LIhe following article appeared in the December 21, 1968, issue of the Belgian socialist weekly La Gauche. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The Western shapers of public opinion have been upset, or have pretended to e upset, over recent events in Brazil. A coup in Brazil! Marshal Costa e Silva dissolved the parliament and assumed full powers. He suspended the congress and of all) arrested former President worst Kubitschek as well as the editor of one of the papers which, although stoutly conservative, maintained a certain critical attitude toward the regime.
This is what has upset the Western press -- the disappearance of the traditional democratic opposition. As a result the papers are denouncing a dictatorship with which their governments intend to keep up the best relations. This is what is awkward!
They regret that the marshal had to to take off the mask of "natural goodheartedness" and so rudely contradict his "professions of faith in democracy." After all, the marshal is one of the good friends of the United States. He, too, is fighting subversion. And he, also, has had his share of difficulties with the students.
The time has passed for talk about coups. The army seized power long ago. On April 1, 1964, the reformist government of João Goulart (they all call themselves reformist!) was overthrown by officers trained by the Pentagon and supported and guided by the CIA and the State Department.
The liberalism of the Goulart government was considered mischievous and purely demagogic. The interested circles were convinced that only an alliance between a military government and the big capitalists could get the country out of the impasse in which it had landed -- that is, an economic crisis with rising prices and raging inflation.
The army intervened to defend the privileges of the Brazilian big bourgeoisie and landowners, and likewise the interests of the imperialists. Under guise of safeguarding democracy it established dictatorial control. It claimed, moreover, to be inspired by a revolutionary ideal, that is, "revolutionary" in quotes.
The theory voiced by the most militarist-minded sector of the officer caste was that of an "all-out war on subversion" with "science as the method of action, democracy as the form of political organization, and Christianity as a higher ethical model of social coexistence."
So, in April 1964 Marshal Castelo Branco became president of the republic. He kept only the trappings of democracy, and they were meager trappings.
There was no question of fundamental reforms. Agrarian reform would create too many problems. All the more so because the government had no desire to give the peasants a plot of land. Instead, they wanted to sell the national territory to American companies. The minister of justice himself recently declared that onefifth of Brazil had been sold to foreigners. In short, the officers had few grounds for boasting of their revolution, while the population had every reason to complain of dictatorship.
In 1965, this regime, which sought "moderate," experito present itself as enced some days of crisis as a result of the elections that were staged. On the basis of a direct vote, the opposition eleven. The "revwon five states out of olution," in the person of General Costa e Silva,
Castelo Branco's minister of war, reacted sharply.
As in 1964, the government resorted
It modified the to emergency measures.
constitution by a basic law which streamlined the appeal process, empowered military judges to try civilians, decided that the president would be elected indirectly by the congress, and permitted the president to declare a state of siege for 144 days. Finally, Basic Law No. 2 dissolved all existing political parties as of the date of enactment.
In addition, Castelo Branco passed the mantle to Costa e Silva by setting the date for the presidential elections and declaring himself ineligible. From then on the regime hardened its policies.
Of course , an opposition party co orastle, the Mie 21 an Deo Dratcráti-
Movement]. It opposed the government formation ARENA [Aliança Renovadora Nacional —- the Alliance for National Renewal]. And freedom of the press was tolerated a certain degree, but the army reserved the right to intervene whenever it pleased to restore order. And all it has done now is put a stop to the protests of some impertinent personalities who lacked sufficient respect for the dignity of their station or adequate reverence for the army.
In fact, nothing has changed in Brazil, except that even the most moderate liberals have finally joined the opposition, ending the Illusory ambiguity surrounding a regime dictatorial in nature from the beginning. As a writer put it in the paper O Pais: "The parliament said no! The judiciary said no!" (by freeing the student leaders arrested by the army in São Paulo last September). "The Church has said no!" (by refusing to compromise in the matter of the clerics arrested in Belo-Horizonte).
This opposition, however, spoke out rather late and it must be said that it let many opportunities go by to express its disapproval of the regime.
In 1964 the struggle of the Brazilian people began and today its path is more clearly delineated than ever. Already the real revolution is on the march, the revolution in which the workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals are united. And a part of the clergy has also joined in the battle.
The Brazilian Bishops
On July 23 at a meeting in Rio de Janeiro, where they criticized the dicta- Helder Camara, the archbishop of Recile, thirty-three bishops led by Mons.
torship, Helder Camara, the archbishop of Recife, decided to form a movement. Although the meeting was held under the aegis of nonviolence, the two documents adopted recognized the state of violence reigning in the country.
In one of the documents presented at their Rio de Janeiro meeting, the bishops declared among other things: "Just as in the time of Nazi Germany some Christians accepted the provisions of the regime without realizing that they were contrary to the profound demands of Christianity, so today not all Brazilians see that the doctrine of national security does not correspond to the spirit of the d'état, the Brazilian Communist party out on the national level for the spoke first time through a letter signed by the party's general secretary Luiz Carlos Prestes. This letter was a short document denouncing the climate of terror prevailing in the country and calling for the "defeat of the dictatorship."
without commenting further on the events which had occurred shortly before, this document announced vaguely that the party would have to modify its methods of action in view of the new national situation.
