The worker of the Brazilian revolution

The transformation of historical figures into myths often simplifies complex figures and overestimates the importance of particular moments, relegating long-term achievements to the background. This is what happened with Carlos Marighella. The period of armed struggle against the military dictatorship, which built in the popular imagination the image of a man with a rifle in his hand participating in violent acts, lasted no more than three years. Marighella, who would have turned 100 on December 5, 2011, had a political activism of more than 30 years in the ranks of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and only acted clandestinely during periods of intensified repression and persecution of communists, both under dictatorships and during more democratic regimes.

The image that best characterizes Marighella's trajectory is that of a disciplined party worker, passionate about samba, poetry, and football, who participated in all stages of the political struggle's assembly line, performing various specific and repetitive functions for the implementation of the socialist revolution.

The mulatto from Bahia, as he was called by friends outside his home state, was born in Salvador. He inherited his socialist ideals and desire to transform society from his father, Augusto, an Italian mechanic, and his mother, Maria Rita, a Black woman, the daughter of an African woman who arrived in the country on a slave ship. A precocious child, he learned to read at age 4 and developed a love for books in his teens. But he wasn't confined to the home. He enjoyed playing soccer and dreamed of owning a pair of soccer cleats. He also participated in serenades in Itapuã with his friends. During Carnival, he would dress up as a woman and a gypsy in the Baixa dos Sapateiros neighborhood. He wrote poems and wrote essays in verse during high school.

His activism began early, in his early twenties. Marighella joined the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) in the early 1930s, after enrolling in the civil engineering course at the Polytechnic School of Bahia, where he became involved in student unrest. He was first arrested in 1932 for participating in a protest in Salvador against President Getúlio Vargas. The demonstration ended with the arrest of more than 500 students on the orders of Governor Juracy Magalhães, Vargas's appointed governor of the state.

Released a few months later, he gained prestige within the party and was given the task of organizing the PCB in Bahia. In early 1936, three leaders from the PCB's national secretariat visited Salvador to learn about the party's activities in the state. Months later, Marighella had a new challenge: to contribute to the organization of communists in Rio de Janeiro, then the country's capital.

Prison and torture

At 25, Marighella went to Rio de Janeiro to help reorganize the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) after the failure of the so-called Communist Uprising, a military revolt organized in 1935 by Luís Carlos Prestes' National Liberation Alliance (ANL) to seize power from Getúlio Vargas. The movement was defeated, and several communist leaders were arrested, including Prestes himself, the party's great leader, and the secretary-general, Antônio Maciel Bonfim, known as Miranda. It was amidst this adverse climate that Marighella arrived in Rio de Janeiro and was soon arrested for the second time, on May 1, 1936. He was imprisoned for a year and two months and subjected to 23 days of torture.

The tortures began with punches and kicks. Then came the beatings with batons and whips from head to toe. Next, his tormentors burned various parts of his body with cigarette embers. They stuck pins under his fingernails. They even tied his testicles with a rope and pulled. Marighella was released from prison in 1937 and resumed his activities in the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party), which was forced underground by Getúlio Vargas after the proclamation of the Estado Novo (New State) in November of that year. Under Vargas's dictatorship, Marighella was tasked with moving to São Paulo and smoothing over the differences between the state's leaders and the party's Central Committee.

In a short time he became the main reference among São Paulo communists, but his political activism was once again interrupted by an arrest – his third – in 1939. During the following six years, Marighella spent time in the prisons of Fernando de Noronha (PE) and Ilha Grande (RJ), which during the Estado Novo (New State) regime were transformed into "depositories" for political prisoners. Upon his release, he wrote one of his most famous poems, a sonnet called "Liberty".

Parliamentary

Marighella was released from prison in April 1945 and returned to Bahia. With the end of the Estado Novo (New State) in October, general elections were called and political prisoners were granted amnesty. Once again legalized, the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) fielded candidates throughout the country, and Marighella was elected federal deputy for Bahia with a large majority. At 34 years old, he returned to Rio de Janeiro to take his seat in Parliament alongside 14 other communist deputies. In the Constituent Assembly, he defended workers' struggles, the right to strike, the right to divorce, freedom of expression, the popular press, the separation of Church and State, and agrarian reform. He only kept 20% of his parliamentary salary, which he considered necessary for survival. The rest went to the party.

After years in prison, he had a romance with Elza Sento Sé, a woman from Bahia who had moved to Rio de Janeiro and worked for the energy company Light. From this relationship, Carlos Augusto Marighella was born in 1948. But the love of his life was Clara Charf, with whom he shared until death the joys and agonies of building a family and the instability of communist political activity. Despite the formal legalization of the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party), repression against communists continued under the government of President Eurico Gaspar Dutra (1946-1951), and the party's registration was again revoked in 1947. Subsequently, the mandates of the parliamentarians elected under the party's banner were annulled.

Once again operating illegally, the mulatto from Bahia would have to act discreetly to lead the party in São Paulo, the new task he received from the organization. Since 1943, while still imprisoned, he had been a member of the Central Committee of the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party). To train new militants, encourage strikes, and engage in struggles, he began investing in the São Paulo labor movement. The mobilization seems to have yielded results, as in 1953 a series of strikes broke out in São Paulo, including those of textile workers, printers, carpenters, and metalworkers, all of which were victorious.

