CANDELÁRIA

CANDELÁRIA

Address: Praça Pio X, s/n, Centro, Rio de Janeiro
Themes: The 1964 Coup D’état; Repressive Structures; Civil and Corporate Participation; Universities and the Student movement; Actions by the Catholic Church; State Racism and Black Resistance; Political-cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard.

The Candelária region in the center of Rio de Janeiro has the same name as the church that was built there long ago by Antônio Martin da Palma and Leonor Gonçalves, a Portuguese ship captain and his wife. The pair survived a storm that had threatened to destroy the ship they took to arrive in Rio de Janeiro. Both were devotees to Our Lady of Candelária and promised to erect a church in her honor if they made it to their destination alive. They fulfilled their promise, building a small chapel in the Pio XI Plaza in 1634. The structure was badly maintained, however, and in 1775 construction began to replace the building with a new place of worship, which would only be completed in 1898 and is what we refer to today as the Candelária church. Considered one of Rio de Janeiro’s most beautiful churches, Candelária has the story of its founding told through six panels painted by artist Zeferino da Costa on the church’s roof. The building’s interior is filled with marble, its façade made of stonework, and its doors crafted in bronze by Portuguese sculptor Antônio Teixera Lopes. The vertical façade is part of a gothic tradition, but the building also has neoclassical traces in its detailing and in the ornamented triangular pediment.

The beautiful church bore witness to tragic political events in the 1960s. In a context of increased political polarization and ideological radicalism under the administration of president João Goulart (“Jango”), in conjunction with a worsening economic crisis, groups of right-wing civilians and soldiers openly carried out strategies to destabilize the government through massive anticommunist propaganda. Government agencies in the U.S. and Brazilian and multi-national companies – organized through the Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD) and the Institute for Research and Social Studies (IPES) – financed this propaganda. Many of the domestic business groups, tied to international capital, had benefitted from Brazil’s economic, financial, fiscal, and social policy. Tied to the construction sector, heavy industry, the banking system, and telecommunication, they had become true economic empires.

IPES formed at the end of 1961 and was made up of businesses and military officials.¹ Its central tasks included developing anticommunist propaganda – in the form of lectures, classes, publications, and films – and coordinating other opposition groups – such as Women for Democracy, Christian Workers, War College Alumni – to organize against Jango and the broad-based reforms that the president and his allies on the left defended. ²

When the political crisis was at its worst, João Goulart held events and public gestures, but there was also a key episode for those who organized against the government: the rally that took place on March 13, 1964 next to Central Station and the Ministry of War building in the Republic Plaza. Jango gave a speech while residents of Rio’s wealthy South Zone lit candles in the windows of apartment buildings to protest the broad-based reforms their president announced. With increased pressure from the conservative offensive as well as popular mobilization on the left demanding an articulation of the administration’s stance on policy and way forward, the president stated the need to review the Constitution and signaled coming land reform by announcing that he would sign one decree to expropriate land around highways, federal dams, railroad tracks, and another that would affect private oil refineries. In the same speech, he also questioned the Rosary Crusade religious movement, which brought together women to pray against communism, saying: “rosaries [can’t] be used against the will of the people and their legitimate aspirations.” In the weeks following the speech, this criticism would trigger massive “Marches of the Family with God for Liberty.”

The Central Station rally served as the pretext conspirators were searching for to incite a movement to depose João Goulart from the presidency. After the rally, the process building to the coup progressed dizzyingly quickly, fed by a series of actions and decisions carried out by actors directly involved in the plan. On March 15, Jango sent his proposal for broad-based reforms to Congress, emphasizing the urgent need for structural and institutional reforms in Brazil, implemented through presidential power, and indicated the utility in organizing a plebiscite to gauge popular support for the measures. The first “March of the Family with God for Liberty,” which took place on March 19, had as one of its catchphrases “It’s time for Jango to go.” On March 20, General Castelo Branco, chief of staff for the Army, circulated classified documents criticizing the Central Station rally and the plebiscite proposal. These documents had enormous consequences in the military. In fact, they served as “permission to begin preparations for the coup” (Fico, 2014, p. 56). On March 25, the Association of Sailors and Marines, a group that the Navy did not recognize, organized a celebration of its second anniversary in the Rio de Janeiro Metalworkers’ Union building.

