身的經歷化為推動國際文學交流的橋梁。1967 年，IWP 正式成立，成為冷戰時代美國用以對抗蘇聯文化影響的策略之一。不同於單純文化輸出，IWP 由聶華苓與安格爾共同主持，特別重視來自威權體制國家的作家參與。從東歐、亞洲到非洲，她邀請異議作家赴美短居創作、交流理念，讓被封鎖的文學聲音得以跨境流通。
她也堅持年年推薦台灣作家參與 IWP，無論本省外省、左派右派，她都力求包容不同聲音。白先勇、王文興、七等生、郭松棻、王禎和等今日台灣文學史上重要的名字，許多都曾透過她的推薦走進國際文壇。這些作家得以在愛荷華的自由氛圍中，重新思索創作與政治的關係，甚至有機會讓作品被翻譯出版。
這一切的努力，並未讓她忘記創作本身。1970 年代，她寫下代表作《桑青與桃紅》，描寫戰爭、白色恐怖與女性離散經驗，作品在台灣一度遭禁，只能轉於香港發表，直到解嚴後才真正回到島內讀者手中。這部小說既是她的個人史，也是台灣在冷戰夾縫中掙扎求生的縮影。
聶華苓的生命軌跡，是跨越三地、三種政治體制的自由之路：從中國動盪的內戰餘火中逃出，在台灣獨裁統治下尋找文學空間，又在美國冷戰文化機器內部，努力為被壓抑的作家尋找出路。她不只是台灣文學的見證者，更是連接台灣與世界、獨裁與自由的藤蔓——用筆、用愛、用行動，把那些「不被容許的故事」向世界講述。
Prisoners Outside the Prison – The Women Whose Names Were Never Recorded
From the 228 Massacre in 1947, through the declaration of martial law on May 19, 1949, until the revision of Article 100 in 1992, Taiwan endured decades of White Terror. Countless lives were affected, but the stories remembered and named were mostly those of men. The women—often referred to only as mothers, wives, daughters, or sisters—were rarely acknowledged as victims themselves.
They had once been known as “the doctor’s wife,” “the station chief’s lady,” “the officer’s spouse.” But when the men in their lives were imprisoned or executed, their identities shifted overnight: they became “the widow of a traitor,” “the family of a political criminal.” They faced grief, poverty, social exclusion, and constant surveillance. Most had little education, no income, and no safety net. They learned to sell soap, wash clothes at markets, take odd jobs—anything to keep their families alive. Some sent their children away. Some were forced into sex work. They could not cry or fall ill; life simply had to go on.
They didn’t lack pain or anger—they simply learned to swallow it. “This is just my fate,” they told themselves, enduring not for justice, but to survive for their children.
Gao Juhua’s story is one such reality. In 1954, she was on track to study at Columbia University in the U.S., but after her father was executed for political reasons, she became the family’s breadwinner and the target of state harassment. An Indigenous woman, she was forced into nightclub singing under the name “Pai Na-Na,” despite hating to sing. For 17 years, she was interrogated, forced to “confess,” and even coerced into providing sexual favours in exchange for military equipment—simply because she was female, Indigenous, and the daughter of a political prisoner.
“I’m not afraid of being executed,” she once said. “I’m afraid that if I die, no one will know what happened.”
Even after surviving those dark years, she received no state compensation. Her name was never entered in the official list of political victims—because she was not the “direct case.” Her wounds were never recognized.
Her story is not an exception—it is the shared fate of thousands of silenced women. Pushed to the margins of justice and history, they bore the harshest burdens and survived the longest storms.
They were not merely the “relatives” of victims.
They were victims themselves.
Today, we remember Gao Juhua not just as a name, but as a symbol of all those lives that were never written into the history books—women who were oppressed by the state, forgotten by society, and yet still chose to survive.
《獄外之囚──那些從未被記下名字的女性們》
1947 年二二八事件、1949 年 5 月 19 日宣布戒嚴到 1992 年「刑法一百條」修正，台灣經歷了長達數十年的白色恐怖。在這段歷史中，受害者無數，但大多數被記錄、被還原名字與故事的，是「他們」──而「她們」，卻經常被省略，僅以母親、妻子、女兒、姊妹的角色出現，彷彿是受難者的附屬，無人承認她們其實本身也是受難者。
她們曾是醫生娘、警察太太、站長夫人；在家人被捕後，身份頓時翻轉，成為「叛亂犯的寡婦」、「政治犯的家屬」。她們要獨自面對生離死別的痛、經濟崩潰的壓、親友疏離的冷眼、國家機器的監視。沒有教育、沒有收入，她們學著推銷肥皂、蹲市場洗衣、四處找零工，只為撐起一家老小。有人含淚送養孩子、有人被逼入風塵；她們的哭泣無人聽見，病痛也無人問起，因為日子還得繼續。
她們不是不痛、不恨，而是學會了把眼淚吞下肚，把命運壓進胸口，說：「這攏是我的命啦。」她們活著，為的是孩子、是家庭，從未為自己申冤，卻是歷史中最沉重的一頁。
高菊花的故事，正是這段歷史的具體縮影。1954 年，原本即將赴美深造的她，在父親遭政治處決後，從知識青年的希望之星，變成為家奔波、被情治人員跟監騷擾的「政治犯之女」。為了生活與躲避騷擾，她成了駐唱歌女「派娜娜」，儘管她不愛唱歌，卻成了紅遍一時的名字。在 17 年內，她反覆被叫去問訊、被迫「自首」、被國民黨要求提供性服務以換取戰艦──只因她是女性，是原住民，是政治犯家屬。她曾說：「我不怕被槍斃，我怕我死了，這些事就沒人知道了。」
即使熬過漫長黑夜，高菊花從未獲得國家補償，她的名字不在官方的政治受難者名冊中，因為她不是「案件本人」，她的痛與傷，從未被正式承認。
她的故事，不只是個人的悲劇，而是成千上萬被噤聲女性的共同命運。她們被迫沉默、被排除於正義與歷史之外，卻活得最苦、撐得最久。她們不只是受難者的「家屬」──她們，是受難者本身。
今天，我們記得她，不只是記得一個名字，而是記得那些從未被寫進史書的生命──那些曾經被國家壓迫、被社會遺忘，卻仍努力活下去的女性。
Writing Their Names in a Silenced Era: Lesbian Voices and the Beginnings of Equality in Martial Law Taiwan
While much of history has focused on gay men, lesbian voices have often been left behind. Yet Taiwan’s LGBTQ+ movement was quietly initiated by an anonymous lesbian.
In 1958, the United Daily News published a letter titled “We Are Both Women—Can We Marry?” written by a woman who identified as a lesbian. She wrote sincerely: “My girlfriend and I want to get married, but I am a woman, and she is also a woman. Can we marry? Please advise.” The letter carried no defiance—only honesty—and yet, in the silenced era of martial law, it questioned the monopoly of heterosexual marriage. The court’s response was cold, citing civil law to reject her request and even advising her to abandon the thought. Still, her words became a foundational voice for today’s equality movement.
And she was not alone. In 1990, Between Us became Taiwan’s first LGBTQ+ organization, founded by a group of lesbians. They didn’t just speak out for women who love women—they built a platform for the entire queer community. It was women in post-martial law Taiwan who first stepped out of the shadows, leading through organizing, writing, advocating, and acting.
If Chi Chia-wei is a name that cannot be left out of queer history, then the torch he carried was first lit by countless women. In 1986—before martial law had even been lifted—Chi petitioned the court to register his marriage with his male partner, becoming the first person in Taiwan to raise the issue of marriage equality in parliament. His request was denied with the claim that “homosexuality is the perverse behaviour of a minority” and “contrary to public morals.” He was later interrogated and detained for 162 days by the Taiwan Garrison Command, effectively becoming a political prisoner.
The marriage equality we enjoy today is not merely the result of legal reform—it is the legacy of those who chose to protect one another in an era when the law did not. It is the courage of the woman who wrote to the court in 1958, of Chi Chia-wei who stood alone against the system in the 1980s, and of all those who have spoken out and acted—in organizations, on the streets, in academia, and in everyday life. It is also the quiet strength of those who still live outside of marriage, in the alleys and corners of society, unnamed and unseen.
《在禁聲年代寫下她們的名字：女同志與戒嚴台灣的平權開端》
當多數歷史將目光投向男同志的身影，女同志往往成為被遺落的名字。但台灣的同志運動，卻由一位匿名女同志打開序幕。
1958年，《聯合報》刊出一封來自女同志的投書〈同是女兒身，不能結連理〉，她寫道：「我和我的女友想結婚，但是我是一個女人，她亦是一個女人，我倆是否可以結婚？請為賜覆。」這封信的語氣真摯，沒有挑釁，卻在無聲的戒嚴年代掀開了對異性戀婚姻壟斷的質疑。法院回信冷漠，引用民法拒絕，甚至勸她「不要再考慮這種念頭」。但那封信，卻成為今日所有平權運動者的先聲。
這不是孤例。1990年成立的「我們之間」，是台灣第一個同志團體，也是由一群女同志創辦。她們不只是為女同志發聲，也為整體同志社群打造出口。台灣的女性力量，在戒嚴後解凍的年代裡，率先走出陰影，投身組織、寫作、倡議與行動。
而若說祁家威是同志運動史上無法忽略的名字，那麼他所接力的火炬，正是由無數女性點燃。他於1986年向立法院請願與男性伴侶公證結婚，在戒嚴尚未解除的時代，便成為國會討論婚姻平權的第一人。他的請願被拒，理由竟是「同性戀者為少數之變態」、「有背於社會善良風俗」，並因此遭警備總部約談、關押162天，成為政治犯。
今天我們能夠擁有婚姻平權的現實，不只是因為法律的進步，更是因為那些在法律尚未保護她們／他們的年代，就已選擇挺身守護彼此的人。她們是1958年勇敢寫信問法院的女同志、是1980年代以一己之力挑戰制度的祁家威、是那些在組織、街頭、學術與日常中持續發聲與行動的人們，也是今天仍默默走在婚姻之外，生活在街角巷弄、不被看見的無名者。
Their Bodies Bear the Truths History Could Not Bear
When we speak of the White Terror, we often think of electric shocks in interrogation rooms, the dark prison cells behind towering walls, or vague charges of “treason” in the courts. But there was another group of victims—women—whose suffering was not marked by bars and shackles, but by the very bodies that were changing and sustaining life. Their wombs, breasts, bodies, and menstrual blood became the most silent, yet most profound form of resistance under authoritarian rule.
🩸 Their periods stopped.
Under immense pressure, fear, overcrowding, and malnutrition, female political prisoners’ biological clocks collapsed. Their menstrual cycles became irregular—or ceased altogether. Some were arrested while still bleeding and were met with disgust and humiliation from the agents. Others bled uncontrollably during torture but were denied basic hygiene; sanitary pads became an unattainable luxury.
🤱 Their breasts dried up.
Mothers, imprisoned right after childbirth, found their milk dried up due to lack of nutrition and rest. Babies were left without nourishment; the sacred bond between mother and child was violently severed. Their breasts, once symbols of care, were reduced to “useless organs.” These women lost not only their children, but also their dignity and identity as mothers.
👶 Their bodies were torn apart by torture.
Toothbrushes forced into vaginas, piano wire used to slash nipples, miscarriages during brutal interrogations—these atrocities were never recorded in official archives, but they are deeply etched into the bodies of women who endured them. Some gave birth in interrogation rooms without medical care. Many unborn children died before seeing the world, becoming forgotten “white ghosts” of history.
📜 One such story is documented in The Memoirs of Bo Yang. A woman named Ms. Shen (Shen Yuan-Zhang, senior journalist at Sheng Sheng Daily) was stripped from the waist down and forced to sit on a burlap sack while two officers repeatedly dragged her back and forth, inflicting severe trauma to her lower body. Bleeding profusely, she eventually confessed—just to end the torture. After dressing herself, she took her own life.
These were not “individual tragedies.” They were the collective consequences of a regime that systematically violated women’s bodies. Under the “state of exception,” these women were no longer protected citizens, but bare lives—reduced to biological existence, stripped of legal recognition and human dignity.
But through their blood and flesh, they bore witness to a hidden chapter of White Terror—one not found in legal codes or verdicts, but written in pain, silence, and survival.
《她們的身體，有歷史無法承受的真相》
當我們談論白色恐怖，往往會想到審訊室裡的電擊、監獄高牆裡的黑牢、還有法庭上模糊的「叛亂罪」。但有一群人，她們的受難不是被鐵窗關住的身體，而是正在經歷變化、承載生命的女性身體——她們的子宮、乳房、身體與經血，成了威權體制下最無聲卻最深刻的控訴。
🩸 她們的月經，停止了。
高壓恐懼、擁擠的空間與營養不良使女性政治犯的生理時鐘崩潰，月經紊亂甚至完全消失。有人被捕時經血未止，卻被特務嫌棄與羞辱；有人在刑求時經血橫流，卻被禁止清理，連衛生棉都成了禁品。
🤱 她們的乳房，乾涸了。
母親們在監牢中乳汁枯竭，嬰兒無法哺乳，生命連結被強行切斷。乳房從滋養的象徵，淪為「無用的器官」；她們不只失去孩子，更失去了身為母親的可能與尊嚴。
👶 她們的身體被酷刑撕裂。
牙刷刺入陰道、鋼琴線割破乳頭、審訊中流產⋯⋯。這些殘酷手段無法從官方檔案中找到記錄，卻深植於每一位女性身上。許多胎兒尚未出生便死於無醫療的審訊室，成為被歷史遺忘的白色幽靈。
而在《柏楊回憶錄》中，一位名叫沈小姐（沈嫄璋/新生報資深記者）的女性，在遭刑求逼供時，被強迫脫光下身坐在麻索上，兩邊刑警輪流「進退拖曳」，使其下體重創，鮮血直流。她痛苦呼喊，最後選擇承認罪行，只為讓酷刑停止。她穿好衣服後，即自殺而死。
這些不是「個人悲劇」，而是國家暴力對女性身體的集體壓迫。在「例外狀態」下，她們淪為沒有法律地位的「裸命」，無權、無名、無聲。
但她們的血與肉，承擔了另一部分不被看見的白色恐怖歷史。
Her Death, Silenced Like Her Life
The Taiwan Independence Association (TIA) case of 1991 stands as a stark example of continued suppression of free thought even after the lifting of martial law. The KMT government accused a group of young scholars of belonging to a “Taiwan independence organization,” charging them under the Act for the Control and Punishment of Rebellion (commonly known as “Article 100” or the “二條一” law). Despite the end of martial law, the White Terror apparatus remained in place. Their “crime”? Forming reading groups, distributing stickers and leaflets around discussions of Taiwan: A Four Hundred-Year History—a book long banned by the state. These spaces of intellectual exchange were branded subversive, their members charged with treasonous activity that carried potential death sentences. This case epitomizes how state violence indiscriminately suppresses thought and the scars it leaves on intellectual life during authoritarian rule.
Among those arrested was one woman whose name has seldom been mentioned: Wang Xiu‑Hui.
She was the sole female defendant—and the most forgotten. A grassroots member of the Democratic Progressive Party, she always stood up for marginalized voices, unable to ignore injustices. She once traveled alone to Japan and formed a close friendship with exiled independence thinker Su Beng—so much so that many TIA members later recalled she was among the closest to him.
Unlike most others involved—educated individuals from academic circles—Wang came from a working-class background. She was led by intuition and feeling, bold and passionate, unafraid to voice her political beliefs. Yet she seldom spoke of her own trauma. While others hesitated, she had already committed fully. Tragically, activism did not shield her; it cut her life short during a time of hope.
Wang was a single mother raising her son alone, participating in Yunlin’s farmers’ movement with her partner and enduring long-term financial hardship. She was found dead in her bathtub, reportedly having ingested pesticide-contaminated water. When her family was notified, her body had already been cremated—without any forensic investigation or autopsy. All that remained were a death certificate and a jar of ashes—leaving many unanswered questions.
We must recognize another kind of activist—not just those who speak under spotlight, but “her,” who carried the burden quietly and fully.
Wang Xiu‑Hui was never the star of history—her name wasn’t properly recorded. Yet her commitment, her sacrifice, her solitary death cannot be ignored. In that era, beyond the stories of “them,” there were stories of “her”—silenced and erased.
《她的死，也如她的生命一樣被消音》
獨台會案發生於1991年，是解嚴後仍持續箝制言論自由的代表性政治案件，被國民黨政府指控為「台獨組織」的成員，包含多名青年學者與學生，被控觸犯「懲治叛亂條例」，雖已解嚴，白色恐怖體制仍在。只是因為史明那本長年被列為禁書的《台灣人四百年史》，他們成立讀書會、發放貼紙與傳單，以讀書會與思想交流為基礎，討論台灣的前途與民主出路，卻因此被視為顛覆國家、叛亂圖謀、以《刑法一百條》與《懲治叛亂條款》（俗稱「二條一」法）逮捕他們，而這些罪行被認為是「叛亂」，是有可能會被判死刑的。這起案件象徵著國家暴力如何無差別打壓思想，更揭開了知識分子在威權時代被迫噤聲的傷痕歷史。
在獨台會案的被捕者名單中，有一位名字鮮少被提起的女性：王秀惠。
她是當時唯一的女性被告，也是整起案件中最被遺忘的一人。她為民進黨基層，總願意為弱勢發聲。她有一種少見的俠女氣質——行動力十足，對社會不公無法視而不見。她曾獨自前往日本，與流亡海外的台獨思想家史明建立深厚交情，也會主動引薦朋友前往拜訪。許多獨台會成員事後回憶，都說她是與史明關係最密切的人。
不同於當時多數來自學術圈、受過高等教育的運動者，王秀惠是基層出身的草根女性，有強烈的感情與直覺驅動。她大膽、熱情，不諱言自己的政治立場，卻很少談論自己的經歷與傷痕。當其他人尚在觀望，她早已投身其中。可惜的是，運動沒有為她帶來保護，反而讓她的人生停在尚充滿希望的年紀。
王秀惠是單親媽媽，獨自扶養兒子，與當時的伴侶投身雲林農民運動，生活陷入長期的經濟困境。這條路比別人都來得更艱辛、更孤單。因為獨台會案，她離世了——而她的死，也如她的生命一般，被迅速地消音、無聲地消失。
她死在家中浴缸裡，據說是誤飲了含農藥的水。家屬接到通知時，她的遺體早已被火化，甚至未經司法調查、也未做解剖，只剩一張死亡證明書與骨灰。這樣的結局，留下的只有無數懸而未解的疑問。
我們得看見另一種運動者的樣貌——不是在鎂光燈下宣示理念的人，而是在默默承擔中走完一生的「她」。
王秀惠不是歷史主角，她甚至不曾被好好記住。但她的行動，她的犧牲，她的孤獨死亡，卻讓我們無法忽視——在那個年代，除了「他們」的故事，還有「她們」的沉默與消失。
On the Riverbank at Night, Proof That We Once Existed: A Secret Map of Gay Life under Martial Law
During Taiwan’s martial law era, society was deeply hostile toward homosexuality. In Kaohsiung, gay men had no safe way to express their identities in public and had to rely on specific geosocial spaces to sustain their emotional lives, communities, and survival strategies.
