The Tiradentes Revolutionary Movement (MRT) was an organization that was active in the armed struggle against the Brazilian military dictatorship and existed between September 1969 and April 1971. During this period, it was responsible for a series of guerrilla actions that sought to destabilize the regime while reorganizing the working class to bring about a socialist revolution. Unlike the majority of guerrilla organizations of that period, formed mostly by students, the MRT had almost exclusively worker members in its composition.

The organization was formed from a meeting in Campos do Jordão, gathering the group that orbited around Devanir José de Carvalho and Plínio Petersen Pereira, former members of the Communist Party of Brazil Red Wing (PCdoB-AV). It was baptized as the Tiradentes Revolutionary Movement in honor of the group of the same name, linked to the Peasant Leagues, which operated between 1961 and 1962, as well as to confuse the repression. Acting in a period in which other organizations of the armed left went through difficulties, MRT tried to articulate itself with other revolutionary groups, such as Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN) and Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária (VPR), to carry out actions of expropriation, sabotage, and propaganda.

Among its main actions were the assault on an armored car of the Brink's cash transportation company, considered one of the most profitable actions of the armed struggle in Brazil, and the murder of the businessman Henning Albert Boilesen, in reprisal for the murder of Devanir de Carvalho, when the organization was already very weakened. The MRT was dismantled by repression in April 1971, after a series of arrests of ex-militants, whose information extracted by repression, led to a domino effect that led the group to close its activities.

History

Foundation The Tiradentes Revolutionary Movement was founded by ex-militants of the Red Wing. The Red Wing, which emerged as a dissidence of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), had opted for the strategy of armed struggle in 1967, and in the following year carried out expropriations, which in principle were to take place only in the urban center of São Paulo and were to be used to finance the implantation of a revolutionary focus in the rural areas, with the objective of creating the conditions for a prolonged popular war. These actions were carried out by the National Special Group (GEN), the armed arm of the organization However, the Red Wing's leadership began to reevaluate these actions, and became critical of the guerrilla actions exclusively in the urban center of São Paulo, and disallowed new ventures by GEN. This position displeased some of the Wing militants, especially those who were part of the GEN.

In mid-1969, a meeting took place between members of the Red Wing's leadership, Derly José de Carvalho and Élio Cabral de Souza, with members of GEN, Aderval Alves Coqueiro, Devanir José de Carvalho, and a militant codenamed "Roberto". In this meeting, the members of GEN proposed the intensification of armed actions, which was not accepted by the members of the leadership, who announced that they intended to dissolve the group and integrate them into the political work with the popular classes. Not accepting the agreement, and faced with the refusal of their proposals, the GEN militants declared themselves estranged from the Red Wing, even though they did not definitively break with the organization. The dissidents made the GEN independent from the Red Wing national leadership and began to act as the Revolutionary National Special Group (GENR), acting without the authorization of the Wing's leaders. In response, the Red Wing dissolved the GEN, and established that armed actions in urban centers should only have political and fundraising aspects. No other branch of the Wing would be created to engage in these actions, which would be put into practice by militants determined by the organization's leadership. GENR, however, continued to carry out actions in the absence of the Red Wing, carrying out, in May 1969, an assault on the National Credit Bank, installed inside Mercedes-Benz, accused of financing the government's torture and repression organs. In April of the same year, the group carried out the expropriation of a van of valuables of the French and Italian Bank, after an intense exchange of fire that led to the death of Francisco Bento da Silva, employee of a bank security company, and Luiz Pereira da Silva, bank employee. Also in April, the organization carried out an attack on the Jurema bus company in response to the increase in public transportation fares.

Because of its armed actions, the Red Wing was strongly repressed by the military. The organization, understanding that the armed actions in the cities proved ineffective in their objectives of motivating the urban proletariat to rise up and to establish a real guerrilla warfare in the rural areas, started to change tactics, aiming at the education, preparation and organization of the popular classes for political and armed struggle. Those militants that sought to engage in more immediate revolutionary actions left the Red Wing after this change. Some of them joined the National Liberation Action (ALN), while the others, aggregated around the leaderships of Devanir José de Carvalho and Plínio Petersen Pereira, founded the Tiradentes Revolutionary Movement (MRT).

