"The blood of the youth is flowing": the political class and their children take on the military in 1968

Abstracts

No Brasil, o ano de 1968 é lembrado pelos confrontos violentos entre o movimento estudantil e o regime militar. O artigo sustenta que não é possível entender a crise de 1968 sem levar em conta um grupo ignorado pela maioria dos estudos - os políticos civis que eram ligados aos estudantes por laços de classe social e sangue. Cada vez mais decepcionados após 4 anos de regime militar autoritário que havia tirado várias das suas prerrogativas, muitos políticos se enfureceram ao ver a repressão violenta contra manifestantes estudantis, juntaram-se a passeatas e defenderam os estudantes em ações e palavras. Esse apoio a estudantes esquerdistas, que culminou nos discursos de Márcio Moreira Alves atacando as Forças Armadas, criaram divergências irreconciliáveis entre políticos e militares, levando à decretação do Ato Institucional nº 5, em dezembro.

movimento estudantil; políticos; Universidade de Brasília

DOSSIER: COUPS AND DICTATORSHIPS

"The blood of the youth is flowing": the political class and their children take on the military in 1968

Bryan Pitts

Duke University (Durham, North Carolina, USA). [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

1968 in Brazil has long been remembered for the violent showdown between the student movement and military regime. This article argues that we cannot understand the crisis of 1968 without taking into account a group that most studies have ignored – the civilian politicians who were bound to university students by ties of social class and blood. As they grew increasingly frustrated after four years of authoritarian military rule that had taken away many of their prerogatives, many politicians were infuriated as the regime violently repressed protesting students, and they joined marches and defended the students with their actions and words. This support for leftist students, culminating in Márcio Moreira Alves's speeches attacking the military, created irreconcilable differences between politicians and the military, leading in December to the decree of Institutional Act no. 5

Keywords: student movement; politicians; Universidade de Brasília

On the morning of Thursday, 29 August 1968, hundreds of police wielding truncheons and machine guns descended on the campus of the University of Brasília (UnB). Acting on the orders of the military and Justice Ministry and brandishing arrest warrants for five student activists, they kicked in classroom doors, smashed laboratory equipment, and marched hundreds of the children of Brazil's elites across campus, hands on their heads, to be held in a basketball court for processing. What happened next might surprise those who have de-emphasized the role of the so-called "political class" in the upsurge of protest that characterized 1968 in Brazil. Infuriated senators and deputies from both the party allied with the four-year-old military regime (Aliança Renovadora Nacional – Arena) and the opposition (Movimento Democrático Brasileiro – MDB) rushed from Congress to protest the invasion, sought to free students from police custody, and engaged in shouting matches and physical altercations with the police. The invasion of UnB dominated congressional debate into the next week, culminating when Guanabara's Márcio Moreira Alves called the Army a "valhacouto de torturadores", urged Brazilian women to launch a sex strike against the military and set into motion a chain of events that would end just over three months later in the decree of Ato Institucional No. 5 (AI-5), after the Chamber of Deputies refused to revoke his parliamentary immunity so the military could try him for his words.

The impassioned, sustained support that many politicians gave the student movement and the frequent reliance of students upon that support does not fit neatly into the narratives many scholars and former student activists have created about 1968. one former student leader, Franklin Martins, recalled years later that students abhorred politicians for their collaboration with or timid response to the military regime. In a preface to Antonio de Padua Gurgel's chronicle of the student movement in Brasília, he wrote, "o golpe de 64 havia aberto um fosso enorme entre os jovens e os políticos, sem exceção". Most scholars and former students activists have not gone that far; indeed, as we will see below, even the book whose preface Martins wrote acknowledges the many times politicians left Congress to join students in the streets. And authors like Artur José Poerner and Victoria langland, along with former student activists like Vladimir Palmeira, have mentioned, if only in passing, the ties of blood and social class that bound together students and the political and economic elite, along with the presence of opposition deputies at key student protests.

Following the intriguing but insufficiently explored references by authors like Gurgel, Palmeira, Poerner, and langland, this article argues that we cannot truly understand how an authoritarian civilian-military regime promising imminent liberalization turned into an unapologetic and even more repressive military dictatorship in December 1968 without taking seriously the behavior and words of the civilian political class, and specifically the support that many of its members lent the student movement. It maintains that in spite of real ideological and generational rifts between "liberal" politicians in suits and communist-inspired students who reveled in 1960s counterculture, they were bound together by ties of class and blood that made it impossible for many politicians to sit idly by while the regime cracked down on an ever more confrontational student movement. Politicians' emotional, even visceral, reactions to police repression of the student movement would lead directly to the showdown over Moreira Alves, which in turn resulted in the decree of AI-5.

Moreover, politicians' defense of the student movement, including that of many regime allies, was a key moment in their growing disillusionment with the military-dominated government. As Lucia Grinberg has shown, even the regime's civilian politician supporters frequently clashed with the military and resented their subjugation to a military-controlled executive (Grinberg, 2009). After largely supporting, or at least acquiescing to, an illegal coup, politicians had experienced a rude awakening, as they witnessed four years of cassações, four extra-legal institutional acts, and the authoritarian constitution of 1967. That constitution was supposed to definitively institutionalize the so-called "Revolution of 1964", eliminating the need for additional repressive measures, and president Artur da Costa e Silva had come to power promising a "humanização" of the regime. Yet now the regime was renewing its repression, and this time it was targeting not only working class unionists or rural laborers, but students who were in many cases politicians' own children, part of the privileged middle and upper classes. This was not what politicians had expected in 1964. Violent repression of students was a sign that the regime was out of control.

A note about the term "political class" is necessary here. The term had its origin in the work of the 19^th-century Italian political scientist Gaetano Mosca, who used it to refer to "the class that rules" in any society. elite theorists in U.S. and european sociology have argued at length about who comprises this "political class" (or "ruling class," "ruling elite," "political elite," or "power elite"), how they recruits new members, and how they exercise and maintain power.