The areas beneath bridges, riverbanks, and nearby parks around Love River became key meeting points for gay men. These spaces, semi-hidden yet geographically accessible, allowed for secret encounters, dates, and sexual contact in a time when revealing one’s identity was dangerous. This kind of spatial culture was passed down through whispered knowledge, embodied practice, and shared emotional experience—forming a distinct queer geography.
👮♂️ Martial Law and Police Violence: The Risk of Existence in the Space
These meeting spots were also highly dangerous. Police and military officers often raided, entrapped, or extorted men near Love River. Some were arrested, verbally abused, or forced to pay bribes. One interviewee recalled being “dragged in like a criminal.” This climate of repression forced gay men to build deep trust and develop their own “rules of engagement” and an underground knowledge system—how to recognize each other, when it was safe, and where to escape.
🌉 The Symbolism of Love River: Desire and Fear Intertwined
For many older gay men, Love River evokes both love and trauma. It was where some found their first loves or long-term partners—and where others were punished harshly, simply for loving “the wrong person.” Even so, these spaces became a proof of existence for Taiwan’s queer community. In an era when the state and society denied the legitimacy of homosexuality, places like Love River stood as living evidence that they had truly existed.
《夜裡的河岸，有我們存在過的證據：戒嚴時代的男同志祕密地圖》
在戒嚴時期，整體社會對同志極為不友善，高雄的男同志們無法在公共生活中安全地展現性傾向，只能依靠特定「地緣場域」維繫情感、社群與生存策略。
愛河周邊的橋下空地、公園與沿岸，是最重要的「同志會面場域」。這些空間因具有相對隱蔽性與地理開放性，成為男同志們在無法公開身分的時代中，秘密相識、約會乃至性接觸的所在。這種地緣性，是透過長時間的口耳相傳、身體實踐與情感經驗所建立的同志場域文化。
👮♂️ 戒嚴與警察暴力：場域中的生存風險
這些場域同時也是高風險的——在戒嚴時期，警方與軍警常在愛河周遭進行臨檢、搜查或設局抓人。許多男同志曾在此遭遇警察逮補、敲詐或羞辱。文中指出，有受訪者回憶當時「像犯人一樣被抓進去」，而警察不僅會語言侮辱，還常要求交保金，甚至私下勒索。
這些迫害使得同志之間的關係必須建立在極高的信任上，這也促使同志社群逐漸建立起自己的一套「場域使用規則」與「地下知識系統」，例如如何辨識同類、何時安全、何處撤退。
🌉 愛河的象徵意義：慾望與恐懼並存
對許多年長男同志而言，愛河既是戀愛與慾望的發生地，也是恐懼與受難的地景。在愛河邊，有人遇見初戀，有人建立長期伴侶關係，也有人第一次被社會狠狠懲罰，只因他愛的是「不該愛的人」。
即便如此，這些場域仍為同志社群提供了一種「存在的證明」，在國家機器與主流社會不承認同性戀存在的年代，愛河這樣的地點就是同志們「真實活過」的證據。
We Thought Freedom Had Come, But the Cage Was Never Opened—Did Martial Law’s End Really Mean Freedom?
On July 14, 1987, President Chiang Ching-kuo of the Republic of China issued the order to lift martial law, and it was officially lifted in the early hours of the following day. Many people rushed into the streets to celebrate, believing this to be a historic farewell to dictatorship. From that point on, they thought, we could speak out loud, gather freely, form political parties and newspapers, vote, and reclaim autonomy over our identities.
But the cages confining people had not actually disappeared.
As early as October 1986—before martial law was officially lifted—the Kuomintang regime had enacted the “National Security Law during the Period of National Mobilization to Suppress the Communist Rebellion,” based on three unconstitutional principles: anti-communism, anti-independence, and state control. This law was already in effect as of July 1, 1987—before the public announcement of the end of martial law. In addition, a host of other “emergency laws” labeled as “mobilization,” “repression period,” or “extraordinary times” remained in place, still restricting citizens’ rights and freedoms. The authoritarian system had not truly ended.
🔹 An Unfinished Era of Imprisonment: Civilians Still Subject to Military Trials
During martial law, most political cases were transferred to military courts rather than civilian ones. Even after the lifting of martial law, many laws retained provisions from the National Security Act, such as the rule that “cases already tried by military courts cannot be appealed or challenged in civilian courts, for the sake of legal stability.” This stripped people of the opportunity to seek justice or overturn wrongful convictions—many of which were obtained through torture or arbitrary rulings by commanding officers without sufficient evidence.
🔹 Was It Real Freedom?
In 1984, Chiang Ching-kuo appointed Lee Teng-hui as Vice President. After Chiang’s death in 1988, Lee succeeded him, becoming Taiwan’s first president born on the island. Many remember his inaugural speech, where he pledged to “end the Period of National Mobilization, revise the constitutional framework, and strengthen the rule of law.” These hopeful declarations were indeed realized during his term. He believed that only through political democratization, economic liberalization, and social pluralism could Taiwan align with global trends and move toward a better future.
In 1991, fueled by Taiwan’s domestic democratic momentum and various social movements (such as the Wild Lily Student Movement), President Lee met with 53 student representatives and convened a National Affairs Conference. The National Assembly passed constitutional amendments, and Lee officially announced the termination of the “Period of National Mobilization to Suppress the Communist Rebellion,” repealing its associated emergency clauses. All lifelong legislators—remnants of the “perpetual parliament”—retired.
But on May 9 of that same year, the “Taiwan Independence Association Incident” (獨台會事件) occurred, revealing that democracy had not yet been fully realized. This event triggered waves of support from universities like National Tsing Hua and National Taiwan University. On May 15, students gathered at Taipei Main Station for a six-day sit-in protest. Under public pressure, the Legislative Yuan promptly repealed the “Act for the Control and Punishment of Rebellion.” On June 3, 1991, the “Act Governing the Disposal of Communist Espionage During the Period of Repression” was abolished. Finally, on May 15, 1992, the Legislature passed the amendment to Article 100 of the Criminal Code.
It wasn’t until then that the people of Taiwan could truly say they had gained their freedom.
《 以為自由來了，但籠子其實還沒打開—— 解嚴，真的代表自由了嗎？》
中華民國總統蔣經國在1987年7月14頒布解嚴令，隔日凌晨解除戒嚴。許多人衝上街頭慶祝，以為這是一場歷史性的告別。從此之後，我們能大聲說話、自由集會、結黨報社、擁有選票與身分的自主。
但，關著人們的牢籠並沒有消失。
早在戒嚴解除前的1986年10月，中國國民黨當局就制定了以違憲、反共與反獨為三大原則的「國安法」，也就是「動員戡亂時期國家安全法」。而此法早在「解嚴令」公布前的1987年7月1日就公布執行了。另外還有各式冠以「動員戡亂」、「戡亂時期」、「非常時期」之名的「非常法制」仍尚未解除，仍限制著人民的權利與自由，威權體制並未消失。
🔹 沒有結束的牢籠時期，平民仍要接受軍法審判
戒嚴時期，案件大多都會被轉移到軍法機關審判，而非一般法院。在解嚴令施行後，許多的法律仍維持著國安法所說「軍法已經審判過的案件，基於法律安定性的考量，不得向法院上訴或抗告」，剝奪了人民為自己平反的機會，許多案件根本沒有足夠的證據就受到酷刑逼供，甚至由上級長官隨便決定審判結果。
🔹真正的自由？
李登輝在1984年獲蔣經國提拔，擔任副總統一職，1988年蔣經國總統任內逝世，李登輝繼任總統，也是第一位在台灣出生的總統。許多人仍記得，他在就職演說中說道「依法終止動員戡亂、修正憲法體制、強化法治」等充滿希望的宣示，這些宣示也如實在他任內一一實現，他相信唯有政治民主化、經濟自由化與社會多元化，與世界情勢接軌，邁向更好的未來。
1991年，加上本土所引領的民主浪潮、各式社會運動（野百合學運等）匯集，李登輝總統接見53位學運代表，並招開國事會議。國民大會通過「中華民國憲法增修條文」，李登輝總統宣布終止動員戡亂時期，廢止「動員戡亂時期臨時條款」，資深中央民代將全數退職「萬年國會」結束。
但同年5月9日，卻發生了「獨臺會事件」，顯示出了民主尚未完全實現。此件事引發了清大、臺大等各個大學的聲援，並於5月15日集結於臺北車站進行持續六天的靜坐遊行，在輿論之下，立法院立即廢除了「懲治叛亂條款」，1991年6月3日「戡亂時期檢肅匪諜條例」廢除。1992年5月15日立法院三讀通過「刑法一百條修正」，人民可以說是直到那時才擁有「真正的自由」。
From Soldier to Psychiatric Patient: Ning-Ren’s Shadowed Years at Yuli Nursing Home
In the history of Taiwan’s White Terror, some individuals were deliberately erased—not only because they were labeled “rebels” or “spies,” but also because both their bodies and minds were crushed and redefined by state violence. Yuli Nursing Home, originally named the “Taiwan Provincial Yuli Nursing Home,” was one of the most overlooked sites of incarceration. Ning-Ren is among the rare survivors who lived through this system and can still speak about it today.
Born in 1946, Ning-Ren moved to Taiwan from China with his family. He attended military school and served as a platoon leader and intelligence officer. After leaving the army in the 1970s, he worked in the food service industry. However, in 1980, he was arrested for drunkenly expressing disapproval of the government’s policy to retake mainland China. He was diagnosed with “alcohol-induced psychosis” and sent to a psychiatric hospital. A year later, after publicly praising the Chinese Communist Party in a self-service restaurant, he was arrested again, sentenced to four years in prison, and detained in the Jingmei Detention Center.
During his incarceration, Ning-Ren began experiencing auditory hallucinations and wrote anti-government messages on the prison walls—acts that were interpreted as “insanity” and “dangerous.” He was shackled by both hands and feet, brutally beaten, had teeth knocked out, and was smeared with paint across his wounded face. “That lieutenant dragged me out and beat me up… they danced on my back like I was a floor,” he recalled. These acts of torture left him with chronic spinal pain that persists to this day.
Later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia (now called schizophrenia spectrum disorder), Ning-Ren was transferred to Yuli Nursing Home. This institution, established under the guise of caring for impoverished psychiatric patients, was operated jointly by the Veterans Affairs Council and a local veterans hospital. During the 1960s and 1970s, the nursing home’s beds were allocated by agencies such as the Police Department and Social Affairs Bureau. Some beds were reserved specifically for the “reformed political offenders” and “suspected subversives” referred by the Taiwan Garrison Command.
Many so-called political offenders were transferred to Yuli after developing psychiatric symptoms during interrogation—or simply because they were suspected of mental illness. These transfers functioned as a form of political punishment under the guise of medical care. Although the authorities denied Yuli was a “place of detention,” insisting that medical treatment was a form of “placement,” the reality was that the Garrison Command continued to interfere in the institution’s management, demanding “close supervision and discipline” of the patients. In essence, freedom was denied, even outside prison walls.
In 1990, Professor Chen Kuang-Chung publicly revealed the presence of political prisoners at Yuli during a conference, prompting media attention and visits by NGOs. It was only then that this hidden chapter of repression began to surface. Decades later, Ning-Ren’s story was recorded, one of the few victims of Yuli Nursing Home whose story made it to the public eye.
《從軍人到精神病患：寧人在玉里養護所的幽暗時光》
在台灣的白色恐怖歷史中，有些人的身影被刻意隱去——不只因他們曾被冠上「叛亂」或「匪諜」的罪名，而是因為他們的身體與精神，雙重地被國家暴力摧殘與定義。玉里養護所，這座原名「臺灣省立玉里養護所」的精神病院，就是其中一個最被忽視的關押地。而寧人，則是這段歷史中極少數得以活著見證並發聲的倖存者。
寧人1946年隨家人自中國來台，曾就讀軍官學校，並擔任排長與情報人員。在1970年代退役後，他轉往餐飲業，卻因1980年在街頭發表批評政府的言論遭人檢舉，先被送往精神病院診斷為「酒精精神病」，隔年又因公開讚揚中國共產黨，再次被捕並判刑四年，關押於景美看守所。
在監禁期間，寧人開始出現幻聽與書寫行為，牆上塗寫批評蔣介石的話語，被視為「瘋狂」、「危險」。他遭受獄卒以手銬腳鐐拘束，長時間毆打、牙齒脫落，甚至在臉上塗滿油漆、被人踩踏背脊。他回憶：「那個中尉，他把我拖出來打一頓⋯⋯他們在我背後上面，跳舞⋯⋯。」這些傷害至今仍讓他飽受脊椎疼痛之苦。
被判定為妄想型精神分裂症（今思覺失調症）後，寧人被轉送至玉里養護所——一座由退輔會與榮民醫院合辦，表面上以收容貧困精神病患為由設立的機構。1960至1970年代間，養護所由警務處、社會處等機構分配床位，其中部分名額專供警備總部轉送的「新生分子」、「匪嫌案精神病患」使用。這些政治犯在審訊過程中罹病，或被懷疑患病，即可被送入該處，實際上為一種轉化為精神異常者的政治打壓手段。
官方始終否認玉里是「關押地」，強調受難者一旦送醫即不再屬於監禁狀態，屬於「安置」。但警總仍持續介入其管理，要求醫院「加以考管」，對病患施以嚴密控管與觀察。這意味著，即使不在牢籠內，這些病人也未曾真正自由。
1990年，陳光中教授於研討會公開指出玉里收容政治犯的事實，引起媒體與NGO關注，才讓玉里養護所浮出檯面。多年後，寧人的經歷意外被記錄下來，成為目前極少數仍能為自己發聲的玉里受難者。
Wang Yun-wu and the 1958 Administrative Reform: A Lonely Attempt from Within the System
In 1958, amid mounting criticism over governmental inefficiency and increasing pressure from both society and U.S. aid agencies, the Kuomintang (KMT) government established the “Provisional Committee for Administrative Reform.” Appointed as chair was then Vice Premier Wang Yun-wu, who led the design of a comprehensive reform plan. This marked the first systematic effort to overhaul the central administrative structure since the Nationalist government’s retreat to Taiwan. More than just an efficiency crisis, this initiative reflected Wang’s deeper democratic aspirations as a reformer working within the system.
Unlike the authoritarian logic of the party-state regime, Wang’s vision drew inspiration from Western democratic and rule-of-law models. He advocated for administration by law, emphasized transparency in administrative procedures, checks and balances, and aimed to build a professional, institutionalized, and de-partisanized modern government. Among his groundbreaking proposals were: clearer delineation of responsibilities between the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan, strengthening the independence of the judiciary and legislature, civil service reforms (including open recruitment and a formal elimination mechanism), and—perhaps most controversially—a proposal urging the gradual withdrawal of the KMT from direct management of government and military affairs, in line with the principles of party-state separation and civilian control over the military.
These proposals struck at the very heart of the authoritarian system. Despite Wang’s reliance on administrative professionalism and international perspective, his reforms met strong opposition from Chiang Kai-shek and conservative forces within the party. Chiang feared that such changes would undermine the legitimacy of the regime and the martial law structure. The idea of separating party and military control was especially viewed as a direct threat to the foundation of KMT rule.
Although the committee ultimately issued 88 proposals—some of which, like administrative delegation, streamlined budgeting, and improved bureaucratic processes, were implemented—key recommendations that touched upon structural and political reform were shelved. Wang himself was gradually marginalized after the committee’s conclusion; his powers were weakened, and many reform items remained mere paperwork. Though later named as a senior advisor, he held no real political influence in his final years.
Wang Yun-wu’s reforms ultimately failed to transform the authoritarian system. Yet, his efforts in 1958 carry important historical significance: even under tight party-state control, some intellectuals dared to envision and advocate for a future of transparent, lawful, and professional governance from within the system. His failure was not merely the decline of a political career, but a reflection of the limitations reformers faced under an authoritarian regime.
This exhibition presents Wang Yun-wu’s reform blueprint and related proposals. In the face of authoritarianism, he chose to articulate a vision for the future. Though defeated, he remains worthy of honour.