In September 1969, a meeting took place in Campos do Jordão, in the interior of São Paulo, attended by the groups aggregated around Devanir de Carvalho and Plínio Petersen, representatives of the Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard (VAR-Palmares), the Communist Workers Party (POC), and the Democratic Network (REDE). After the initial discussions, the political lines of each organization seemed to be well defined, and the militants who attended the meeting were free to make the decision they liked best, and could choose to join any of the groupings represented there. Thus Devanir de Carvalho, Plínio Petersen, Waldemar Andrew, Armênio de Souza Rangel, Nelson Ferreira, João Moraes, Antônio André Camargo Guerra, Jorge Kurban Abraão, and other members of GENR decided to join a new grouping that resulted from that meeting, which was to be baptized as Tiradentes Revolutionary Movement (MRT). The others present decided to join the VAR-Palmares.

It was only a few days after this meeting that the organization was baptized. The choice of the name "Tiradentes Revolutionary Movement" alluded to the Red Wing's earliest origins, whose most prominent founding members, such as Diniz Cabral Filho, Élio Cabral de Souza, and Tarzan de Castro, were part of the movement of the same name linked to the Peasant Leagues. This name was also chosen to confuse the repression, in order to make the repressive organs think that it was in fact the organization that had acted in the beginning of the 1960s. In the same way, for the general public, the presence of MRT's actions, an acronym given as debunked by repression, could demoralize the military government, just as the militants of the Communist Dissidence of Guanabara (DI-GB) did when they assumed the acronym of the 8th October Revolutionary Movement (MR-8), another organization given as defeated by repression.

First actions From the beginning, MRT sought to carry out as many armed actions as possible in the metropolitan region of São Paulo. For this, it sought to articulate with other leftist guerrilla organizations. Soon after the meeting in which MRT was founded, the militants decided to carry out an expropriation in a supermarket on Santo Amaro Avenue, together with REDE, but that ended up not happening because a Radio Patrol car intercepted the group formed by Devanir, Armênio, Waldemar and REDE militants, there was an exchange of fire and the death of a soldier.

Some time later, MRT carried out, together with REDE, an assault on an armored car of the National Institute of Social Security (INPS), an action in which an INPS employee was killed. Another expropriation together with REDE was carried out on September 8, at the Light agency, in the Belém district of São Paulo, commanded by Devanir de Carvalho and Eduardo Collen Leite. Also participating in this action were militants Gilberto Faria Lima, James Allen da Luz, Geraldo Virgílio Godoy and another identified only as Ismael.

In late 1969, after the successful kidnapping of U.S. ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick, repression fell even harder on the armed groups of the revolutionary left. Carlos Marighella, the main leader of the ANL, was assassinated, and several militants fell victim to the repression. The revolutionary organizations decided to create a front to articulate the armed actions among themselves, adding efforts and seeking unity, although without proposing a fusion into a single, large organization. MRT, ALN, VPR, POC and REDE participated in a meeting in December 1969 for the creation of a revolutionary armed front. Devanir de Carvalho, leader of the MRT, had an important role in the construction of this front. In the meeting a document entitled "Project of Declaration" was elaborated, with seven points that the organizations agreed upon to guarantee the objective of contributing to a "workers' revolution in Brazil", like a greater articulation among the actions of these revolutionary organizations; the realization of systematic meetings with one or two representatives of each of the groupings that composed the front; the decision that if the realization of the actions, the way and the participation of each organization were unanimously decided by the signatories, the action could be signed in the name of the front; The technical knowledge of the actions would be restricted to the participants of the preparatory meetings; the organizations should support each other logistically and financially; the organizations that made up the front would recognize each other as revolutionary organizations and the front would be open to other organizations that accepted such terms; and, finally, besides the systematic meetings and joint actions, the need to develop ideological discussions among the militants was recognized, by means of documents and within the norms of mutual respect. It was decided that Devanir de Carvalho and Plínio Petersen would be responsible for representing the MRT on this front.

Assaults, leafleting and sabotage Right at the meeting that formed the armed front, a simultaneous expropriation of two banks located on Brigadeiro Luís Antônio Avenue was agreed upon. The action took place on December 29, 1969, in a joint action in which the militants robbed both the Banco Mercantil de São Paulo e o Banco Itaú. Devanir de Carvalho, Plinio Petersen and Waldemar Andrew participated in the action for MRT. The expropriated money remained with Guiomar Lopes, and was later shared among ALN, MRT and REDE. This action also had a symbolic character, since the guerrilla organizations intended to resume significant actions that would demonstrate their strength and organization after Marighella's assassination.

After that, a series of other actions articulated by the front occurred in São Paulo. These actions, for the most part, were aimed at raising funds to guarantee the maintenance of the guerrilla organizations and to enable their establishment in the countryside, to establish a rural guerrilla war.