Gabeira, Fernando

(1941– )

   Born in the northern state of Minas Gerais, Fernando Paulo Nagle Gabeira is a Brazilian politician, author, journalist, and former guerrilla. A federal deputy for the state of Rio de Janeiro since 1995, in October 2008 Gabeira was narrowly defeated—by 1.4 percent of the votes—in the runoff elec-tion for mayor of Rio. A longtime supporter of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Gabeira broke with his former political ally in 2003. He is one of the founding members of the Brazilian Green Party and an outspoken and colorful politician, widely seen—during his mayoral candidacy—as a reformer.

   Gabeira’s initiation in Brazilian politics stems from his participation on 4 September 1969 in the kidnapping of Charles Elbrick (1910–1983), the United States ambassador to Brazil. Ambassador Elbrick was held prisoner for four days by members of the Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN, National Action for Liberation) and the Movimento Revolucionário 8 de Outubro (MR-8, 8th of October Revolutionary Movement) and released unharmed. Hugely embarrassed by the incident, the military regime of Artur da Costa e Silva had published the guerrillas’ manifesto as demanded and freed 15 guerrillas, who were then flown to Mexico. According to Elbrick’s daughter, Valerie, in an interview in October 2008, Ambassador Elbrick—who distinguished himself through the ordeal by his calm, courageous demeanor—felt a “strange admiration” for his kidnappers. She is reported to have declared, “he had tears in his eyes when they let him go, because he knew they’d be hunted down and tortured.” Indeed, the day after the kidnapping, the regime decreed several acts of banishment and capital punishment for anybody involved in “subversive warfare.”

   As a result of the crackdown by military forces, Gabeira was arrested, tortured, and exiled. He spent time in Chile, where he was forced to seek asylum at the Argentine Embassy in 1973, during the coup against Salvador Allende Gossens, and later in Europe. His return from exile in Sweden in 1979, after renouncing political violence, and the publication of his memoir, O que e isso companheiro? (What Is This, Comrade?), transformed him into a hugely popular figure among the Brazilian public, then thirsting for accounts of the years of dictatorship. In a matter-of-fact, journalistic voice laced with occasional personal revelations, Gabeira’s memoir recounted his transformation from journalist with the popular daily, Jornal do Brasil, to a member of an armed-guerrilla group, though the author denied ever firing a weapon. The narrative, gripping and even humorous at times, reveals the romanticized view of revolution that attracted many young people to armed struggle in Latin America during the late 1960s. In an interview cited by the scholar Nancy T. Baden, for example, Gabeira admitted that it was only after exile that he had become familiar with Marxist texts. The memoir concluded with an account of prison and torture, although, as Baden remarked, it lacked the “ornamental horror” of many of the narratives of the time.

   An instant best seller in Brazil, with an unprecedented number of editions, O que e isso companheiro? was adapted for the screen by the director Bruno Barreto in 1997, with Alan Arkin in the role of Ambassador Elbrick. The movie was released in the United States as Four Days in September and was nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film the following year. In 2007 Silvio Da-Rin released the documentary Hércules 56, in which former political foes of the military dictatorship, as well as some of the guerrillas released as a result of the Elbrick kidnapping and flown to Mexico in the Hercules 56 aircraft of the title, spoke about that moment in Brazilian political life. In a move perhaps revelatory of the political atmosphere in Brazil at the beginning of the new millennium, in October 2008 the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, D.C., chose Hércules 56 for inclusion in its Reel Time Brazil—First Brazilian Documentary Film Week.