The term has long been used in Brazil, including by scholars like Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1973, p.170) and Lêoncio Martins Rodrigues (2006). I maintain that the term does describe, however imperfectly, a "political oligarchy" whose "numbers are relatively small, its ranks relatively closed, and its power concentrated in a few hands" (Hagopian, 1996, p.17). This group has shared since the colonial period a "common identity as legitimate leaders of their society" by virtue of pedigree, wealth, education, or profession (Kirkendall, 2002, p.1). They are distinguished not by the control of the means of production, which they share with the rest of the upper class and bourgeoisie, but also by their desire and ability to run for public office, their political power, and their socialization, and they long worked to protect their collective interests, despite internal disputes. only since the establishment of the New Republic has the hegemony of this "political class" been seriously challenged, and it remains to be seen whether it will lose its coherence or incorporate the new social actors who have begun to participate in politics.

"NOSSOS FILHOS, NOSSOS IRMÃOS, NOSSOS PARENTES": POLITICIANS, STUDENTS, AND SOCIAL CLASS

From the perspective of many politicians, 1968 was to have seen the continued progression of the "Revolution" toward a more open political system. Although Ato Institucional no. 2 (AI-2) had resulted in more cassações and the abolition of the old political parties, the act had expired on 15 March 1967, when Costa e Silva took office. Politicians were settled in two new parties, and there was even talk of a civilian successor to Costa e Silva. The new Constitution, if it limited the powers of Congress, also theoretically gave the regime the power it needed to effect its transformation of the economy, politics, and society without institutional acts. Moreover, it stipulated that future cassações could only be carried out through a Supreme Court trial, with congressional approval. Perhaps the end of the military's intrusive "revolutionary" project was in sight, and perhaps civilian politicians would soon be able to rule Brazil alone again. Yet in 1968, the truce between the political class and the military was dealt a series of punishing blows as the military and police engaged in increasingly violent repression of student protestors.

On 28 March 1968, Rio de Janeiro secondary student edson luís, a work-ing-class migrant from Pará, was killed by military police during a protest over cafeteria food. Prior to the death of luís, student demonstrations had focused largely on demands related to education – more openings in universities, a more democratic system of university governance. other than the most politically active leftists, most cared little about overthrowing the military regime (langland, 2013, pp.107-108). But with the violent death of an innocent bystander who by all accounts was uninvolved in student politics, student protests exploded across Brazil. The largest demonstration occurred in June when, after clashes with police led to more repressive treatment, students marched in Rio de Janeiro in the famous "Passeata dos 100,000". As the size and political tone of the protests increased, so too did police repression, culminating in the arrest of hundreds of student activists at the clandestine congress of the banned União Nacional de estudantes (UNE) in october.

Politicians, even many of those who supported the regime, were overwhelmingly sympathetic to the students. For in a country where a university education was still the privilege of the few, the students protesting in the streets were "nossos filhos, nossos irmãos, nossos parentes". Deputy Breno da Silveira (MDB-GB) had a son in school at UnB who was detained during a demonstration against the killing of edson luís; his other son, who was in the Army, was part of the force sent to break up the demonstration. one of the organizers of the March of the 100,000, Vladimir Palmeira, was the son of senator Rui Palmeira (Arena-AL); when Vladimir had gotten married in 1967, the wives of some of Arena's foremost politicians attended the wedding of a leftist student activist.

Mário Piva (MDB-BA) put it more pointedly: "Aqueles que hoje tentam defender os responsáveis [pela morte de edson luís] ou se omitem diante da gravidade do problema, ou não tiveram juventude, ou não têm filhos, como eu tenho, estudando na universidade".

Politicians saw younger, idealistic versions of themselves in university students, who one deputy called "a vanguarda da consciência do povo desta Nação". It was natural that the deputies, over 80% of whom had themselves attended university, would identify with students; in them they saw "futuros líderes – da política, da economia e das finanças", "elite nova de um país ignorante".

Repression of students aroused such indignation because deputies could identify with them in highly personal ways. Idealistic by nature, students were "generosos, impulsivos, nobres e patrióticos", and their elders owed them "um pouco de compreensão". They were the "parcela ... mais esclarecida da população brasileira ... que possuem um preparo cultural e humanístico muito superior ao da média".

The reality was that the vast majority of Brazilian university students had little in common, at least on the surface, with the politicians whose families had walked the halls of power, first in Rio de Janeiro and later in Brasília, since the establishment of the Republic in 1889, and in several cases for longer still. As Brazil industrialized in the 1950s and a growing middle class demanded access to higher education, the populist governments of Getúlio Vargas and Juscelino Kubitschek had expanded the university system, and in the 1960s the military regime accelerated this trend. University enrollments grew from 27,253 in 1945, to 93,202 in 1960, to 278,295 in 1968 (Martins Filho, 1987, p.36; langland, 2013, p.72). Most of these students came not from the political elite, but from the growing and often immigrant-descended middle classes in the urbanizing and industrializing Southeast and South.

Yet none of this mattered to politicians who nostalgically remembered their own student activism during the days before the expansion of the university system, when a university education had only been available to the upper class. Whatever the actual class composition of the student movement of 1968, politicians, whose own children were often university students, imagined them as being people like themselves, and thus deserving of deferential treatment from their social "inferiors". And after all, however much the university system had grown, university students still made up only 0.2 percent of the Brazilian population (Poerner, 1995, p.43). even if they had come from the new middle classes, as the coming generation of educated, trained professionals, they numbered among the privileged few in a country with drastic inequalities of class, race, and region.

In the wake of each new confrontation between students and police, senators and deputies denounced the violence, nearly invariably blaming the police and, occasionally, the military itself. Márcio Moreira Alves (MDB-GB) was perhaps the most forceful deputy after the death of edson luís. "o que este regime militar fez no Brasil foi transformar cada farda em objeto da execração do povo ... [o Governo] transformou [as Forças Armadas] em valhacouto de bandidos". Antônio Cunha Bueno (Arena-SP), who during his studies at the Faculdade de Direito de São Paulo in the 1930s had been active in student politics, offered his "veemente protesto" às violências policiais contra os estudantes, que, "se não forem coibidas, fatalmente criarão o clima para a implantação de uma ditadura". The protests came most frequently from younger members of the MDB, but they were joined by several arenistas who were horrified by the attacks on students. other arenistas, while deploring police violence and defending the students, argued that nefarious, presumably communist, subversives were exploiting "o entusiasmo, a boa fé e a exaltação natural dos estudantes" in order to advance their own "objetivos criminosos e inconfessáveis". For paulista Nazir Miguel, when student protests included the burning of American flags or throwing rocks at the American embassy, "Isso ... é infiltração comunista. e lugar de comunista é na cadeia, porque é subversivo, e o estudante deve estar na escola estudando, e não fazendo arruaças". Still, surprisingly few arenistas defended the police or attempted to shift the debate to violence committed by students against police or property.