Even though the Ministry of the Navy banned the event, thousands of soldiers attended it and decided to occupy the union building, demanding official recognition for the organization, improvements in meals, changes in disciplinary codes within the Navy, with no consequences for taking part in the protest. After the Ministry failed to arrest the leaders of the movement – thanks to intense loyalty in the marines and support from rear admiral commander Cândido de Aragão, who, however, would quickly be dismissed from his post – Goulart decided to resolve the situation by replacing the Minister of the Navy with another, considered more left-wing, reinstating Aragão as a commander, and sending troops from the Vila Militar to the union building. The sailors involved were taken to the First Army Guard Battalion but were released shortly thereafter. Far from mitigating the situation, the decision caused indignation in the highest ranks of the Navy and Army, as they saw it as proof that military discipline and hierarchy were crumbling. Then, on March 30, Goulart attended the celebration of the 40^th anniversary of the Military Police Sub-officer and Sergeant Association at the Automobile Club of Brazil – another event organized by sub-officers just days after the “sailors’ revolt.” In a speech that was broadcast live via radio and TV, Goulart criticized those who invoked the church in the recent “March of the Family with God for Liberty” in São Paulo and the other similar marches planned in other cities. He also criticized those who accused him of exacerbating a break in military discipline, reaffirming that:

my mandate, as determined by the people then confirmed by the people for a second time, will be carried out in full, in the name of our people, and in defense of popular interest. Those who think reactionary forces are capable of destroying an administration that represents the people are very mistaken (Jornal do Brasil, 31 mar. 1964).

It was in this extremely agitated context that on March 31, in anticipation of other events soon to follow, troops moved from Juiz de For a towards the Guanabara Palace, the government building in Rio de Janeiro. On April 1, 1964, Army tanks occupied the Centro neighborhood of Rio, and particularly the Candelária region, violently repressing protests. At the same time, according to newspaper reports, residents of the South Zone went onto the streets of Copacabana to greet Army troops with carnavalesque fervor and threw paper confetti from their windows.

The second “March of the Family with God for Liberty” took place in Candelária the day after the coup. The march surrounded Candelária church and, because it celebrated the removal of Goulart from the presidency, is also known as the “Victory March.” The rally took place with military support – a convoy of 20 members of the Military Police Cavalry Regiment accompanied the march – and extensive media coverage. Newspapers published ads inviting the people to the demonstration. There was also live coverage of the event on National Radio. People held signs with the following phrases: “The only good kind of red comes as lipstick”; “Real students leave the UNE and wish them well as they burn in hell” – a reference to the fire that took place in the National Student Union (UNE) on the day of the coup; “One, two, three, put Brizola under lock and key” (Jornal do Brasil, 3 abr. 1964). These slogans show the vitriol of the discourse and the extremity of political and ideological confrontation, similar to the dozens of other marches that took place around the country.

On April 9, the Supreme Revolutionary Command, made up of commanders-in-chief of all three branches of the armed forces, established the Institutional Act that granted the temporary Command itself and the future president discretionary power to punish opposition through June 15. The military leaders could terminate the terms of elected officials, suspend political rights, transfer members of the military to the reserves, etc. The Act also specified that the next president would be determined by an indirect, congressional election – they would select General Castelo Branco – and mandated that the elections would take place in 1965, which were subsequently cancelled by the General in the presidency. Delaying the elections shows the power struggle that took place after the coup in terms of institutionalizing the military dictatorship as permanent. The Institutional Act (later called the First Institutional Act, or AI-1) already shows that in its preamble, which stated: “The victorious revolution is determined to exercise its constituent power […] it legitimates itself [and possesses] ruling power” (Brasil, 1964). The 1946 Constitution remained, as did Congress, but with limitations and reservations. In reality, the military in control of political life in the country allowed for the rise of so-called “hard-liners” – more radical groups of high-ranking officials (lieutenants, captains, lieutenant-colonels, and colonels) in charge of Military Police Investigations aimed at persecuting members of the armed forces who supported Goulart, communists, union members, and politicians through an onslaught of violence, repression, and fear that began on the first day of the coup. These radical groups did not just push for a continuation of the “clean operation” beyond the previously determined date; they also called for autonomy to carry out “revolutionary punishments” (arbitrary arrest and detention, the use of torture in interrogations, suspension of political rights, dismissals, transfers of soldiers to the reserves, etc.) against opposition and “subversives.” These are the roots of the Second Institutional Act (AI-2), established in 1965, and the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5), established in 1968 – pillars of authoritarian state repression, expressions of the regime’s political will and determination to remain in power, and the basis for a future “intelligence community.”

