In 1964 the Brazilian military, with the active co-operation of the Peace Corps the UA and the US Ambassador Lincoln Gordon, seized power in Brazil. They ousted from power the socialist President Goulart who had sided with the unions in labour disputes and was threatening the economic power of the Brazilian middle class. This military regime is still in power, but since 1967 there has been a growing many-sided resistance to it. The kidnapping of the US Ambassador Elbrick is merely the latest in a long line of insurgent actions. Here we print a brief summary of them over the past two years:
1967 1 March: guerrilla operations reported in southern Brazil. 2 March: a secret congress of thousands of students in Rio denounces US imperialism. 5 April: 11 guerrillas captured in the state of Minas-Gerais. All are officers or soldiers expelled from the army after the 1964 coup. July 10: the former Governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Leonel Brizzola, is condemned to nine years prison; he is accused of having led the Minas-Gerais guerrillas August: 350 delegates attend the National Union of Brazilian Students congress (UNEB), banned in 1964. They adopt a revolutionary programme.
25 September: the Brazilian CP opposes the policies of OLAS and expels Carlos Marighela who claimed to represent them at the OLAS conference in Havana. 27 September: bomb thrown at the home of the US military attache in Rio. 1968 January: a series of arsons in military installations in southern Brazil. 21 March: bomb thrown at the US consulate in Sao Paolo. 30 March: popular demonstrations break out at the funeral of a student killed by the police. Tanks occupy the town. 3 April: armed clashes of students and police in many Brazilian towns. The US cultural centre at Fortaleza is burnt down. 5 April: the army intervenes to put down students in Rio. 24 April: Carlos Marighela creates a new Revolutionary Brazilian Communist Party (CRB) and attacks both the orthodox communists and the pro-Chinese Communist Party of Brazil. He advocates guerrilla struggle and the establishment of a unified politico-military command to run armed struggle in the towns and the countryside. 2 May: 400 arrests after an anti-US student demo in Sao Paolo. 5 May: a fourth organisation, the Proletarian Communist Party, appears; backs OLAS and urban guerrilla struggle. 14 June: 16,000 students strike in Rio. 22 June: 6 students killed by police in Rio. 500 students occupy the Parliament in Brasilia. 27 June: 100,000 people demonstrate in Rio calling for "the end of the dictatorship" 30 July: dissident members of left-wing Catholic group Popular Action, join the PCRB. 4 August: Fresh wave of militancy after arrest of student leader Vladimir Palmeira, accused of being a "Marxist agitator" 12 August: left-wing militants rob a train carrying £18,000.
August-December: a wave of robberies and hold-ups in and around Sao Paolo. These are attributed sometimes to the left and sometimes to extreme right-wing groups like the Anti-Communist Movement (MAC) and the Committee for Chasing Communists (CCC). 14 October: 1,000 members of the university and all the leaders of UNEB are arrested at a meeting. An American army officer is assassinated by the left. 1969. 27 February: Police arrest 12 members of the PCRB. For the first time they admit that "terrorist groups" are near the capital. 18 members of another group arrested in Sao Paolo. 28 June: Police arrest 32 persons accused of "subversion". 17 July: 3 radio and TV stations in Sao Paolo are burnt down.
arrested.
August: continuing arrests of members of MR8. 15 August: a statement attributed to PCRB is broadcast on radio Sao Paolo announcing a verv imnortant event" Radio station necnnied. revolutionary left in Brazil. Like the other components of this left it has come out of the left of the orthodox CP and is influenced by the Cuban position. One of the militants the military were forced to release was Gregorio Bezerra, a 70-year old ex-communist who was imprisoned for leading peasants in the impoverished North-East and who was paraded naked through the provincial capital, tied by a rope round his neck to a military jeep. At his trial he was asked by his judge if he had Czech arms and he replied that if he had he would have shot the judge down.) but will install a new class of bureaucrats and military officers. On the other hand, they do represent an advance from the days of Idris. The strategic position of imperialism in Libya has been undermined; and the flow of oil from a reactionary ally is no longer secure.
The causes of this coup lie in the inability of the Idris regime to solve nationalist problems: by allying itself with imperialism, tolerating the bases and dragging its feet in the anti-Zionist struggle the regime had revealed its reactionary nature and was bound to fall.