Due to their sympathies for the student movement, many deputies, particularly from the opposition, left the halls of Congress and joined students in the streets. Such activities were controversial; Arena vice-leader Haroldo leon Peres of Paraná provoked a shouting match in the Câmara when he implied that MDB deputies were inciting students and were thus responsible for the ensuing violence.

At the same time, there were limits to politicians' involvement. Covas insisted that his respect for the autonomy of the student movement would not permit him to interfere in its internal functioning; his role was limited to dialogue and mediation.

Students heaped even more scorn upon politicians who supported the regime; even if they stood up to the military, "era porque não lhes restava outra alternativa; simplesmente haviam sido lançados ao mar pelos donos do poder" (Martins, 2002, pp.19-20). In São Paulo, the anger of students was vividly illustrated on May Day, when Abreu Sodré attempted to speak to 10,000 workers and students but was drowned out with cries of "Assassino!" and "Interventor!" Soon the jeers were accompanied by eggs, wood, and rocks, and after he was hit in the head by a rock (or in his account, a nail-studded potato), the governor retreated to the safety of the Catedral da Sé. Students and workers took over the stage and unfurled a banner with an image of Ché Guevara to thunderous applause. Although Abreu Sodré blamed communist infiltrators pretending to be students, the event served as a striking demonstration of the disgust student and labor activists felt for regime-allied politicians.

"COMO RUSSOS ENTRANDO EM PRAGA": THE INVASION OF UnB

Although the largest marches took place in Rio de Janeiro and repression of student demonstrations occurred all over the country, federal legislators were most directly involved with events in Brasília. In part this was due to the new capital's isolation. The city had been rushed to completion in 1960 in time for President Juscelino Kubitschek to inaugurate it before leaving office, and in 1968 many government agencies and most foreign embassies had yet to relocate from Rio. Its isolation was enhanced by a poor road system and expensive long-distance telephone service. As one deputy lamented, "Vivemos numa capital, no mais das vezes pouco informada sobre a realidade dos acontecimentos, dada a distância dos grandes centros, onde as notícias realmente são feitas e os fatos acontecem".

This was particularly true for events at UnB, where politicians' children often studied. The University of Brasília was part of the original "plano piloto" for the city – a national university for the new capital of a modernizing nation. In the vision of its first rector, anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, UnB would challenge outmoded ideas about admissions, pedagogy, and university governance. The university was also unique at the time in that it united all its academic programs on a single campus – an arrangement that not only facilitated intellectual exchange but also heightened the opportunities for student mobilization (Gurgel, 2002, p.31). Yet only two years after he began to implement his ambitious plan at UnB, the military coup brought to power the enemies of Ribeiro, the one-time Goulart minister of education and culture, and the generals suspended his political rights ten days after the coup. Despite their enthusiasm for development and modernization, the military was suspicious of Ribeiro's reforms and the faculty they attracted. Academics who held progressive ideas about education may have also been politically progressive, even subversive. UnB's location at the center of political power and its unorthodox approach to education placed it at the center of the regime's gaze. The campus, barely six years old in 1968, was only three kilometers from Congress. Demonstrations nearly always occurred on weekdays, when it was easiest to assemble a crowd – and while Congress was in session. Thus while politicians also remained informed about events in their home states through telephone calls, newspapers, and weekend visits, their proximity to UnB meant that they were always aware of events there, often more than at universities in their home states.

UnB students knew that their deputy or senator fathers (or friends' fathers) enjoyed a measure of security due to their parliamentary immunity, which protected them from arrest. After all, Covas and other deputies had demanded an explanation from justice minister luiz da Gama e Silva and visited students in the hospital in April 1967 after police invaded the UnB library and beat students protesting the visit of the American ambassador. Starting with the death of edson luís in March, students at UnB again mobilized, and a group of opposition deputies attended their protest march. When the police began attacking the students, Covas and fellow MDB deputies attempted to intervene, but the police ignored their pleas, and in the melee Ceará deputy José Martins Rodrigues was hit on the head with a truncheon. A few days later, after students captured a plainclothes Serviço Nacional de Informações (SNI) agent and confiscated his revolver, at the urging of their professors they agreed to give it back – but only if they could hand it over to an opposition deputy. In response to the capture of the SNI agent, the police occupied UnB. Then, at a mass to commemorate the death of edson luis, the police arrived to arrest Honestino Guimarães; he fled into the sacristy, and while the bishop held the police at bay, other students rushed to Congress, where the congressional leadership was in the midst of a closed-door meeting with other student leaders to negotiate the end of the military occupation. Covas and Arena vice-leader leon Peres – who had accused opposition deputies of inciting student violence – rushed to the church and saved Guimarães from arrest, and Guimarães and fellow student leaders left the church in official cars of the Chamber of Deputies. Another time, Covas reported that students took refuge in Congress after a demonstration; after twelve hours of negotiations with the authorities, politicians used their private cars to return the students to their homes. And at a march at the end of June, Covas and several other MDB deputies marched at the head of the students' procession. later, Covas hid Honestino Guimarães and five other students in his apartment with his wife and children for two days while the police searched for them.

On the morning of August 29, 1968 the longstanding tension between the regime and UnB erupted into open conflict. With arrest warrants for Guimarães and four other "subversives", officers from Dops and the federal police, backed up by 200 members of the military police, descended on the campus "como se fossem russos entrando em Praga", and arrested Guimarães. Students fought back, a patrol car was tipped over and set on fire, and police began a brutal sweep of the campus and its classrooms, kicking in doors, smashing lab equipment, and using tear gas, truncheons, rifles, and machine guns to round up students and herd them to a basketball court until they could decide which to arrest. one student was shot in the head, another in the knee, and others suffered broken bones.

Congress was in the midst of its morning session when the invasion began. In the Senate, Aurélio Vianna (MDB-PB) announced that he had just heard about a confrontation at UnB and would be leaving immediately with a group of senators to find out what was happening. Celestino Filho (MDB-Go) made a similar announcement in the Chamber. At the urging of Arena leader Ernani Sátiro and Chamber president José Bonifácio lafayette de Andrada (great-great nephew of the patriarch of Brazilian independence, José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva), a group of deputies rushed to their cars and departed for UnB, a short drive away down two of Brasília's broad, sweeping avenues. on their way out, they were joined by Covas, who had rushed to Congress upon hearing what was happening. All told, at least twenty deputies and three senators from both parties converged on the campus.

