Document of the week! Conspiracies everywhere: the dictatorship's repression of student protests for improvements

Check out the full document in our collection: Memorandum of conversation from the US Consulate in Porto Alegre to the Embassy in Brasilia regarding student protests

Conspiracies on all sides: the dictatorship's repression of student protests for improvements

The year 1968 was marked by intense protests student demonstrations in various parts of the world, with the May demonstrations in France the most famous. In Brazil, which at the time was experiencing its second dictatorial government – the Costa e Silva presidency –, it was no different. 

In addition to serious infrastructure problems and a lack of places in higher education, which led to various types of student protests, the authoritarian nature of the regime and the brutal way in which dictatorship repressed the demonstrations and ended up generating waves of protests at various times throughout the year.

In this week's NACE CNV-Brazil document, we bring a memorandum of conversation from the Consulate of Porto Alegre with two actors who had very different perceptions about the causes of student protests in Brazil, their nature and the way to respond to their rise: on the one hand, a professor of Political Science from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Leonidas Xausa; and, on the other, the General Carlos Alberto Fontoura, Chief of Staff of the 3rd Army, in Rio Grande do Sul.

Among the various interesting points that appear in the interviews with Professor Xausa and General Fontoura, the deeply conspiratorial view that the head of State of the 3rd Army had regarding the student demonstrations stands out. 

For General Fontoura, the student protests that were taking place in Brazil were nothing less than “part of a conspiracy by the Communist International” to destabilize and, ultimately, overthrow “free governments”, including the Brazilian one (despite being an authoritarian regime, it was common for the military not to understand the dictatorship as a dictatorship, framing it as a form of “free government”).

General Fontoura, on several occasions, pointed out that he was certain that the student demonstrations would be, solely and simply, the work of “professional agitators”, interested not in solving problems in Brazilian higher education, but in creating “political unrest”.

It would be exactly this type of conspiratorial and polarizing mentality demonstrated by General Fontoura that would give way to a process of increasing repression against movements of Brazilian civil society, generating, at the end of the year, the decree of AI-5.

Prof. Dr. Felipe Loureiro,

Deputy coordinator of NACE CNV-Brazil,

Institute of International Relations at the University of São Paulo