Costa e Silva’s tenure began in March 1967 and caused the military regime to intensify its repression. The new president’s cabinet was almost entirely made up of members of the military. Government measures in economics and education generated increased dissatisfaction amongst the population, leading to important workers’ strikes, particularly in the ABC region of São Paulo. The student movement was the most mobilized sector of the population, reaching its apex of activism in March 1968. Youth radicalism took a clear anti-authoritarian stance and generated numerous protests for freedoms and better teaching conditions. A standout protest was one calling for improvements in food distribution and the end of interminable renovations in the Calabouço Restaurant, a space frequented by students in the center of Rio de Janeiro. The aggressive police response to the protest caused the death of high school student Edson Luís de Lima Souto. The student’s schoolmates carried his body to the Legislative Assembly, causing significant public commotion. The lines of protesters against police brutality also communicated a message to the middle class: “They killed a student: it could be your child.”

It was the first clear political killing. The middle class was shocked. It is not random that a chain of dozens of protest would take place in every major Brazilian city (Elinor Brito, president da Frente unida dos Estudantes do Calabouço (FUEC). Depoimento em Reis Filho e Moraes, 1998, p. 163).

In Candelária church, two masses commemorated Edson Luís’s death on April 4, 1968. The first, which took place at 11:30 A.M., found 1,000 people inside the church, not to mention the much greater number that congregated outside. Soon after the commemoration, the police attacked the crowd that was honoring the murdered student. Navy helicopters and Air Force planes flew overhead to monitor the repressive strategy and agents from the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS-GB) fired tear gas indiscriminately at the crowd.

That same afternoon, soldiers and state agents still tried to disperse the crowds gathering around Candelária, since a second mass had been scheduled for 6:15 PM. Even though the police made their presence in the region clear, nearly 2,500 people gathered inside the church, and the Military Police dispersed people outside. Priests formed a protective line at the end of the mass to avoid a repetition of the police repression that had occurred that morning. The priests managed to stop police brutality around the church, but the police and DOPS agents surrounded countless people elsewhere in the central zone of the city, attacking them with kicks and blows. The result was 380 wounded people and nearly 200 detained in the Santa Cruz Fortress in Niterói.

Edson Luís’s death provoked a series of protests in major Brazilian cities between April and June 1968. On June 21, students gathered in front of the U.S. embassy and were the target of intense violence at the hands of police. According to information from area hospitals, 28 people died from the brutality, while according to the official version, there were only 3 casualties. Hundreds were wounded and nearly one thousand arrested. An outcome of this episode, known as “bloody Friday,” was a protest in Candelária on June 26 that would go down in Brazilian history. With banners and signs reading, “Organizing the people topples dictatorship” and “Down with imperialism,” thousands of people came together around Candelária church to protest repression of the student movement. The protest came to be known as the “March of One Hundred Thousand” because, after 3 P.M., it brought together more than 100,000 people equipped with signs and spray paint who tagged the streets of the city center with grievances and criticisms of the military dictatorship.

The leaders of the student movement planned and directed the march, mobilizing intellectuals, members of the church, artists, and workers. Hélio Pellegrino stated: “People use public space, and then go back to their homes. This is a right to property that needs to be respected” (Arão Reis Filho e Moraes, p. 80). Soon, the march continued to Tiradentes Palace, the Legislative Assembly building for Rio de Janeiro and ended at 5 P.M. without incident.

There was still no law censoring the media at that point, and so the protest had wide coverage. The newspaper Última Hora even emphasized the ability protestors had to maintain order without police presence, which would have only served to disrupt the peace at that moment. President Costa e Silva agreed to meet with the students as a result of the march, and scheduled a meeting with the movement’s commission. The four basic demands were: reopening the Calabouço mess hall, the release of detained students, the end of police repression, and no more censorship of the arts. Costa e Silva decided, however, to reject all of the commission’s demands.

Given the president’s rejection, a new protest took place in the center of Rio on July 4. Even though it was smaller than the March of the One Hundred Thousand, the protest, deemed the “March of the Fifty Thousand,” stands out for its political radicalism.

During the March of the Fifty Thousand there was a group that shouted: “Organizing the people topples dictatorship.” Another said: “Arming the people topples dictatorship.” And the crowd, in its wisdom, began to shout: “Organizing and arming the people topples dictatorship” (Vladimir Palmeira. Depoimento em Arão Reis Filho e Moraes, p. 113).

