The use [and refuse] of “progress” and “technology” as ideals of the Portuguese Estado Novo regime: a possible analysis of Lições de Salazar posters, 1938

Resumo

From 1926 to 1974, Portugal went through a far-right dictatorship regime.
At first, the main concern was to validate its arrival to power by presenting
itself as the regime that was finally able to save the nation from
previous circumstances. In order to achieve this, it was necessary to demonstrate
how the government had the capacity of hauling the nation to
the so-called developed countries level of progress. In 1938 seven posters
entitled Lições de Salazar were printed and affixed at every school. Six represented
different viewpoints of Salazar’s economic miracle; the seventh
represented the moral values over which education should be established,
and hence the Nation. Through these posters analysis a contradictory
message is perceived: the pressure to employ “progress” and “technology”
as propaganda concepts, but also the reluctance in its use, since these notions
were commonly associated to a “disruptive modernity”, contrary to
a conservative regime conscience.