In 1966, Basic Law No. 3 abolished direct election of state governors and the mayors of capital cities. Although the Central Committee denounced this as another "crime" against democracy, it still did not believe all was lost for a peaceful road...In June 1966 a political resolution of the Central Committee drew a euphoric picture of the possibilities for "defeating the dictatorship and restoring democracy."
Here is what the resolution said (the text was reprinted by the Foreign
Section of the Central Committee): "Reflecting the interests of the national bourgeoisie and ever growing popular discontent, a movement of opposition to the dictatorship, emerging from the ruling classes themselves, has developed in the most recent period. In some states the deputies and senators of the MDB (the "official" opposition party instituted by the military government to "oppose" the government party ARENA) are presenting a program of struggle which corresponds to the demands of the democratic forces. Thus, the isolation of pro-imperialist the reactionary and group in power is increasing...Its social and political base is narrowing... We must struggle together with these organizations which unite forces opposed to the dictatorship."
Strictures baietbeen it to fe sestate total devotion to the security of the West. And the postulates of this doctrine are to be transformed into institutional and constitutional principles." "The the document source of this doctrine, stresses, "is the War College Group which holds supreme power."
"The image of Christian Western civilization thus presented will not stand careful comparison with the message of the gospels, because in it the fundamental rights of the human person are restricted and democracy here is only a word covering up the reality of military totalitarianism."
Attitude of the Brazilian CP
Three months after the 1964 coup
In other words, once "parliamentary life" had been reduced to a minimum, the CP concentrated its hopes on the last vestiges of bourgeois opposition which was "more than authorized" by the dictatorship itself -- the deputies and senators of the MDB!
A New Vanguard
The tendencies which underestinated working-class struggle (by obscuring it with vague slogans) have now beer bypassed by events. A regroupment is taking place around the forces which were able to understand the class nature of the revolutionary process in Brazil. Acção Popular [People's Action -- a
Castroite-type formation] has lost its majority in the UNEB [União Nacional dos Estudantes do Brasil -- National Student Union of Brazil] to the dissident CP
youth and the POC [Partido Operaria Communista -- Communist Workers party].
The POC is the product of a fusion between several CP dissident groups and the revolutionary Marxist organization POLOP [Politica Operaria -- Workers Politics]. The POC has proposed a front with the other organizations of the revolutionary left, the FER [Frente d'Esquerda Revolucionária -- Front of the Revolutionary Left].
Recently sections of the AP as well as the "red wing" of the pro-Chinese CP have moved close to the POC. Among the students, Wladimir Palmeira is aligned
Khalil Touame, the Arab student leader at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was released from an Israeli prison in mid-December after serving nine though his sentence is completed, he has months on a trumped-up charge.
been restricted by a military court to his native village of Rama.
Touame is a member of the Israeli Socialist Organization, which has both Arab and Jewish members. He was convicted by a military tribunal March 13, 1968, for allegedly harboring Ahmed Khalifa, a political leader of the Palestinian Arabs.
Khalifa, who is serving a two-year sentence for writing leaflets opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank area in Jordan, stayed in Touame's apartment for several weeks. Ihis was no secret at the time as both took part in many student meetings and other public activities.
A worldwide campaign was mounted on behalf of Khalil Iouame when he was put on trial. Figures such as Bertrand Russel1, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beau-
The two largest Palestinian resistance organizations, Al Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, have decided to coordinate their acaccording to a "well-informed tivities agence France-Presse reports in a January 4 dispatch from Beirut.
A conference of the main leaders of both groups is reportedly being held "somewhere in the Middle East." The purpose of the meeting is "to unify the actions of the two movements on the military level. The conference is also studywith this current in the Brazilian left.
The other pole is the Partido Comunista Brasileiro Revolucionário [Revolutionary Brazilian Communist party] and the Mariguella group. They are known as the "Current."
It is not worth the trouble to deal with the remnants of the reformist forces and the orthodox CP. This tendency has remained on the sidelines of all the real mass struggles. After the death sentence it received in 1964, reformism has continually lost ground to the young vanguard.
voir, and the German-Jewish poet Erich Fried demanded his release.
As Israeli citizens who oppose Zionism and imperialism, the Israeli Socialist Organization has been persecuted by the Zionist regime. Despite this, the ISO has reportedly experienced a considerable growth since the June 1967 aggression by the Zionists against the Arab states.
Three other activists of the ISO were arrested at the beginning of October for allegedly painting slogans on buildings in Jerusalem denouncing Zionist chauvinism. (This was said to have included the house of Foreign Minister Abba Eban.) When tried a week after their arrests, the three were given relatively light sentences. The prosecution appealed and recently won stiffer sentences.
Bober and Hoffman received suspended sentences of a year in prison and fines of 1,500 Israeli pounds [US$500] each. The third defendant, Cohen, was fined 750 pounds [US$250] and given five months in prison, suspended.
ing the political evolution of the Palestine question during recent weeks and working out the position of the Palestinians in regard to proposals which may be made by the Big Four for a peaceful settlement of the crisis."
The AF-P dispatch adds:
"The meeting of the two movements constitutes a sort of prelude to the Palestinian congress scheduled to be held in Cairo in the early part of January."