The New York Times
Sunday, August 24, 1980, p. 3

Brazilian Rightists Begin Terror Drive
By Warren Hoge, Special to the New York Times

Rio de Janeiro, Aug. 23 — Groups professing to be anti-Communist have begun a terrorist campaign in Brazil that is being widely interpreted as a last stand by backers of the right-wing philosophy that has been dominant for 16 years.

The immediate targets of the firebombings, sniper attacks, vandalism and death threats have been a Jewish nursery school in Sao Paulo and hundreds of newsstands selling literature newly freed for publication by the removal of censorship. The larger objective is believed to be a halt in the gradual liberalization of the authoritarian pattern of rule that began when Gen. Ernesto Geisel was President from 1974 to 1979 and is continuing under his successor, Gen. Joao Baptista Figueiredo.

The same leaflets, showing a newsboy, a pile of papers with a hammer and sickle on the cover and the legends of a dozen small weeklies and monthlies, have turned up at torched sites in six states, suggesting that the movement is being coordinated on a national scale. The wave of attacks began just after Pope John Paul II came to Brazil in July, a visit that endorsed the social activist role of the Roman Catholic Church, for years the dominant voice opposing the harsh policies of military regimes.

Despair and Necessity

"The despair of the fascists in view of the new reality of Brazilian politics is now bordering on psychosis and paranoia," commented Alberto Goldman, an opposition member of Congress.

To Dalmo de Abreu Dallari, a professor of law, the former head of the church's most powerful human-rights group and himself a victim of a recent beating, the wave of attacks represents "a temporary and necessary phase that the country must endure in moving from an arbitrary regime to a democratic state." The outbreaks prove, he added, "that the ultraright no longer has any space to move in."

Leaders from President Figueiredo and his Cabinet officers to local mayors have been voluble in denouncing the onslaught, but this has not been matched by conclusive action. No arrests have been made, which has led to a growing suspicion that paramilitary groups from the armed forces or the police may be responsible for the violence. This conclusion is bolstered by an army document turned up a year ago that recommended "containment of the influence of small opposition organs" that disseminate "Marxist ideas in various disguises."

There is also evidence that the Government is not comfortable with a press that has proved to be cantankerous after more than a decade of being gagged.

Press-Control Law Drafted

The President and his communications chief, Said Farhat, have warned that the administration is working on legislation to bring the press under "control." In the President's words, the objective is a law that would permit "exercise of the profession in complete freedom, but with responsibility." Brazil already has a little-used press law that denies use of the defense of factual accuracy to anyone who criticizes the President or the heads of Congress and the Supreme Court.

In the terror campaign, newsdealers have received printed messages telling them to stop selling publications from what is known as "the alternative press." The handbills end with the warning that "there will be no more warnings."

True to their word, the authors have followed up by burning streetcorner stands and destroying the inventories of those who have not heeded the threats.

The journals in question range from satirical sheets to shrill tabloids calling for revolution in alternating red and black type. In Salvador and Recife all the newsdealers have obeyed. In Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo most have, though some have elected to put the disputed publications out of sight, supplying them to those who ask for them. Their circulations, already small, have fallen more than 50 percent. The better known ones are trying to encourage subscription sales to get around the campaign; others are being sold by volunteers.

'Death to Children' on Walls

The attack last week on a nursery run by the Jewish-Brazilian Union for Social Well-Being was linked by the director of the city police force to the newsstand incidents. The attackers left obscenities, swastikas and slogans urging "death to children" on the walls, broke furniture and appliances and killed two pet parakeets.

Freedom of expression has probably drawn the fire of those unhappy with the new order because it has been most rapidly affected by the opening of the political process. The last prior censorship of newspapers was lifted two years ago, books by authors of every political persuasion are once again on sale and such long-prohibited films as "Last Tango in Paris" and "Z" are being shown in major cities.

Franklin Martins, editor of one of the alternative papers, Hour of the People, is a onetime leftist terrorist [...] "I can assure you that no leftist group of any kind is interested in terror in Brazil today," he said. "Terror today exists only for those who want to slow down the process of democratizing Brazil."