The university was in chaos. Deputies and senators saw a group of perhaps 300 students marched across the campus at machinegun-point, hands on their heads. The police refused to allow wounded students to leave for the hospital before receiving orders from above. The press took special note that female students and faculty had fainted under the stress and that the police had entered ladies' restrooms where women were hiding. An Arena deputy gave an impromptu speech calling for reductions in funding for Dops and the SNI, and Martins Rodrigues told a federal police commander who had just arrived to take control of the apparently leaderless operation, "General, eu me orgulho de estar ao lado dos estudantes, e do povo, contra esses bandidos", to which the commander shot back, "Bandido é você!" even deputy Clovis Stenzel (Arena-RS), an UnB professor of social psychology and enthusiastic supporter of the regime, was overheard exclaiming, "eu, que sou identificado como homem da linha dura, acho tudo isso uma barbaridade".

Eventually the police allowed most students to leave, arresting only a few judged to be ringleaders of the resistance to Guimarães's arrest. They left behind bloodstains on the floors, spent shell casings and gas canisters, kicked-in doors, and shattered lab equipment. A group of politicians remained to take statements from professors. Politicians were in shock, and each one who lived in Brasília had a story to tell about that day. oswaldo Zanello (Arena-eS) feared for his daughter, who had received threats from Dops. Aniz Badra (Arena-SP) was stung when his son accused him of serving a Nazi government. Their children and friends' children had been beaten, arrested, and treated like common criminals. Deputies themselves had suffered violence and threats of arrest by police that respected neither congressional credentials nor social class. Few had any doubts as to the source of the invasion. It may have been Dops and the federal and military police who conducted the invasion, but the orders had obviously come from above. The most likely source appeared to be the hated and radically pro-regime justice minister Gama e Silva, to whose Justice Ministry the federal police was subordinate.

Reaction in Congress began during the morning session, as the delegation of senators and deputies was preparing to leave for UnB. After the announcement of the invasion, 16 of the remaining 33 deputies scheduled to speak discarded their prepared remarks and instead denounced the invasion. Nearly all questioned why hundreds of police armed with machine guns were necessary to arrest one student. Was it designed to provoke a violent student reaction, thus giving right-wing military elements an excuse to issue a new institutional act and implant of a total dictatorship? Two deputies compared it to the invasion of Czechoslovakia the week before, when Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring. others took the opportunity to inveigh against not so much the police as the ones who gave them orders (by implication, the military). "Clamamos contra aqueles que mandaram esses pobres policiais, incapazes, sem a menor cultura e capacidade, praticar essas violências contra os estudantes de Brasília", said Getúlio Moura (MDB-RJ). Doin Vieira (MDB-SC) expressed what were likely the feelings of many agonized deputies: "São os nossos filhos que estão lá, e nós nos vemos impotentes para agir".

Emotions were raw during the tumultuous afternoon session; it nearly had to be suspended five times amidst hostile confrontations between deputies. In the first speech, Wilson Martins (MDB-MG) lamented, "Nós, que temos filhos nas universidades, ao invés de nos encontrar satisfeitos, esperando amanhã termos em casa um médico, um engenheiro, um profissional liberal, tememos encontrar a cada momento o cadáver dos nossos filhos dentro de suas próprias salas de aula". Seven deputies, including two from Arena, gave speeches decrying the invasion, and eleven more, including three arenistas, offered sympathetic interruptions to a speech by Gastone Righi (MDB-SP) blasting the police. Agreeing with Righi, Moreira Alves inveighed, "Não temos um Governo; nós temos no poder um bando, uma gang, um grupo que usa contra a Nação os seus sicários". Another deputy argued that it was clear that the police had received their orders from the Army and that the arrest warrants were a pretext for a meticulous operation of psychological warfare designed to demoralize the university. Righi agreed, claiming that the factions of the military now in power had opposed Kubitschek's plan to place a university in the capital, due to their fear of the potential for unrest provided by 15,000 students. only Cantídio Sampaio (Arena-SP), an unyielding ally of the regime, supported the police, arguing that the students had attacked them first. When David lerer (MDB-SP) shouted that he was a liar, Sampaio punched him in the face, and other deputies had to step in to separate them.

Arena vice-leader leon Peres, staking out his party's official position, begged the deputies to suspend judgment until all the facts came to light. Peres admitted that abuses might have occurred, but such things were to be expected in such a tense atmosphere. Deputies, he reasoned, should know this, since they had all been involved in political rallies or protests that had gotten out of hand – what right did they have to cast stones at the police when they had all similarly repressed unruly mobs? Carlos de Brito Velho (Arena-RS) interrupted, to "palmas prolongadas", "eu lanço a pedra! ... Violências, e muitas, tenho cometido contra os fortes e poderosos; contra os fracos, jamais". Still, Peres emphasized, if the police committed excesses, the students had too; a police car had been set afire, and an officer had been shot in the arm (a claim disputed by MDB deputies). If the deputies wished to condemn violence, they should condemn it when all sides committed it, not just the police. When Ernani Sátiro, Arena's leader, jumped in to defend Peres "pelo equilíbrio e pela serenidade com que está falando", he was booed, not only by the MDB, but also by arenistas, and Unírio Machado (MDB-RS) exclaimed, "É frieza demais! Pasmem os céus!" When Bonifácio ordered the deputies to listen "com tranqüilidade", Machado cried, "Tranqüilidade? Pelo sangue da mocidade que está correndo. Quero ver a tranqüilidade de muitos quando os filhos deles estiverem nesta situação".

After Peres concluded his "desapaixonado" call for deputies to listen to both sides of the story, Mário Covas gave the position of the MDB in a speech that was sufficiently vehement that he requested it withheld from publication in the Diário da Câmara dos Deputados. He began with a meticulous blow-byblow account of events at UnB, emphasizing that unlike Peres's "versão policial", his own account contained the written eyewitness testimonies of deputies and professors who had seen it firsthand, not to mention his own. other deputies spoke up to add details as he went along. Moreira Alves reported that he had heard that the student shot in the head had been left lying atop a table for an hour before the police would allow him to be taken to the hospital. Mário Maia, a practicing physician, arrived from the hospital where he had just served as the anesthesiologist for the brain surgery that had saved the student's life. An Arena deputy received cries of approval and lengthy applause when he proposed that the Brazilian flag above Congress be lowered to half-mast in mourning of the day's events.

