Communist Party of Brazil

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Partido Comunista do Brasil




President	Renato Rabelo

Founded	February 18, 1962
Headquarters	Alameda Sarutaiá nº 185 Jardim Paulista São Paulo

Political Ideology	Marxism-Leninism
International Affiliation	Sao Paulo Forum
Colours	red
TSE Identification Number	65

Website	www.pcdob.org.br

See also	Politics of Brazil Political parties Elections

The Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Comunista do Brasil), better known by its abbreviation PCdoB, is a political party in Brazil. It takes part in the current national government of Lula da Silva.

PCdoB originated as a spliter group from the Brazilian Communist Party (Partido Comunista Brasileiro - PCB), which, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, assumed a revisionist ideological line. Nearly one hundred of its members quit PCB and, on February 18, 1962, PCdoB's heavily Maoist-influenced manifesto was approved, becoming the first non-government Communist Party to openly oppose Khrushchev. Later that day, it was decided that the party would issue its own newspaper, A Classe Operária (The Working Class).

On July 27, 1963, in an open letter to Khrushchev, criticizing the post-20th Congress Soviet Communist Party, PCdoB officially adopted its anti-revisionist agenda.

On March 31, 1964, as Brazilian President João Goulart was overthrown by the military in a US-backed coup d'état which started a twenty-year-long military dictatorship, the party advocated the country's return to democracy. A few months later, when the decree issued by the government dissolved all political parties, suppressed most civilian rights and installed the censorship against all the media, PCdoB became one of the main underground resistance movements. The small party had grown, thanks to its presence on university campuses and other leftist circles. Meanwhile, members and leaders of anti-government groups were regularly shot by the military.

In 1972, the Army, Air Force and the Police raided the city of Marabá, in southern Pará, suspect of hosting some Communist leaders. PCdoB was among the resistance movements which formed the Araguaia Guerrilla, named after the nearby river. The government prohibited the media to publish anything on the guerrilla movement, which was defeated only in 1975.

On August 28, 1979, the military government, which was beginning the democratization process, announced the amnesty of the main political prisoners, including the original leaders of the PCdoB. On that same year, the party announced the issuing of its newspaper Tribuna Operária (The Working Class Tribune).

In early 1984, the leftist leadership organized the Diretas Já campaign. In only three months, as many as eight million Brazilians protested against the government on the streets, demanding presidential elections. This was not approved by the Senate, however. Even so, the military regime began to be dissolved. Later that year, PCdoB created the Union of the Socialist Youth (União da Juventude Socialista).

On May 23, 1985, only eight months after the Diretas Já, Tancredo Neves was elected president by the Senate, marking the end of the Brazilian military dictatorship. The PCdoB and the other leftist parties are re-legalized by the government. The party later elected five deputies for the Constitutional Assembly, which later approved the 1988 Constitution.

In 1989, the first presidential elections in twenty-nine years took place. PT's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in a coalition with the PCdoB, obtained 47% of the votes. This PT-PCdoB alliance would be repeated in the 1994, 1998 and 2002 elections.

In February 1992, the party's 8th Congress took place with the motto O Socialismo Vive! (Socialism Lives!). While many other Communist Parties around the world softened their agendas after the fall of the Soviet Union, sometimes even changing their names, PCdoB gained prestige for not rescinding its ideals. In September of the same year, it was the first party to ask for the impeachment of president Fernando Collor de Mello, accused of corruption. Collor eventually resigned on December 29.

In the 1990s, PCdoB became one of the main opponents of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's neoliberal policies. At the legislative elections, 6 october 2002, the party won 12 out of 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and no seats in the Senate. It had a similar performance at the October 1, 2006 legislative elections, winning 13 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Today the party is one of the members of 'Lula' da Silva's PT-led coalition government, in power since January 2003.

The PCdoB was legally recognized as a political party by Brazilian Electoral Superior Court on June 23, 1988. The current President of the PCdoB is José Renato Rabelo. Nowadays it has nearly 70,000 members.

The PCdoB's youth wing, UJS (União da Juventude Socialista) is affiliated to the World Federation of Democratic Youth.