1. Introduction

«The people’s story is also made through singing. Each verse, each tone, and each pause of this bundle of songs can be compared to the little pebble in the highest tower or the humblest hut that saw us born. Here goes our story» (Martins ^{Júnior, 2004})^[1].

On 22 June 1969, the cleric José Martins Júnior assumed the chapelry of Ribeira Seca (Machico, Madeira Island). This event anticipated the long-lasting contentious tension and collective resistance amongst the local community vs. the Catholic Church hierarchy and regional power structures, during ex-ante and post-democratic periods.

The land-tenure cleavage constituted the critical juncture into action. The Contrato de Colonia established a customary system of land holding between the aristocracy (landowners) (senhorios) and the peasants (colonos) in which the peasants ‘worked the land’ and was forced to give half of what they produced to the landowners. The Contrato de Colonia had been introduced by King D. Manuel I (1496) and lasted until 1977 when the dependence of landowners was abolished and the property rights returned to the farmers.

The landholding inequality, the economic and social deprivation which Ribeira Seca community lived in, compelled Martins Júnior to organize the claim-making within this community. He aggregated their claims and called for the attention of local authorities. Through his representation and orientation, this community organized themselves around common purposes and shared interests and were mobilized into collective action, appealing to political change around the economic structure framed by the Contrato de Colonia (land-tenure). They engaged in specific routines and a set of interactions against the status quo towards social and political change. They anchored their demands and claim-making, expressed their exploitation and deprivation conditions throughout lyrics, dance, and theatre performances. This constituted the main ‘repertoire of action’ in addressing local grievances to a “powerful landed elite”.

The inequality of state-society interactions (power relations), the landowner’s exploitation to peasants and their poverty conditions have been well documented by the European history. Prominent scholars have pointed out the long-standing literature on rural and the land-tenure conflicts across Europe in interwar periods and its trade-offs across democratic and non-democratic polities (^{Skopol, 1979}; Moore, 1967; Tilly, 1990; ^{Acemoglu and Robinson, 2006}); or the effects of landholding inequality on regime change (Moore, 1967; ^{Acemoglu and Robinson, 2006}; ^{Ziblatt, 2008}).

In Portugal, a rural and peripheral country, property rights were at stake during democratic transition (1974-1976) in the Alentejo and rural north (mainland) (^{Cezerales, 2017}). In the aftermath of 25 April 1974, a widespread popular mobilization called for landowning patterns reforms, the state apparatus, and companies in the industrial and financial sectors (^{Maxwell, 1986}; ^{Fernandes a, 2014}). In the mainland, the agrarian reform established a partnership between the state and the landless workers and small producers’ organization to property management (Barreto, 1976; ^{Fernandes a, 2014}, p. 93).

At the insular territories - Azores and Madeira - a pro-fund rural-agrarian societies persisted (^{Lizardo, 2015}; Câmara, 2012). Tensions and violent episodes marked the political environment during the transition to democracy (1974-1976) in the Azores and Madeira. For example, Américo Tomaz and Marcelo Caetano^[2] were exiled in Madeira Island in April 1975, and popular demonstrations erupted, demanding the “purge of fascists”. Separatist movements^[3] committed bombing attacks and other assaults on the headquarters of left-wing parties in both regions (^{Nepumoceno, 2006}; Autor, 2021).

Thus, Madeira Island offers an ideal setting for research purpose. Several questions around the events that erupted on the island during the dictatorship (1930s to 1970s) and during democratization periods which led to popular mobilization, remain unanswered. Alongside democratization and decentralization processes, other elements had intervened on that. For example, the economic structure, the rurality and illiteracy among its population; or the economic dependence from the exterior (island remoteness) constitute a set of factors which allow us to explore: a) the role of political actors; b) the pre-existing institutional structure and the terms in which regional institutions come up (territorial autonomy) during democratization process, and c) how those constellations of elements exerted an enduring effect on the long-term of incumbency of regional-premier Alberto João Jardim, who was in office for 39 years (Author, 2015; 2018; 2021).

I argue that the relationship of non-institutional political actors (Catholic Church) and politics is important to this understanding. Thus, I shed light on the political dynamics at play within Ribeira Seca community (Machico), during pre-democratization and post-democratic periods, to engage in a long-standing debate about the pathways of Madeira Island political system. Thus, I ask: How does land-tenure cleavage structured politics in the Madeira Island?

