BRAZIL: Out of Hiding

The most influential Communist in the Western Hemisphere, Brazil’s Luis Carlos Prestes, last week won the right to reappear in public. A Rio judge struck down a warrant for Prestes’ “preventive” arrest, which has kept him underground for ten years. This week Prestes is supposed to come out of hiding and sign the judge’s terms for his conditional freedom (e.g., he must report twice a month) while he awaits trial—months hence, if ever—on charges of sedition.

The court order ended a curious game of hide-and-seek in which Prestes was often pursued but never quite caught— perhaps because of the 600,000 votes that he and his followers reportedly control. He was seen at times disappearing over the Bolivian border, leaving for Moscow, or holed up in Sao Paulo running a strike. His manifestoes appeared in the 40 newspapers and magazines that Brazil’s Communists put out despite the party’s technically illegal status.

For Old Revolutionary Prestes, black-eyed, bony and frail at 60, working in the open will be a novelty. More than 30 years ago, as a young army officer, he led a column of 1,500 fanatic men who staged a legendary 16,000-mile retreat through Brazil’s jungled backlands after an attempted revolution by army left-wingers had flopped. He then fled to Russia, worked as a hydroelectric engineer, became a member of the executive committee of the Communist International. Back in Brazil in 1935, Prestes sparked another insurrection; his men rose in the night and slit the throats of sleeping loyalist soldiers. He failed again and went to prison for nine years. Released, and playing the martyr’s role to the hilt, he was elected Senator, but his loyalties remained wholly Red. “If Brazil should fight Russia,” he said, “I would form guerrillas and together with my followers I would fight for Russia.”

Fortnight ago, from underground, Prestes proclaimed a popular-front “alliance of all national forces in the fight against North American imperialism,” and promised an “enthusiastic campaign” for the election of all “nationalist democratic candidates” in October’s congressional elections. The thought of Prestes’ votes whetted political thirsts in Congress; five days later the judge who has jurisdiction over Prestes’ case decided that the Communist leader “does not intend to flee from application of the penal law,” and revoked the arrest order. Above ground, Prestes will probably strive for re-establishment of Brazilian diplomatic relations with Russia, legality for his party, increased membership. During his last period of freedom, from 1945 to 1947, he built membership from 900 to 130,000, making Brazil’s Communist Party the fifth biggest outside the Iron Curtain.