Araguaia Guerrilla War

Araguaia guerrilla
Part of the Cold War and Brazilian coup d'état

Araguaia River banks
Date1966 – 1975 (Main phase: 1972 -1974)
LocationState of Goiás (Current State of Tocantins), Brazil
Result

Military Government victory.

  • Successful counter-insurgency operation.
  • Guerrillas failed to gain popular support.
  • Guerrilla forces exterminated.
Belligerents

Brazil Brazilian military government

 Communist Party of Brazil
Commanders and leaders
Brazil Pres. Emílio Garrastazu Médici
Brazil Pres. Ernesto Geisel
Brazil Gen. Orlando Geisel
Brazil Gen. Milton Tavares de Souza
Brazil Gen. Olavo Viana Moog
Brazil Gen. Hugo de Abreu
Brazil Gen. Antônio Bandeira		 João Amazonas
Maurício Grabois
Elza Monnerat
Ângelo Arroyo
Strength
10,000 - 12,000 (Parrot Operation) Army
100 - 300 Marines Corps		 80 - 150 guerrillas

The Araguaia guerrilla (Portuguese: Guerrilha do Araguaia) was an armed movement in Brazil against its military dictatorship, active between 1967-1974 in the Araguaia river basin. It was founded by militants of the Communist Party of Brazil (PC do B), the then Maoist counterpart to the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), which aimed at establishing a rural stronghold from whence to wage a War of National Liberation against the Brazilian military government, which had been in power since the 1964 coup d'état.[1] Its projected activities were based on the successful experiences led by the 26th of July Movement in the Cuban Revolution, and by the Communist Party of China during the Chinese Civil War.

Outset

The idea of setting up a focus of rural guerrilla that could function as a pole of attraction for all elements dissatisfied with the Brazilian military dictatorship in order to compensate for the smashing of urban opposition movements had been long nurtured among the Brazilian Left since 1964, but it was left to the PC do B to be the only political organization that actually tried to build up such a focus.[2]

The guerrilla was countered by the Brazilian Army from 1972, when several of its members had already been established in the region for at least six years. The stage of combat operations between the guerrillas and the Army took place in the border of the states of Goiás, Pará and Maranhão. The movement's name came from the fact that its fighters were established on the banks of the Araguaia river, near the towns of São Geraldo, Pará and Xambioá, in northern Goiás (currently located in northern Tocantins, at a region popularly known as Bico do Papagaio (Parrot's Beak).[3] The region was chosen because it consisted of a hotspot of tension between peasants and developers (miners and public works contractors) attracted by the investment opportunities offered by the recent discovery of the nearby Carajás iron ore mine.[4] The guerrillas hoped to gain support of such tensions by siding with the peasants.

It is estimated that the movementwas composed of about 80 guerrillas. Of these, fewer than twenty survived - among them José Genoino, later president of the Workers' Party, who was arrested by the Army in 1972 during the first stage of military operations. The vast majority of combatants, primarily composed of former college students and self-employed workers, was killed in battle in the jungle or executed after arrest and torture during the final stages of military operations in 1973 and 1974.[1][3] However, none of the individuals was acknowledged as dead, remaining in the status of persons who had disappeared for political reasons.[1] Currently 60 of the combatants are still considered desaparecidos.[1][5]

Summary of Military Operations

The military intervention by the then military dictatorship to eliminate the guerrillas focus in the region, "the Araguaia guerrilla" can be divided into 4 phases:[6]

Documents were burned, the camps dismantled and the enemies corpses taken out of their graves (many of them shallow), and burned. In the following years, surfaced records of successive masking operations in the region. Of the Brazilian military dictatorship, Ernesto Geisel was the only dictator to officially talk about it, in a message to Congress on March 15, 1975, which said that there were attempts to organize "guerrilla bases on unprotected and far inland territories", and that they had been all "completely defeated".