However, this would be the last large protest against the regime before the most significant instrument of repression was established on December 13, 1968: the Fifth Institutional Act. This Act, which had already been debated in the highest ranks of the government and military since January of that same year, prohibited any protest of any activity of a political nature, installed permanent political censorship in the press, suspended habeas corpus, and gave the state discretionary power to revoke positions and suspend political rights, to intervene in states, and to shut down the National Congress in addition to determining that cases of state repression could not be heard in court. According to the preamble of the AI-5, the act contained the elements necessary to achieve the goals that the revolution had named for itself, “in order to possess the indispensable means to rebuild Brazil, economically, financially, and morally” (Brasil, 1968). On this grounding, the regime organized a complex system of repression in the heart of the Brazilian state and society ³ that functioned as a web of different agencies (restructured or new, legal or hidden) directed towards surveillance, control, and physical and structural violence. This constituted a structure that would immediately enable a systematic policy of fear in Brazil, one that was inherent to the dictatorship since the coup, and one which would become unprecedented in intensity, scale, and efficiency.

Mechanisms for political violence came into effect with the AI-5, and mass protest movements shrunk drastically as opposition to the dictatorship was forced to go into hiding. This opposition included both the group that did not opt for armed resistance as well as urban and rural guerilla organizations that threatened the regime through military force, until they were completely defeated and dismantled at the end of Médici’s rule (1969-1973) and the beginning of Geisel’s (1974-1978). It was only with Geisel’s political opening (which still maintained security safeguards and continued the repressive practices of torture, killings, and disappearances of leftist militants, albeit with more selectivity) and, above all, with the repeal of the AI-5 and other suspensions of the rule of law in 1978, that a slow but growing set of social movements, civil associations, and political forces could reorganize in Brazil. After Ernesto Geisel assumed the presidency in 1974, a plan for political opening took root in the armed forces, originally conceived of as a “slow, gradual, and safe” opening. (This did not occur without tension and open resistance from the “intelligence community,” which protested the move in the form of attacks that took place through 1981). It was during Figueiredo’s term in the late 1970s and early 1980s that the political opening grew, always with the military under full control of politics.

The regime needed to take a series of crucial measures in order to put their plan into effect. First, it needed to disassemble the major apparatuses of the state of exception, which took place in 1978, and second, it needed to make two decisions that would directly impact the organization and re-articulation of social movements and partisan political life in Brazil. The first decision was passing the Amnesty Law in 1979 which, beyond the “broad-based, general, and unrestricted amnesty” for political prisoners that a growing social movement had called for since 1979, guaranteed impunity and immunity for agents of the state and those responsible for repressive policies. The law formed the political-ideological basis for a deliberate strategy for forgetting, covering-up, and “national pacification and reconciliation” in respect to crimes perpetrated by the dictatorship. At the same time, the law freed the majority of political prisoners and allowed Brazilians to return from exile. The second decision took place in 1980 and consisted in Congress sanctioning the Organic Political Parties Law that reestablished a multi-party system and allowed for the formation of new parties, in addition to other measures.

In 1982, the first direct elections for governor since the beginning of the military dictatorship took place as planned, and resulted in the opposition’s victory in three major Brazilian states: Leonel Brizola of the Democratic Workers’ Party (PDT) won in Rio de Janeiro; Tancredo Neves of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB) won in Minas Gerais; and Franco Montoro, also of the PMDB, won in São Paulo. This victory took place in a political and climate filled with democratic demands from civil society and served to reinforce the call for direct elections of the President of the Republic, so much so that one year later, the Diretas Já – Direct Elections Now – campaign emerged. The nonpartisan movement aimed to pressure the government to reinstate direct presidential elections. The campaign took the form of huge marches and began in 1983 with its first public rally in the state of Pernambuco. In March 1983, Representative Dante de Oliveira (PMDB-MT) presented a constitutional amendment to congress that proposed the return to direct elections for the president and vice-president in the elections planned for 1985, which launched the Diretas Já movement. It was in 1984 that the public organized en masse for the movement. Dozens of demonstrations took place in hundreds of cities in almost every state. To this day, it was the largest popular movement in Brazil’s history. Thousands of people demanding direct elections took to the streets in major cities around the country and various musicians took the stage at Diretas Já movements: Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, Moraes Moreira, who sang the song “Frevo das Diretas,” Fernanda Montenegro, Sônia Braga, and many others.

