Guerrillas from Araguaia
The Guerrillas of Araguaia were a Brazilian underground communist movement that operated from 1967 to 1974 in the region of the Rio Araguaia where the states of Goiás , Pará and Maranhão share borders. It was largely crushed on December 25, 1973 by units of the Brazilian Armed Forces ( Forças Armadas do Brasil ), which the guerrillas officially referred to as Forças Guerrilheiras do Araguaia ( Foguera ). Most of the 65 or so guerrillas fell in combat or disappeared. The bodies were never found. In March 2012, one of the officers involved was charged with kidnapping.
Concept and activities
Military political concept
The guerrilla emerged in 1967 from members of the Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCdoB), a spin-off from the Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB). The guerrilla was de facto the party's military wing and was also under its leadership. In contrast to the PCB, which was based on the orthodox Marxism of the CPSU , the PCdoB pleaded for the concept of the long-lasting people's war of Mao Tse-tung . The focus theory Che Guevara was a voluntarist rejected, as is the concept of urban guerrilla warfare , as described by Carlos Marighella or the Comando de Libertação Nacional was represented (COLINA).
The guerrilla's strategic goal was to trigger a revolution , to establish rule based on the Chinese model and to overthrow the military government that had ruled since 1964 . The guerrilla or PCdoB therefore had no contacts to Cuba and, unlike other underground movements in Brazil, received no logistical support from there.
Structure and social composition of the guerrillas
The guerrilla was built up from 1967 in the planned operational area conspiratorially ; all members therefore had cover names to make it difficult for the police and the military to identify them.
The most important leaders were João Amazonas ( Cid or Tio Cid , 1912-2002), André Grabois ( Zé Carlos , 1946-1973), João Carlos Haas Sobrinho ( Dr. Jaco , 1941-1972) and the former boxer and engineer Osvaldo Orlando da Costa ( Osvaldão , 1938-1974). The military leadership of the guerrillas was the responsibility of the so-called Military Commission ( Comissão Militar = CM). Although a minority, some women also took part in the movement, such as Áurea Elisa Pereira ( Elisa , 1950–1974), Helenira Resende de Sousa Nazareth ( Preta or Fátima , 1944–1972) and Walquíria Afonso Costa ( Walk , 1945–1974 ).
The members of the guerrilla came almost exclusively from the urban petty bourgeoisie and middle class and were therefore referred to by the inhabitants of the region as Paulistas after the metropolis of São Paulo . Between 1967/68 and 1971 they founded small shops or bars in the region or worked as doctors , fishermen , planters and transporters . These activities were intended to establish contact with the local population and gain their trust so that they could later be recruited for the movement. The party leadership had calculated a two-year preparation period that seemed necessary to lay the foundations for a rural guerrilla.
In 1971/72 the movement comprised a good 60 women and men from all regions of Brazil. The guerrilla operated in three destacamentos (port .: commandos, departments). Both weapons and equipment and training were severely lacking in comparison with armed forces; the guerrillas were in no way prepared for a long mission in the jungle .
The area of operation and its population
The operational area consisted largely of jungle and was bordered in the north by the town of Marabá and in the south by the villages of São Geraldo do Araguia and Xambioá and cut by the Rio Araguaia and the Transamazônica .
The region was hardly populated at the time. The residents worked as small farmers , lumberjacks , gem collectors ( Garimpeiro ), fishermen and hunters and were mostly illiterate . The guerrillas did not succeed in recruiting personnel from the residents; only a good two dozen sympathizers were willing to support them logistically or to take part in the guerrilla itself.
The operations of the armed forces
organization
Neither the activities of the guerrillas nor the police and the armed forces were made public at the time, as the military dictatorship did not want to generate any sympathy for the guerrillas and controlled the print media through press censorship . Until about 2000 the military files were either lost or destroyed, until it became clear that a considerable part of the military correspondence had been preserved.