Aftermath

When democracy was being restored, in 1982, family members of 22 of the disappeared persons brought proceedings in the Federal Court of Rio de Janeiro, asking for the whereabouts of the disappeared persons to be established and their remains located so that they could be given a decent burial and their death certificates could be registered.[1] At first, the national courts processed the case in the usual way, requesting documents from Executive Branch officials, and summonsing witnesses.[1] However, on March 27, 1989, after the judge responsible for the case was replaced, the Araguaia guerrilla case was dismissed without ruling on the merits, on the grounds that it was legally and physically impossible to comply with the request.[1] Similarly, the judge considered that what the plaintiffs were requesting was covered by the Amnesty law and did not require a judicial action.[1]

The plaintiffs appealed the decision to dismiss the case and, on August 17, 1993, obtained a ruling from the Federal Court of Appeals, which reversed the decision of the lower court, and returned the case to the same judge for finding of fact and a ruling on the merits.[1] On March 24, 1994, the Federal Government filed requests for clarification against the Federal Court's ruling.[1] The appeal was not heard by the Court, based on a unanimous decision of the Court of Appeals itself on March 12, 1996.[1] The Government lodged a special appeal against this decision, which was also ruled inadmissible by the Court of Appeals.[1]

On March 6, 2001, the plaintiffs appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which decided to declare the Araguaia guerrilla case admissible with regard to alleged violations of the American Declaration and the American Convention.[1] On May 20–21, 2010, the case was heard at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.[14] On December 14, 2010, the Court ruled that Brazil has broken the American Convention on Human Rights by using its Amnesty law as a pretext for not punishing human rights violators of the military regime.[15]

On April 29, the Supreme Federal Court decided, by a score of 7-2, to uphold the 1979 Amnesty law, which prevents the trial of those accused of extrajudicial killings, torture and rape during the military regime.[16] According to University of São Paulo professor Fábio Konder Comparato, author of the Order of Attorneys of Brazil's plea against the Amnesty law in the Supreme Federal Court, the May 20 hearing at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights might cost Brazil its coveted seat at the United Nations Security Council.[14]

Bibliography

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 "Araguaia guerrilla movement case". Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, March 6, 2001.
  2. ↑ Marcelo Ridenti , O fantasma da revolução brasileira, São Paulo: UNESP, 1993, page 232
  3. 1 2 (Portuguese) MORAIS, Tais and SILVA, Eumano. Operação Araguaia: os arquivos secretos da guerrilha. São Paulo: Geração Editorial, 2005. 656p. ISBN 85-7509-119-0.
  4. ↑ Thomas E. Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-85. Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0- 19-503898-3 , page 123
  5. ↑ (Portuguese) Dossiê dos Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos a partir de 1964
  6. ↑ Gaspari, 2002. Pages 415, 417, 422, 433, 436 and 445.
  7. ↑ Skidmore, Politics of Military Rule, 123
  8. ↑ Hugo Studart, A lei da selva: estratégias, imaginário e discurso dos militares sobre a guerrilha do Araguaia . São Paulo: Geração Editorial, 2006, ISBN 85-7509-139-5 , page 140
  9. ↑ "Relatório aponta uso de napalm pelo Exército contra Guerrilha do Araguaia". G1 newssite, . Retrieved October 11 2014
  10. ↑ Skidmore, 123
  11. ↑ Catholic Church. Archdiocese of São Paulo , Torture in Brazil: A Shocking Report on the Pervasive Use of Torture by Brazilian Military Governments, 1964-1979, Secretly Prepared by the Archiodese of São Paulo. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998, ISBN 0-292-70484-4 , page 90
  12. ↑ Suzeley Kalil Mathias; Fabiana de Oliveira Andrade, "O Serviço de Informações e a cultura do segredo".Varia Historia, V.28, no. 48, December 2012. Available at . Retrieved September 17, 2014
  13. ↑ Pedro Correa Cabral, Captain, Ret., quoted by Renata Furtado de Barros & Paula Maria Tecles Lara, eds., JUSTIÇA E DEMOCRACIA: as novas perspectivas da hermenêutica constitucional.. Raleigh, NC: Lulu Publishing, ISBN 978-1-300-49658-8 , Volume II, pages 68/69
  14. 1 2 (Portuguese) Agência Brasil. "Autor da contestação à Anistia afirma que decisão do STF acaba com chance brasileira na ONU". Zero Hora, April 80, 2010.
  15. ↑
  16. ↑ (English) "Brazil Court upholds law that protects torturers". Amnesty International, April 30, 2010.

External links

See also

References

    This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, August 15, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.