The PC do B also endorsed the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Cecil Johnson noted, “By mid-summer of 1967 the Maoists of Brazil had inaugurated a campaign to study Mao’s works and to exalt the Cultural Revolution. They, like pro-Chinese groups around the world, were enjoined to study Mao’s works to educate the party members in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism and to gain a better understanding of problems affecting the revolution in Brazil.”[187]
From its inception, the PC do B preached—and for a considerable period of time practiced—the theory of the violent road to power. In contrast to the position of the pro-Soviet party of Prestes, the Maoists strongly opposed the somewhat confused leftwing regime of President João Goulart (1961-1964), which was finally overthrown by the military.
In April 1970, João Amazonas recounted the attitude of the PC do B toward the Goulart regime. He wrote, “concerning the road to the Brazilian revolution, the Communists base themselves on Leninism. The use of revolutionary violence of the masses constitutes one of the fundamental aspects of the work and practical action of the great strategist and tactician of the proletariat. … Following these basic indications, the Communists in Brazil, in 1960 tenaciously opposed the theses presented and approved in the V Congress of the Party. It was exactly the defense of the revolutionary way, of armed struggle, which was the center of the debates then under way between the Marxist-Leninists and the revisionists of Prestes. During the government of Goulart, the policy of pacific development followed by the Prestes party and other currents grew and gained many sectors of the population. … But the PC do Brasil, based on the theory of Lenin and a realistic analysis of Brazilian political life, never ceased in unmasking that solution, demonstrating all its falsity. … it affirmed repeatedly that it was necessary to prepare armed action because the reactionary forces would not surrender without resistance and would end by counterattacking to defeat the popular forces. That was what in fact occurred with the military coup of April of 1964.”[188]
However, the Brazilian Maoists specifically rejected the Castro-Guevarite foco theory of armed revolution. In a document of May 1969, entitled “People’s War—The Path of Armed Struggle in Brazil,” the party claimed that supporters of the foco theory “minimize the role of an initial party structure” and consequently “oppose the leadership of the proletariat in the revolution.” It stated that those preaching the foco theory “are looking at revolution from a ‘purely military viewpoint.’”[189]
The Maoists during the Military Dictatorship
The Maoists apparently were somewhat slow in resorting to guerrilla warfare against the military regime that came to power in 1964. The PC do B was severely persecuted by that regime. It was reported that particularly during the administration of President Emílio Médici (1969—1974), at least one hundred members of the party were tortured and killed by the regime.[190]
In 1969, the Central Committee of the Partido Comunista do Brasil issued a statement “explaining that laying the groundwork for eventual ‘people’s war’ required a period of nonarmed mass struggle.”[191] In January of that year, the party’s underground paper, A Classe Operaria reported PC do B involvement in an armed resistance movement among peasants in Matelandia in the southern state of Parana.[192]
In 1971, the party was calling for “the workers, peasants, students, progressive intellectuals, and some sectors of the national bourgeoisie. … to join forces and enjoy all forms of struggle, legal and illegal, open and clandestine, in order to carry out the revolution.” At about the same time, the party “claimed that the communists were in the vanguard of the peasant struggles in the northeast.”[193]
However, the Partido Comunista do Brasil apparently did not seriously undertake guerrilla activity until 1972. A U.S. State Department source reported that in that year it had “engaged in limited guerrilla activities in the interior of the country” but that these had been “checked by the Brazilian Armed Forces.”[194]
The principal center of PC do B guerrilla activity was in the Araguaia region, on the edge of the Amazon area, where the states of Pará, Goiás and Mato Grosso join.[195] The “heroic armed resistance” there began in April 1972. Two years later, the party’s Central Committee sent a message to those fighting there, saying, “You are on the way to achieving a memorable exploit of very great significance to the destiny of Brazil. … It has been 2 years of unequal struggle, but a necessary and glorious one.”[196] By that time, at least half of the guerrillas had been killed, including Augusto Frutuoso, a presumed member of the Central Committee of the PC do B.[197]
Sometime after the guerrilla struggle in Araguaia had ended, João Amazonas gave his version of what happened there. He said “It was not the struggle of a subversive group isolated from the masses. It came up as a response to the brutal attack by the armed forces on the inhabitants of the Araguaia region, where a good number of communists persecuted in the cities took refuge. That armed resistance elicited the support of 90 percent of the population.”[198]
Fighting in the Araguaia are continued until at least January 1977.[199] Among those who lost their lives there was Mauricio Grabois, probably the most important of the original founders of the Partido Comunista do Brasil.[200]
The Maoists continued to suffer severe losses in the late 1970s. Just before Christmas 1976, forces of the Second Army in São Paulo raided a house where the Central Committee of the party was meeting. Three members of the committee were killed, including Pedro Pomar, another of the three principal founders of the Maoist party.[201]
As the military regime moved toward reestablishment of an elected civilian government, the Partido Comunista do Brasil took advantage of this situation, at the same time modifying its position on “the road to power.” The exiled and underground leaders of the party, in response to the general amnesty decreed by the government of President João Baptista Figueiredo, came back to Brazil or out of hiding.
Among those returning was João Amazonas, the only survivor of the three principal original leaders of the Communist Party of Brazil. Upon his return, he told the Rio de Janeiro newspaper Jornal do Brasil, “We Communists defend the principle of armed struggle and revolutionary violence as a scientific principle through which the oppressed can achieve their true liberation. Defending the principle of revolutionary violence does not mean, however, that the Communists are inciting the people to rise up in arms today. This would be disregarding reality.”
189
Nelly Stromquist, in
191
Rollie Poppino, in
192
194
197
Rollie Poppino, in
201