I follow a process-based approach accounting for the main historical events, identifying the pathways and its trajectories; the mechanisms which triggered the episodes of contention; the actors involved, and the outcomes of those contention from 1970’s to 2019 period.

Based on rich microlevel and novel data within a single case, it’s revealed that the protests evolved locally (Ribeira Seca, Machico) were driven by historical and territorial factors and the interaction amongst institutional and non-institutional actors paved way to the cycles of contestation. The major aim of this article is to enhance the understanding of regional politics in Portugal.

The article is organized in three parts. The first section presents a brief theoretical outline on contentious politics and repertoire of action literature. Secondly, it is provided an overview of the historical and political contexts where the events unfolded and thirdly, it’s analysed the narrative through the sequence of events and agency approaches. The final sections discuss and summarize the findings.

2. Theoretical Framework

Territory is an essential reference of political and social life (^{Keating, 1998}; ^{Hepburn, 2010}). Territory have gained importance to the understanding of collective action (Tilly, 2000; Sewell, 2001; ^{McAdam et. al., 2001}), to the extent that specific territories have displayed critical episodes that have shaped subsequent political outcomes. Contextualizing and understanding how individuals and groups engage in contentious politics is critical to illuminating the mechanisms and processes that support it (McAdams et. al., 2001). Most of the protests evolve locally and are driven by historical and territorial factors. Revealing such factors is critical to the role of “protest histories of individual populations” play within national political cultures (Imig and Tarrow, 2001, pp. 5).

Collective action or popular mobilization has long drawn the interest of sociologists and anthropologists. Scholars have documented the range of ways through which people express the constraints imposed by their social, political or cultural context in a given period, including protest events such as demonstrations, boycotts, or occupation mechanisms (^{Moore, 1966}; Tilly, 1975; 1986; 2008; ^{della Porta and Diani, 2006}). People’s grievances and their capacity and willingness to advance their claims (^{McAdam, 1982}); identity; a sense of a common purpose and a commitment to a cause (^{Touraine, 1981}; ^{Opp, 2009}); or relative deprivation (^{Olson, 1965}) have been appointed as the major mechanisms that impel people to engage in contentious behaviour (McAdam et. al., 2009, pp. 268).

The understanding that “local people and local issues, rather than nationally organized programs and parties have entered repeatedly into the daily collective confrontations” [that occur in any given context] (Tilly, 1995, pp. 19), is part of the explanation of people’s commitment to collective action, social interactions, and narratives (^{Tilly, 1986}; 1997, ^{Tarrow, 1998}). As ^{della Porta and Diani (2006)} put it:

«Collective action does not spring automatically from structural tensions […]. Numerous factors determine whether this will occur. These factors include the availability of adequate organizational resources, the ability of movement leaders to produce appropriate ideological representations and the presence of a favourable context. » (pp. 63).

Protests or protest events have been presented as critical tools of collective action across times, and often they have had transformative effects on societies (Sewell, 1996; ^{della Porta, 2008}). Such events can range from parochial to national configurations; be reactive or proactive; conventional, disruptive, or violent (^{Tilly, 1986}; ^{Tarrow, 1989}; ^{Kriesi et. al., 1995}). Different forms of contention have been put in place at different times in several societies, setting the means through which different individuals or groups challenge the authority of political elites or an oppressive regime (^{Tilly, 1986}, pp. 4) on behalf of their shared interests. Thus, it shapes a process in which societal and political transformation is expected.

Charles Tilly introduced the metaphor “repertoires of action” in the nineteenth century to characterise the popular collective action modus operandi (routines, organization, structure) that Great Britain experienced from the 1750s to the 1830s. Such repertoires, he explained, shaped the “claim-making routines that apply to the same claimant-object pairs: bosses and workers; peasants and landlords, rival nationalists’ factions and many more” (^{Tilly and Tarow, 2007}, pp. 4; see also ^{Tilly, 1986}; Tilly and ^{Tarrow, 2015}). The “repertoire of contention,” has become central analytical tool for “identifying and making sense of specific routines of claim-making that are selected and acted out by people in their pursuit of shared interests and change during contentious interactions with others” (^{Alimi, 2015}, pp. 410). Those attributes encompass a process of interaction within a conflict context focused on collective claims made to state institutions (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, 2009, pp. 261).

