By MILTON PINHEIRO*
Why was the PCB the main target of the dictatorship? The erased history of democratic resistance and the fight for justice 50 years later
The history of the military-burgher coup[I] of 1964 is amply proven by, among others, three basic objectives: attacking the interests of the working class, destroying the growing popular organization and destroying the main political operator[ii] of the Brazilian communists, the PCB, which was the hegemonic force on the left in that historical period.
Although the marches and counter-marches that constituted the landmarks of the expanded scenario of the coup revealed an important set of problems in the analysis of the concrete reality by Brazilian communists, the party's initial reaction was organized to operate with the perspective of bringing together democratic and national forces that, in principle, would be dissatisfied with the rupture in the legality of formal democracy and the institutional order in force.
The communists even outlined an internal movement to build an armed reaction to the coup, however this timid initiative came up against the inability to predict the coup scenario and the fall of sectors of the Armed Forces where this possibility of reaction would be reasonable, such as the posts under the direction of Commanders Teixeira and Aragão.
Once any possibility of this armed reaction had ended, and even with a period in which the leadership sank into clandestinity, the return to the counterattack organized by the PCB Central Committee was largely centered on the political articulation of a Democratic and National Front that would bring together a significant group of sectors of the legalist bourgeoisie, high-ranking military personnel who would be against the break in the structure of the military hierarchy, proletarian and popular forces, peasants, parliamentarians opposed to the coup, low-ranking military personnel who rebelled in recent revolts, and the strong student youth.
The framework of this political Front to contain the coup was gradually being undermined by the increasing coercive action of the coup plotters established in power. Arrests, political violence, assassinations at the very beginning of the armed coup, dismissals and discretionary acts formed the framework that strengthened the coup plotters, in addition, of course, to the expressions of support in society, the press and prominent figures in politics.
The PCB's tactics were moving away from its strategy, and the internal debate sought to focus on the causes of the coup. This political agenda was heated up due to the convening of the party's 6th Congress. The organic rupture was inevitable, and the party was divided into several groups that left the PCB to form organizations that would engage in armed confrontation against the dictatorship that had been established in the country. It is important to note that in the internal debate, among those who remained in the PCB, the possibility of armed confrontation with the military regime was considered, but this position did not go ahead.
The PCB sought to use its political tactics to build the Democratic Front, despite the closed spaces, arrests and murders of militants that occurred in April 1964 (Ivan Rocha Aguiar and Antogildo Pascoal Viana). The central element of the political organization of Brazilian communists was democratic resistance. This key to action began to generate political advances in the early 1970s, when the armed struggle developed by urban guerrilla organizations and some rural guerrillas was gradually defeated.
After the 1972 and 1974 elections, when the opposition won a major victory in the latter election, the forces of the dictatorship's police-military apparatus began to move with the PCB as their number one enemy (Colonel Paulo Manhães) as their central axis. With the aim of destroying the PCB, “Operação Radar” was organized in 1, which operated until 1973 and had various names in other states of the federation, such as “Barriga Verde” in Santa Catarina and “Cajueiro” in Sergipe.
The policy of siege and annihilation carried out by the police-military repression bodies that acted lethally through the agents that made up the “Basements” of the dictatorship, ordered by the political-military apparatus of the regime, with full authorization initially from General Médici and later, in an even more brutal way, with the consent and consent of General Ernesto Geisel, played a demonstrably murderous role in eliminating the PCB’s reference cadres, mainly in 1975.
The logic of siege and annihilation against the PCB reached its most violent moment during 1975. There were hundreds of arrests, hundreds of trials, and many communists fled into exile as a way of protecting their lives. However, the terror of the police state cowardly and murderously struck down 12 members of the party, heroic militants of the most diverse struggles of the Brazilian people.
At the height of this terror, “Operation Radar” in 1975, that is, 50 years ago, killed six members of the party’s Central Committee, other militants of seminal importance to the PCB’s action, and the person in charge of youth work. This was the dictatorship’s counterattack in response to the party’s political victory in the 1974 elections, when the PCB elected 22 federal deputies and dozens of state deputies and the opposition won a victory that could have been decisive for changing the institutional framework. In this political scenario, the dictatorship government threatened to suspend the 1976 municipal elections, but the political and social repercussions prevented this coup from taking place.
