when Governor Rafael Fernandez,
the big estate-owner who
has been mentioned above, prevailed upon the central gov-
ernment to call out the federal troops against the rebels.
Infantry Battalion No. 21, with headquarters at Natal, was
accordingly given orders to pr.oceed against the people, for
the defense and preservation of the imperialist mines and
factories; and their orders further were to put down the
strike, which, in the euphemistic idiom that imperialists
speak, is what is known as "preserving law and order and a
respect for the constituted authorities." The Natal infantry-
men declined to play the part of slave-hunters;
and remem-
bering how nobly, four years before, they had fallen in beside
the rebels of Recife, they now refused to track down the
victims of exploitation and oppression in Rio Grande do
Norte.
On the 23rd of November the region is in a state of armed
insurrection. Through the comhined efforts of the soldiers,
workers, peasants and popular sympathizers,
the struggle
against feudal-imperialist
reaction has been victorious all
through the stat~. Sr. Fernandez relinquishes the govern-
ment; and the revolutionists,
with the situation in hand,
proceed to organize a new government, or rather a governing
Junta, constituted as follows:
Sr. Mauro Lago, ex-state-prison-superintendent;
Sr. Jose de Macedo, another former public official;
Dr. Juan Batista Galvao, a professor and ex-secretary of
the Athenaeum at Natal:
Sr. Mario Paiva, " popUlar representative;
Sergeant Ezequiel Diniz, of the 21st Infantry Battalion.
All of these persons were well known and highly esteemed
citizens of Natal. Things went on like this for three days,
at the end of which time the revolutiOflists were forced to
abandon the city in the face of advancing columns of sol-
diery, some of them leaving on board the Brazilian Lloyd
steamer,
Santos,
while others made for the interior. A few
days later, the
Santos
came back and put in at the port of
Natal, having disembarked the revolutionists at an unknown
point along the coast. As to just what the fate of the rebels
was, the government to this day refuses to give out any
information; but in the meanwhile,
reports deserving of
credence indicate that the insurrection aries continued the
struggle in the northeast, in the interior of the region.'
From the list above given, it may be seen that the govern-
ing Junta was hardly one made up of "soldiers,. marines,
workers and peasants." Nonetheless,
according to the of-
ficial propaganda of Dr. Vargas's government,
which is at
present the only propaganda permitted in Brazil, the whole
thing was due to a "communist plot." The Natal "soviet"
was in all probability one composed of outlaws, acting under
the instigation of a dangerous bearded Russian. But the truth
will out, sooner or later, the censorship is bound to slip, and
whether or no, we catch an allusion to the Junta. Then it's
the "soviet" once
mare.
Needless to say, if the Junta had been composed of a de-
generated admiral, an alcoholic general and one or more
public embezzlers, whether bankers, manufacture"rs or land
barons,the "plot" would have taken on quite another aspect.
It would have been, for example, a "national safety move-
ment," and would have begun by protecting the imperialist
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
plants and by jailing or shooting down-as in Rio Grande
do SuI, in 1930, and in San Paulo, in 1932-all
those who
declined to take part in the bosses' "fight," and who thereby
showed themselves to be communists, plain and simple.
But as it happens, the Junta was composed of men of the
people, even though they might belong to the middle class;
and this body at once called for an unremitting struggle
against imperialist exploitation and for the nati.onalization
of mines and factories. It spoke sometimes in the name of
the League for N ationalFreedom;
and again, it would in-
voke the name of Luis Carlos Prestes, the hoped-for leader,
so long dreamed of in Brazil. For all of that, it wasn't a
governing Junta; a "soviet" it had to be! It was not the
long-awaited movement for national liberation in Brazil, but
a conspiracy on the part of "extremist elements."
The short of it is, the story must be told in some other
way, and I am not the one to tell it. Let us go on to some-
thing else.
THE REVOLUTION IN PERNAMBUCO AND RIO DE JANEIRO
Curiously enough-a fact only to be explained by a lack
of organization in the midst of swift-crowding evems-
curiously enough, the city of Recife, the most revolutionary
of any in Brazil, did not respond as had been expected. In
Pernambuco,
the armed uprising did not take on the im-
portance that it did in Rio Grande do Norte. The workers,
however, did take possession of the outlying suburbs, where
they were dislodged by reinforced detachments of troops
loyal to the government. In Rio de Janeiro, on the contrary,
there were important developments. Captain Agildo Barata,
one of the indubitable leaders of the revolution, was stationed
at the time in the 30th Infantry barracks, in Praia Ver-
melha; and there he started a movement in the ranks, ob-
taining the support of more than a hundred corporals and
sergeants and one commissioned officer. On the night of
Tuesday, November 26, as the officers were all upstairs in
their clubroom, which was on the third floor, Captain Barata,
having strategically distributed his forces, dashed up to the
salon, where he suddenly burst in, cheering for the revolu-
tion and for Luis Carlos Prestes. A colonel started reproving
him for his conduct and ordered him downstairs at once to
his quarters.
"Who are you?" said Barata.
"I'm your commanding officer," said the colonel.
"I don't know you! The only commanding officer I re-
cognize is Luis Carlos, Prestes
!"
With this, he drew his revolver and shouted at them:
"V
p
with your hands!" The hands went up, one hundred and
fifteen pairs of them. Barata then placed a sentinel over the
officers with orders to shoot the first one who made a move.
Going down to the second floor, he threatened to blow the
place to bits if any of the seven hundred and fifty men there
dared to stir. The mutineers were barely a hundred in num-
ber, but they now engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the
other soldiers. The ~esult was, the regiment was prevented
from answering the government's call to arms, which was
Barata's object all along.
The revolutionary summons was responded to by the
Military Aviation School. Whether it was that they were
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