Carlos Marighella

Cralos Marighela, a leader in the Brazilian anti-government guerrilla movement in the 1960s, was born in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. His father was an Italian immigrant and his mother was a Brazilian national descended from slaves brought to the country in the 19th century. He became involved in revolutionary politics while attending the Bahia Polytechnic School, and in 1934 joined the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). He was arrested two years later for "subversive activities", thrown into prison and tortured, being released a year later, after which he went underground. He continued his anti-government activities, including the reorganization of the decimated PCB, and was again arrested in 1939. This time he stayed in prison for six years until he and other political prisoners were released when the military dictatorship that ran the country was replaced. Marighela traveled to Communist China in the early 1950s, at the invitation of that government, and stayed for almost a year, honing his "revolutionary" skills. He returned to Brazil and put into action the skills he had learned. He was so effective in organizing resistance to the government that they spent years hunting him down, and its secret police finally tracked him to a movie theater in Rio de Janeiro in 1964. He was shot while being arrested, although some stories say he was arrested and then shot, and imprisoned again, but released by a court in 1965. He attended a meeting of Latin-American revolutionaries in Cuba in 1967, and was expelled from the PCB the following year. He founded a guerrilla organization called the ALN, and one of their first actions was the kidnapping of the American ambassador. That was followed by a string of robberies and kidnappings, and the handsome and charismatic Marighela became a folk hero to many of Brazil's poor and those who were unhappy with the country's military dictatorship.