In the logic of the siege and annihilation against the PCB, which marked the tragic year of 1975, on January 15, truck driver Elson Costa and public administrator Hiran de Lima Pereira, both members of the Central Committee, were murdered. On February 4, lawyer and journalist Jayme Miranda, a prominent member of the party's CC, was murdered. In April (?) peasant leader Nestor Vera, also a member of the Central Committee, was arrested and murdered. On May 25, construction worker and leader Itair José Veloso, a member of the Central Committee, was arrested and murdered.
On August 7, the activist and printing worker Alberto Aleixo was murdered. On August 8, the activist and Lieutenant of the Military Police of São Paulo, José Ferreira de Almeida, was murdered under severe torture. Also in August, on the 18th, the activist and Colonel of the Military Police of São Paulo, Maximino de Andrade Netto, was murdered under torture. On September 17, the activist and businessman Pedro Jerônimo de Souza was murdered. The killing continued in September, when the student leader José Montenegro de Lima was murdered on the 29th. On October 8, the journalist and lawyer Orlando Bonfim Júnior, a former city councilman of Belo Horizonte and member of the Central Committee, was murdered. To cap the 1975 massacre, on October 25, the activist and journalist Vladimir Herzog was murdered.
The Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) had 43 members assassinated between April 1, 1964, and September 24, 1979. In 1975 alone, 12 leaders and activists were assassinated. The PCB was subjected to dozens of lawsuits, with thousands of activists being prosecuted, arrested, tortured, exiled, and killed. Even using the political tactic of fighting through democratic resistance, working among the masses, and coordinating democratic and national forces to defeat the dictatorship, the party was considered the number one enemy of the police and terrorist state that was established in 1 and remained in place until 1964.
On this 50th anniversary, when in 1975 the dictatorship carried out a cowardly siege and annihilation against the PCB, it is necessary for the recently recreated Amnesty Commission to institute a process for memory, justice and reparations for the PCB. The historical structure of the party, in addition to the martyrdom of its militants and leadership, suffered a relentless attack that put at risk its existence and what the party represents as a historical, political and cultural heritage in social life and in Brazilian political history.
The PCB's political tactics contributed significantly to defeating the arbitrariness and putting an end to the bourgeois-military regime in 1985. From that year onwards, the party returned to legal and political legality, even with the traditional impediments that the logic of bourgeois politics operates against communists in Brazil's long history, after all, it has been 103 years of the most hateful persecution.
This action for memory, justice and reparation must be taken to the competent bodies of the federal government as a matter of urgency, after all, Brazilian memory and history need to be preserved and the PCB must have justice and reparation.
*Milton Pinheiro is a professor of political history at the State University of Bahia (UNEB) and a member of the PCB.
Notes
[I] The 1964 coup d'état was characterized by the coordinated action of various factions of the internal bourgeoisie, organized by their representations in entities such as FIESP and similar institutions, with the active participation of entities representing landowners. This social class (bourgeoisie) held control of parliamentary blocs to be represented in parliament and in the parties of order based on the profile of the different bourgeois factions. These forces of order consolidated important political-ideological action before 1964 that was developed by ideological apparatuses, such as IPES, IBAD, ESG, reactionary segments of the Catholic Church and corporate media, in line with the military leadership in the logistics of the intervention. The bourgeois pact, with the full support of US imperialism, was operated and directed by the military as a state bureaucracy, acting above the classes as an institution in a Bonapartist manner to preserve bourgeois interests. These military personnel were guided by the ideology of national security, whose central focus was the extermination of the internal enemy and subordination to imperialism. This state bureaucracy (military), intervening in a Bonapartist manner as an institution, became politically autonomous during the coup process to command and manage (from a technocratic profile) the capitalist state in its various governments from 1964 to 1985. From then on, they constructed a strong intervention in social dynamics to control and oversee social and political relations. Therefore, this political process of institutional rupture and the governments of exception that lasted 21 years were configured as a coup and a bourgeois-military dictatorship (PINHEIRO, 2024).
[ii] Explanatory category that I have used in my research, since 2009, to understand and qualify the revolutionary collective subject, endowed with a universal project, which acts based on the political representation of the working class to operate, as a strategic agent, the revolutionary process of conquering power.
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