Alberto Nogueira
Alberto Nogueira (politician, diplomat) | ||||||||||||
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Born | Alberto Nogueira 17 September 1918 | |||||||||||
Died | 14 March 1993 (Age 74) | |||||||||||
Nationality | Portuguese | |||||||||||
Alma mater | University of Lisbon | |||||||||||
Portuguese diplomat during the Estado Novo, in favor of keeping the colonies in Africa, who attended several Bilderberg meetings.
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Alberto Franco Nogueira was a Portuguese politician and diplomat during the Estado Novo. He attended several Bilderberg meetings, both as Minister of Foreign Affairs and just afterwards. He was briefly jailed after the 1974 Carnation Revolution, and went into exile on London.
Contents
Background
Alberto Marciano Gorjão Franco Nogueira, son of a jurist, followed the family tradition when he enrolled at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon in 1935, where he graduated in July 1940.[1][2]
In 1941, he entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Nogueira was sent to the delegation in Japan, where he arrived (after the end of the Second World War) in January 1946, where he performed the functions of Portuguese representative to the Allied High Command that occupied the country. At the end of that year, he officially requested authorization to marry the Portuguese-Chinese Vera Machado Wang, and the permission arrived in July 1947 and the marriage took place two months later.
During the following decade, he assumed growing role among Portuguese diplomats. He was part of delegations to sessions of the Commission for Technical Cooperation in Africa (CCTA) and to African defense conferences. In 1953, he traveled to Africa, on a service mission to Portuguese Mozambique. He became consul-general in London in 1955. He participated in the Portuguese delegations to the conferences of the International Labor Organization of 1956 and 1957 and to the meeting of plenipotentiaries that, in August 1956, drew up in Geneva a convention for the suppression of slavery. Finally, he is one of the members of the mission sent to XI General Assembly of the United Nations, in November of 1956, being always present in the plenary sessions that took place in New York until 1960. He then began its fights in defense of the overseas policy of the Estado Novo of retaining its colonies, increasingly contested from the new countries emerging from the process of decolonization.
He became number two at the Foreign Ministry, collaborating closely with the then minister Marcello Mathias, whom he accompanied on several official visits. Anxious to leave the Ministry and leave for the embassy in Paris, Mathias sees Nogueira as his successor and points his name to Salazar.
Minister of Foreign Affairs
On 16 April 1961 (just three days after the failure of the Botelho Moniz coup), the President of the Council met with Nogueira, convincing him to accept the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs, which he took office on 4 May.
Until he left his post on October 5, 1969, Alberto Franco Nogueira faced a situation marked by the wars in Africa and the growing international isolation of Portugal that the conflicts provoked. Internally and externally, he attacked the United Nations and denounced what he considers the imperialist interests of the great powers in Portuguese "overseas provinces". On numerous official visits and presences at NATO meetings, he tried, with some success, to gain international support, even traveling to Angola (1964) and Mozambique (1966). A close collaborator of Salazar and a faithful follower of his strategy, Nogueira gained weight within the regime.
However, Salazar's illness and removal from the presidency of the Council, in September 1968, put him in a difficult political situation. Faced with Américo Tomás' option for Marcelo Caetano, with whom he had and would have several political confrontations because they differed as to what to do with the overseas territories. Nogueira defended integrationism[3]. At that time he intended to leave the Ministry, but the new President of the Council manages to keep him in the portfolio for another year.
From 1969 to 1974
After leaving the government, he entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on unlimited leave and was given the honorific title of "ambassador", which he would hold until his death; that same year, 1969, he became one of the elected deputies in the National Assembly. At the same time, he was appointed director of the Benguela Railway and became a member of the Board of Directors of Banco Espírito Santo.
Prison and exile
For the new political situation that emerged from the 1974 Carnation Revolution Nogueira was one of the most prominent representatives of the overthrown government. On the 28th of September, he was arrested and sent to prison, suffering from heart problems, where he found himself very weak and battered with Dr. César Moreira Baptista (former Minister of the Interior), the 5th Duke of Palmela, Dr. Francisco Ribeiro de Spínola (brother of Marshal António de Spínola), Júlio Moreno and ten other detainees who then occupied a space initially intended for seven.
Freed on May 13, 1975, he went into exile in London, where he performed professional duties in the private sector and devoted himself to writing a biography of Salazar (based on his access to the dictator's personal archives).
The return to Portugal
The former minister returned to his native country in 1981, not failing to comment (with a very critical eye) on the evolution of the country and the world, until he died in Lisbon on March 14, 1993. In the last years of his life he exercised teaching functions in private higher education: Universidade Livre (Lisbon) (ca. 1981-1986); Autonomous University of Lisbon (1986-1987); and Universidade Lusíada (Lisbon) (1987). In the latter, he became Director of the Department of History, where he conducted courses on Contemporary History. He was posthumously appointed an honorary doctor of this University, where an amphitheater was named after him in the main buildings in Lisbon.
Events Participated in
Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
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Bilderberg/1967 | 31 March 1967 | 2 April 1967 | United Kingdom St John's College (Cambridge) UK | Possibly the only Bilderberg meeting held in a university college rather than a hotel (St. John's College, Cambridge) |
Bilderberg/1968 | 26 April 1968 | 28 April 1968 | Canada Mont Tremblant | The 17th Bilderberg and the 2nd in Canada |
Bilderberg/1970 | 17 April 1970 | 19 April 1970 | Switzerland Hotel Quellenhof Bad Ragaz | the 19th Bilderberg meeting, in Switzerland. |
Bilderberg/1972 | 21 April 1972 | 23 April 1972 | Belgium Hotel La Reserve Knokke | The 21st Bilderberg, 102 guests. It spawned the Trilateral Commission. |
References
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