Opposition
The fall of João Goulart radicalized student groups. Unable to mobilize poor Brazilians, student groups adopted direct action tactics, much like the Red Army Faction in West Germany in the 1970s.
The first signs of resistance were seen in 1968 with the appearance of widespread student protests. In response to this upsurge, the government issued Institutional Act Number Five in December 1968, which suspended habeas corpus, increased the power of the executive by shutting down the other branches of government, and declared a nationwide state of siege. Protests were suppressed with violence. The anti-military movement descended into the political underground and eventually armed action.
By the end of the decade there were twenty organizations involved in the urban guerrilla movement. The old-left, particularly in the shape of the Brazilian Communist Party, was seen as irrelevant and outdated, as Marxist-Leninist, Maoist, Trotskyist, Castroist, and all the other shades of left-wing ideology competed for the loyalty of the young militants, especially in places like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Recruitment drives were carried out in schools and universities, initially with lectures in Marxist theory. The most determined were drawn deeper into activism, some making the decision to leave their families and go underground altogether.
In 1969 the Revolutionary Movement 8th October kidnapped Charles Burke Elbrick, the U.S. ambassador to Brazil. The rebels demanded the release of imprisoned dissidents in exchange for Ambassador Elbrick. The government responded by adopting more brutal measures of counter-insurgency, leading to the assassination of Carlos Marighela, a guerrilla leader, two months after Elbrick's kidnapping. This marked the beginning of the decline of armed opposition. In 1970, Nobuo Okuchi, Japanese consul general in Sāo Paulo, was kidnapped, while Curtis C. Cutter, U.S. consul in Porto Alegre, was wounded in the shoulder but escaped kidnapping. Also in 1970, Ehrenfried von Holleben, West German Ambassador, was kidnapped in Rio and one of his bodyguards was killed.
According to a government-sponsored truth and reconciliation commission in 2007, by the end of the 21 years of dictatorship there were 339 documented cases of government-sponsored political assassinations or disappearances. More were interrogated, tortured, and jailed.
Read more about this topic: Brazilian Military Government
Famous quotes containing the word opposition:
“Except for poverty, incompatibility, opposition of parents, absence of love on one side and of desire to marry on both, nothing stands in the way of our happy union.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“My opposition [to interviews] lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us, and whereto our passions transport us; but those which by long habits are rooted in a strong and ... powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)