Carlos Marighella and resistance to the military dictatorship by the sound waves in 1969

Abstract

Fifty-five years ago, in one of the worst moments of the Military Dictatorship in Brazil, in 1969, Carlos Marighella resisted authoritarianism in several ways. One of them was using the airwaves of a radio station in the interior of São Paulo. A revolutionary for some, a guerrilla for others, he was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party and, when he broke with the party, he created the National Liberation Action (ALN), which supported the armed struggle to overthrow the dictatorship. Two actions demonstrate how the group countered the information disseminated by traditional media outlets that were under censorship. One of them was the takeover of the National Radio of São Paulo, in Piraporinha, on August 15, 1969. The other was the distribution of a ten-minute recording, produced by the Libertadora Radio, to some radio stations. To reconstruct this story, a bibliographic review was carried out on other works by authors such as Magalhães (2012), Gaspari (2002), Fausto (2004) and two works written by Marighella himself (1979) and the listening of sound material available on the internet.