Memória social da Guerrilha do Araguaia e da guerra que veio depois

Abstract

The Guerrilha do Araguaia had place in southern Pará and north of Goiás (nowadays, state of Tocantins), encompassing also areas of Maranhão, in the region known as ‘Bico do Papagaio’. The guerrilla occurred between the middle 1960s, when the first activists of Communist Party of Brazil (PC do B) arrived in the region, and 1974, when the last guerrillas were hunted and killed by militaries, trained to combat the guerrilla and determined not to do prisoners. Executions, elimination of vestiges and torture are in the narratives collected, as well as in the existing literature on the guerrilla. The probable operações limpeza (operations to eliminate traces of evidence) were realized in many manners, to rely on the narratives collected by the team created by the Ministry of Defense to fulfill federal sentence produced in response to demand moved by the guerrillas’ relatives. In addition to recovering the guerrilla’s memory, from the narratives of who lived the experience, it is important to send light on what popularly is known as the ‘second war’. In the region, the military governments set an intense system of repression and political control, and a model of occupation based on cattle ranching which destroyed the forests. So, when we tell on the guerrilla, we need also tell on the war that came afterwards.