《王雲五與1958年行政改革：制度內改革者的孤獨嘗試》
1958年，在行政體系效率低落、社會輿論與美援壓力升高的背景下，國民黨政府成立「臨時行政改革委員會」，由時任行政院副院長的王雲五擔任主任委員，主導整體改革設計。這是戰後國民政府遷台以來，第一次系統性規劃中央制度革新，其背後折射的，不僅是行政效能的危機，更是王雲五作為制度內改革者所懷抱的民主願景。
不同於黨國體制的威權邏輯，王雲五的改革藍圖更貼近西方民主法治國家的設計。他主張依法行政，強調行政程序透明、分權制衡原則，並致力於建立一個制度化、專業化、去黨化的現代政府。他提出多項深具突破性的建議，包括：明確行政院與立法院的權責劃分、強化立法與司法的獨立性、公務員制度改革（包含公開招考與淘汰機制）、以及最具爭議的建議——促請中國國民黨逐步退出對行政與軍隊系統的日常管理，以落實黨政分離、軍政分離原則。
這些主張無疑觸及了威權體制的核心神經。儘管王雲五以行政專業與國際觀為基礎，試圖以技術官僚身分提出制度性改革，最終卻因蔣中正與黨內保守派的強烈反對而遭到擱置。蔣中正擔心改革會動搖統治正當性與戒嚴體制，特別是涉及軍隊與政黨的分離，更被視為危及國民黨政權控制根基的「不當提案」。
雖然臨時行政改革委員會最終提出多達88項建議，其中包括行政分層負責、預算制度簡化、公務程序優化等部分獲得推動，但涉及制度本質與政治結構的關鍵提案幾乎全數被擱置。王雲五本人在會議結束後逐漸被邊緣化，重要職權被削弱，許多改革案淪為紙上文件。他晚年雖名列「資政」，但已無實質決策影響力。
王雲五的改革，終究未能改變威權時代的體制現實。然而，他在1958年的努力留下了一個重要歷史意義：即便在黨國高度統治下，仍有知識份子試圖於體制內推動透明、法治、專業的行政秩序。他的失敗，不只是個人政治生命的轉折，更反映出當時制度封閉的侷限與改革困境。
展覽在此呈現王雲五所主導的改革藍圖與相關提案，試圖重現這位制度內改革者的歷史時刻。面對威權的高牆，他選擇提出一套屬於未來的治理設想。雖敗猶榮。
The Price of Loyalty: Tai Chong-Ching and State Missions
In 1981, Tai Chong-Ching returned to Taiwan and reentered the nightlife and hospitality industry he was familiar with, operating hotels and Western-style restaurants that featured popular live shows. His businesses thrived, earning him great wealth and connections across both legitimate and underworld circles. At the same time, Taiwan’s democratization movement was gaining momentum, with opposition forces challenging Kuomintang (KMT) rule on the streets and also in the legislature. In response, the KMT mobilized various societal forces to counteract the opposition—and it was in this context that Tai became involved in numerous historical moments.
According to Tai, many of his actions were directly instructed by General Chang Chih-Hsiu, the Southern Commander of the Taiwan Garrison Command, who had led the suppression of the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident.
For example, before and during the 1979 “Yang Ching-chu Labor Forum,” Tai mobilized about a hundred gang members to disrupt the event. They filled the seats early and created confusion by shouting contradictory language complaints. “When Yang spoke in Taiwanese,” Tai recalled, “we shouted, ‘Speak Mandarin—we don’t understand!’ Then when he switched to Mandarin, others yelled, ‘Don’t speak Taiwanese—we don’t get it.’ Eventually, he had to end the event in a hurry.”
He also had people occupy the chairs outside the Formosa Magazine office, intimidating passersby with the visible presence of gang members. In a second phase, he ordered the removal of banners put up by the opposition, replacing them with pro-government slogans: “In the train station area, we changed them all to read, ‘The rioters have been eliminated by the government.’”
The third phase involved more aggressive actions. Tai admitted, “Later, Shih Ming-teh didn’t forgive me for some time.” He recounted how Shih eventually reached out through intermediaries for a meeting, during which Tai revealed everything he knew, as a gesture of reconciliation. “But the Presidential Office and the KMT didn’t want me to talk,” Tai added, “saying it would damage the party.”
He also mentioned his involvement in early-stage planning of intelligence operations, including the infamous Lin Yi-hsiung family massacre. “I didn’t know much about the Chen Wen-cheng case,” he said, “but in the Lin Yi-hsiung case, there really was talk at the top of using gang members… I had planned to involve the Big Circle Boys and even scouted Lin’s residence myself. But in the end, we assessed it as too brutal, so it wasn’t carried out.” Tai added that he had been photographed by the Investigation Bureau while scouting, and was once considered a suspect in the case.
In 1985, Tai was shot five times in broad daylight. One bullet pierced his cheek, narrowly missing his brain by a centimeter; another struck his hand. “Whenever I see my bent pinky that won’t straighten, I remember that day… That person really wanted to kill me,” he said. Tai survived by pretending to be dead on the ground. The case remains unsolved. “I’ve wondered—was it revenge from opposition people for what I did?” he reflected. But when asked if it might have been the intelligence agency trying to silence him, he firmly denied it three times: “Impossible,” citing his good relationship with top-level officials.
In 1986, Tai ran for a supplementary legislative seat and even appeared on a magazine cover. He said the run was “on orders from above,” intended to absorb non-party votes and split support to help the KMT candidate win. Though he lost the election, Tai believed he had fulfilled his mission.
Reflecting on his relationship with the regime, Tai once said, “What’s right? What’s wrong? Back then, I owned seven or eight venues in Kaohsiung. When the KMT asked me to cooperate, could I say no? If I refused, I’d be sent to a labour camp.” Yet compliance didn’t guarantee safety. In 1990, he emigrated with his family to Vancouver, leaving behind politics and the shadows of violence.
忠誠的代價：戴崇慶與國家任務
1981年，戴崇慶回到台灣，再次投身他熟悉的八大行業，經營酒店與西餐廳，結合當時流行的餐廳秀，事業日入斗金，黑白兩道通吃。此時台灣的民主化運動正逐步升溫，黨外勢力從街頭與議會兩線出擊，挑戰國民黨政權。為了應對壓力，國民黨動員社會各種資源反制，戴崇慶就在此脈絡下「參與」許多歷史現場。
他自述，當時許多行動皆由警備總部南部指揮官常持琇直接授意。常持琇正是1979年美麗島事件的鎮壓指揮官。
例如在1979年「楊青矗勞工座談會」前後，戴崇慶動員約百名兄弟到場，先坐滿座位，再製造語言干擾。他說：「他（楊青矗）講台語的時候，我們的人就喊：『講國語啦，我們聽不懂啦！』他改講國語的時候，又有人喊：『不要講台語啦，我們聽不懂。』最後，他只好草草收場。」
他還派人固定佔據美麗島雜誌社前桌椅，讓民眾見到場內都是流氓而退卻。第二階段，他派人拆下黨外掛的布條，換上親政府標語，「火車站一帶全換成：『暴亂分子已被政府消滅了。』」
第三階段則是更進一步的行動。他承認：「後來施明德對我有些不諒解。」並提到某年施明德透過中間人希望見面，他也答應，將自己知道的事說出來，算是和解。他補充：「但總統府和國民黨希望我不要去講，說是傷害國民黨。」
此外，他也提到自己曾參與其他情報行動的前期規劃，例如林義雄家中血案。他說：「陳文成案我不清楚，但林義雄那案子，上面的確有想過利用兄弟去做⋯⋯我本來打算找大圈仔，還親自到林義雄家附近勘場，事後評估這事太狠了，沒有執行。」他也表示，當時勘場時被調查局拍照，一度因此被列為林宅血案的嫌疑人。
1985年，戴崇慶在光天化日下遭人開五槍，一槍穿過臉頰，差一公分就傷及大腦，另一槍打中手掌。他說：「我現在看到我小姆指沒辦法伸直，就想到這件事⋯⋯那個人是真的要殺死我。」他當時在地上裝死，才逃過一劫。槍擊案至今未破。他說：「我曾經想我對黨外的人做了這些事，是不是黨外的人來報復？」但對於是否可能是情報單位要「減口」，他連說三次「不可能」，認為自己與高層關係良好。
1986年，他參選增額立委，還登上雜誌封面。他表示這次參選是「受上級指示」，為了吸納無黨籍選票、分散支持，協助國民黨籍候選人當選。最終他落選，但自認已完成任務。
回顧當年與體制的關係，他曾說：「什麼是對？什麼是錯？在那個年代，我在高雄有7、8家店，國民黨要我配合，我能不做嗎？不做，我就會被送去管訓了。」但即使配合，也不代表安全。1990年，他舉家移民溫哥華，遠離政治與槍擊陰影。
“The Birthday Tribute Issue”: A Magazine From Praise to Confrontation
In 1957, Free China Journal Volume 15, Issue 9, was published early on October 31 under the title “Special Birthday Tribute Issue,” to commemorate President Chiang Kai-shek’s 70th birthday. With deliberate design, the issue’s cover featured a bold red slogan: “Warm Congratulations on the President’s 70th Birthday.” Yet beyond this ceremonial gesture, the issue centered on the idea that “it is better to celebrate the nation than the individual.” It compiled sixteen editorials and political essays from prominent liberal intellectuals—including Hu Shih, Hsu Fu-kuan, and Wang Shih-chieh—offering rational appeals and institutional suggestions regarding Taiwan’s political system and direction. Their shared hope was that Chiang would respond to public expectations and lead Taiwan toward constitutional democracy.
However, this issue, which appeared to offer birthday greetings while actually advocating reform, quickly triggered nerves both in the public sphere and among political elites. Just three days after publication, Free China’s publisher Lei Chen wrote in his diary: “We printed an extra thousand copies for this issue, now sold out. Requests have come in from Chiayi, Yilan, and other regions—we’ve decided to reprint it again.” The issue was reprinted multiple times in response to popular demand. According to materials later compiled by Fu Cheng, the official record noted nine reprints, but the actual number reached as high as thirteen, indicating the widespread interest and resonance the issue evoked in society.
Yet despite its popularity among readers, the “Birthday Tribute Issue” did not receive a goodwill response from the government in the form of open discourse or reform. Instead, it was perceived as a latent challenge to the regime. Rather than adopting the institutional adjustments and party reforms proposed in the issue, the Kuomintang (KMT) labeled the publication as “containing toxic ideas” and launched a coordinated campaign against it, involving the party, military, and state-run media. The already-tense relationship between Free China and the KMT formally ruptured, turning into open confrontation.
This event became a key turning point that led to Lei Chen’s political persecution and the eventual shutdown of Free China. Although Lei and his colleagues had been striving to carve out a space for public discourse under authoritarian rule, the “Birthday Tribute Issue” demonstrated that, in such a political climate, even well-disguised appeals—cloaked as birthday greetings—could not escape the regime’s hostility and repression toward dissenting opinions.
At a time when Taiwan had yet to lift martial law or secure press freedom, Free China Journal chose a moderate and gradualist approach to advocating reform. This spirit was fully embodied in the “Birthday Tribute Issue,” which stands as a rare document during the martial law period that combined liberal ideals with a hope for institutional change from within the system.
《祝壽專號》：從禮讚到決裂的一期雜誌
1957年，《自由中國》第十五卷第九期於10月31日提前出刊，以「祝壽專號」之名向總統蔣中正七十大壽致意。這期內容別具巧思，不僅封面印有醒目的紅色標語「恭祝總統七秩華誕」，更以壽人不如壽國為核心主軸，集結十六篇社論與政論文章，廣邀各界自由派知識分子——包括胡適、徐復觀、王世傑等人——針對國家體制與政治方向進行理性呼籲與制度性建議，期望蔣中正能回應社會期待，帶領台灣走向憲政民主。
然而，這期表面祝壽、實則寄望改革的刊物，迅速引爆輿論場與政壇神經。創刊第三天，《自由中國》社長雷震在日記中寫道：「本刊此次多印千餘份，現已售罄，嘉義、宜蘭各地要本刊，決定再版一次。」此後，「祝壽專號」多次再版，盛況空前。根據傅正日後整理資料，官方紀錄為九次再版，實際上實體印行多達十三次，可見此專號在社會間引起廣泛關注與共鳴。
然而，這份廣受讀者肯定的祝壽專號，並未換來政府開放言論與實施改革的善意回應，反而被視為對政權的潛在挑戰。國民黨政府不僅未採納內容中所呼籲的制度調整與政黨改革，反而迅速將該專號定調為「隱含毒素思想」，並發動政黨、軍方、官方媒體全面展開圍剿。《自由中國》與國民黨之間原本維持的緊張平衡，自此正式破裂，雙方關係轉為公開對抗。
此事件成為雷震日後遭受政治迫害與《自由中國》停刊的關鍵轉折點。儘管當時的雷震與同仁，仍試圖在威權統治下尋找言論空間，但「祝壽專號」事件證明，在當時的政治氛圍下，即使以「祝壽」之名包裝建言，終究難逃體制對批判意見的敵意與打壓。
在台灣尚未實現黨禁解除與新聞自由的年代，《自由中國》選擇以溫和漸進的方式促進改革，其精神展現在這期「祝壽專號」中，成為台灣戒嚴時期難得一見、結合自由主義與制度內改革期待的文獻見證。
Dispatches from Democracy: Media and Propaganda in the Wild Lily Student Movement
In March 1990, the Wild Lily student movement swept through Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. Students self-organized and coordinated, forming an ad-hoc democratic community. Over the course of seven days, they chanted slogans, made demands, held meetings, and negotiated with authorities—but one key activity received less attention: the propaganda team’s strategic and tactical deployment in “voice making” and the “battle of public opinion.”
At the time, Taiwan’s media landscape was still transitioning—partially state-run and still under the shadow of the lifting of martial law and press restrictions just two years prior. Many mainstream media outlets either delayed reporting on the sit‑in or presented it ambiguously, diluting the students’ message. To counter this, the student propaganda team decided to take initiative. They didn’t wait for media coverage; they approached the media themselves, shaping a new mode of expression between protest journalism and activist messaging.
Each day at the site, the propaganda team wrote updates, hand-drew illustrations, edited “flash reports,” and used a simple second-hand photocopier to print batches of leaflets. Volunteers distributed them across the plaza, to press seats, and to nearby newspaper offices. They even visited newsrooms late at night to hand-deliver the reports, hoping the media would report on the authentic voices of the plaza. This grassroots media intervention was seen as the first “media co-construction experiment” initiated by activists themselves.
A standout production was the mini bulletin Citizen Plaza. Compared with the more formal Plaza Newsletter—produced by a group of journalists and scholars—Citizen Plaza was more immediate and colloquial, closely aligned with the atmosphere in the square and the habits of its audience. From the first issue, this bulletin served to inform the public of daily developments, correct media bias, document the pulse of the protest, publish commentaries, clarify rumours, and build a “Great Wall of public opinion” on the ground.
The seventh issue was especially symbolic, entitled “Anger Toward the Mass Media.” It criticized several mainstream newspapers for oversimplifying the students’ demands and framing the protest as disruptive—emphasizing, for example, “students incited” or “plaza watchers interfering with traffic.” In Citizen Plaza No. 7, the students stated, “We are not here to cause trouble; we are here to learn how to reform the nation through constitutional mechanisms.” Such language transformed the bulletin from a mere information tool into a strategic front in the ideological struggle on the plaza.
This media strategy shift highlighted a key trait of the Wild Lily Movement—it was no longer simply petitioning upward; it was a self-driven practice. Through onsite propaganda production and distribution, student participants became not only the subjects of media coverage but also creators of their own narrative. They were both reporters and the reported; they both acted and recorded in the moment.
Moreover, Citizen Plaza played an important symbolic role: when mainstream media failed to provide timely information, the bulletins helped the crowd to form consensus and shared identity onsite. Each leaflet functioned as an “instant public communiqué from the democratic scene,” with people reading aloud, circulating, and responding—acting as a bridge between traditional media and spoken mobilization. This semi-manual, semi-informed form of communication marked a turning point: Taiwan’s democratization movements were moving from underground leaflets toward open and transparent public media.
After the protest, physical copies of Citizen Plaza became valuable documents for researchers and collective memory. They set a precedent for future civic movements in Taiwan—print bulletins, SMS alerts, livestreams, and social media posts all trace their lineage back to this model. These printed news actions during the protest period concretely embodied the Wild Lily Movement’s spirit of self-expression and autonomous reporting.
In today’s era of rapidly evolving media and information overload, looking back at those simple paper bulletins of 1990 feels especially poignant. In a time when freedom was not yet secured, students chose the simplest tool—newsprint—to write reports for freedom. They demonstrated that democracy is never just a slogan but a day-to-day, ongoing practice.
民主現場的快報：野百合學運中的媒體實踐與文宣行動
1990年3月，野百合學運席捲中正紀念堂，學生自發組織、分工協作，形成一個自主運作的臨時民主社群。在這場歷時七日的集體抗爭中，除了喊出口號、提出訴求、召開會議、與政權交涉之外，一場同樣關鍵卻較少被注意的行動，正悄悄在廣場角落展開——那就是文宣組對「發聲」與「輿論戰」的主動部署與策略實踐。
這場學運正值「解嚴」與「報禁解除」不過兩年餘，台灣媒體環境仍處在半國營、半戒嚴的過渡階段。許多主流媒體對學生的靜坐並未給予即時或正面的報導，甚至出現模糊焦點、弱化訴求的現象。為了對抗媒體冷處理與錯誤報導，學生文宣組決定主動出擊。他們不再只是等待媒體關注，而是以行動走向媒體，形塑一種介於「抗議新聞」與「社運宣傳」之間的全新言論模式。
學生自組的文宣組，每日在現場即時撰寫文字、手繪插圖、編輯快報，再以簡易的二手影印機分批印製，透過志工與參與者分送至廣場各區、記者席與周邊報社。他們還曾深夜拜訪報社，親手遞送自製快報，希望媒體能引用、報導廣場真實聲音。這種自下而上的媒體介入方式，在當時被視為台灣首次由社運主體發起的「媒體共構實驗」。
在這場文字的運動中，最具代表性的產物之一是由文宣組現場編印的小型快報《市民廣場》。與另一份由記者與學者協力製作的《廣場通訊》相比，《市民廣場》更即時、直白，貼近廣場現場與大眾閱讀習慣。從第1期開始，這份快報便肩負起溝通民眾、糾正媒體失衡報導、記錄抗爭脈動的功能。它不僅告知當日進程、摘要討論結論，也發表評論、澄清謠言，甚至擔起抗爭現場的「輿論長城」。
其中第7期的內容尤具指標性，標題便點出：「對傳播媒體的憤怒」。文中批評當時幾家主流報紙過度簡化學生訴求，甚至以「學生被煽動」、「廣場糾察干擾交通」等視角報導，使大眾誤解現場狀況。《市民廣場》第7期中強調：「我們不是鬧場，我們在學習用憲政體制改變國家。」這類文字讓快報不只是訊息工具，更成為廣場論述的戰略前線。
這種媒體策略的轉變，凸顯出野百合學運的重要特質——不再僅僅是傳統的「向上請願」，而是一種自我主體的實踐。透過現場文宣的製作與流通，學生參與者不再只是被媒體報導的對象，而是積極塑造自身聲音的發聲者與敘事者。他們既是記者、也是受訪者；既是在場行動者，也是在場紀錄者。
此外，《市民廣場》也有一項重要的象徵功能：它讓群眾在無法即時獲得媒體資訊的情況下，得以在現場形成共識與認同。每一份快報都像是「民主現場的即時公報」，有人誦讀、有人傳閱、有人回應，形成一種介於傳統傳媒與口語動員之間的中介平台。這種半手工、半資訊化的傳播形式，也標誌著台灣民主運動從地下文宣走向公開透明的轉捩點。
學運結束後，《市民廣場》的紙本成為許多研究者與歷史記憶的重要文獻，也奠定了台灣日後許多公民運動中快報、簡訊、直播與社群發文等策略的雛型。它是抗爭時期的印刷媒體行動，是野百合學運「自我發聲、主體報導」精神的具體展現。
在今日媒體快速變遷與資訊爆炸的時代，回望1990年那場廣場上的紙本發聲，或許格外值得深思：在一切仍不自由的時代裡，他們選擇用最簡單的方式，印下一份份為自由而寫的快報，也印證了民主從不只是呼喊，而是一場場日常而持續的實踐。
We Are the Media.