In recent decades, the repertoires of action and contention politics approaches have been expanded to better account for the interaction amongst a multiplicity of actors (in terms of episodes of contestation and their variations and regularities). The focus has been shifted from the subjects and objects of contention to the mechanisms that connect them to each other and to a broader range of institutions and actors (^{Tarrow, 2015}, pp. 86) across time.

We know that traditional mobilization could take place “within the context of local communities to which individuals have long-lasting commitments such as peasants’ villages or urban craft guilds” (^{Goldstone 2001}, pp. 151), or such mobilization might be seen as a type of small-scale contentious politics.

Political opportunity structure emerges as the main explanatory concept that of the conditions that trigger contentious actions (^{Tarrow, 2015} pp. 7; ^{Tilly, 2006}).

Political opportunity structure (POS) has been well-established in the literature (^{Kriesi et al., 1995}; ^{McAdam, 1982}; McAdam & Tarrow, 2019; ^{Tarrow, 1989}, ¹⁹⁹⁸) to account for role played by the contextual factors; strategies, and outcomes on mobilization (^{Tarrow, 1998}). It covers an array of elements such as: i) the openness or closure of the institutionalized political system, ii) the stability or instability of political alignments; iii) the presence or absence of potential allies and iv) the state capacity and propensity for repression (^{Tarrow, 1989}; McAdam, 1996; ^{Kriesi, 2004}).

Predominantly, POS illuminates the ‘political context’ (Eisenger, 1973), that is, the political system structure which promote or constrains mobilization. It refers to those aspects of the political system that affect the possibility that challenging groups must mobilize effectively (Tarrow: 1996; pp. 54; Tilly and ^{Tarrow, 2015}). The structure of opportunity, as Tilly put it, provides the “necessary and sufficient condition of contention” (^{Tilly, 2004}, pp. 34).

3. Research strategy and data

Local grievances and interactions in local community (Ribeira Seca, Machico) assumed significant importance within Madeira Island politics during dictatorship and democratic periods. Its distinctive dynamics prompted by the land-tenure cleavage, and it’s claim making determined the role of agency led by Martins Júnior, and the confrontational repertoire that evolved in a specific political context. Focusing on a regional unit of analysis (island), I will examine the spatially uneven nature of major processes of political transformation (^{Snyder 2001}, pp. 94), exploring the relationship between politics and the territory (^{Hepburn, 2010}) to advance an effective understanding of a broader political phenomena exhibited at the regional level.

For systematic analysis, the political and economic context is extremally valuable to the understanding of the main processes, mechanisms and actors evolved on mobilization (^{Tarrow, 1998}).

Understanding the configurations of mobilization and the contentious path across the 1970s until present (1970s-2019) - it covers the last years of the authoritarian regime, the transition to democracy and the democratic period - it requires ‘thick description’ (Gerring, 2011) on the reconstruction of the critical events. It helps to shed into light the mechanisms that led to contention and gain leverage to the explanation.

The research strategy is anchored on a process-based tradition (^{Goodwin and Jasper, 2004}) which considers the multiplicity of players and their interaction within the protests, underlying the relational nature of contention. For that, it is considered four dimensions: i) the historical and political trajectories that support the episodes of contention, ii) the constellation of players and their cleavages; iii) the nature of claim-making, frames, and narratives and how they evolve throughout the cycle of protests and, iv) the repertoire of action.

Empirically, I zoom-in the analysis, exploring narratives as a way that enabled a community to construct a common interest towards collective action (^{Mayer, 2014}). That is, how protest events evolved over time through the agency of Martins Júnior. Alongside political context, agency is critical to the understanding of the strategies and how it affected the cycle of protest, to the extent that the actors involved are also path-dependent of their context. Thus, cycle of protests and contentious events are part of a longer contentious process and interaction amongst institutional and non-institutional political actors. By putting individual experience into stories, it’s highlighted the analytic narratives which episodes and events and be decomposed into mechanisms and then reassembled into more general accounts of the process involved (Brady and Collier, 2005).