For Covas, the police were not the real problem; as victims "desta sociedade que não os educou, não lhes deu condições para reações humanas, dignas de um povo civilizado", they were not at fault for their boorish behavior. Rather, the fault lay with Brazil's government, which had still not held anyone response for the killing of edson luís five months before, a "ditadura" that used the "palavra mágica" of "subversivo" as a "desculpa para todas essas violências". He stated that if he thought that resigning from Congress could help the students' cause, he would do it in a heartbeat and promised that if he found himself in a similar situation again, he would offer himself for the police to beat instead. He said that although he had no children in college, after a day like this, he suspected that he may not want them to attend university when they grew up; "o desconhecimento e a falta de cultura" might be preferable to "um dia passar pelo vexame, pela humilhação, que hoje vi sofrerem milhares de jovens desta cidade".

The UnB invasion dominated the Chamber of Deputies the next day, Friday, and was still hotly discussed into the next week. Behind the scenes, some arenistas were reported to be infuriated. Although Cantídio Sampaio had punched David lerer for questioning his claim that the students had attacked first, his wife was rumored to be part of a group of women preparing a letter to Costa e Silva demanding that the government stop ordering their husbands to defend lies. And it was later claimed that Jorge Curi (MDB-PR) had proposed that Arena vice-leaders refrain from giving speeches defending the government. "Ninguém pode violentar a consciência para defender o indefensável. Chega de tolerância e de engolir sapos".

Hermano Alves (MDB-GB) complained that five days had passed with no investigation, no explanation, no identification of those responsible, and speculated that the deafening silence from the presidential palace was because those who had issued the orders "se acobertam sob a farda de oficiais do exército". Martins Rodrigues interjected that he had heard that the police who ordered the invasion were in fact Army officers who had been assigned to the police forces, noting sarcastically, "Todas as honras dessa operação militar excepcional foram reservadas, infelizmente, àqueles que fazem parte do que se chama, neste País, o glorioso exército de Caxias". All speakers agreed that the UnB invasion was not the fault of the Army as a whole, but of a small faction of "militarista" extremists who sensed subversives lurking in every shadow, saw in every Brazilian a potential enemy, and sought to turn the Armed Forces into a political party and distract them from their true mission. The end result of this alienation of the Armed Forces from the people, Jairo Brum (MDB-RS) warned, could be a "trágica sangreira", because, "Um dia os brasileiros se armarão e sairão à rua com armas na mão, para se defenderem da polícia que não nos defende, que só nos ameaça e fere nossos filhos". He called on Costa e Silva to find and punish this "polícia nazista ... dos sub-porões do Gestapo ... esses restos, esses rebotalhos de comunismo e de nazismo". Yet in the midst of such terrible events, Congress found itself powerless, and the congressional leadership was shirking its duty to demand an explanation from the president. Paulo Freire (Arena-MG), who had criticized students for their supposed acts of violence at the end of March, now exclaimed, "Sou arenista, mas não darei mais, em hipótese alguma, meu modesto voto para apoiar o Governo, enquanto não punir ele esses bandidos que querem instalar aqui no Brasil o sistema de Hitler".

Quando será estancada a hemorragia da Nação? Quando pararão as tropas de metralhar na rua o povo? Quando uma bota, arrebatando a porta de um laboratório, deixará de ser a proposta de reforma universitária do Governo? Quando teremos, como pais, ao ver os nossos filhos saírem para a escola, a certeza de que eles não voltarão carregados em uma padiola, esbordoados ou metralhados? Quando poderemos ter confiança naqueles que devem executar e cumprir as leis? Quando não será a polícia uma banda de facínoras? Quando não será o exército um valhacouto de torturadores? Quando se dará o Governo Federal, a um mínimo de cumprimento de dever, como é para o bem da República e para tranqüilidade do povo?

Mariano Beck (MDB-RS) broke in to read a letter signed by 175 "Mães e esposas de Brasília", at least 30 of whom were married to deputies and senators who vocally opposed the repression. It decried the "cenas de selvajaria e inominável violência que mais uma vez ensangüentaram a Universidade de Brasília ... o que nós Mães e esposas sempre desejamos é somente ver nossos filhos e maridos estudando e trabalhando em paz e segurança". While the mothers and wives did not all have children at UnB (the wife of Moreira Alves had neither a husband young enough to be in college nor children old enough), the discursive kinship that they (and by extension their husbands) invoked illustrates the extent to which the political class identified with university students.

Yet Moreira Alves was not finished. The next day, in a shorter speech during the Pequeno expediente, he proposed that in protest of the military's refusal to investigate its own role in the UnB invasion, parents keep their children away from independence festivities on 7 September and young women, "aquelas que dançam com os cadetes e freqüentam os jovens oficiais", withhold their affections. Tying his tongue-in-cheek proposal, which he later dubbed "operação lysistrata", to the manifesto from the "Mães e esposas de Brasília" the day before, Moreira Alves suggested that the boycott could serve as part of a wider movement of female resistance to the regime.

Although congressional rules allowed Arena deputies to interrupt the first speech to refute his arguments, and although one of the arenistas speaking after his second speech could have repudiated it, none did so. Their silence indicates that Jorge Curi, who had urged Arena vice-leaders to "go on strike" from defending the government, was not alone in his sentiments. After all, while there was honor to be found in loyalty to the government, defending the regime's repression of students stretched one's honor to the breaking point. even majority leader Ernani Sátiro had been tepid in his defense of the regime since August 29. He had remained conspicuously absent since the day after the UnB invasion, hoping to avoid explaining why he had not yet wrangled an explanation from Costa e Silva; he briefly entered during Moreira Alves's first speech, only to leave abruptly when he realized its subject. When he finally deigned to speak later that afternoon, he promised that he would offer an explanation for the "lamentable events at UnB" as soon as he had one – Costa e Silva had not appeared at their meeting on Friday, and today the president had canceled his Monday appointments in light of the tragic death of the son of his civilian chief of staff, Rondon Pacheco, in a car accident over the weekend.