“We Are the Media”: Democratic Street Battles from the Wild Lily Movement to the Anti-Military Intervention Protests
In the spring of 1990, the Wild Lily Student Movement swept across Taiwan. Over ten thousand students occupied Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall for seven days, demanding political reform with four major appeals: dissolving the National Assembly, abolishing the Temporary Provisions, convening a National Affairs Conference, and setting a clear timeline for democratic reform. The movement prompted President Lee Teng-hui to meet with the students and promise to convene the conference, marking a critical turning point in Taiwan’s democratic development.
However, just two months later, political turmoil resurfaced. In May 1990, news broke that Lee Teng-hui intended to appoint former Minister of National Defense Hau Pei-tsun as Premier—a move that stirred public uproar. Students and civil society feared this would bring the military back into high political office, undermining the newly established constitutional order and the principle of civilian-led government. In response, the National Student Movement Alliance—formed during the Wild Lily protests—launched a second wave of resistance, known as the “May Movement,” or more specifically, the “Anti-Military Intervention Campaign.”
Unlike the rational, sit-in based, and system-oriented approach of the March movement, the May protests were more confrontational and creatively street-based. With Taiwan’s Government Information Office ordering a media blackout, the mainstream media stopped reporting on the students’ actions, eliminating platforms for moderate discussion. Facing this information lockdown, the students stopped waiting to be covered—they became the creators and broadcasters of their own messages.
The most iconic action came from the self-organized “Bee Squad,” student teams that operated without high-tech tools or media airtime. Riding scooters, armed with spray cans, they launched a guerrilla-style “Democracy Graffiti Campaign.” Each two-person team zoomed through city streets: one drove, while the other stood to spray “Oppose Military Intervention” on the sides of moving buses. Some bus drivers even tacitly supported the cause—driving while cursing the authorities in sync with the students’ chants. These high-energy actions turned the streets into mobile festivals of democracy.
Calling themselves “hornets,” these agile, unpredictable activists embodied a new form of protest. Their acts of guerrilla communication didn’t just capture public attention—they transformed the city into a massive democratic stage. In an era without the internet or social media, this was a radical form of media practice rooted in physical presence and spectacle.
The students also directly targeted complicit media institutions. One team sprayed “LiarVision” (a pun in Chinese) on the wall of CTS (a major TV station), protesting distorted coverage—and were even sued as a result. These confrontations foreshadowed future public resistance to media monopolies and state-controlled narratives in Taiwan’s civil society.
From the Wild Lily Movement to the May protests, the students evolved their strategies—shifting from plaza-bound petitioners to mobile actors seizing urban space and reshaping public discourse. They were no longer “represented” by the media; they became their own storytellers, inscribing democracy onto the streets of the island.
This history reminds us: democracy does not arrive overnight. It is built through daily acts of “breaking through censorship and reclaiming the right to speak.” In an era dominated by party-owned media and authoritarian structures, these students proved—with creativity and courage—that when the system stays silent, the city itself can speak.
「我們就是媒體」：從野百合到反軍人干政的民主街頭戰
1990年春天，野百合學運席捲全台，一萬多名學生佔領中正紀念堂廣場七日，要求政治改革，提出「解散國大、廢除臨時條款、召開國是會議、訂出改革時間表」四大訴求。這場運動促使李登輝總統接見學生，並承諾召開國是會議，成為台灣民主進程中的關鍵轉折。
然而，就在兩個月後，台灣政壇再起波瀾。1990年5月，媒體傳出李登輝將提名前國防部長郝柏村出任行政院長，引發各界譁然。學生與公民社會深感憂慮，認為這將使軍人重返政治高位，是對方才建立的憲政秩序與文人內閣原則的嚴重倒退。於是，野百合學運中結盟出的「全國學生運動聯盟」，迅速號召群眾展開第二波抗爭，也就是「五月學運」——又名「反軍人干政行動」。
不同於三月學運的理性、靜坐、訴諸制度，五月學運展現了更具衝撞性與街頭創意的抗爭手法。由於新聞局下令三台封鎖相關訊息，媒體幾乎不再報導學生動態，也不再提供溫和空間與辯論平台。面對資訊封鎖，學生們不再等待主流媒體報導，而是自己成為訊息的創造者與傳播者。
最具代表性的，就是當時學生組成的「小蜜蜂機動隊」。他們不靠高科技、不上新聞節目，而是騎上機車，手持鐵樂士噴漆，鎖定在街頭行進的公車，進行一場場「民主噴字行動」。兩人一組的機車隊，在市區穿梭。前座掌控速度，後座的同伴站起身，對準公車側面噴上「反軍人干政」五字。公車司機有時甚至成為默默助陣者，邊開車邊配上三字經助勢，而學生則在完成噴字後高喊口號、合唱口訣，現場氣氛猶如一場移動的民主嘉年華。
這些騎著機車、在街道上噴字的年輕人，自稱為「虎頭蜂」，一如他們快速、靈活、無法預測的行動方式。他們的出現，不僅讓全台看到學生如何用創意對抗強權，也讓城市變成一個巨大的「民主展演場」。這種以肉身與行動搶奪視覺焦點的方式，在那個還沒有網路、沒有社群媒體的年代，是一種真正的媒體實踐。
此外，他們也鎖定特定媒體對抗，例如直奔華視大樓噴上「謊視」，抗議電視台扭曲報導，甚至因此遭提告。這些被迫與傳統媒體決裂的行動，也預示著未來台灣公民社會對於媒體壟斷的警覺與挑戰。
從野百合學運到五月學運，學生們完成了一次組織策略與媒體實踐的轉型。他們從坐在廣場上要求改革的請願者，成為佔領城市空間、主動介入輿論的行動者。他們不再只是「被代表」，而是自己書寫與發聲，用腳、用機車、用鐵樂士，把民主訴求噴在這座島嶼的街道上。
這段歷史提醒我們：民主不是一夜之間到來，而是一次次「突破封鎖、重奪發聲權」的日常行動所累積而成。在黨營媒體壟斷與國家體制強勢介入的年代，這群學生以創意與勇氣證明——當制度不說話時，我們就讓城市來說。
Beneath the Lead Type: The Perilous Daily Life of Printers in Martial Law Taiwan
During Taiwan’s martial law era, lead-type printing was not just a technical task—it was a political tightrope. Print shops were held accountable for every word they produced. A single typo could throw an entire operation into jeopardy.
Fong Yi Printing Press in Chiayi was one of the few large-scale lead-type presses in southern Taiwan with its own casting capability. Housing over 250,000 lead type pieces and eight typecasting machines, it was once the busiest hub for movable type printing in the south. Owner Lo Shen-Mao recalls the most nerve-wracking moment in the 1970s, when a typesetter mistakenly picked the character for “communist” (共) instead of “central” (央), accidentally printing “Communist Government” (中共政府) instead of “Central Government” (中央政府) in an official document. In that atmosphere of political paranoia, the mistake was tantamount to subversion. Security agents launched an immediate multi-day investigation. Lo grimaced: “We couldn’t even sleep in peace during that time.”
In another incident, a worker swapped the character for “strong” (強) with “weak” (弱), changing the inspirational slogan “Discipline and Strength” (莊敬自強) into “Discipline and Weakness” (莊敬自弱), once again prompting state agents to show up for questioning. Though such mistakes were due to mirrored engravings or similar molds, under an omnipresent surveillance state, even the smallest slip could be interpreted as subversion.
Luckily, both incidents were eventually dismissed as human error, resolved with written apologies. But Lo still recalls the fear: “If someone had wanted to make an example of us, we’d have been finished.” Fong Yi’s cautionary tales spread throughout the printing world, illustrating how print shops navigated a climate of fear.
Similar risks haunted Fukuen Printing on Wanhua’s Yajiang Street. Acquired in 1963 by poet Huang Ho-Sheng, the mid-sized press printed literary magazines like Modern Poetry, Genesis, and Reed, as well as the politically satirical Human World. Huang recalled, “You can’t just print anything,” noting he once declined to print the Taiwan Self-Rescue Movement Manifesto, advising instead: “Just change ‘Chiang Kai-shek’ to ‘Mao Zedong’ first, then change it back for safety.”
Fukuen constantly maneuvered between political red lines and publishing demands. It printed underground publications and magazines for KMT-affiliated minor parties like the China Youth Party and China Democratic Socialist Party. Still, intelligence officers would occasionally drop by “to borrow money”—a euphemism for extortion. “I lent them NT$1,000,” Huang said, “knowing it would never come back.” Running a print shop in those days meant balancing business, political savvy, and nerves of steel.
In 1972, Huang’s Giant Publishing unexpectedly struck gold with a bilingual edition of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, after Chiang Ching-kuo endorsed it as a student read, selling over 100,000 copies. But six years later, his Modern Chinese Thinkers series was seized after just one print run. “They made us rip out eight pages,” Huang said. “To this day, I still don’t know what was so sensitive.”
Once a poet, Huang had published Tactile Life in 1956 before vowing never to write again. “Being possessed by poetry once was enough,” he said. Yet his Fukuen Printing remained a haven for poets and thinkers. Literary figures like Lee Kuei-hsien proofread their work there. Lee even joined Reed after meeting editor Chao Tian-Yi at Fukuen.
Huang was also a journalism classmate of Huang Wen-hsiung, who tried to assassinate Chiang Ching-kuo in New York in 1970. Although the secret police launched a dragnet investigation into his associates, they missed Huang Ho-Sheng. “The KMT wasn’t that smart after all,” joked Huang Wen-hsiung—mocking the absurd selectivity of state repression.
In an era when a single character could become a political landmine, every lead type, every printed page was an act of negotiation with authoritarian power. From Chiayi to Wanhua, from Fong Yi to Fukuen, these print shops carried the weight of literature, thought, and resistance in the turbulent undercurrents of Taiwan’s martial law years.
鉛字下的暗潮：戒嚴時代印刷廠的驚險日常
在戒嚴時期的台灣，鉛字印刷不只是技術工作，更是一場步步為營的政治考驗。印刷廠不只承擔出版任務，也必須對每個字、每句話負責——一個錯字，就可能讓整間工廠陷入危機。
嘉義的豐益印刷廠，是南部少數擁有自鑄能力的大型鉛字印刷廠，保有多達25萬枚鉛字與8台鑄字機，曾是南台灣最繁忙的鉛字基地。老闆羅伸茂回憶，最驚險的時刻出現在 1970 年代，一位撿字工人不慎將「央」字誤撿為「共」，將政府公文中的「中央政府」誤排為「中共政府」，在那個草木皆兵的年代，幾乎等同於顛覆政權，情治單位立刻展開連日調查，他苦笑說：「那陣子連睡覺都不安穩。」
不只如此，一次印製標語時，工人又誤將「強」撿成「弱」，將原本的勵志語「莊敬自強」變成「莊敬自弱」，再度引來調查人員登門質問。儘管這些錯誤只是因鉛字陽刻、左右顛倒、字模相似所致，但在國家機器無所不在的年代裡，任何微小的文字差錯都可能被放大為意圖不軌的證據。
所幸，這兩起事件最後皆以員工疏忽結案，只需撰寫悔過書即可了結。但羅伸茂至今仍心有餘悸，他說：「萬一當時有人想借題發揮，我們早就出事了。」豐益的故事成了印刷圈的警世傳說，也說明了印刷廠在那個年代，如何在高壓體制下提心吊膽地生存。
類似的驚險，也發生在萬華雅江街的福元印刷廠。這家由詩人黃荷生於1963年接手的中小型印刷廠，曾印製詩刊《現代詩》、《創世紀》、《笠》，也為以諷刺見長的《人間世》雜誌提供印刷。黃荷生笑說：「裝訂工廠不能亂印東西」，他曾婉拒幫《台灣自救運動宣言》印製，並提醒：「先把『蔣介石』改成『毛澤東』印，再改回來比較安全。」
福元印刷在政治與出版之間周旋。他不只幫地下刊物印書，也承接國民黨周邊政黨如中國青年黨、中國民社黨的雜誌，《新中國評論》、《民主中國》都由他們製作。即便如此，也不時有情治人員上門「借錢」，黃荷生摸摸鼻子借了一千元，知道「是借不回來的」。他深知，在那樣的時代，經營印刷廠不只是生意，更是一種政治敏感度與膽量的綜合考驗。
1972 年，黃荷生的巨人出版社出版《天地一沙鷗》中英對照本，意外因蔣經國推薦為學生讀物而狂銷十萬本，成為當年的「紅包書」。但六年後的《現代中國思想家》系列，才首刷就被查扣，還得撕掉八頁才能流通。黃荷生說：「我到現在都不知道那八頁哪裡敏感。」
他曾經是個詩人，1956年出版詩集《觸覺生活》後便封筆，稱自己「被詩附魔過一次就夠了」。但事實上，他開設的福元印刷廠，始終是詩人與思想者的基地。不少詩集、文學刊物都在那裡排版、誕生。詩人李魁賢甚至就是在福元校稿時，遇見趙天儀送來《笠》的創刊號，而加入該刊編輯團隊。
黃荷生與刺蔣案主角黃文雄是政大新聞系同窗。1970年黃文雄在紐約行刺蔣經國未遂後，情治單位全面清查與他有關的人脈，卻漏掉黃荷生。黃文雄笑說：「國民黨也沒多厲害！」這句話雖然玩笑，卻道出某種時代荒謬的輕重分寸。
在那個動輒得咎的年代，每一枚鉛字、每一次印刷，不只是技藝與工藝的展現，更是一場與極權體制的細膩對抗。從嘉義到萬華，從豐益到福元，這些印刷廠與他們的經營者，在暗潮洶湧的歷史縫隙中，承載了文學、思想與抵抗的重量。
Voices from Vancouver: Flames of Democracy in a Distant Land
In Taiwan’s history, there was once a group of people who had a home, yet could not return. They were Taiwanese living abroad—blacklisted by the government for criticizing authoritarian rule, participating in the democracy movement, and speaking up for human rights. From the moment they stood up for Taiwan’s democracy, their homeland became a place they were barred from.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Canada became a refuge for many Taiwanese in exile. Although it was far away and home to fewer Taiwanese than New York or Los Angeles, Vancouver fostered some of the most determined and generous acts of support. These exiles established Taiwanese associations, published newsletters, organized fundraising talks, and led protest actions. While news in Taiwan was censored, they wrote to The Vancouver Sun, speaking to the international community: “The Chiang Kai-shek regime does not represent the people of Taiwan. China has never governed Taiwan.”
They raised funds, lobbied, and marched—sometimes taking buses across the border to join demonstrations in the United States. At the scene, if there were media present, they would put on masks before speaking—because their families were still in Taiwan, and being identified could result in political retaliation. Through anonymity, code names, silence, and long-distance solidarity, they guarded Taiwan’s future.
Many of those on the blacklist had earned doctoral degrees abroad but were barred from returning to teach. Some were even denied the chance to return home for a parent’s funeral. Although martial law was lifted in 1987, the blacklist remained for years.
In the cold of exile, they lit a fire—whispering the name “Taiwan” in places where it could not be spoken. They were the exiled, but also the ones keeping watch over their homeland.
From afar, these overseas Taiwanese took part—in their own way—in the long journey home.
《溫哥華之聲：異鄉裡的民主火光》
台灣歷史上曾有一群「有家卻歸不得」的人。他們是在國外的台灣人，因為批判威權政權、參與民主運動、發聲爭取人權，被列入政府的黑名單。從為台灣的民主奮鬥的那刻起，故鄉便成了回不去的地方。
1970至80年代，加拿大成為許多流亡台灣人的避風港。雖然距離遠、台灣人數不如美國紐約與洛杉磯多，但溫哥華卻孕育了最堅定、最慷慨的支持行動。他們成立台灣人社團、發行刊物、辦募款演講、組織示威行動。他們在台灣的新聞被封鎖，卻寫信給《Vancouver Sun》，向國際發聲：「蔣介石政權不代表台灣人，中國也從未治理過台灣。」
他們募款、遊說、遊行，有時搭乘巴士越境到美國參加示威。到了現場，發現有媒體記者，他們便戴上面具接受訪問——因為家人在台灣，身分曝光可能會帶來政治報復。他們以匿名、代號、沉默、遠距離守護台灣的命運。
這些黑名單上的人，有的博士學成卻無法歸國任教，有的甚至無法回台奔喪。儘管1987年解嚴，黑名單仍持續多年。
他們曾在冰冷異鄉燃起火光，在不能說出名字的地方，低聲唸出台灣的名字。他們是被驅離的人，也是守望家園的人。
異鄉的台灣人，用他們的方式，參與了那場漫長的回家之路。
Photo Credit:
1. Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino
2. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal
The history of 20th century Europe is dominated by stories of horrors, violence, and dictatorship across the continent: from Germany, to the Soviet Union, to Italy, to Spain, and more. The story of Portugal in the 20th century is, however, seldom discussed or even known beyond the country’s borders, despite the fact that it was one of Europe’s longest lasting.
