Face to face with Abidoral Queiroz

death squads and democracy in northeast Brazil

Nancy Scheper-Hughes

pp. 151-177

in: Leonidas K. Cheliotis (ed), Roots, rites and sites of resistance, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

Between 1964 and 1985, Brazil was a military police state run by senior army generals. The 1964 coup, initially euphemistically described as a "revolution", ushered into power (with support from the CIA) a repressive military dictatorship that justified itself as stabilizing a volatile and inflationary economy and a politically volatile population of rural workers who were organizing in the backlands of Northeast Brazil under the Ligas Camponese (Peasant Leagues), whilst rural migrants to Brazil's cities settled their land problems by "invading" hillsides and other under-utilized public land creating new shantytowns.