The speeches were quickly distributed in the military barracks as an example of the contempt in which the political class held the military. Military critics of Moreira Alves seized on three passages – the reference to the Army as a "valhacouto de torturadores", the proposal to boycott Independence Day commemorations, and, above all, the suggestion that young women should "boycott" their cadet and officer companions. on 5 September, Army minister lyra Tavares sent a letter to Costa e Silva, requesting that he take measures to prevent more attacks like the ones Moreira Alves had made and repair the damage done to the military's honor. on 11 october, procurador geral Décio Miranda forwarded to the Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) a request from Gama e Silva that the court try Moreira Alves for his "atentado contra a ordem democrática". The STF then requested that the Câmara revoke Moreira Alves's parliamentary immunity so that he could be tried. As is well known, the Arena-controlled Câmara shockingly refused to revoke Moreira Alves's immunity on 12 December.

CONCLUSION

In 1968, the many indignities heaped upon politicians since 1964 culminated in the military's repression of the student movement. Politicians had watched, and in some cases collaborated, as colleagues were cassados, institutional acts decreed, laws re-written, and a new constitution imposed. Yet now the military had turned its sights on politicians' own children and their friends, the privileged elite who, despite their youthful rebellion and hostility to institutional politics today, would one day assume their rightful place as leaders of Brazil. These attacks on their children and their social class were more than many politicians in Congress could bear, and they showed their displeasure by protecting students from arrest, joining their marches, and making speech after speech blasting the regime for its ham-fisted handling of a situation that, in their eyes, should have been handled with tolerance and understanding. The repression of the student movement was the spark that sent the already uneasy relationship between politicians and the military up in flames.

Ideological and generational differences between politicians and students were not enough to overcome the ties of family and class that bound them together. Indeed, Franklin Martins, who recalled that student activists were so hostile to politicians, was the son of Guanabara MDB senator Mário Martins, a long-time udenista who had turned against the regime shortly after the coup. Politicians sympathized with students because they were their own children, because they remembered their own days as student activists with nostalgia, or because students belonged to the ranks of the same tiny elite that received a university education. Perhaps they were communists; perhaps they were "subversive". But they were politicians' children and potential future members of the political class. When students were arrested, beaten, and tortured by poor, unlettered soldiers and policemen, it was a fundamental violation of the way politicians believed that the world was supposed to work.

When students appealed for politicians' mediation or took refuge in Congress, it was because they recognized, perhaps subconsciously, that despite the ideological divide there was something that bound them to the political class. It is difficult to imagine Arena politicians or the more conciliatory members of the MDB inviting industrial unionists or rural workers to stay in Congress overnight to escape the police who had cracked down on their organizations since 1964. Despite their dreams of a proletarian revolution and their frequent middle class origins, student activists had more in common than they realized with politicians, and many of them, like Franklin Martins, São Paulo student leaders José Dirceu and José Serra, and most notably, student and armed militant Dilma Rousseff, would go on to have political careers of their own. In the end, although the students of 1968 would have scoffed at the idea, Covas was correct when he equated Honestino Guimarães's leadership of students with preparation for politics.

In 1968, however, the military had little patience for leftist students or their sympathetic politician parents. Though we have few sources relating reaction within the military, it is not difficult to imagine.

Scholars like Carlos Fico (2004, pp.29-60) have rightly pointed out that the coup of 1964 and the regime that followed was the production of civilian-military collaboration. Yet if the regime began as civilian-military, civilian politicians quickly came to see it as too military, while powerful factions within the military were convinced that it remained too civilian. More broadly, the conflict of 1968 was one between and among the various military factions and their civilian supporters over what the right civil-military balance was. This tension had been building from the early days after the coup, when Paulo egydio Martins bitterly recalled that he and fellow civilian supporters of the coup had felt pushed aside (Martins et al., 2007, p.188). In 1968, this tension came to a head, beginning with the conflict over repression of the student movement. When the dust settled in 1969, an authoritarian civilian-military regime had become a naked military dictatorship, and it would continue as such (with fluctuating levels of civilian participation) until the revocation of AI-5 and amnesty a decade later. our recognition of the civilian-military nature of the regime that followed the coup must also acknowledge the frequent conflicts between civilian collaborators and the military.

Moreover, politicians' defense of the student movement in 1968 has received little attention from scholars, and it has been largely forgotten in the memory of resistance to the dictatorship. It may well be that scholars – perhaps in some cases themselves former student activists or the children of activists – have assimilated the anti-politician discourse of the student movement of 1968. Yet as this article has shown, if there was an ideological gulf that separated students from most politicians, it was bridged by their common membership in the educated upper and middle classes that imagined themselves the "elite ... de um país ignorante". events in Brasília in 1968 should remind scholars to be attentive to the bonds of family, class and socialization that have long united Brazil's elites, regardless of party membership or ideology. It was these common bonds that led politicians to march in student protests; hide students in their cars, offices, and homes; engage in confrontations with the police; and launch verbal salvos from the daises of the Senate and Câmara. It was these common bonds that led Márcio Moreira Alves to blast the police and military in congressional speeches. And ultimately, these bonds between politicians and students would play an instrumental role in creating the crisis that culminated in AI-5.