Portugal’s dictatorship was never one of flashy military marches, extravagant mass rallies, or charismatic firebrand leaders. Led for much of its existence by an austere and intelligent economics professor, António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal spent four decades from 1933 to 1974 under an authoritarian regime known as the New State (Estado Novo). This era was obsessed with its narrative of a heroic and Catholic history and values, chased its opponents with the secret police, and fought wars to perpetuate its colonies during a global period of decolonization.
In a society where the state aspired to depoliticize the people and keep them stuck in a retrograde past of orderly obedience, strict religious faith, and colonial glories, the story of resistance to this different kind of dictatorship must be understood in different terms. To speak out against authoritarianism was only the first step—the real challenge was to break the regime’s stories and rediscover who the Portuguese (or any of the people who once lived under their rule) really were. Those stories of resistance spanned the globe: from Lisbon to Luanda, from Maputo to Macau.
The New State fell amid the Carnation Revolution of 1974, but the tales the dictatorship told generations of Portuguese over the decades have not disappeared. Narratives of a more benevolent Portuguese colonialism persist in Eurovision song submissions or the monuments of Lisbon’s cobblestone streets. A 2007 national vote even chose Salazar, the former dictator, as “the greatest Portuguese.”
Freedom is not achieved the moment dictatorship ends; it takes time and effort to heal, reconstruct, and fortify. Without remembering the stories, thoughts, and choices of those who fought against dictatorship, democracy may remain fragile and freedom may remain precarious.
《另一種獨裁——葡萄牙與遺忘的二十世紀》
二十世紀的歐洲史，往往以戰爭、暴力與獨裁的故事主導——從德國到蘇聯、義大利到西班牙。然而，葡萄牙的二十世紀卻鮮少被境外談及，儘管它擁有歐洲最漫長的獨裁之一。
與其他國家的獨裁不同，葡萄牙的統治缺乏鋪張的閱兵、巨大的群眾集會，或魅力四射的煽動型領袖。長年掌權的安東尼奧・薩拉查（António de Oliveira Salazar）是一位嚴肅、內斂且精於經濟學的教授。自 1933 年至 1974 年，「新國家」（Estado Novo）政權以「英雄且天主教化的歷史與價值觀」為敘事核心，動用祕密警察追捕異議者，並在全球去殖民化浪潮中執意為保有殖民地而發動戰爭。
在這個企圖讓人民「去政治化」、困在秩序服從、宗教信仰與殖民榮光的過往幻象中的社會裡，抵抗的意義不僅是反對專制，更在於打破政權的敘事，重新尋回葡萄牙人——以及曾在其統治下生活的各族群——的真實面貌。這些抵抗的故事跨越大洲：從里斯本到羅安達，從馬普托到澳門。
新國家政權終於在 1974 年康乃馨革命中倒下，但它灌輸數代葡萄牙人的故事並未隨之消失。「仁慈殖民主義」的神話仍出現在歐洲歌唱大賽的歌詞裡，或里斯本石板街的紀念碑間。甚至在 2007 年，全國票選還將薩拉查選為「葡萄牙最偉大的人」。
自由不是獨裁結束的瞬間，而是需要時間與努力去療癒、重建與鞏固。若不記住那些對抗獨裁者的故事、思想與選擇，民主就可能脆弱，而自由依舊岌岌可危。
Photo Credit: Memórias de África e do Oriente, Universidade de Aveiro
“We have been in Africa for 400 years, which is a little more than to have arrived yesterday,” asserted Salazar, Portugal’s dominant 20th century figure, in 1960.
To the Portuguese dictatorship, their small Iberian country was unlike any other European nation. Portugal was an ancient kingdom of mixed Latin, Celtic, and Islamic North African ancestries, who was Europe’s first and oldest imperial power. Portuguese sailors and explorers had been traversing the oceans since the 15th century, having rounded the southern end of the African continent and reaching India by sea route before any other.
Defenders of the regime’s colonial policies argued that Portugal and the Portuguese bore a centuries-old intimate relationship with the indigenous peoples of their colonies. Only in Portuguese-ruled Brazil was it possible for the widespread occurrence of racial mixing, because the Portuguese, themselves of supposed multiracial origin, were somehow less sensitive to race itself. What Portugal created, lusotropicalism said, were multiracial families of diverse origins, sharing a common Portuguese language, and a robust Catholic faith. Their empire was not like that of the exploitative British, for example, concerned solely with extracting as much economic value from its colonies and living completely separate from their indigenous subjects.
This myth of Portuguese multiracialism and a more humane colonialism was widely disseminated by the regime. School textbooks gushed that the Portuguese imperial model was the best solution to the world’s racial issues. Images of children of all colours happily playing together or celebrating their Portugueseness were littered across the pages. However, the reality in the Portuguese empire was far darker.
Notwithstanding the inherent inaccuracies of the regime’s memory of Portuguese colonialism, Portugal’s colonial subjects still bore the brunt of deeply discriminatory policies and administrative failures. The vast majority of Black Africans were denied access to civic rights that were, in theory, legally accessible to them, for instance due to their failure to meet standards of literacy in Portuguese; the irony was that white Portuguese settlers, of whom an estimated 40% were themselves illiterate, were never subjected to such standards. Access to schooling was still limited to a small fraction of indigenous populations, standards of living remained far below metropolitan standards, and practices of forced labour were common. Amílcar Cabral, one of the leaders of the anti-colonial movement in Guinea and Cape Verde, was scathing in his criticism: Portugal was not the superior colonizer it envisioned itself as, but a “backwards”, poor, and “underdeveloped country” masquerading as a third-rate colonial power.
Colonialism and imperialism will, by virtue of its traditional importance to the country’s history and identity, be forever etched somewhere in Portuguese society. When some of a country’s greatest historical figures are inseparable from colonialism, coming to terms with the realities of the past empire will remain a challenge, particularly when decades of the dominant narrative has sought to sugarcoat that history and place it at the core of national identity.
「我們在非洲已經四百年——可不是昨天才剛到。」葡萄牙二十世紀的主導性人物薩拉查於1960年如此宣稱。
在葡萄牙獨裁政權看來，他們這個位於伊比利半島的小國與其他任何歐洲國家都不同。葡萄牙自詡為一個由拉丁、凱爾特與北非伊斯蘭血緣交織而成的古老王國，也是歐洲最早且歷史最悠久的帝國強權。早在他國之前，葡萄牙的水手與探險家自十五世紀起便橫越大洋，繞過非洲南端，經海路抵達印度。
為政權殖民政策辯護者主張，葡萄牙與其殖民地原住民之間存在延續數百年的親密關係。只有在葡萄牙統治的巴西，種族混合才得以廣泛發生；因為葡萄牙人自認本就出自多種族源，對「種族」本身較不敏感。依據「盧索熱帶主義」（lusotropicalism）的論述，葡萄牙創造的是來自多元出身的多種族家庭，共用葡萄牙語，並擁有堅實的天主教信仰。他們的帝國不同於剝削性的英國殖民體制——後者只關心從殖民地榨取最大經濟利益，且與當地原住民完全隔離。
關於葡萄牙「多種族」與「較人道」殖民的神話，被政權廣泛傳播。學校教科書極力吹捧，稱葡萄牙的帝國模式是解決世界種族問題的最佳方案。書頁間充斥著不同膚色的孩童快樂玩耍，或共同慶祝其「葡萄牙性」的圖像。然而，葡萄牙帝國的現實要陰暗得多。
儘管政權對葡萄牙殖民歷史的記憶本身充滿謬誤，殖民地臣民仍承受著深度歧視性政策與行政失靈的最大衝擊。絕大多數非洲黑人被剝奪了理論上依法可得的公民權，例如因未達葡語識字標準而被拒之門外；諷刺的是，白人葡萄牙移民中估計有四成本身不識字，卻從未受到此類標準的約束。原住民能取得教育的比例仍極其有限，其生活水準遠低於母國標準，強迫勞動的做法亦相當普遍。幾內亞與維德角反殖領袖阿米爾卡爾・卡布拉爾嚴厲批評道：葡萄牙絕非其自我想像中的優越殖民者，而是一個「落後」、貧困且「未開發的」國家，僅僅偽裝成三流殖民強權。
由於殖民主義與帝國主義在葡萄牙歷史與國族認同中具有傳統上的重要地位，它們將永遠以某種形式銘刻於葡萄牙社會之中。當一個國家的部分最重要歷史人物與殖民主義密不可分時，要真正正視過去帝國的現實始終是一項挑戰——尤其當主流敘事在數十年來不斷美化這段歷史，並將其置於國族認同的核心之時。
Photo Credit:
1. Fundação Mário Soares
2. Wikimedia Commons
On April 25, 2025, thousands of Portuguese marched down the wide, tree-lined Avenida da Liberdade (Avenue of Freedom) in the heart of Lisbon bearing red flowers and national flags in celebration of the Dia da Liberdade (Day of Freedom).
Five decades ago, military officers opposed to the dictatorship’s policies on the Colonial War staged a coup against the regime in Lisbon. They were quickly joined by the frustrated masses on the streets. In a pivotal moment in Portuguese history, the revolution of 1974 occurred with almost no widespread violence, and people on the streets handed flowers to the soldiers, including the red carnations (“cravos” in Portuguese) which would give the revolution its most common name: the Carnation Revolution.
Today, the 25th of April is one of the most iconic names in Portugal. Streets, monuments, and even Lisbon’s famed red suspension bridge are all named after the day of the revolution. One 2024 survey reported that 65% of Portuguese considered April 25, 1974 the most important moment in their country’s history. The day lives on in Portuguese history forever, as a moment when a dictatorship which kept Portugal conservative, rural, colonialist, and stuck in the 19th century finally fell and decades of brave, persistent resistance finally returned the nation to democracy nearly five decades after it was lost.
2025年4月25日，數以千計的葡萄牙人沿著里斯本市中心寬闊、林蔭成排的自由大道（Avenida da Liberdade，「自由大道」）遊行，手持紅色花朵與國旗，慶祝「自由日」（Dia da Liberdade，「自由之日」）。
五十年前，反對獨裁政權殖民戰爭政策的軍官在里斯本發動政變。街頭的不滿群眾迅速響應加入。葡萄牙歷史上的這一關鍵時刻——1974年的革命——幾乎未出現大規模暴力；街上的人們把花朵遞給士兵，其中包括紅色康乃馨（葡語稱 “cravos”），而這朵花也為革命帶來了它最常見的名稱：「康乃馨革命」。
如今，「四月二十五日」已是葡萄牙最具象徵意義的名稱之一。許多街道、紀念碑，甚至里斯本著名的紅色吊橋，都以這場革命的日子命名。2024年的一項調查指出，65%的葡萄牙人認為1974年4月25日是本國歷史上最重要的時刻。這一天被永遠銘刻在葡萄牙史中：它標誌著那個使葡萄牙長期保持保守、鄉村、殖民主義、宛如停滯於十九世紀的獨裁體制終於垮台，而數十年勇敢且持續的抵抗，終於在失去民主將近半個世紀後，讓國家重返民主。
Photo Credit:
1. Nationaal Archief (Netherlands)
2. Wikimedia Commons
The son of two well-known Portuguese artists, João Abel Manta was an architect, illustrator, and cartoonist. From a young age, he was in the crosshairs of the New State dictatorship. While still a young architecture student at Lisbon’s School of Fine Arts in 1948, Manta was arrested by the PIDE, the secret police, and spent two weeks in the notorious Caxias prison near Lisbon for participating in the opposition political organization, the Movement of Democratic Unity.
While Manta’s work across the 1950s and early 1960s was already achieving international acclaim, his illustrations and cartoons took on increasingly political themes in the late 1960s. His work bravely satirized current events and national cultural symbols in major Lisbon newspapers like the Diário de Lisboa and Diário de Notícias, before repeatedly being subjected to the “blue pen” of censorship and barred from the newspapers. Pushing the boundaries of freedom of expression, a few of Manta’s major works did manage to escape the censors: his illustrations for the book Most Excellent Dinosaur (Dinossauro Excelentíssimo), a satirical take on the life of its titular “dinosaur”—the late octogenarian dictator Salazar—written by José Cardoso Pires and published in 1972.
The dawn of the Carnation Revolution in spring 1974 fully opened the doors for Manta, as he became the emblematic artist of the revolution, with his famed posters with sharp, bold, and simple caricatures full of revolutionary and modern feeling celebrating the alliance between the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) which staged the revolution and the Portuguese “povo” (“people”).
In his cartoons, Manta so captivatingly captures the thoughts and feelings of the Portuguese people who endured decades of dictatorship, marking Manta as one of the iconic artists of a time of dramatic social and political change in mid-20th century Portugal.
See more of Manta’s work in this video from the archives of Portugal’s national broadcaster, RTP: https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/cartoons-de-abel-manta/.
若昂・阿貝爾・曼塔（João Abel Manta）出身於兩位知名葡萄牙藝術家之家，是一名建築師、插畫家與漫畫家。他自年輕時起便成為「新國家」獨裁政權的鎖定目標。1948年，仍是里斯本美術學院建築系的年輕學生時，曼塔因參與反對派政治組織「民主統一運動」（Movement of Democratic Unity）而被祕密警察 PIDE 逮捕，並在里斯本近郊惡名昭彰的卡西亞什監獄被關押了兩週。
儘管曼塔在1950年代與1960年代初期的作品已獲得國際讚譽，他在1960年代末的插畫與漫畫卻日益聚焦政治主題。他在《里斯本日報》（Diário de Lisboa）與《新聞日報》（Diário de Notícias）等里斯本主要報紙上大膽諷刺時事與國族文化象徵，但其作品屢屢遭審查的「藍筆」刪改，並被報社禁登。即便如此，他仍在表意自由的邊界上不斷推進，部分重要作品成功躲過了審查——例如他為《最尊貴的恐龍》（Dinossauro Excelentíssimo）所作的插圖。該書由若澤・卡多索・皮雷什（José Cardoso Pires）撰寫，1972年出版，以諷刺筆法書寫其名義上的「恐龍」——已逝、年逾八旬的獨裁者薩拉查。
1974年春天康乃馨革命的來臨，為曼塔徹底敞開大門；他成為這場革命的象徵性藝術家。他那些以銳利、大膽、簡潔的漫畫形象著稱、充滿革命與現代感的著名海報，讚頌發動革命的武裝部隊運動（MFA）與葡萄牙「povo」（「人民」）之間的結盟。
在其漫畫中，曼塔極具吸引力地捕捉了在獨裁下忍受數十年的葡萄牙人民的思想與感受，使他成為二十世紀中期葡萄牙社會與政治劇變時期的指標性藝術家之一。
更多曼塔的作品可見葡萄牙國家廣播公司 RTP 檔案館的這支影片：https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/cartoons-de-abel-manta/。
Photo Credit:
1. Fundação Mário Soares
2. Wikimedia Commons
Amílcar Cabral and Eduardo Mondlane hailed from opposite sides of the African continent, 6,000 kilometres apart—Cabral from a Guinean-Cape Verdean background and Mondlane from Mozambique—yet were tied to a broader movement in Portugal’s African colonies which sought to reassert the agency and dignity of peoples suppressed under colonial rule.
Portuguese colonial rule denied the existence of African nationalisms itself. In the words of the regime, anti-colonial nationalism among the indigenous populations of the Portuguese “overseas provinces” could not exist because the population of those territories had been “Portuguese” for centuries. School textbooks in Portuguese Africa routinely ignored the existence of a pre-colonial African history or culture, portraying the histories of Mozambique, Angola, or Goa as starting with the heroics tales of Portuguese explorers like Diogo Cão and Vasco da Gama, the bearers of a superior Western civilization and Catholic faith who represented the “beginning of history” for Africa.
The denial of history and an active role in defining that history was, to thinkers like Cabral and Mondlane, a critical trauma created by colonialism. Mondlane wrote that colonial education attempted to “cut [Mozambicans] from their background, annihilate the values they had been brought up with” to produce a population of “servants of Portugal” who were “docile and loyal.” Cabral described education as a place which “disparages the African, his culture and civilization” and where African children were made to “fear the white man and to feel ashamed of being Africans.” Reclaiming the “inalienable right of every people to have their own history” was thus essential to the anti-colonial struggle. To achieve genuine national liberation required not only political liberation, but also a deeper historical and cultural liberation which enabled the once-colonized to break colonial narratives.
Both Cabral and Mondlane are today recognized as some of the foremost thinkers in African anti-colonial political thought and of the 20th century. Both would not live to see the fruit of their work: the full liberation of their homelands from colonial rule; Mondlane was assassinated by agents of the PIDE, the Portuguese secret police, in Tanzania in 1969, while Cabral was murdered in 1973. Their contributions to anti-colonial thought, however, reverberated across not only Africa, but the entire world.
