African Activist Archive

The press release announces a campaign to boycott all Portuguese products sold in Ithaca, called by the Southern Africa Liberation Committee (SALC) (a group of students and teachers at Cornell University), the Attica Brigade (the Cornell chapter of a national student anti-imperialist organization), the African Students Association at Cornell, and the African Liberation Solidarity Committee (a community group). This is part of a nation-wide effort called by several national organizations, including the New York-based American Committee on Africa that is intended to deny the Portuguese government U.S. dollars with which it buys napalm, helicopters, and bombs to use against the peoples of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique. The press release describes the history of Portuguese colonialism in Africa, the underdevelopment and poverty of the three countries, peaceful efforts to obtain independence that were rebuffed, and progress made by armed liberation movements in the three countries. It also describes U.S. support for Portugal's military effort to maintain colonial control, with Portugal borrowing techniques used by the U.S. government in Indochina (including napalm, defoliation, forced relocations, and wholesale reprisals against villages), Portuguese counter-insurgency specialists being trained in the U.S., and NATO weapons provided by the U.S. government that stock Portuguese arsenals. Also, Portugal relies heavily on U.S. investment to fund its wars; Gulf Oil, for example, pays 60% of the cost of repression in Angola. Portugal also needs the American dollars earned by its exports to the U.S. of cotton, coffee, and wine. In Ithaca, the main boycott target is ALLEGRÍA WINE because ALLEGRÍA 'S parent, Heublein Wines of Hartford, Connecticut, selected Ithaca as the test market for ALLEGRÍA WINE; Heublein, which also owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, has saturated Ithaca with radio advertising on stations WVBR and WTKO and has hired Nelson Research Associates of Chicago to conduct a telephone market survey. Local liquor stores have been asked to discontinue the sale of ALLEGRÍA WINE; already East Hill Supply and College Liquor have promised to respect the ALLEGRIA boycott, and North Campus Union at Cornell has pledged to discontinue buying all Portuguese wines. Starting October 5, the sale of ALLEGRÍA will be protested by picket lines at stores continuing to sell it.

African Activist Archive

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