Carnation revolution icon Celeste Caeiro passes away
Her simple but powerful gesture of handing flowers to soldiers became the emblem of the Carnation Revolution, which overthrew the right-wing dictatorship which ruled Portugal for 41 years.
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Celeste Caeiro, the Portuguese woman who handed out carnations to soldiers rebelling against a fascist dictatorship in a 1974 coup that became known globally as the Carnation Revolution, passed away on Friday at 91.
Her granddaughter, Carolina Caeiro Fontela, confirmed her death, in a hospital, to Portugal’s national news agency, Lusa. She said Ms. Caeiro had a history of heart and lung problems.
Her death, just months after the 50th anniversary of the nearly bloodless leftist coup, triggered an outpouring of sorrow and gratitude online and in official statements, with the Portuguese Communist Party remembering “comrade Celeste” as “a working woman with strong convictions”.
“Her generosity and friendliness will remain in everyone’s memory,” it said in a statement.
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On April 25, 1974, the Lisbon restaurant where Caeiro worked was about to celebrate the anniversary of its opening and the owners had bought carnations for the mostly female staff.
The military coup caused them to cancel the party and Caeiro was sent home and told to take the flowers with her.
Watch this video to hear Celeste tell the story:
In interviews over the years, she recalled how a young soldier asked her for a cigarette, which she didn’t have, so she gave him a carnation instead, and then handed more flowers to others soldiers who passed by.
Appreciating her gesture, soldiers began placing carnations in the barrels of their rifles.
This symbol of peaceful resistance rapidly became the emblem of the revolution that led to the overthrow of Antonio Salazar's right-wing dictatorship, which had ruled the country since 1933.
In later years, Caeiro acknowledged that her action was accidental, yet it became a significant symbol for the nation.
The Carnation Revolution also sparked numerous global shifts, decolonizing nations previously under Portuguese rule.
Difficult life
Celeste Martins Caeiro was born on May 2, 1933, in the working-class Socorro district of Lisbon. Her father left the family when Celeste was 18 months old, and her mother, Teodora de Viana Martins Caeiro, who was originally from Galicia, in northwest Spain, was forced through penury to put the child in a series of care homes while visiting her regularly.
Ms. Caeiro remained poor into adulthood, finding low-wage work while living in a single room of a rented house with her daughter, Helena, in Lisbon’s poor Chelas neighborhood. In 1988, a fire in a nearby department store and warehouse spread along her street, destroying the home.
“We left with whatever we were wearing, nothing else,” her daughter told the weekly newspaper Expresso in 2018. “We only managed to grab my neighbor’s cat.”
For the next year, Ms. Caeiro and her daughter lived in a community home in Chelas until the City Council helped them rent a house close to Lisbon’s Avenida da Liberdade (Liberty Avenue), where the Carnation Revolution is celebrated every April 25.
She spent her later years living on a small state pension with her daughter and granddaughter north of Lisbon.
Ms. Caeiro Fontela, her granddaughter, said Ms. Caeiro had felt neglected by successive Portuguese civilian governments, which she said never officially acknowledged her role in the revolution.
Sources: Lusa, The New York Times, MSN