Marighella, Carlos

(1911–1969)

   Founder of the Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN, National Action for Liberation), a leftist urban guerrilla organization in Brazil. He was one of the “big three”—the guerrilla leaders most prominent in the armed opposition to Brazil’s military dictatorship. The others were Joaquim Câmara Ferreira and Carlos Lamarca.

   Marighella, who had been active in the Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB, Brazilian Communist Party) since the 1930s, was imprisoned for two months after the 1964 military coup that ousted the left-leaning president João Goulart. After his release, he became impatient with the PCB’s passive line, and in 1967 formed the ALN, a PCB splinter group committed to armed struggle. In 1968 the ALN began robbing banks, small operations that provided not only funding but also (according to Marighella) practice for larger operations. On 4 September 1969 the ALN and the Movimento Revolucionário 8 de Outubro (MR-8, 8th of October Revolutionary Movement) kidnapped the U.S. ambassador Charles Elbrick, an event dramatized in the feature film Four Days in September. Elbrick was released unharmed on 8 September 1969 after the government broadcast the guerrillas’ manifesto and released 15 political prisoners and exiled them to Mexico. On 4 November 1969 the government revenged the kidnapping: Sérgio Fleury, a notorious torturer, ambushed Marighella in São Paulo and shot him to death.

   Marighella was succeeded by Ferreira, who in October 1970 was abducted in São Paulo and tortured to death by Fleury.