REFERENCES

• ALVES, Márcio Moreira. 68 mudou o mundo Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1993.
• _______. A Grain of Mustard Seed: The Awakening of the Brazilian Revolution. Garden City (N.Y.): Anchor Books, 1973.
• _______. A velha classe Rio de Janeiro: Arte Nova, 1964.
• CARDOSO, Fernando Henrique. Associated-Dependent Development: Theoretical and Practical Implications. In: STEPAN, Alfred (Org.) Authoritarian Brazil: Origins, Policies, and Future. London: Yale University Press, 1973.
• CARNEIRO, Glauco. Cunha Bueno, história de um político: formação, trajetória, bandeiras, organização de um homem público de São Paulo 1918/1981. São Paulo: Pioneira, 1982.
• CARVALHO, Alessandra. Elites políticas durante o regime militar: um estudo sobre os parlamentares da ARENA e do MDB. Tese (Doutorado) Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro, 2008.
• CARVALHO, Vladimir (Dir.) Barra 68: sem perder a ternura. [Documentário]. Brasil: Europa Filmes, 2002.
• CHIRIO, Maud. A política nos quartéis: revoltas e protestos de oficiais na ditadura militar brasileira. Trad. André Telles. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2012.
• COVAS, Lila; MOLINA, Luci. Lila Covas: histórias e receitas de uma vida. São Paulo: Global, 2007.
• DAHL, Robert A. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961.
• DIRCEU, José; PALMEIRA, Dirceu. Abaixo a ditadura: o movimento de 68 contado por seus líderes. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 1998.
• FICO, Carlos. Versões e controvérsias sobre a ditadura militar. Revista Brasileira de História, São Paulo: Anpuh, v.47, p.29-60, 2004.
• GRINBERG, Lucia. Partido político ou bode expiatório: um estudo sobre a Aliança Renovadora Nacional, Arena (1965-1979). Rio de Janeiro: Mauad X, 2009.
• GURGEL, Antônio de Pádua. A rebelião dos estudantes: Brasília, 1968. Brasília: Ed. UnB, 2002.
• HAGOPIAN, Frances. Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil Cambridge (U.K.): Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• KIRKENDALL, Andrew J. Class Mates: Male Student Culture and the Making of a Political Class in Nineteenth-Century Brazil. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.
• LANGLAND, Victoria. Speaking of Flowers: Student Movements and the Making the Remembering of 1968 in Military Brazil. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013.
• LASSWELL, Harold D.; KAPLAN, Abraham. Power and society: a framework for political inquiry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.
• MARKUN, Paulo (Dir.) AI-5: o dia que não existiu. [Documentário]. São Paulo: TV Cultura, 2001.
• MARTINS FILHO, João Roberto. Movimento estudantil e ditadura militar, 1964-1968 Campinas (SP): Papirus, 1987.
• MARTINS, Franklin. Prefácio. In: GURGEL, Antônio de Pádua. A rebelião dos estudantes: Brasília, 1968. Brasília: Ed. UnB, 2002. p.19-20.
• MARTINS, Osvaldo. Surge um líder. In: _______. (Org.) Mario Covas, democracia: defender, conquistar, praticar. São Paulo: Fundação Mario Covas, 2011.
• MARTINS, Paulo Egydio et al. Paulo Egydio conta: depoimento ao CPDOC-FGV. São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial do Estado, 2007.
• MEISEL, James H. The Myth of the Ruling Class: Gaetano Mosca and the "Elite". Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958.
• MELLO, Jayme Portella de. A Revolução e o Governo Costa e Silva Rio de Janeiro: Guavira, 1979.
• MICHELS, Robert. Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Dover, 1959 [1911]
• MILLS, C. Wright. The Power Elite New York,: Oxford University Press, 1956.
• MOSCA, Gaetano. The Ruling Class Trad. Hannah D. Kahn. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939 [1896]
• PARETO, Vilfredo. A Treatise on General Sociology Trad. Arthur Livingston. New York: Dover, 1963 [1915-19]
• PITTS, Bryan. "O funeral da democracia": o caso Moreira Alves, a cultura política das elites e o estabelecimento de uma ditadura no Brasil. In: BAUAB, José D'Amico (Org.) Paulistânia eleitoral: memórias, ensaios, imagens. São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo, 2011. p.287-300.
• POERNER, Artur José. O poder jovem: história da participação política dos estudantes brasileiros. 4.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, Centro de Memória da Juventude, 1995.
• REIS FILHO, Daniel Aarão. Ditadura e democracia no Brasil Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2014.
• RODRIGUES, Leôncio Martins. Mudanças na classe política brasileira São Paulo: PubliFolha, 2006.
• SODRÉ, Roberto de Abreu. No espelho do tempo: meio século de política. São Paulo: Best Seller, 1995.

¹

Yet this is as much attention as the pivotal role of politicians in 1968 has received. The principled – and at times even courageous – stand that many members of the political class took as the regime repressed students has sometimes been denied, other times quickly passed over, yet most often simply ignored, as narratives presenting students as autonomous and principled opponents of military rule have proliferated.

²

Yet as Frances Hagopian has stated: "If social scientists have difficulty in identifying "traditional elites" [and] conceiving of them as a distinct political class ... Brazilian society does not. The famílias tradicionais, velhas lideranças, and classes conservadoras are known to all" (Hagopian, 1996, p.20).

³

As deputy Paulo Nunes leal (Arena-RO), himself a former colonel, put it: "Com filhos frequentando os bancos escolares, associamos a eles as primeiras reações que sentimos, imaginando que os pais que choram o desaparecimento do seu filho querido poderiam ser nós, já que ninguém pode ter a pretensão de afirmar que seu filho jamais participará de uma manifestação estudantil".

⁴

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The gaúcho deputy José Mandelli (MDB) explained, "os jovens de hoje serão os homens do amanhã. Serão eles que deverão nos substituir nos negócios públicos, nas cátedras, nas indústrias, nas profissões liberais, no comércio". Mário Covas, MDB leader in the Câmara, was particularly impressed with UnB student leader Honestino Guimarães, once remarking to his wife, "Será um grande político. Fiquei impressionado com os argumentos que ele usou no seu discurso ... eu me arrepiei quando ouvi aquele líder nato" (Covas; Molina, 2007, p.89). old udenistas like Júlio de Mesquita Neto (not a politician, but the son of the owner of

O Estado de S. Paulo) and São Paulo governor Roberto de Abreu Sodré had fought as students against Getúlio Vargas and the estado Novo. Both Mesquita's and Abreu Sodré's activities were extensive enough that they generated a file with the São Paulo Departamento de ordem e Política Social (Dops) and earned the latter more arrests than he could count.

⁷

Despite their support for the "Revolution," politicians who had struggled against Brazil's last authoritarian regime could identify with student protesters. Although Miguel Feu Rosa (Arena-eS) was too young to have opposed Vargas, he was speaking for many politicians who had done so when he said: "Seja qual for a minha filiação político-partidária, não posso renegar as minhas origens. Foi na política estudantil ... que forjei a minha personalidade de homem público; onde aprendi a interpretar os fenômenos políticos e sociais da minha Pátria ... Solidarizo-me com os estudantes da minha Pátria, participo dos seus sofrimentos e do seu sentimento de dor".