Shortly afterwards, however, the PCB would enter a new crisis. In 1956, communists around the world were shocked by the release of the report in which the new leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced the crimes of Joseph Stalin.
The first meeting of the PCB Central Committee after the document's release was marked by harsh attacks between party leaders. Shaken by the revelations, Marighella went to the podium and wept. For days, the tears flowed. Despite the disappointment, he continued his activities in the party and became part of the organization's main decision-making body, the Secretariat of the Central Committee. Although they did not achieve the legalization of the party, under the government of Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-1961) the communists experienced a period of greater tranquility because they were not repressed. During this time, Marighella was able to spend more time with his family.

The turn

The period of greatest stability ended with the resignation of President Jânio Quadros in 1961, seven months after taking office. Faced with the impasse, the military began to act to prevent the inauguration of the vice-president, the labor leader João Goulart, and to persecute communists. The police went to Marighella's apartment in Rio, but he and his wife managed to escape.

These were years of intense political turmoil until 1964. The progressive government of João Goulart attempted structural reforms in the country. At the same time, the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) grew through the organization of unions and the carrying out of strikes. The party walked a tightrope, divided between supporting the government, over which it exerted influence, or intensifying pressure to demand change.

Marighella defended the second option. This intense political struggle, however, ended with the 1964 military coup. Once again, the communists went underground. On the very day the coup was consummated, April 1, 1964, Marighella and his wife narrowly escaped the police. In May, the mulatto from Bahia was arrested, but resisted as much as he could, shot in the chest, and confronted the armed police inside a movie theater. He obtained a habeas corpus, but soon after, a new arrest warrant was issued. In hiding, he wrote the text "Why I Resisted Arrest," which analyzes the political situation and the Brazilian reality and proposes armed struggle as a tactic for the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party).

From then on, he began to wage political struggle within the party to convince leaders and militants to opt for arms as a way to ignite popular insurrection, while Prestes' line was one of peaceful resistance. Over time, tensions increased within the organization. Marighella resigned from the Executive Committee, but continued as secretary-general in São Paulo, striving to lead the party into armed struggle. In São Paulo, for example, 90% of the party militants sided with Marighella at the state conference in April 1967, even with the presence of a delegation led by Prestes.

In Arms

The Central Committee reacted and began intervening in states not aligned with its position. After participating in a conference in Cuba without the consent of the party leadership, in September 1966 the mulatto from Bahia was expelled from the organization in which he had been active for over 30 years. There were no more constraints preventing him from putting into practice the political line he had defended for the party, and he then founded the National Liberation Action (ALN). The political organization had an armed wing formed by cells of militants who carried out bank robberies, armored car heists, and even a payroll train heist to raise funds for the struggle, in addition to kidnapping diplomatic authorities to exchange them for political prisoners.

The first actions were led by Marighella, who in December 1968 wrote and published the manifesto "Call to the Brazilian People," a document in which he presented the guerrillas' proposals for Brazil. Meanwhile, repression intensified. The first sign of the intensification of military violence was Institutional Act No. 5, which closed the National Congress in December 1968.

Then, there was an even greater escalation when the United States ambassador, Charles Elbrick, was kidnapped in Rio de Janeiro and exchanged for political prisoners in September 1969. The dictatorship had already identified Marighella's "fingerprints" in the actions of the armed struggle, and the military launched an obsessive hunt for the one they considered the regime's number one enemy.

The persecution ended on November 4, 1969, when the guerrilla fighter arranged a meeting with two Dominican friars who collaborated with the ALN. He did not know, however, that both had been arrested and tortured and were acting under police orders. Upon arriving at the agreed location, on Alameda Casa Branca, in São Paulo, the communist militant was assassinated with four shots, in an operation involving 29 police officers in six cars.

Marighella left behind a wife, a son, and a host of heirs in the fight against the dictatorship, with his example of ideological conviction, persistence in the struggle, and courage to act. He was a grassroots activist, party leader, political prisoner, federal deputy, mass agitator, guerrilla fighter, bank robber... In more than 30 years of political struggle, the leader who embodied the aspirations for freedom and justice, according to the words of literary critic Antonio Candido, went through all these roles and fulfilled every kind of task, which made him a true worker in the struggle for socialism who gave his life for the Brazilian people.

What did Marighella want with the armed struggle?

In December 1968, the guerrilla fighter released the manifesto "Call to the Brazilian People," in which he outlined the main principles defended by his organization, the National Liberation Action:

● End of privileges and censorship
● Elimination of corruption
● Freedom of creation and freedom of religion
● Release of political prisoners from the dictatorship
● Elimination of police repression agencies
● Expulsion of Americans from the country and confiscation of their property.
● State monopoly of finance, foreign trade, mineral resources, communications, and essential services.
● End of large landholdings and guarantee of property titles for farmers
● Confiscation of the illicit fortunes of major capitalists
● Job security for all workers and for women
● Reduced rents, protection for tenants, and guaranteed homeownership.
● Reform of the education system and expansion of scientific research
● To remove Brazil from its status as a satellite of American foreign policy.