The period of analysis covers four decades (1970s-2019). I engaged with different data collection effort from regional and national newspapers to characterize and reconstruct the events within the political context that had prompted contestation. I’ve also considered public broadcast archives to frame the state of economy and the prominent social structure in the 70s.

The deprivation and oppression experiences, the claim-making and to whom they were addressed were voiced on lyrics, and for that I have focused on the main contents from published CDs. Additionally, I used the Martins Júnior’s personal blog to strengthen the narrative and link all those constellations of elements that had interacted during these processes of contention.

For each event considered, the data is organized as follows: identification of actors; the claims they made; and the forms of action (repertoire) they engaged in, and to whom they were oriented. The main objective is to capture the sequences of events (change over time), trace the trajectories of change (claims, objects, and actors), create an accurate description of the political process, and illuminate the mechanisms of contention.

4. The Case: Madeira Island Setting the context - the social, economic, and political structure

This section presents the political opportunity structure (POS) and the protest events that erupted during the last years of dictatorship in the Madeira Island. It points out the main historical features and the characteristics of the regional political system which had prompted the claim-making and the action of institutional and non-institutional political actors.

«Before 25^th of April, the people from Machico village lived ‘crushed’ in so many ways. Workers, peasants, and fishermen suffered exploitation and mistreatment by bosses, landlords, merchants, civil servants, etc. Much like poor people everywhere, they desired for a just law, a law of the people. But this law, could only appear through the rule by the people and for the people^[4]».

The Contrato de Colonia gave the institutional set-up in Madeira Island, where protests evolved - the landholding conflict among landlords (senhorios) and landless peasants (colonos). This economic structure was prominent in Madeira Island.^[5] It was grounded on a feudal model that had structured the economic production (wine, sugar, linen) alongside political structure (^{Câmara, 2002}; ^{Lizardo, 2015}; Autor, 2021). The state organized productive activity around a classe gardé which concentrated all resources, especially within British people (^{Freitas, 1984}). A mercantilist economic model fostered a rigidly hierarchical society in which most of the population was dependent on a small elite, which means, an exploited group organized by a patrimonial state (Autor, 2015; 2021).

Three protest events stemming from peasants revolved the Madeira archipelago during the Estado Novo’s dictatorship. These uprisings were known as Revolta da Farinha (Flour’s Revolt) in 1934, the Revolta do Leite (Milk’s Revolt) in 1936 and the Revolta da Água (Irrigation Revolt) in 1962. The Revolta da Farinha and the Revolta do Leite revealed the oppression that peasants lived in. They opposed to the dictatorship regime because the monopoly of the cereals, sugar and milk transformation was ascribed to big landlords. This event raised the prices and prompted popular demonstrations and boycotts, particularly, amongst docker sector (^{Freitas, 2011}; ^{Nepumoceno, 2006}; Autor, 2021).

The Revolta da Água was a protest to “water rights” enabling the peasants to irrigate their land was displayed at the Ponta do Sol village (Levada do Moinho). The revolt lasted four months. A pacific and spontaneous protest turned into violent one (^{Fernandes b, 2008}).

Those three revolts underlined the tensions around the scarcity and the deprivation that the islanders experienced during dictatorship period. The land-tenure customary arrangements imposed by the Contrato de Colonia made it extremely difficult for the peasants to survive. The peasant’s perception of their living conditions gave the impetus to change. The cornerstone of popular mobilization was systematically grounded on the peasant’s exploitation and deprivation by the landlords and their grievances around property and labour rights, who claimed, that “the land belongs to God, and the fruits to those who work on it”^[6]. Those grievances constituted forms of resistance in a non-democratic setting. It illustrated the islanders’ struggles for autarcia, the islandness circumstances of economic and political dependence from the exterior, and especially, exposes the social control dynamics framed by a landholding inequality structure.

5. Concluding remarks

This article explored the protest events that evolved and led to popular mobilization in the Madeira Island during dictatorship (1930s to 1970s), during ex-ante and post-democratic periods.

Throughout a process-based approach, it is illuminated the waves and cycle of protest events by putting in place the historical and political context; the relation amongst the actors (institutional vs. non-institutional) involved; the mechanisms that linked those events; the claim-making and its repertoires, and the outcomes of contention.