In Rio de Janeiro, major rallies took place on three dates: February 16, March 21, and April 10, 1984. On the first two days, the gathering point was Candelária and the march moved towards Cinelândia. The final demonstration, which was the largest to take place in all of Brazil, happened in the Candelária plaza and came to be known as the “Candelária Rally.” The Candelária area held roughly one million people on April 10, 1984. The crowd went wild during one speech, when lawyer Heráclito Fontoura Sobral Pinto read aloud the constitutional principle of popular sovereignty: “All power is derived from the people and applied in the name of the people.” Garnering wide-reaching press coverage, the protest featured musicians like Fafá de Belém, who sang the national anthem, in addition to politicians like Leonel Brizola, Franco Montoro, Tancredo Neves, Ulisses Guimarães, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who all shared the podium. Despite the success of the campaign, congress rejected Dante’s proposed amendment. Indirect presidential elections still took place in 1985, and Tancredo Neves was selected with José Sarney as his vice president. Tancredo Neves died due to illness and Sarney was sworn in as president in March. This was the combination organized by the Democratic Alliance, made up of dissenters in the regime’s party – the Democratic Social Party (PDS) – and moderate opposition. And so the New Republic was inaugurated, representing the official end of the military dictatorship in Brazil and the beginning of a “top-down, seamless” transition to democracy, which took place under the strict guidance and veto power of the armed forces.

After the turbulent years of the military dictatorship, the Candelária region was the site of one of the massacres that took place in Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s. At dawn on July 23, 1993, a group of military and civil police opened fired at approximately 70 children and adolescents sleeping around the church. Eight children and teenagers were executed and dozens were wounded that night. The Candelária massacre had repercussions throughout Brazil as well as abroad, and is still remembered in vigils and protests carried out by the mothers whose children were murdered by the state, and by groups and networks of activists organizing against police brutality. Other massacres took place in the city, like the Acari massacre in 1990, which resulted in the kidnapping of 11 people who remain disappeared to this day, and the Vigário Geral massacre in 1993, in which 21 people were executed. Many acts of violence and massacres continued – and continue – to take place in favelas and peripheral communities in Rio de Janeiro, and the vast majority target black and low-income people.

New political protests also took place in Candelária and continue to occur in the area to this day. Notable are the Painted Faces movement in the 1990s and the 2013 protests. The Painted Faces movement brought together young people and students across the country in public protests throughout September 1992, during the impeachment of president Fernando Collor. The youth who participated in the movement painted their faces black, green, and yellow and took to the streets throughout the country to call for Collor’s impeachment and the arrest of businessman Paulo César Farias, who was treasurer for Collor’s campaign and had orchestrated the administration’s corruption scheme. The emblematic Painted Faces march took place in Rio de Janeiro, drawing students from public and private high schools and universities throughout the city and the region. Candelária was the gathering point and the march moved on Rio Branco Avenue to the Mahatma Gandhi plaza, near Cinelândia. Popular pressure for impeachment, along with other factors pushing for the same outcome, had results: after the decision passed through Congress, president Collor was removed from his position and was not allowed to participate in politics for eight years.

Recently, in 2013, Candelária became the gathering space for a movement that came to be known as the “June Journeys.” The increase in public transportation fees was the starting point of the movement, but soon it expanded to include demands for a broad and unrestricted right to the city. Masses of people would meet at Candelária at 5 P.M. and march to the Cinelândia region or to the Rio de Janeiro Legislative Assembly building. Police brutality against the protestors was intense, and people were arrested and wounded from truncheon blows and tear gas. From the 2013 protests through today, many other protests have chosen Candelária as the location to meet and mobilize in Rio de Janeiro.

1. Muitos desses militares ocuparam altos cargos do governo militar, como ilustra o caso do general Golbery do Couto e Silva, criador do futuro Serviço Nacional de Informações (SNI).
2. Cabe ressaltar que nem a figura de Jango, um trabalhista histórico, nem as reformas propostas (agrária, bancária, universitária, do sistema habitacional, etc.) eram radicais ou pró-comunistas, como insistia sistematicamente a propaganda desestabilizadora.
3. Dela faziam parte o SNI e as Divisões de Segurança e Informações; o Centro de Informações do Exército (CIE), o Centro de Informações da Marinha (Cenimar) e o Centro de Informação e Segurança da Aeronáutica (Cisa); o Centro de Informações do Exterior; os DOI- -Codis; os tribunais militares; a Divisão de Censura de Diversões Públicas; o Setor de Imprensa do Gabinete (Sigab), órgão secreto da censura política, ligado à Polícia Federal; a Assessoria Especial de Relações Públicas (Aerp), a cargo da propaganda oficial; e as polícias estaduais civil e militar.