阿米爾卡爾・卡布拉爾（Amílcar Cabral）與愛德華多・蒙德拉內（Eduardo Mondlane）雖然分別來自相距6,000公里、位於非洲大陸兩端的地方——卡布拉爾出身於幾內亞－維德角背景，蒙德拉內則來自莫三比克——卻同屬於葡萄牙非洲殖民地中一股更宏大的運動：這股運動旨在重新主張（或奪回）在殖民統治下被壓抑人民的主體性與尊嚴。
葡萄牙的殖民統治否認非洲民族主義本身的存在。按照該政權的說法，葡萄牙「海外省」的原住民不可能產生反殖的民族主義，因為這些地區的人民「數百年來一直是葡萄牙人」。在葡屬非洲的學校教科書中，前殖民時期的非洲歷史與文化往往被刻意忽略；莫三比克、安哥拉或果阿的歷史被描述為始於葡萄牙探險家如迪奧戈・康（Diogo Cão）與瓦斯科・達・伽馬（Vasco da Gama）的英雄事蹟——他們被塑造成攜帶更優越的西方文明與天主教信仰而來的人，並被標舉為非洲「歷史的開端」。
對卡布拉爾與蒙德拉內這類思想家而言，否認歷史與剝奪人們在界定自身歷史上的主動角色，是殖民主義造成的一種關鍵性創傷。蒙德拉內寫道，殖民教育試圖「將［莫三比克人］與其背景切離，抹滅他們自小內化的價值」，以培養出一群「葡萄牙的僕役」，「馴服且忠誠」。卡布拉爾則指出，學校成為「貶抑非洲人、其文化與文明」的場所，非洲兒童在其中被教導要「畏懼白人，並為身為非洲人而感到羞愧」。因此，收復「每個民族擁有自身歷史的不可剝奪權利」是反殖鬥爭的要務。要實現真正的民族解放，不僅需要政治上的解放，還需要更深層的歷史與文化解放，使曾受殖民的人們得以打破殖民敘事。
如今，卡布拉爾與蒙德拉內被公認為二十世紀非洲反殖民政治思想中最具代表性的思想家之一。然而兩人皆未能親眼見到其事業的成果——故土徹底脫離殖民統治：蒙德拉內於1969年在坦尚尼亞遭葡萄牙祕密警察 PIDE 的特務刺殺；卡布拉爾則於1973年遇害。然而，他們對反殖思潮的貢獻激起的回響，已超越非洲，傳遍整個世界。
Photo Credit: Eduardo Gageiro
“We see, we hear, and we read / we cannot ignore,” writes Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, one of Portugal’s greatest poets and writers of the 20th century, in her 1960s poem “Cantata da paz” (“Cantata of peace”). At a time when the New State dictatorship continued to wage a brutal war in Africa to defend its colonies, Andresen could not ignore the “hunger,” “injustice,” and “terror”—one could not turn away when “our time is organized sin.”
Adept at capturing the feelings of many Portuguese in her poetry, Andresen was never afraid of directing her subtle critique at the regime, the war, and its impacts on Portugal. One of her poems spoke of the dictator, Salazar, as an “old vulture” with “a gift of making souls smaller”; another laments the youth sent off to their deaths in Africa while the regime demanded the country “keep a calm conscience.” She celebrated the revolution of 1974 as a moment for the country to start afresh, “as a poem beginning on a blank page.”
At the same time, Andresen’s work reflected the beauty of her native Portugal, including in its constant allusions to the sea—a place of life, beauty, time, and serenity. Not only a poet but also a noted children’s author and short story writer, her story “The Girl from the Sea” (“A Menina do Mar”) is an ode to the sea, its sounds and sights, but also of young friendship, imaginations, and learning.
To Andresen, poetry and literature was a means of understanding the world, both the bitter circumstances of political and social life, but also the sweet moments of nature and life itself.
「我們看見、我們聆聽、我們閱讀／我們不能忽視。」二十世紀最偉大的葡萄牙詩人與作家之一索菲亞・德・梅洛・布雷納・安德烈森（Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen）在1960年代的詩作〈和平清唱曲〉（葡語 Cantata da paz；英譯 Cantata of peace）中如此寫道。當「新國家」獨裁政權仍為保衛殖民地而在非洲發動殘酷戰爭之際，安德烈森無法對「飢餓」、「不義」與「恐怖」視而不見——當「我們的時代是被組織化的罪惡」時，人們無從轉身不看。
安德烈森善於在詩中捕捉許多葡萄牙人的情感，她從不畏懼以含蓄而犀利的筆鋒直指政權、戰爭及其對葡萄牙的影響。她的一首詩將獨裁者薩拉查比為「老禿鷹」，並指他「擁有讓靈魂變得更渺小的本事」；另一些詩則為被送往非洲送死的青年哀悼，而政權卻要求國家「保持心安理得」。她將1974年的革命讚頌為國家的重新開端，「就像在白紙上開始的一首詩」。
同時，安德烈森的作品也映照她故土葡萄牙的美，其中不斷指涉大海——一處蘊含生命、美、時間與寧靜之地。她不只是詩人，亦是知名的兒童文學與短篇小說作家；其作品〈來自大海的女孩〉（葡語 A Menina do Mar）是一首向大海、其聲響與景致致敬的頌歌，同時歌詠年少的友誼、想像與學習。
對安德烈森而言，詩與文學是理解世界的方式——既能照見政治與社會生活的苦澀，也能呈現自然與生命本身的甜美時刻。
Photo Credit:
1. Wikimedia Commons
2. Arquivo Mário Pinto de Andrade/Fundação Mário Soares
What does it mean to be Mozambican, when the Portuguese dictatorship has, for centuries if not decades, defined your homeland only in terms of the European explorers who colonized it, the language and religion they brought, and the economic value it provided?
This was the question which Noémia de Sousa had to tackle as a Mozambican woman. Although she recognized that she was part of a relatively better educated, racially mixed Mozambican middle class, de Sousa’s work rejected the narrative of an Mozambican identity based on the system of Portuguese colonial assimilation. She rejected colonialism, embraced Blackness, and flirted with pan-African thought; her poetry, though in Portuguese, was filled with African motifs, words, historical allusions, and cultural elements. One poem “Deixa passar o meu povo (Let my people go)” draws on the sounds and words of African American spirituals, where she writes of not being “swayed by the futile music / of Strauss waltzes,” finding greater solace in the sounds of those who similarly shouted “let my people go” in their fight for freedom in the Civil Rights era United States.
Already a mainstay in anti-colonial and opposition publications in Portuguese Africa writing under various pseudonyms, her first and most famous poetry collection, Sangue Negro (“Black Blood”), was distributed secretly in the 1950s and subjected to constant censorship. As she grew increasingly popular, de Sousa became the target of the secret police, the PIDE, even being arrested and detained on occasion.
Despite this, de Sousa’s poetry was for decades often dismissed or overlooked in favour of Mozambique’s great male poets. Only in the 1990s and 2000s did de Sousa receive deserved attention as a voice carrying perspectives of Mozambican and African women in the struggle to define identity, womanhood, and nation in a post-colonial world.
「當葡萄牙獨裁政權在數個世紀（若非僅數十年）之久，僅以殖民此地的歐洲探險家、他們帶來的語言與宗教，以及此地所提供的經濟價值來界定你的家園時，作為『莫三比克人』意味著什麼？」
這正是諾埃米婭・德・索薩（Noémia de Sousa）作為一名莫三比克女性必須直面的問題。儘管她意識到自己屬於受教育程度相對較高、種族混合的莫三比克中產階級，德・索薩的作品卻拒斥以葡萄牙殖民「同化」體制為基礎的莫三比克身分敘事。她否定殖民主義，擁抱「黑性」（Blackness），並傾向泛非主義思想；她的詩雖以葡萄牙語寫成，卻充滿非洲的母題、詞彙、歷史典故與文化元素。其中一首詩〈Deixa passar o meu povo〉（〈讓我的人民走〉，英譯 Let my people go）汲取了非裔美國人靈歌的聲音與語彙；她寫道自己不會被「史特勞斯圓舞曲／那無用的樂聲」所搖動，反而在那些同樣為自由而呼喊「let my people go」的人們（美國民權運動時期）之聲中尋得更大的安慰。
她以多個筆名長期活躍於葡屬非洲的反殖與反對派刊物；其第一部、亦最著名的詩集《Sangue Negro》（《黑血》）在1950年代以秘密方式流傳，並不斷遭受審查。隨著知名度攀升，德・索薩也成為祕密警察 PIDE 的鎖定對象，甚至數度被逮捕與拘留。
儘管如此，數十年來德・索薩的詩作時常被忽視，風采多由莫三比克的男性名家所掩蓋。直到1990與2000年代，德・索薩才作為一個承載莫三比克與非洲女性觀點的聲音，獲得應有的關注——她關注在後殖民世界中，對身分、女性主體與國族的界定之鬥爭。
Photo Credit: 1. Fundação Mário Soares 2. Wikimedia Commons
After the outbreak of an anti-colonial revolt in Angola in 1961, the Portuguese dictatorship began 13 years of conflict in several of its African territories against local anti-colonial nationalist movements. Known as the Portuguese Colonial War, the regime’s desperation to defend its African colonies would lead it to forcibly conscript thousands of young Portuguese men, sending them to the multiple theatres of war in Africa for two year tours at a time. Many were from small rural towns, humble families, limited education, and had little knowledge or understanding of Africa and the war.
While many soldiers were certainly enthusiastic supporters of the war or believed the regime’s assertion that it was their “duty” as good Portuguese, oral histories of subtle resistance among these conscripted soldiers quickly began to emerge as the reality of the situation grew increasingly clear. On overcrowded troop ships enroute to Africa, some soldiers sang songs by folk singer Zeca Afonso, one of the most well-known anti-regime artists, in protest. Exposed to the poverty and daily racism experienced by the indigenous populations of the African colonies, the regime’s portrayal of a “pluricontinental” and “multiracial” Portugal rapidly dissipated.
Many conscripts openly questioned what they were doing in Africa, criticizing the regime for using them as “cannon fodder” or “guinea pigs” for its colonialist intransigence. Feelings that the anti-colonial nationalists the Portuguese were fighting were justified in their battle against colonialism began to proliferate. Instead of cautiously following the regime’s propaganda, some brazenly listened to banned broadcasts of anti-colonial radio stations. Multiple conscripts in Guinea deserted, crossing the border into Senegal and disappearing from sight. Other soldiers and junior officers disobeyed orders to destroy local villages or let their prisoners escape to avoid certain torture and death. Dodging the draft in the first place was difficult and risky; in multiple cases, men who escaped to France were on their return arrested and sent off to fight in Guinea—the most violent and brutal theatre of war, often dubbed Portugal’s Vietnam. Thousands were killed, while tens of thousands would suffer life-changing injuries. Some units saw only 10% of their soldiers return home without injury; the rest lost their eyesight, their limbs, or their lives.
The Colonial War was, in the end, a war fought by the Portuguese to perpetuate the institution of colonialism. Instances of war crimes, like the Wiriyamu Massacre in 1972 where Portuguese soldiers killed hundreds of innocent civilians in a Mozambican village, underscore that these select stories of soldiers’ resistance at war cannot characterize all of those who fought for the Portuguese. Many soldiers fought willingly and fought brutally.
Dictatorship and colonialism are never clear-cut binaries of oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized. For thousands of young Portuguese sent to Africa against their will, many were also victims of a dictatorship with a callous disregard for its own citizens’ lives. Still, there were soldiers who bravely pushed back against their leaders in a war which they increasingly saw as unjustifiable. These quiet individual stories of resistance which coexisted alongside brutal injustices and violence are a reminder of the devastating choices faced during the tragedy of war.
1961年安哥拉爆發反殖民起義後，葡萄牙獨裁政權在其數個非洲屬地，與當地反殖民族主義運動展開了長達13年的衝突。這場戰事被稱為「葡萄牙殖民戰爭」。為了捍衛非洲殖民地，政權在絕望之下強行徵召數以千計的年輕葡萄牙男子，按每次兩年的役期把他們送往非洲多個戰場。許多人來自小型鄉間城鎮、家境樸素、受教育程度有限，對非洲與這場戰爭所知甚少。
儘管確有不少士兵熱情支持戰爭，或相信政權所宣稱作為好葡萄牙人這是他們的「義務」，但隨著現實逐漸清晰，有關這些被徵召士兵「細微抵抗」的口述歷史也迅速浮現。擁擠不堪、駛往非洲的運兵船上，有人以唱起民謠歌手澤卡・阿豐索（Zeca Afonso）的作品示威——他是最知名的反體制藝術家之一。當士兵親眼目睹非洲殖民地原住民所受的貧困與日常種族主義，政權所描繪的「多大陸、 多種族」葡萄牙幻象便迅速瓦解。
許多應徵入伍者公開質疑自己為何在非洲，批評政權因其殖民固執而把他們當作「炮灰」或「白老鼠」。認為葡萄牙所對抗的反殖民族主義者「是對的」、其反殖鬥爭合情合理的看法開始蔓延。有人不再小心翼翼地跟隨政權宣傳，而是公然收聽被禁的反殖電台。幾內亞有多名應徵兵逃離，越境進入塞內加爾後下落不明。另有士兵與初級軍官違抗毀村命令，或放走戰俘以避免他們遭到必然的酷刑與死亡。至於一開始就逃避徵兵，則既困難又冒險；多起案例中，逃往法國以避役的男子在返國時被逮捕、再度徵召，並被送往幾內亞——那是最兇殘、最血腥的戰場，常被稱為葡萄牙的越南。數千人喪生，還有數以萬計的人身受改變一生的重傷。有些部隊無傷返國者僅佔一成；其餘的人失明、斷肢，或失去生命。
歸根究柢，這場殖民戰爭是葡萄牙為維繫殖民主義體制而打的戰爭。戰爭罪行時有所見；例如1972年的維里亞穆大屠殺（Wiriyamu Massacre）中，葡萄牙士兵在莫三比克的一個村莊殺害了數百名無辜平民。這些事例凸顯：個別士兵在戰場上的抵抗故事，無法代表所有為葡萄牙作戰的人。仍有許多士兵是心甘情願、且以殘酷手段作戰。
獨裁與殖民從來不是簡單切割為壓迫者與被壓迫者、殖民者與被殖民者的二元對立。成千上萬被違背意願派往非洲的葡萄牙年輕人，同樣是獨裁體制的受害者；這個體制冷酷地漠視自家公民的生命，讓他們為領導層僵化的目標付出死亡、創傷與終身殘疾的代價。儘管如此，仍有許多個別士兵在他們愈發認為不合情理的戰爭中，勇敢地設法對抗上級。這些與殘暴不義與暴力並存的靜默個人抵抗故事，提醒我們：在戰爭的悲劇之中，人們所面臨的抉擇何其毀滅性、艱難，且足以危及性命。
Photo Credit:
1. Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo
2. Gente comum: Uma história na PIDE (Aurora Rodrigues)
Under the New State dictatorship, the PIDE (Polícia Internacional e da Defesa do Estado; International and State Defense Police) was the Portuguese secret police active between the 1940s and 1960s, the feared instrument of abrupt arrests, brutal torture, and sudden disappearances. Charged with identifying, silencing, or neutralizing threats to the regime—whether suspected communists or African nationalists—the PIDE had no qualms in the means it utilized or the distances it went to do so, committing assassinations of political enemies in places as close as Spain and as far as Tanzania.
Aurora Rodrigues entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Lisbon in 1969 as a young student from the Alentejo, in south-central Portugal, and immediately found herself in circles of progressive thinkers and students who challenged the regime’s suppression of political rights and its commitment to the Colonial War. After a fellow student was murdered by police in 1972 after attempting to organize students’ activism against the war and the regime’s infringement on academic freedom, Rodrigues was arrested for the first time by the PIDE after attending the murdered student’s funeral, which had turned into a wider protest. She was again arrested in spring 1973 and interned by the PIDE.
Detained at the notorious Caxias prison in the suburbs of Lisbon, Rodrigues was denied access to a defense lawyer and experienced the PIDE’s usual ritual of isolation and torture. At Caxias, she was locked in isolation for nearly three weeks, subjected to sound torture for over two weeks, where officers would constantly deny her sleep. Rodrigues was also beaten and verbally abused, suffering various health problems. Although she would only spend three months in total at Caxias, her experiences at the prison with the regime’s secret police highlighted the regime’s willingness to violently pursue any ordinary citizen who it deemed to have any risk of becoming a threat by speaking out for freedom and anti-colonialism.
Rodrigues’ experience of torture is one of the longest recorded periods for a Portuguese woman during the dictatorship. Despite her traumatic experiences, Rodrigues did not shy away from a life of activism and public service; she would later become a public prosecutor and activist for women’s rights in Portugal.
「我們已在非洲存在四百年，這可比昨天才到要久得多。」葡萄牙二十世紀的主導人物薩拉查於1960年如是宣稱。
對葡萄牙的獨裁政權而言，這個位於伊比利半島的小國與其他任何歐洲國家截然不同。葡萄牙是由拉丁人、凱爾特人與北非伊斯蘭人混血組成的古老王國，同時也是歐洲第一個、也是歷史最悠久的帝國強權。自15世紀以來，葡萄牙的水手與探險家便已航行於世界各大洋，在其他歐洲國家之前，繞過非洲南端抵達印度，開闢了海上航路。
政權殖民政策的捍衛者主張，葡萄牙與其殖民地原住民之間擁有長達數世紀的親密關係。唯有在葡萄牙統治的巴西，種族混合現象才能如此普遍發生，因為葡萄牙人自稱本就擁有多種族血統，因此對「種族」的敏感度較低。所謂的「葡語熱帶主義」宣稱，葡萄牙創造的是由多元血統組成的多種族家庭，共享葡萄牙語與深厚的天主教信仰。他們的帝國，並不像英國那種只顧從殖民地榨取經濟利益、並與原住民完全隔離的剝削型殖民主義。
這種葡萄牙「多種族主義」與「較為人道的殖民主義」的神話，被政權廣泛傳播。學校教科書極力讚美葡萄牙的殖民模式是解決世界種族問題的最佳方案，書頁上到處可見不同膚色的孩子快樂地玩耍，或是共同慶祝他們的「葡萄牙身分」。然而，葡萄牙殖民帝國的現實卻遠為陰暗。
儘管政權對殖民主義的記憶存在本質上的不實，葡萄牙的殖民地人民依然承受著嚴重的歧視性政策與行政失能之苦。大多數非洲黑人被剝奪了理論上可獲得的公民權，例如因未達到葡萄牙語識字標準而被排除；諷刺的是，定居殖民地的白人葡萄牙人中，估計有約40%本身也是文盲，卻從未受到這類要求的限制。原住民能接受教育的比例依然極低，生活水平遠低於宗主國標準，強迫勞動的現象更是普遍。幾內亞與維德角反殖運動領袖阿米卡爾·卡布拉爾曾尖銳批評：葡萄牙並非自詡的「優越殖民者」，而是一個「落後」、貧窮的「未開發國家」，卻裝扮成三流的殖民強權。
殖民主義與帝國主義，因其在葡萄牙歷史與國家認同中佔有傳統重要地位，將永遠在葡萄牙社會中留有痕跡。當一個國家的許多歷史偉人與殖民主義密不可分時，要真正面對並接受過去帝國的現實，將始終是一項挑戰，尤其是在數十年來的主流敘事不斷美化那段歷史，並將其置於國族認同核心之時。
Photo Credit:
1. Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo
2. As mulheres do meu país (Maria Lamas)/Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
The Portuguese regime had its ideal type of woman: an obedient, loyal wife to her husband, dutiful mother to her children, devoutly religious, and unseen in the public eye. To a dictatorship so obsessed with its conceptualization of the family as the foundation of its Catholic social order, a woman’s place was confined to the home. Rates of illiteracy—already among the highest in western Europe—were far higher among women than men. Women were subjected to restrictive conditions of education, living status, and literacy in accessing the right to vote, only receiving the universal franchise in 1975.