⁸

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As former university students themselves in a country where few people studied past primary school, politicians could identify with student activists in ways that they could not with members of other social movements. While many deputies may not have endorsed Brazil's longstanding repression of urban labor unions and rural peasant movements, or the routine police violence against the lower classes, repression of students was fundamentally different in the eyes of the political class because it pitted uneducated, lower-class police against people politicians saw as their wealthy, educated children. Their denunciations of violence against students was an indignant cry of, "How dare you do this to people like us!"

¹⁰

Most government allies kept silent, along with more cautious oppositionists like São Paulo's André Franco Montoro and Ulysses Guimarães, and Minas Gerais's Tancredo Neves.

¹¹

The image of politicians standing alongside "subversive" leftist students who were often related to them had to be infuriating to the many in the military who already resented the political class for its laxity in the fight against subversion. As Costa e Silva's chefe do gabinete militar, General Jayme Portella, later complained, MDB deputies, "usando as suas imunidades, insuflavam a agitação" (Mello, 1979, p.560, 564-565).

¹²

In perhaps a more accurate assessment, Moreira Alves agreed that politicians' participation in the student movement was limited, but not because they did not wish to interfere, but because leftist student activists were highly suspicious of even opposition politicians, whose opposition to the regime through legal channels, they believed, was insufficiently revolutionary (Alves, 1993, pp.143-144). Franklin Martins, looking back on the student movement in 2002, agreed. MDB politicians "haviam sido derrotados em 64 sem esboçar qualquer resistência. Prometeram ao povo uma vida nova mas, na hora H, deixaram o povo sozinho ... Preferiram aguardar tempos mais amenos. Por que os jovens, então, deveriam levar em conta os seus conselhos?" Their very presence in Congress was a betrayal, proof that they were not serious about ending the regime. The MDB was "um joguete nas mãos dos militares, criado com o único objetivo de ajudar a botar de pé um simulacro de Congresso e um arremedo de democracia".

¹³

If politicians like Abreu Sodré could look back on their own student activism with nostalgia, the very students with whom they sympathized were determined not to grow up to be like them.

¹⁴

The metropolitan area's population was only 400,000 in 1968, and many of those were migrants working in the city's construction who had little in common with legislators and federal employees. At the same time, lofty aspirations for Brasília as the harbinger of a modernizing Brazil combined with its isolation meant that events there were enormously relevant to politicians who found themselves forced to spend time there.

¹⁵

¹⁶

¹⁷

Deputy José Santilli Sobrinho (MDB-SP) rushed to UnB with his son to find his daughter and take her home. When they exited their car, police surrounded them and began to beat the deputy's son with a truncheon. Santilli Sobrinho attempted to intervene, waving his congressional identification and crying that he was a deputy, but the police knocked the ID out of his hand and began to beat him too, shouting, "É por isso mesmo!" They were only saved from arrest when other legislators intervened as they were being dragged to a police car, as Santilli Sobrinho shouted, "Vocês espancam deputado federal! Protesto!" The police tried to arrest them too, until senator Argemiro de Figueiredo (MDB-PB), whose own son was in the basketball court, stated that if they attempted to arrest legislators, they would encounter violent resistance, as they wouldn't go without a fight.

¹⁸

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"O SANGUE DA MOCIDADE ESTÁ CORRENDO": POLITICIANS' REACTIONS TO THE INVASION

²¹

²²

²³

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²⁶

In public, over the next three business days 47 deputies from both parties gave speeches, overwhelmingly condemning the invasion. Still, at first they used a modicum of caution. Despite vicious attacks on specific generals, most speeches on Thursday and Friday focused their criticism on the police or the Costa e Silva administration, not the Army itself. There was an implicit understanding, reinforced by the withholding of the Covas speech, that the situation required a healthy dose of caution, particularly when deputies speculated about the military's role in the invasion. By Monday, however, no explanation had come; rumor had it that Ernani Sátiro had gone to the Planalto Palace on Friday, seeking an explanation, but had been denied an audience with Costa e Silva.

²⁷

The sense of frustration was palpable, and MDB deputies, especially younger ones known for their vehement criticisms of the government (condescendingly dubbed "imaduros" by São Paulo emedebista Ivete Varga), went on the attack.

²⁸

It was then the turn of Márcio Moreira Alves. The 32-year-old carioca complained that there were no answers, only questions, about the events at UnB on Thursday. Who had ordered the invasion? To what extent could Gama e Silva and the Justice Ministry be held responsible? Who had written the police press releases justifying the invasion? Did the Costa e Silva government endorse the content of the press releases? And how would the government respond? The speech's crescendo came in a series of rhetorical questions:

²⁹

³⁰

³¹

As Moreira Alves pointed out later, his suggestion (which he said he hoped the girlfriends had taken) could be taken as a direct challenge to the military's manhood. "Here was this spoiled brat, scion of a long line of politicians ... not only calling them a gang of torturers, but going to the groin and attacking their machismo!" (Alves, 1973, pp.12-13). Implicitly questioning the military's morality and patriotism was bad enough; challenging its collective manhood went an enormous step further.

³²

Arena's response to Moreira Alves's speeches, then, was characterized by total silence.

³³

The next day, the regime decreed AI-5, inaugurating the most repressive period of military rule. over the coming months, hundreds of politicians were cassados, and time and again the Conselho de Segurança Nacional used their defense of the student movement as proof of their unfitness to hold public office.

³⁴

The "Revolution" of 1964 had been necessary, in their eyes, to root out subversion, wherever it might be found. If communist "subversion" came from the children of Brazil's political elites, the response should be no different than if they were rural workers, urban unionists, or leftist priests; the threat was not lessened simply because students were young and idealistic. But instead of recognizing the danger and repudiating their children's errors, politicians, including supposed allies, were seeking to shield their leftist children. To the military, suspicious of civilian politicians from the beginning, it must have looked as though they were tolerating such behavior in their children because they secretly wished that they too could frontally oppose the regime. Adding insult to injury, out of control oppositionists like Moreira Alves were recasting the military doing its duty as torture, questioning their honor as patriots, and worse still, challenging their manhood. It was clear to many in the military that the political class had learned nothing after four years of "Revolution". An example had to be made of Moreira Alves, to show politicians that in the new Brazil, with orderly, military-directed authoritarian modernization, politicians' role was to collaborate with the military and offer constructive criticism, not defend subversion and engage in scurrilous attacks on its honor.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  24 July 2014
• Date of issue
  June 2014

History

• Accepted
  19 May 2014
• Received
  14 Mar 2014