Understanding how protest events evolved during ex-ante and post-democratization periods, called for intermediation from political opportunity structure approach and the agency role played by the clerical Martins Júnior. Alongside political context, agency was critical to illuminate the strategies and the understanding how it affected the cycle of protest.

For that, I engaged with different data collection effort to reconstruct those events. It allowed to identify the processes and the conditions/mechanisms under which the local community mobilization emerged (claim-making at stake), the relational nature of the key actors and the repertoire of their actions.

Those contentious events are part of a longer contentious process - spanned two political regimes - and interaction amongst institutional and non-institutional political actors, where the Catholic Church hierarchy and the regional institution revealed to be intertwined.

The progressive and disruptive nature of the Martins Júnior agency - in line with other movements that emerged within Catholic Church during the 1970s^[25] - determined the path-dependent nature of the institutional processes established during the democratic period. The ‘principal agent’ tale (Martins Júnior) helped to illuminate the non-institutional aspects (processes and mechanisms) that constituted the blocking blocks of the regional politics in Portugal.

The island’ structure of economy (mostly agrarian), the landholding inequality determined the unfolded events. The terms in which the process of democratization evolved, how actors interacted have contributed to the path of institutional performance turn.

This piece of research shed into light the “protest histories of [these] individual population” (Imig & Tarrow, 2001) from Ribeira Seca (Machico) which voiced their demands and claim-making of their deprivation conditions they lived in through lyrics, dance, and theatre performances. This constituted their ‘repertoire of action’ in addressing local grievances. Noteworthy, this local community had a strong women participation and that the lyrics were mostly written by illiterate women^[26].

The findings suggest that many elements interacted on those processes path. The interaction of institutional and non-institutional actors constituted the major driver of the cycles of contestation, benefited by the political opportunity structure and by local-community mobilization. It also outlines the paths under which democratization took place and the institutional dynamics shaped by those processes at the regional level.

The critical episodes that erupted in Madeira Island are contingent to contextual specificities. The conditions under which popular mobilization occurred was prompted by the socio-economic context, the agency of a local actor which, in turn, prompted the subsequent cycle of claim-making and protests. The contentious issue that was at stake evolved due to the elite’s resistance against threats of redistribution in case of regime change. De facto, the transformation of the political opportunity structure - regime change - triggered into the end of the landholding conflict.

Moreover, the canonical issue that erupted after regime change with the ad Divinis suspension have prevailed contentious over four decades. After the resignation of Alberto Joao Jardim after 39 years of incumbency (regional government) and the replacement of the Bishop D. António Carrilho by the bishop D. Nuno Brás (Church hierarchy) it was possible to play out with this contentious issue.

In sum, from a territorially bounded context (Madeira Island) this article offered a systematic perspective that identified the opportunity structure that supported the cycles of contestation, how it encouraged political change and the pathways towards regional democracy. Empirically, those constellations of elements resonate with how democracy works at the regional level. The contentious interaction amongst the Catholic Church and regional political structures against Ribeira Seca community echoed also in terms of political/electoral outcomes. The Social-democratic party (PSD, Partido Social Democrata) has been in office in Madeira ever since the first regional election in 1976. Alberto João Jardim assumed the helm of the regional cabinet in 1978 and retained it until 2015. PSD constituted an electoral stronghold over time. The exception was in the Machico constituency, where opposition parties, firstly União Democrática Popular, (UDP, Popular Democratic Union) and then Partido Socialista (PS, Socialist party) led the municipality^[27]. In contrast to the other type of elections - regional, national and European elections - in municipal elections, Machico’ voters presented a distinctive voting behaviour from the other constituencies, which mostly voted for the PSD (Author, 2021), suggesting that the previous mobilization process echoed positively on people’s politization.

As the lyrics from Ribeira Seca’ community put it: «People from Ribeira Seca/ People who are secure and genuine/ Fighting for the truth/ They don’t get tired all their lives!/ Your name will be remembered / It has its history / This ground / is a Sacred Ground / Where we sang Victory^[28].»

This article constitutes an important contribute to the understanding of the processual roots and the mechanisms that contributed to popular mobilization in Madeira Island. It also illuminates the causal pathways of Madeira Island political system over the last century, in particular the implication of the pre-existing structures to democratization and the pattern of regional democracy that we have today.

In memorium of clerical José Martins Jr. (1938-12 june 2025).