Maria Lamas did not and would not fit the mould the regime cast for Portuguese women. Well-educated and twice divorced—nearly scandalous in the eyes of the strict Catholic social elite—Lamas became one of Portugal’s first female journalists at major Lisbon newspapers, before later joining and leading women’s activist organizations like the National Council of Portuguese Women (Conselho Nacional das Mulheres Portuguesas; CNMP). The CNMP held petitions and protests for women’s rights and, under Lamas’ leadership, organized an exhibition of books and other work by women writers and artists in Lisbon in 1947—an event the regime found so reprehensible it forced the closure of the CNMP soon afterwards.
Her advocacy for Portuguese women extended into opposition politics more broadly, including as a member of the main democratic opposition organization, the Movement for Democratic Unity (Movimento de Unidade Democrática). Regularly arrested by the regime police, Lamas would eventually be sent into exile in the 1960s.
One of Lamas’ works, “As mulheres do meu país (The Women of My Country)” published between 1948 and 1950, is an ode to the Portuguese women who the regime obscured in society. A collection of Lamas’ own photographs and texts from across the country, the book highlights the portraits, lives, and stories of many Portuguese women who worked in rural, manual labour, or agricultural activities—valuable cornerstones of life in a still deeply rural and agricultural Portuguese society. Lamas called it an expression of “sororal solidarity.” While not outwardly critical of the regime, “The Women of My Country” is now seen as a symbol of counter-power: of bringing to the centre of attention those who the conservative, authoritarian regime sought to keep hidden away.
葡萄牙政權心目中理想的女性形象，是一位對丈夫順從忠誠、對孩子盡責的母親、虔誠的宗教信徒，並且在公共場合中不顯露身影。對於這個痴迷於「家庭」作為天主教社會秩序基礎的獨裁政權來說，女性的位置被限制在家中。葡萄牙的文盲率——在西歐已屬最高之一——女性的比例又遠高於男性。女性在受教育、生活地位與識字條件方面受到限制，這些限制直接影響她們獲得投票權的資格，直到1975年才真正獲得普選權。
瑪麗亞·拉馬斯（Maria Lamas）既不符合，也不願符合政權為葡萄牙女性設定的模子。她受過良好教育，並且曾兩度離婚——對嚴格的天主教社會菁英來說幾乎是醜聞。拉馬斯成為里斯本主要報社中首批女性記者之一，之後加入並領導葡萄牙女性全國委員會（Conselho Nacional das Mulheres Portuguesas, CNMP）等女性行動組織。CNMP為爭取婦女權利發起連署與抗議，在拉馬斯的領導下，還於1947年在里斯本舉辦了女性作家與藝術家的書籍與作品展覽——這場活動被政權視為極其惡劣的挑釁，不久後便強行關閉了CNMP。
她對葡萄牙女性的倡議延伸至更廣泛的反對派政治，包括成為主要民主反對組織——民主統一運動（Movimento de Unidade Democrática）的成員。拉馬斯經常遭政權警方逮捕，最終在1960年代被迫流亡海外。
拉馬斯的一部作品《我國的女性》（As mulheres do meu país），於1948至1950年間出版，是一曲獻給那些被政權隱藏於社會之中的葡萄牙女性的頌歌。書中收錄了她在全國各地拍攝的照片與文字，呈現了許多從事農村、體力或農業勞動的女性的肖像、生活與故事——這些女性是當時依然深具農業社會特徵的葡萄牙生活中重要的基石。拉馬斯稱之為「姐妹般的團結」的表達。雖然這部作品在表面上並未直接批判政權，但如今被視為一種反抗的象徵——將那些保守、威權政權試圖掩藏的人物，帶到社會視線的中心。
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Under a regime who identified itself by its fervent Catholic faith and promotion of the traditional family as the foundation of social order, LGBT and queer people were considered social deviants who corrupted the basis of society itself. One of 20th century Portugal’s most important medical figures, Dr. António Egas Moniz, considered homosexuality a form of disease for treatment—like many in Western countries at the time.
In that atmosphere, gay men in particular were forced into a state of invisibility, with the vast majority of police cases dealing with so-called sexual “vagrancy” involving men from working and lower class backgrounds. Spots around Lisbon became rare places for meeting others, including the famed “A Brasileira” cafe in the Chiado neighbourhood and the Eduardo VII Park, yet were also the target of the most police surveillance. If caught, these men risked being sent to psychiatric prisons or hospitals for “treatment.” LGBT individuals in the upper classes or lesbian women, though still kept hidden in the dark by the regime, were at least often tolerated by its police.
By the late 1960s, however, LGBT and queer people began to break the enforced regime of silence, with semi-secret gay bars emerging more openly in areas like the neighbourhood of Principe Real. In a time when the existence of homosexuality itself was denied by a dictatorship whose motto was “God, Fatherland, Family,” these first steps out of the coerced shadows foreshadowed the Carnation Revolution of 1974 and a new era of sexual and gender identity rights in Portugal.
在一個以狂熱的天主教信仰自我定位，並推崇「傳統家庭」作為社會秩序基礎的政權下，LGBT與酷兒族群被視為遊民或社會異端，認為他們腐化了社會的根基。葡萄牙二十世紀最重要的醫學人物之一安東尼奧·伊加斯·莫尼士（Dr. António Egas Moniz），與當時許多西方國家的人一樣，將同性戀視為一種需要治療的疾病。
在這樣的氛圍中，尤其是男同性戀者，被迫生活在隱形的狀態下。警方處理的所謂「性遊蕩」案件中，絕大多數涉及來自工人階級與下層階級背景的男性。里斯本少數可以結識他人的地點——包括希亞多（Chiado）區著名的「A Brasileira」咖啡館，以及愛德華七世公園（Eduardo VII Park）——雖然成為難得的聚會場所，卻同時是警方監控的主要目標。一旦被抓，這些人面臨被送往精神監獄或醫院「治療」的風險。至於上層階級的LGBT人士或女同性戀者，雖然同樣被政權壓在黑暗中，卻往往能得到警方的相對容忍。
然而，到1960年代末，LGBT與酷兒群體開始打破政權強加的沉默。半秘密的同志酒吧在如普林西比雷亞爾（Principe Real）等社區更為公開地出現。在一個口號是「上帝、祖國、家庭」並否認同性戀存在的獨裁時代，這些從被迫陰影中走出的第一步反抗，預示了1974年康乃馨革命的到來，以及葡萄牙性別與性傾向權利新時代的開啟。
Photo Credit:
1. Inácio Ludgero/Fundação Mário Soares
2. Wikimedia Commons
After the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974, the New State dictatorship collapsed, with its leader, Marcelo Caetano, resigning and going into exile in Brazil. The end of the authoritarian regime, however, did not guarantee the arrival of democracy.
The leaders of the military coup which sparked the revolution initially had hesitations about handing over power to a fully civilian regime, seeking to institutionalize a role in the state for the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) which had carried out the coup. The long-silenced communists and socialist parties were eager to assert themselves in the new Portugal, while new emergent political parties, like the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) and the Christian democratic CDS, attempted to organize in the aftermath of the fall of the dictatorship. Only after two tenuous years, including farmers and labourers seizing land from their employers, concerns of a Marxist takeover of the state, and two further coup attempts, did Portugal ultimately emerge as a liberal democracy after its first free and fair election under a new constitution in 1976.
Liberal democracy, however, has not marked the end of the practices and narratives of the old dictatorship. Portugal’s 1989 entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, “Conquistador” by band Da Vinci, sang of once “being a conqueror” and “going to Brazil, Praia, and Bissau,” connecting the world through “oceans of love,” echoing the regime’s old tales of a more humane Portuguese imperialism. Crowds of tourists in Lisbon flock to the Monument of the Discoveries (Padrão dos Descobrimentos) in Belém, a Salazar-era monument to figures of Portuguese exploration and colonial history, yet still one of Lisbon’s most iconic attractions. Reconciliation with Portugal’s long but complex history remains an ongoing process, which the return of democracy has allowed to accelerate but has not yet completed.
在1974年4月25日的康乃馨革命之後，「新國家」獨裁政權崩潰，其領袖馬塞洛·卡埃塔諾（Marcelo Caetano）辭職並流亡至巴西。然而，威權政體的終結並不代表民主的立即到來。
發動革命的軍事政變領導人最初對將權力完全交給平民政權抱有遲疑，企圖為發動政變的武裝部隊運動（MFA）在國家體制中確立正式角色。長期被壓制的共產黨與社會黨急於在新葡萄牙中展現自身力量，而新興的政黨，如人民民主黨（PPD）與基督教民主黨（CDS），則在獨裁政權垮台後努力組織起來。在接下來的兩年中，葡萄牙經歷了農民與工人奪取地主土地、社會對馬克思主義奪取國家政權的憂慮，以及兩次進一步的政變企圖。直到1976年，葡萄牙才在新憲法下舉行第一次自由公正的選舉，正式成為自由民主國家。
然而，自由民主並未終結舊獨裁政權的敘事與做法。葡萄牙在1989年歐洲歌唱大賽的參賽歌曲——Da Vinci樂團的〈征服者〉（Conquistador）——唱道「曾經是征服者」以及「前往巴西、普拉亞與比紹」，以「愛的海洋」連結世界，呼應了政權時期關於「更人道的葡萄牙殖民主義」的舊有說辭。在里斯本，遊客依然蜂擁至位於貝倫的「發現者紀念碑」（Padrão dos Descobrimentos）——這座建於薩拉查時代、歌頌葡萄牙探險與殖民歷史人物的紀念碑，至今仍是里斯本最具代表性的景點之一。如何與葡萄牙悠長且複雜的歷史和解，依舊是持續進行中的進程，而民主的回歸雖加速了這一進程，但仍未完成。
Photo Credit:
1. Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo
2. Centro Português de Fotografia
In modern Portuguese history, the name “Tarrafal” is synonymous with brutality, exile, and resistance.
On a dry, rocky part of the island of Santiago in the then-Portuguese colony Cape Verde, the New State dictatorship operated a concentration camp outside the town of Tarrafal. Hundreds of political prisoners from across Portugal and its colonies passed through its dusty yellow walls between the 1930s and 1970s. From Portuguese communists or trade unionists to Angolans or Guineans fighting for liberation from colonial rule, Tarrafal was a place for the regime to isolate its enemies at a remote location in the middle of the Atlantic while physically and psychologically punishing them. Diseases like malaria and an unforgiving climate ensured that the camp was insufferable, with forced labour and torture as daily occurrences. The nickname of the camp underscored its sheer cruelty: “the camp of slow death.”
One mode of torture was the “frigideira,” meaning “frying pan” in Portuguese, a tiny, windowless concrete box where a dozen prisoners were crowded into and subjected to the searing island sun, reaching well over 50 degrees, sometimes for weeks at a time. Esmeraldo Pais, a doctor on duty at the camp even remarked: “I am not here to cure, but to sign death certificates.”
Many sent to Tarrafal were never given trials or formal sentences. Dozens would die at the camp, far away from their homelands and loved ones. The camp was not closed until the revolution in 1974 but it still stands today in an independent Cape Verde as a testament to the strength and resilience of those who fought against dictatorship and colonialism.
在現代葡萄牙歷史中，「塔拉法爾」（Tarrafal）這個名字幾乎成了殘暴、流放與抗爭的代名詞。
在當時屬於葡萄牙殖民地的佛得角聖地牙哥島（Santiago）上，一片乾燥多石的地區，距離塔拉法爾鎮外不遠處，「新國家」獨裁政權自1930年代至1970年代間經營著一座集中營。數百名來自葡萄牙本土及其殖民地的政治犯，曾經穿過這座滿佈塵土、泛著黃褐色的高牆。從葡萄牙的共產黨員、工會成員，到來自安哥拉與幾內亞、為反抗殖民統治而戰的人們，塔拉法爾成了政權將敵人隔離於大西洋中部偏遠之地，並對其施以身心折磨的工具。瘧疾等疾病與嚴酷的氣候使這裡幾乎無法忍受，強迫勞動與酷刑更是日常。集中營的別稱正點出了其殘酷本質：「慢性死亡之營」。
其中一種酷刑被稱為「frigideira」（葡語意為「平底煎鍋」）：這是一個狹小、無窗的混凝土小室，可被擠入十多名囚犯，在烈日直射下室內溫度可飆升至50度以上，有時一次便要忍受數週之久。曾在營中值勤的醫生埃斯梅拉多·派斯（Esmeraldo Pais）甚至直言：「我在這裡不是來治病的，而是來簽死亡證書的。」
許多被送至塔拉法爾的人，從未接受審判或獲得正式刑期。數十人死於此地，遠離家鄉與親人。集中營直到1974年革命後才被關閉，但至今仍矗立在獨立的佛得角，作為反抗獨裁與殖民主義者力量與韌性的見證。
Photo Credit: Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo
When the aging dictator Salazar fell into a coma and was removed from power in 1968, the installation of Marcelo Caetano as Portugal’s new prime minister gave hope to some that the dictatorship might gradually liberalize. Aspirations of a “Marcellist Spring” were strong among a particular group of politicians in the legislature with a shared background: young urbanites from Lisbon or Porto, and well-educated in typically liberal professions like law or medicine.
Located in an ambiguous position as members of the regime institutions yet bearing a distinctively more modern background, this so-called “liberal wing” in the dictatorship began to push for change and reform from within the system. Among them was Francisco Sá Carneiro, a young lawyer from Porto with a Catholic reformist background, who had since the late 1960s pushed for greater political rights for citizens, press freedoms, and a gradual transition towards a western European democratic system. Carneiro and other liberals sponsored key bills in the National Assembly proposing to end prior censorship, guarantee various political and individual freedoms, and restore direct elections for the presidency, as well as leading an inquiry into the conditions of the regime’s political prisoners. Denied the reforms he and other liberals pushed for, Carneiro resigned from the Assembly in 1973, though the active and persistent pressure the liberals placed on the regime had helped to plant the seeds of democracy at the highest levels of the Portuguese state.
Sá Carneiro never stopped working to advance Portugal’s democratic transition, working to form a new political party which would later become one of the key political organizations of a young Portuguese democracy in the late 1970s. He would be democratically elected prime minister in 1980, only to die only a few months later in a plane crash.
當年邁的獨裁者薩拉查（Salazar）於1968年陷入昏迷並被解除權力後，馬賽洛·卡埃塔諾（Marcelo Caetano）被任命為葡萄牙新總理，讓部分人看見了獨裁體制可能逐步開放的希望。所謂「馬賽洛之春」（Marcellist Spring）的期待，在一群立法機關中背景相似的政治人物之間尤為強烈——他們多是來自里斯本或波爾圖的年輕城市菁英，受過高等教育，從事法律或醫學等典型自由派專業。
這批被稱為獨裁政權「自由派翼」的人，身處政權體制內卻具有明顯現代化的背景，開始嘗試從體制內推動改革。其中包括來自波爾圖的年輕律師弗朗西斯科·薩·卡內羅（Francisco Sá Carneiro），他擁有天主教改革派背景，自1960年代末起便致力爭取公民更大的政治權利、新聞自由，以及向西歐民主制度逐步過渡。卡內羅與其他自由派議員在國民議會推動關鍵法案，包括取消事前審查、保障各項政治與個人自由、恢復總統直接選舉，並主導調查政權政治犯的監禁情況。由於改革提案遭到否決，卡內羅於1973年辭去議員職務，但他與自由派持續對政權施加的壓力，已在葡萄牙最高政治層級種下民主化的種子。
薩·卡內羅從未停止推動葡萄牙的民主轉型，他著手籌組新政黨，這個政黨後來成為1970年代末期年輕葡萄牙民主政體中的關鍵政治力量之一。1980年，他經民主選舉出任總理，但僅在幾個月後便因飛機失事而不幸身亡。
Photo Credit: Fundação Mário Soares
“Obviously, I’ll fire him!”
These were the famed words uttered by Humberto Delgado, a former general in the Portuguese Air Force, as he campaigned for the Portuguese presidency in the national election of 1958.
By the 1950s, the regime had been in power for two decades and Salazar had increasingly done away with the limitations on his power, with the country’s president usually remaining a regime-friendly puppet chosen in uncompetitive elections and the weak legislature doing little to keep the dictator in check. The sole constitutional check on the dictator’s power was now that of the presidency, which was directly elected and maintained the right to appoint or remove the prime minister.
Delgado was once sympathetic to the regime, an anti-communist who backed the military coup of 1926, had flirted with fascism during the 1930s, and was later appointed to several leadership and diplomatic positions by the regime. Increasingly disillusioned with the dictatorship’s inability to modernize a stagnant Portugal and Salazar’s strict, insular rule, Delgado staged a campaign for the presidency in 1958, on the expressed promise of sacking Salazar from the premiership and soon garnered popular support. Delgado became known as the “general without fear” (“general sem medo”).
The campaign managed to mobilize thousands of supporters and unite the opposition to the regime on a platform of restoring political rights, releasing political prisoners, and holding free elections. Crowds of Delgado supporters fearlessly assembled in Lisbon and Porto during the campaign despite being attacked and dispersed by regime police and being targeted for arrests by the secret police.
