Remembering Tristão Bragança Cunha ("T.B.C".) A fait divers or how in the nineteen fifties "T.B.C." outwitted the infamous "Policia Internacional e da Defesa do Estado", the Portuguese political police unit better known by its acronym, PIDE.
By Armando Felix Pereira inter...@mail.telepac.pt T.B.C. had been granted an amnesty and although no criminal or other charges were later brought against him, he was not free to return to India and was under close surveillance by plain clothes PIDE agents in Lisbon. He was under de facto house arrest. On his release from the Forte de Peniche prison T.B.C. appointed me to be his legal adviser. My brief was to contact the Portuguese authorities and take whatever legal steps were necessary to enable him to return to India. Contacts with the Portuguese authorities proved to be very disappointing: despite recognizing that there were no legal grounds to justify T.B.C's lack of freedom to travel it was made quite clear that for political reasons he would not be allowed to return to India. In view of the above, the only way open to T.B.C. to leave Portugal and return to India would be by means of a well-planned, one-off scheme using all available lawful instruments. Such a scheme was worked out by TBC and myself and comprised four carefully drawn up steps. as follows: Step one. To keep our plans in absolute secrecy. The only third party who would be made aware of the scheme was T.B.C,'s trusted friend, Mr. P. Kakodkar. Step two. To obtain a Portuguese Identity Card. An application for an I.D-card would not raise any suspicions with the Portuguese authorities as it would be only natural that T.B.C. would need some form of identification as he had none, his passport having been confiscated. A birth certificate was accordingly obtained from Goa. When T.B.C saw it, he was most displeased because all of his ten or more proper names were mentioned on it, starting with António and ending with Tristão, despite having previously shortened his long full name to Tristão Bragança Cunha (T.B.C.). In my own view, however, the certificate with all those proper names on it was most welcome: T.B.C could from then onwards lawfully use and sign his name as AntónioCunha i.e. using only his first and last names, to confound the Portuguese authorities. Step three. To obtain a Portuguese passport. T.B.C would apply for a Portuguese passport during the months of June/July, the time when many Portuguese citizens applied for passports in order to cross the border into Spain. At that time Portuguese passports were only valid for the countries mentioned in them. It was customary for applicants to put both Spain and France as their intended destinations even if they were only going to travel to Spain. As the Portuguese authorities would be on the alert it was decided to apply for his passport through a travel agent in the month of June, stating Spain and France as the only required destinations. In this way, T.B.C's.application for a passport would join dozens of other applications to be submitted by the travel agent to the Governo Civil de Lisboa. Step four. To find a reliable means of transport from Portugal to France. Flying from Lisbon to Paris by air was out of the question due to very strict PIDE control at the airports. Travelling by train also had to be avoided as this would have given PIDE ample time to obtain the co-operation of the Spanish police and to have TBC detained during his journey through the Spanish territory. The only remaining means of transport was therefore by ship. This had the added advantage of only a small number of passengers, maybe only two or three, embarking in Lisbon for a French port and PIDE passport control at the port of Lisbon was therefore handled by more junior members of PIDE's staff. On a fine summer morning Mr. P. Kakodkar and myself went down to Lisbon quay to bid T.B.C. farewell before boarding the ship which would take him to France. Our hearts missed a beat. At the-bottom of the gangway a PIDE agent was checking the passports. To our despair we saw that the PIDE agent was talking to T.B.C. and taking a long time to give his passport back to him. We sighed with relief when we saw the agent eventually handing back his passport. T.B.C. explained to us later that the subject of the discussion had been the lack of a military permit to leave the country. The agent was apparently satisfied when T.B.C. pointed out that his age, as was written in the passport, he was no longer eligible for conscription. The sea voyage was uneventful except that after leaving the Spanish port of Vigo when the ship was already on international waters T.B.C. noted that his fellow passengers were eyeing him with some curiosity. T.B.C. later learned the reason for the curiosity: the Captain had received a radio message from the Portuguese authorities asking him to disembark T.B.C. at the nearest Spanish port as he had evaded Portuguese conscription rules! Of course the Captain did not comply with the request made by the Portuguese authorities. When in international waters, the Captain of a French ship was only required to follow instructions issued either by the ship's owners or by French authorities. T.B.C. was therefore lucky that the ship had already left the Spanish port of Vigo and was in international waters when the message came through. There is no doubt that he had narrowly escaped being handed over to the Portuguese authorities by General Franco's Spanish police agents. When T.B.C arrived in Paris he learned that the Portuguese authorities had been putting pressure on the French authorities to have him extradited back to Portugal. The French were so annoyed by the pressure applied by the Portuguese authorities that they provided T.B.C with a safe conduct to enable him to travel on to India. Lisbon, September 30, 2009 ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Armando Felix Pereira was born in Goa in 1922 into a family of lawyers: both his great-grand father António Bernardo Pereira and his grand father António Felix Pereira were lawyers and his father was the late Justice A.B.de Bragança Pereira. After completing his law studies with honours at the Faculty of Law, Lisbon University, he decided to open his law office in Lisbon rejecting an invitation to act as Director of the Legal Department of the Ministry of Labour. Though now 86, he is still active, working a minimum of 35 hours a week. Goanet Reader is compiled and edited by Frederick Noronha and suitable Goa-related articles for circulation through this network may be submitted via fn at goa-india dot org