The Araguaia Guerrilla Movement: Networks And Memory

• In Event: Social Movements in Latin America: Historical And contemporary dynamics

Abstract

In the late 1960s, the first members of the Communist Party of Brazil arrived in the Amazon region to establish a rural guerrilla movement to fight the Brazilian authoritarian regime (1964-1985). The guerrilla movement was still in its preparatory stages, and clandestine, when it was first attacked by the military forces in 1972. It took almost three years and three military campaigns for the government’s armed forces to ultimately defeat the contentious movement. During this period, most of the guerrillas were assassinated; and numerous local peasants were arrested and tortured by government officials. Since the militaries have not disclosed any documents on the campaigns against the guerrilla movement, the primary sources we have are the statements of the few former guerrillas who survived and the local peasants who lived in the region. Drawing on empirical data collected during the fieldwork, this paper focus on how this memory work is done by the articulation of these actors on different social networks and organizations. In doing so, it aims to contribute, on the one hand, to the Latin American debate on the work done by social movements in search for memory, truth, and justice; and, on the other, to the discussion on the role of social networks to social movements.

Author

• Rafaela Pannain, Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento