Mozambique and economic growth. FRELIMO took control of the territory after 10 years of sporadic warfare, as well as Portugal's own return to democracy after the fall of the authoritarian Estado Novo regime the Carnation Revolution of April 1974, and the failed coup of 25 November 1975. Within a year, most of the 250,000 Portuguese in Mozambique had left—some expelled by the government of the nearly independent territory, some fleeing in fear—and Mozambique became independent from Portugal on 25 June 1975. A law had been passed on the initiative of the relatively unknown Armando Guebuza of the FRELIMO party, ordering the
History of the Jews in Mozambique History of the Jews in Mozambique The history of the Jews in Mozambique, until 1975, was closely connected with the history of Judaism through the former Portuguese empire, particularly those elements of it operating on the coastlines of the Indian Ocean. By the time the first Portuguese ships entered this ocean in the late 15th century, Jewish merchants and persons connected with sea work had lived on, and next to, this ocean for many centuries. As a European presence deepened by the late 19th century in the Portuguese East African colonial capital then called "Lourenço Marques", a cluster of Jews