What was the Araguaia guerrilla? The Guerrilha do Araguaia went down in history as one of the greatest popular resistance movements. Led by the PC do B, it sought inspiration in the Chinese and Cuban socialist revolutions to fight against the military regime between 1966 and 1974.
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The conflict only became known to the population after its end, taking advantage of the censorship law, the government prevented any disclosure about what was happening in the locations on the banks of the Araguaia River.
The guerrillas were a hard blow for the regime, despite the fact that the movement was suffocated and its participants cruelly murdered, the uprising served to show that the army Brazilian was not invincible and that it was time for the government to start the redemocratization process, before a movement of even greater proportions managed to make the socialist revolution in the country.
Latin American nations are marked by inequalities and social conflicts, a secular heritage of exploitation and foreign domination and the extreme concentration of wealth held by elites national. Considered a region of eminently agrarian countries, Latin America is transforming and ceasing to be an environment dominated by local oligarchies and gradually becoming a continent industrialized. But this transition does not take place smoothly, as Latin American countries develop, the contradictions between classes intensify.
In Brazil, in a period when these changes became more accelerated and noticeable, more precisely between the 1950s and 1970s, popular discontent deepened in reaction to its social effects, calling into question both the exploitation practiced by the national dominant classes and the influence foreign.
Faced with this socially and politically explosive framework, left-wing political groups that sometimes organize themselves in parties find in the revolutionary path the solution for the liberation of the popular classes Latin American. In several countries, the communist parties appear as one of the spokespersons for these discontents and call on the dispossessed masses to fight. Cuba becomes the first country to stage a victorious revolution on the continent.
The United States, after the victory of the Cuban Revolution, began to finance coups d'état throughout Latin America. As a result, military and authoritarian governments emerge that use all kinds of arbitrariness to prevent a new revolution from happening. For the US, it is unacceptable that a new revolution takes place in its domains.
In Brazil, it was no different. The military regime that was installed in 1964 used all the sordid means to repress the action of groups willing to carry out the revolution. The people were increasingly massacred in the name of order and democracy dictated by the ruling classes and the interests of imperialist capital.
In the midst of this wave of injustices, several leftist parties and organizations, including the Partido Communist Party of Brazil – PC do B – started to elaborate and put into practice a plan of armed struggle against the regime military. For the leaders of the PC do B, the only way to carry out a revolution was to go to the countryside and seek in the people the necessary support for the struggle inspired by the experience of the Chinese revolution led by Mao Tse-Tung.
For the PC do B, Mao Tse-Tung was the greatest revolutionary leader of today. In line with this orientation, in 1966 the PC do B began to send militants to the region of Bico do Papagaio (confluence of the states of Goias, For It is Maranhao). It was the beginning of one of the biggest conflicts in Brazilian history, the Guerrilha do Araguaia.
The Guerrilha do Araguaia was the attempt of the PC do B to make a revolution with the support of the people. The Communist Party of Brazil's dream of revolution was interrupted in 1972, when the army discovered the movement and invaded the region.
The army's attacks were divided into three campaigns, and in the last one, at the end of 1973, the guerrillas were all exterminated. The Brazilian people were increasingly crushed by inflation, low wages and a lack of government assistance. Not to mention the total abandonment in which the rural population lived, which, in addition to not having any kind of government support, still suffered at the hands of large landowners, land grabbers and police corrupt. This large portion of Brazilian society was ignored by the authorities in our country and left to their own devices.
From that moment on, PC do B's work was focused on finding a favorable place to start the fight.
Party leaders roamed the country in search of the perfect location. This place should be difficult for the military to access and conducive to mass social work. The chosen location was the region known as Bico do Papagaio, the confluence of the states of Goiás, Pará and Maranhão. When they arrived in the region, the militants should not let the population discover their real intentions, they would pretend to be simple residents and then give start the assistance work and soon after, when they had gained sympathy and trust, they would start the work of indoctrination and awareness of the masses.
As soon as they arrived in the region, the residents nicknamed them “Paulistas”, it was not difficult to win the sympathy of the riverside people, living practically abandoned by the government, they were lacking in everything. The militants, while continuing the guerrilla strategy, helped this population in every possible way.
Among the guerrillas there were doctors, nurses, teachers most from the upper middle class, they started a series of social works with this suffering people tired of the misery and arbitrariness of the local authorities. In the movement's view, it would be easy to form a popular army to march towards urban centers and overthrow the military regime.
In 1972, the government sent troops to the Araguaia region, but the soldiers' inexperience in fighting in densely forested areas meant that the first two army expeditions failed. The third army campaign began in October 1973 and was characterized by terror deployed by the military.
The soldiers arrested men and women, beat anyone they considered a guerrilla collaborator, and destroyed houses and crops. This time, the army came well prepared with the support of troops specialized in fighting in the jungle, they also recruited rural workers to guide them inside the forest.
With the army's attack, the guerrillas who were organized into three detachments were forced to disperse to try to escape the enemy siege. But the fight was infinitely uneven, on one side were the PC do B guerrillas with few weapons and ammunition to fight against an army prepared for a real war, they even came equipped with helicopters to defeat about fifty guerrillas. The defeat of the Guerrilla Forces was inevitable, the militants who participated in this last campaign were all murdered.
The desire of the Communist Party of Brazil to make the Revolution was not fulfilled, the Guerrilha do Araguaia for a long time was hidden from society there was fear on the part of the military that it would serve as an example for the outbreak of another fight. But that was not what happened, no other organization was willing to start another revolutionary movement, even because the military government would not admit it.
Then came the political opening and the end of the military regime, but the situation of the people did not change much, mainly in the region where the Guerrilha do Araguaia took place. Workers continue to be exploited and small landowners threatened by land grabbers and large landowners.
The Guerrilla was an attempt to change this situation, but those who benefited from the backwardness of the country were stronger. The desire for revolution seems to have fallen by the wayside, those who still touch on the subject are seen as “radicals” and that possibility seems increasingly remote.
Lorena Castro Alves
Graduated in History and Pedagogy