When the security authorities became aware of the existence of the guerrilla in 1971, the armed forces set up an operation zone that covered a good 7,000 square kilometers . The military leadership was temporarily incumbent on General Olavo Viana Moog ; one of the most important task leaders was the future general Hugo de Abreu . The fight against the guerrillas began in 1972 and was completed after three major operations in January 1975. The FAB used the French counterinsurgency tactics of the Revolutionary War , which had been developed during the Algerian War .
The key figures in the fight against the guerrillas was the Centro de Informações do Exército (CIE = Information Center of the Army ), a news service of the army , which with undercover agents worked in the theater of operations and perform the following tasks was to track down hiding the guerrillas and residents of the region as To attract informers and guides. The naval intelligence service Centro de Informações da Marinha was also involved .
For direct combat guerrilla both regional police units were used as well as special forces of the army and navy, the Batalhão de Infanteria de Selva ( Jungle - Infantry - Battalion ), which Forças Especiais da Brigada de Pára-quedistas ( special forces paratrooper - Brigade ) and units of the marine infantry ( Fuzileiros da Forca de Fuzileiros da Esquadra = protecting the rifle forces of the fleet ). In addition, these units were supported by the Air Force ( Força Aérea Brasileira ), which also used helicopters .
The smashing of the guerrillas
In September 1972, the armed forces began to take targeted action against the guerrillas. Eight guerrillas were killed this month alone. In the second half of the month, the movement succeeded in raiding a post of the Pará military police on the Transamazonica, from which they stole some rifles, ammunition and clothing. It was the guerrilla's first, if not only, military success.
A year later, on October 7, 1973, the armed forces began Operation Marajoara after extensive intelligence preparation . On the basis of its research, the CIE had gathered very precise information on the strength and composition of the guerrillas and estimated the number of guerrillas at a good 65. Less than 300 soldiers were deployed against them, 30 of which were CIE agents alone. The Pará and Goiás military police supported the operation with roadblocks and guards.
At this point the guerrillas were already materially weakened; a number of its members no longer even owned shoes, and there were hardly any medicines or food left . Within a few days of the start of the operation, the CIE agents had identified and "neutralized" the guerrilla supporters; H. arrested or forced to cooperate with the armed forces as an informant . Some of their houses were burned down.
Christmas 1973 saw the last skirmishes with the 30 or so surviving guerrillas. After that, the guerrillas ceased to exist as an organization. Individual refugees, like other relatives before, were later caught, tortured and executed without trial. For reasons of secrecy, the relatives of the murdered guerrillas were not informed about the location of the graves; they are still considered Desaparecidos today .
Legal processing
Due to the amnesty laws that were passed in Brazil after the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, there has been no legal possibility to punish the executions until now. On March 6, 2001, however, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights declared the cases to be negotiable. After years of legal tug of war , the first was in March 2012 in Brazil criminal proceedings against a former officer of the armed forces initiated the then captain ( capitão ) Sebastião Curió , who at that time under the legend Dr. Luchini operated as an intelligence agent against the guerrillas.
Movie
- Araguaya - A Conspiração do Silêncio (BRA 2004, directed by Ronaldo Duque )
literature
- Pedro Correa Cabral: Xambioá. Guerrilha no Araguia , Rio de Janeiro (Record) 1993.
- Romualdo Pessoa Campos Filho: Guerrilha do Araguaia. A esquerda en armas , Goiânia (Ed. UFG) 1997. ISBN 85-7274-079-1
- Luiz Maklouf Carvalho: O coronel rompe o silêncio , Rio de Janeiro (Objetiva) 2004. ISBN 85-7302-606-5
- Taís Morais / Eumanio Silva: Operação Araguaia. Os arquivos secretos da guerrilha , São Paulo (Geração Editorial) 2005. ISBN 85-7509-119-0
- Denise Rollemberg: O apoio de Cuba à luta armada no Brasil. O treinamento guerrilheiro , Rio de Janeiro (MAUD) 2001. ISBN 85-7478-032-4
- Indictment against a soldier in Brazil , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 15, 2012, p. 6.