The hope and mobilization of the masses who backed Delgado scared Salazar and the regime. It is widely agreed that through fraud, intimidation, and ballot-box stuffing, the regime engineered a comfortable victory for its candidate, Américo Tomás, leaving Delgado only about 20% of the vote. Spooked by the possibility of a united opposition gathering popular energy, the regime quickly moved to abolish direct elections to the presidency—after 1958, the president would be elected by the regime’s rubber-stamp legislature.
Too visible as a symbol of opposition to Salazar, Delgado was sent into exile and was eventually murdered by PIDE agents in 1965. Although the restoration of democracy had to wait, the election of 1958 became a landmark moment in the resistance to the New State dictatorship.
「『當然，我會開除他！』
這是葡萄牙空軍前將軍翁貝托·德爾加多（Humberto Delgado）在1958年全國總統大選中競選時所說的著名言辭。
到了1950年代，政權已掌權二十年之久，薩拉查（Salazar）越來越多地取消對其權力的限制。葡萄牙總統通常在缺乏競爭的選舉中被選出，成為政權的友好傀儡，而軟弱的立法機關對獨裁者幾乎毫無制衡作用。憲法上唯一對獨裁者的制衡，就是由全民直選產生的總統，其仍保有任命或罷免總理的權力。
德爾加多曾是政權的同情者，是一名反共主義者，曾支持1926年的軍事政變，1930年代還曾與法西斯主義有所接觸，之後也獲政權任命擔任多項領導與外交職務。然而，他逐漸對獨裁政權無法讓停滯的葡萄牙現代化、以及薩拉查嚴苛且封閉的統治感到失望，並於1958年參加總統選舉，公開承諾將薩拉查革職，不久便贏得廣泛民眾支持。他因此被稱為「無畏將軍」（general sem medo）。
這場競選成功動員了成千上萬的支持者，並團結反對派，提出恢復政治權利、釋放政治犯、舉行自由選舉的政綱。在競選期間，即使遭到政權警察襲擊驅散，並被秘密警察PIDE逮捕鎖定，大批德爾加多支持者仍無懼地在里斯本與波爾圖集會。
德爾加多背後的民眾希望與動員，讓薩拉查與政權感到恐懼。普遍認為，政權透過舞弊、恐嚇及塞票，為其候選人阿梅里科·托馬斯（Américo Tomás）確保了輕鬆勝選，使德爾加多僅獲得約20%的選票。害怕反對派再度凝聚群眾力量，政權迅速廢除了總統直選制度——1958年之後，總統將由政權控制的橡皮圖章式立法機關選出。
德爾加多作為薩拉查反對象徵的形象過於鮮明，被迫流亡國外，最終於1965年被PIDE特工暗殺。雖然民主復甦尚需等待，但1958年的總統大選成為抵抗「新國家」獨裁政權的一個重要里程碑。
Photo Credit:
1. Expresso
2. Associação Casa dos Estudantes do Império/Fundação Mário Soares
Portugal’s university campuses were supposed to be the training ground for the regime’s next generation of leaders. In a deeply stratified society still populated by large segments of the working class and peasantry, only the children of the regime’s most favoured elite and professional classes managed to attend university. Yet it would be those exact students who would increasingly challenge the dictatorship’s attempts to control academic freedom.
On March 24, 1962, the regime announced it would ban the Students’ Day celebrations at the University of Lisbon, sparking a series of protests, strikes, and hunger strikes from students for the following several months. In Lisbon, over 1,000 students were arrested at one point in May, overflowing the regime’s prisons to the extent that students had to be held at police barracks outside the city. Riot police familiar with violently repressing the working class masses now found themselves face to face with the children of Portugal’s elites. One of those student leaders in Lisbon was Jorge Sampaio, a law student and the son of a physician from a prominent Lisbon family (he is seated under the number 4 on the wall in the image), who would later become President of Portugal in 1996. Hundreds were similarly arrested at Salazar’s own alma mater, the University of Coimbra, where the regime repeatedly attempted to ban student assemblies and attempt to establish direct control over student organizations.
Students from all backgrounds, whether Catholics, right-wingers, or communists, united to defend the university as a place of free speech and thinking, free from the clutches of the regime. Thousands of students who participated would be expelled from their universities or even forcibly conscripted into the Colonial War to fight in Africa, but students continued to protest and challenge the regime throughout the final decade of its existence, defying the regime at each step.
Even today, the 24th of March is celebrated in Portugal as Students’ Day (Dia dos Estudantes), in memory of the events of 1962.
葡萄牙的大學校園原本被政權視為培養下一代領導菁英的搖籃。在一個社會階層嚴重分化、仍有大量工人階級與農民的社會中，唯有受到政權偏愛的菁英階層與專業階層子女才能進入大學就讀。然而，正是這些學生，日益將力量與抵抗精神投入到挑戰獨裁政權對學術自由的控制之中。
1962年3月24日，政權宣布禁止里斯本大學舉辦學生節（Students’ Day）慶祝活動，這一決定引發了數月的學生抗議、罷課與絕食行動。在里斯本，僅在5月某一次行動中，就有超過1,000名學生被捕，以至於政權的監獄人滿為患，學生不得不被關押在市郊的警察營房。那些習慣於以暴力鎮壓工人群眾的鎮暴警察，如今不得不面對葡萄牙菁英子弟。當時里斯本的學生領袖之一是若熱·桑帕約（Jorge Sampaio），他是出身於顯赫醫師家庭的法律系學生（照片中坐在牆上4號下方的人），後來於1996年成為葡萄牙總統。薩拉查（Salazar）的母校科英布拉大學也有數百名學生遭逮捕，政權多次試圖禁止學生集會，並企圖直接控制學生組織。
來自不同背景的學生——不論是天主教徒、右翼人士或共產主義者——都團結一致，捍衛大學作為言論與思想自由空間的地位，使其免於政權的箝制。參與抗爭的數千名學生被開除學籍，甚至被強制徵召前往非洲殖民戰爭前線，但學生們在政權最後的十年間仍持續抗議與挑戰，不斷在每個環節對抗獨裁。
直到今天，3月24日依然被葡萄牙定為「學生節」（Dia dos Estudantes），以紀念1962年的事件。
Photo Credit:
1. Associação Casa dos Estudantes do Império/Fundação Mário Soares
2. Arquivo Mário Pinto de Andrade/Fundação Mário Soares
At first, the dictatorship envisioned the House of Students of the Empire (Casa dos Estudantes do Império; CEI) as a symbol of brotherhood between Portugal, its colonies, and the wider Portuguese-speaking world. A creation of the Ministry of the Colonies in 1944, the CEI was intended to be a place to bring together students from across the Portuguese colonies and Brazil studying in metropolitan Portugal and avoid cultivating anti-colonial nationalism by strengthening a supposed common imperial feeling shared across Portuguese-speaking people of all races. On the other hand, keeping the colonial students close together was seen as a way for the regime to more easily monitor and control student activities.
In reality, the CEI became a vibrant space where students from vastly different backgrounds could debate, share, learn, and express themselves—often in ways which undermined the regime’s goals. The CEI’s in-house magazine, Mensagem, was filled with poetry by African writers and essays on colonial relations, expressing subtle protests on racism and conditions in the colonies or expressing their dreams and aspirations for their homelands. One of the authors of that poetry was Agostinho Neto, a CEI member from Angola studying medicine at the University of Coimbra who, despite frequent arrests for his participation in opposition politics in Portugal, would later go on to become a key anti-colonial leader and president of an independent Angola. Dozens of other former students who grew their political minds at CEI spaces across Portuguese universities would become key leaders in the fight against colonialism, such as Amílcar Cabral and Mário Pinto de Andrade.
Members of the CEI were routinely willing to defy the regime’s wishes. In the mid-1950s, when the regime asked the CEI’s Goan students to condemn Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s assertions of sovereignty to Portuguese India to provide public validation of the regime’s position, all of the students refused. Despite the regime’s attempts to pressure the students into conformity by subjecting its members to constant PIDE investigations, altering the CEI’s internal rules, limiting public activities, and cutting its funding, the organization and its branches across Portugal remained a vital space of resistance and intellectual growth.
By 1965, the dictatorship had seen enough—internal secret police documents told a story of an organization which had rapidly grown into a persistent headache for the dictatorship. The CEI was shut down permanently, yet the ideas and young leaders it had allowed to cultivate over the years were now out in the world and far beyond the regime’s grasp.
起初，獨裁政權將「帝國學生之家」（Casa dos Estudantes do Império, CEI）構想為葡萄牙、本國殖民地與更廣泛葡語世界之間兄弟情誼的象徵。CEI 於 1944 年由殖民地部設立，旨在匯聚來自葡萄牙各殖民地與巴西、在本土葡萄牙求學的學生，並透過強化一種號稱跨越種族、由所有葡語人士共享的「帝國共同感」，來避免滋長反殖民族主義。另一方面，將殖民地學生集中在一起，也便於政權更容易監控與控制他們的活動。
然而，實際上 CEI 演變為一個充滿活力的空間，來自不同背景的學生可以辯論、交流、學習與表達自我——往往以削弱政權目標的方式進行。CEI 內部出版的雜誌《Mensagem》刊登了非洲作家的詩作與探討殖民關係的文章，對殖民地的種族主義與生活條件進行含蓄抗議，或表達對家鄉的願景與憧憬。詩作者之一是來自安哥拉、在科英布拉大學學醫的阿戈斯蒂紐·內圖（Agostinho Neto），儘管因參與葡萄牙反對派政治多次遭逮捕，他後來成為反殖鬥爭的重要領袖，並擔任獨立後安哥拉的總統。還有數十位在 CEI 空間培養政治思想的學生，日後成為反殖鬥爭的重要領袖，如阿米爾卡·卡布拉爾（Amílcar Cabral）與馬里奧·平托·德·安德拉德（Mário Pinto de Andrade）。
CEI 成員經常無懼挑戰政權意志。例如 1950 年代中期，政權要求 CEI 的果亞學生公開譴責印度總理賈瓦哈拉爾·尼赫魯（Jawaharlal Nehru）對葡屬印度的主權聲明，以此替政權立場背書，但全體學生一致拒絕。儘管政權試圖透過不斷的 PIDE（政治警察）調查、修改 CEI 內規、限制公共活動與削減經費等手段迫使學生屈服，該組織及其在葡萄牙各地的分部依然保持為抵抗與思想成長的重要場域。
到 1965 年，獨裁政權終於下定決心——內部秘密警察文件記錄著 CEI 迅速發展成為政權長期的心腹大患。CEI 被永久關閉，但它所孕育的理念與年輕領袖，早已走向世界，遠遠超出政權的掌控範圍。
Photo Credit:
1. Fundação Mário Soares
2. Mário Varela Gomes/Fundação Mário Soares
Controlling the publication and distribution of literature and information is at the core of any authoritarian regime. In 1933, Portugal’s newly founded New State dictatorship declared that it would institute censorship “only to prevent the perversion of public opinion” and defend society from anything “against truth, justice, morals, good administration, and the common good.”
Despite this assertion, up to 10,000 books and far more other texts, ranging from newspapers to poetry, passed through the hands of the regime’s Censorship Commission (Comissão de Censura). Newspapers like República and Notícias de Amadora were regularly subjected to censorship. While material seen as politically critical of the regime or sympathetic to socialist or communist causes was the first to be targeted by the censors, anything seen to be contradictory to the regime’s strict moral code was at risk, meaning that content that was critical of religion and the Catholic Church or overly erotic or violent could be censored. Censors would cross out text it found undesirable with a large blue “X” and the bolded word “CORTADO” (“cut” in Portuguese), giving censorship under the New State its notorious nickname: the “blue pencil” (“lápis azul” in Portuguese).
On April 26, 1974, the day after the beginning of the Carnation Revolution, mobs of Portuguese encircled and stormed the headquarters of the censorship service, now called the Prior Review Commission (Comissão do Exame Prévio), on the Rua da Misericórdia in Lisbon. Calling for the abolition of censorship by the new revolutionary leaders which staged the coup of April 25, photographs and videos of the day show the streets filled with papers—evidence of the work of the censors—thrown by the crowds from the windows of the censorship office. When the leaders of the coup attempted to pass measures to maintain a degree of control over the media and press in the summer of 1974, the public again united successfully to protest and pressure the coup leaders to put an end to censorship—and with it, one of the oldest institutions of authoritarian rule in Portugal.
控制文學與資訊的出版與流通，是任何威權政權的核心手段。1933 年，葡萄牙新成立的「新國家」獨裁政權宣稱將實施審查制度，「僅為防止公眾輿論的扭曲」，並保護社會免受任何「違反真理、正義、道德、良好行政與公共利益」的內容影響。
然而，事實上有多達一萬本書籍，以及數量更多、涵蓋從報紙到詩歌等各類文字作品，都需經由政權的「審查委員會」（Comissão de Censura）過目。像《共和報》（República）與《阿馬多拉新聞》（Notícias de Amadora）等報紙經常遭受審查。雖然在政治上批評政權、或對社會主義與共產主義立場抱有同情的內容是首要審查目標，但凡是與政權嚴格道德準則相悖的材料，也在被刪改的風險中，例如批評宗教與天主教會、或帶有過度情色、暴力的內容。審查員會用藍色粗線劃掉不合意的文字，並加註粗體「CORTADO」（葡語意為「刪除」），使得新國家時期的審查制度獲得臭名昭著的綽號——「藍鉛筆」（lápis azul）。
1974 年 4 月 26 日，即「康乃馨革命」爆發後的隔天，大批葡萄牙民眾包圍並衝入位於里斯本慈悲街（Rua da Misericórdia）的審查總部——當時已改名為「事前審查委員會」（Comissão do Exame Prévio）。群眾要求 4 月 25 日發動政變的新革命領導人廢除審查制度。當天的照片與影片顯示，街道上滿是紙張——這些是民眾從審查辦公室窗戶拋出的審查文件與被刪改的稿件。當政變領袖在 1974 年夏天試圖推行措施、以保留部分媒體與新聞控制權時，公眾再次團結抗議並施壓，迫使領袖們徹底終結審查制度——至此，葡萄牙最古老的威權統治機構之一正式走入歷史。
Photo Credit:
1. Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections, York University
2. Fundação Mário Soares
Portuguese immigration to Canada began to thrive during the years of the New State dictatorship in the 1950s and 1960s, driven by economic opportunities to leave a stagnant Portugal, attempts to avoid their sons being conscripted to the Colonial War in Africa, and the political pressures of the dictatorship. The typical Portuguese Canadian has, however, been conceptualized as being of limited education, rural origin, and politically disinterested—attributed by some to Portugal’s strict, conservative, religious, and rural social structure and anti-democratic political culture, both of which the regime used to depoliticize its subjects.
Despite the lack of a strong democratic or activist political tradition, Portuguese Canadians quickly took their place among the diaspora as a key source of resistance, advocacy, and outreach for those opposed to the dictatorship. Established in 1959 by exiled supporters of Humberto Delgado’s 1958 presidential campaign, the Portuguese Canadian Democratic Association (PCDA) emerged as one force of left-wing, labour, and anti-fascist activism in Canada, holding protests, publishing newspapers and literature, and organizing with other diaspora groups as part of a wider transnational network of opposition to the dictatorship.
Such resistance occurred under great pressure from the dictatorship, eager to assert its clutches outside of Portugal. Francisco Ciriaco da Cunha, a PCDA leader, expressed repeated concerns that agents of the Portuguese secret police were active in Canada to spy on the diaspora. Others underscored fears that the diaspora would risk arrest if they returned to visit Portugal, with cases of activists’ relatives in Portugal being arrested or investigated as a result of their political activity in Canada. Even in Canada itself, regime sympathizers and pro-Salazar nationalists routinely turned out to challenge the opposition diaspora, occasionally sparking public attacks, riots, and boycotts of community events.
Portuguese Canadians who worked tirelessly towards the return of democracy to Portugal would watch intently as the Carnation Revolution unfolded in Portugal in 1974. Their voices, which the dictatorship was so insistent on keeping muzzled, had blossomed while abroad, and now they could watch over the ocean as the voices of all Portuguese returned to light.
葡萄牙人在 1950 與 1960 年代「新國家」獨裁政權時期的大量移民加拿大，是由多重因素推動的——離開經濟停滯的葡萄牙、逃避兒子被徵召參加非洲殖民戰爭，以及躲避獨裁政權的政治壓迫。長期以來，典型的加拿大葡萄牙移民被視為教育程度有限、來自農村、且對政治冷漠；一些觀點將此歸因於葡萄牙嚴苛、保守、宗教色彩濃厚且以農村為主的社會結構，以及反民主的政治文化——這正是政權刻意用來使人民去政治化的工具。
儘管缺乏深厚的民主或行動主義傳統，加拿大葡萄牙移民很快便在海外社群中成為抵抗、倡議與外聯的重要力量，為反對獨裁政權發聲。1959 年，由流亡海外、支持翁貝托・德爾加多（Humberto Delgado）1958 年總統競選的成員成立了「加拿大葡萄牙民主協會」（Portuguese Canadian Democratic Association, PCDA），成為加拿大左翼、勞工與反法西斯行動的重要力量之一。該協會舉行抗議、出版報刊與文獻，並與其他僑民團體合作，形成跨國網絡，共同反對獨裁政權。
然而，這類抵抗活動是在政權強大壓力下進行的。獨裁政權積極試圖在海外伸手掌控，PCDA 領袖法蘭西斯科・西里亞科・達・庫尼亞（Francisco Ciriaco da Cunha）多次表達擔憂，指葡萄牙政治警察 PIDE 的特務在加拿大活動，監視僑民動態。其他人則擔心，僑民若返回葡萄牙探親將面臨被捕風險，甚至有活躍於加拿大的政治異議人士，其在葡萄牙的家人因此遭到逮捕或調查。在加拿大本地，政權同情者與親薩拉查（Salazar）民族主義者也經常出面對抗反對派僑民，有時引發公開衝突、騷亂，甚至杯葛社區活動。
多年來為葡萄牙民主復歸而努力的加拿大葡萄牙人，在 1974 年「康乃馨革命」爆發時，懷著高度關注的心情注視著祖國局勢的發展。那些獨裁政權極力壓制的聲音，已在海外綻放，如今他們得以隔著海洋，見證全體葡萄牙人的聲音重回光明。
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