Command of Communist Hunting

The Command for Communist Hunting (Portuguese: Comando de Caça aos Comunistas - CCC), was a paramilitary and conservative group active in Brazil during the first years of the military dictatorship (1964–1985).

Activities

The CCC, in the mid-1960s, began as an informal organization of rightist university students who busied themselves with bullying of allegedly leftist students, or anyone they deemed as a communist. At the outbreak of the military dictatorship, it was such a group of students, who, according to the historian Maria Yedda Leite Linhares, engaged in witch-hunting during the red scare that followed the fall of the João Goulart government:

"When the military coup took place, the Rádio MEC was invaded by members of the Comando de Caça aos Comunistas (CCC) which literally destroyed the studios". Rádio MEC was a state-owned broadcasting station in Rio de Janeiro. The CCC was also held responsible for the arson, on the same day, of the Rio headquarters building of UNE, the national university students organization.

As a generic denomination for any group of rightist students,the CCC was also involved in the events known as Conflito da Rua Maria Antônia (Maria Antônia Street Battle) in 1968, among students of Universidade Mackenzie, a private college, and Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil's leading public university—where a student died.

As a formally organized paramilitary group, the CCC became known to the general public when it staged attacks to leftist personalities outside the university milieu. Its most shocking action was the invasion of the Ruth Escobar Theatre in São Paulo on July 18, 1968, where they beat the cast members of Chico Buarque's play Roda Viva. Among them was actress Marília Pêra, who was hit with rubber truncheons backstage and had to flee naked into the street, alongside other members of the female cast.[1] According to the same sources, the CCC was also responsible for a bomb attack on the Opinião Theatre in Rio de Janeiro on December 2 of the same year and for kidnapping, torturing and murdering of Antônio Henrique Pereira Neto, a Catholic priest of Recife and aide of archbishop Helder Câmara, on May 26, 1969.

Military Backing and demise

As the military government, at the end of 1968, dissolved habeas corpus and could arrest citizens without the right of defense, Brazilian repressive institutions such as DOI-CODI holding the power of life and death over anyone deemed an enemy of the military regime, paramilitary groups such as CCC lost their raison d' étre and ceased their actions, its individual members quietly melding into the social support basis for the dictatorship.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Clarissa Brasil, "As ações do Comando de Caça aos Comunistas (1968-1969)", paper presented at IX Encontro Estadual de História, ANPUH-RS, 2008, available at
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