1 For a Better Guinea! Winning hearts and minds in Portuguese Guinea Luís Nuno RODRIGUES Department of History, ISCTE – Lisbon University Institute Paper to be presented at SHAFR 2010 (Draft version/not to be quoted) Abstract. The purpose of this presentation is to analyze the policies followed by António de Spínola, Portuguese Governor-Geral and Commander-in-Chief in Portuguese Guinea between 1968 and 1973. Arriving at Guinea in May 1968, Spínola realized that a war like the one Portugal was fighting in that territory could not be won merely by military means. A counter-subversive war should be a battle for the “hearts and minds” of the African population not a war to kill and annihilate the enemy. He developed, therefore, a concerted approach to the problem of Guinea, a program later called “For a Better Guinea”. Although he continued to defend that it was essential to maintain military initiative, Spínola engaged the Portuguese armed forces in several other activities, such as education, health and infrastructure construction, trying to win back the support of the population. He also developed a program of “Africanization” of Portuguese troops, recruiting more and more Guineans to serve in the “African units” of the Portuguese armed forces. Despite some successes on his “hearts and minds” policy, without significant backing from metropolitan Portugal and facing an enemy well equipped (and with the support of the other side of the “Iron Curtain”), Spínola resigned in 1973 and came back to Portugal to write the book that detonated the democratic transition in 1974. Introduction In the late 1960s Portugal was facing three colonial wars in its African territories of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea. The regime, led since 1932 by Oliveira Salazar, believed it was essential that the country maintained its presence in Africa and was not prepared to decolonize or to find a political solution for the colonial conumdrum. Several attempts had been made in the early years of the decade, either by internal forces or by international pressure, but Salazar and the Portuguese political and military elite adamantly refused. One of the most serious problems was the situation in Portuguese Guinea. A small territory of 37,000 square kilometres situated between Senegal and the Republic of Guine, the Portuguese colony was at war since 1963. In January of this year, the nationalist movement African Party for the Independence of Guinea and of Cape Verde (PAIGC), led by Amílcar Cabral, carried out its first successful military operation against colonial domination. The PAIGC military successes were rapid and in the following months the nationalists conducted several military operations including ambushes and the laying of mines. Faced with a deteriorating situation, in May 1964 the Portuguese government decided to appoint Brigadier Arnaldo Schultz as Commander-in-Chief in Guinea. Schultz gambled on an essentially military strategy, in which he sought to “counter-attack” and regain control of the areas occupied by the