Twenty Years Later and the establishment of the narrative about preemptive counterrevolution

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the relationship between major events that led to the military-corporate coup of 1964 and the actions of the Peasant Leagues in the Northeast Region of Brazil. Motivated by economic interests of national and US business groups, the coup propagated a false narrative of communist threat that generated fear in the population and, consequently, consensus as to its relevance. Seen as a focus of communist subversion, the Leagues were far from reaching the necessary maturity for an attempt to seize power, but they were still the basis of the coup justifications. In this sense, the case of the Peasant League of Engenho da Galiléia (state of Pernambuco), where Eduardo Coutinho's film Twenty Years Ago (1984) was being shot when the coup took place, is enlightening. In the construction of the narrative that referenced the need for a preemptive counterrevolution, the seized film material was disseminated in the press as guerrilla training equipment for an imminent communist revolution to be launched in the country.