Left-wing military: Political participation and engagement in armed struggle

Abstract

This article presents a study on military personnel who participated in the armed struggle against the military regime in Brazil. The organization of these military dissidents is inserted into a larger movement that predates the civil-military coup, and has its heyday in the campaign for legality in 1961, when the military ministers attempted to prevent the inauguration of vice president João Goulart. With the deposition of the president in 1964, followed intense military repression, with thousands of officers and underlings disenfranchised from the ranks of the armed forces. In the following years, some of these military will engage in armed struggle in various organizations that arise or that re-articulate from already existing in the previous period, as Popular Action (AP) or Polop.