1969. Long night. Authoritarianism and repression increase in the
same proportion as the oposition becomes radical. The military dictatorship,
through then President Marshal Arthur Costa e Silva, imposes Institutional
Act nº 5 on December 13, 1968, and reaches the peak of forced imposition of
provisional measures, mechanisms adopted by the military to legalize
political actions not foreseen by, and even contrary to, the Constitution,
which eliminated any possible democratic opposition to the regime, including
the closure of Congress. The Brazilian nation was deprived of the democratic
rights to organize, to question, to oppose, to debate, to vote, to
participate.
1969, year which, according to Herbert Daniel, could have been a
suggestive metaphor of so many democratic hopes and possibilities of
sharing, of stimulating relationships, of organizating contacts and
dialogues...
The opposition armed itself and became an "armed left", with the
formation of diverse groups of guerillas, quixotically formed by some
hundreds of students of one part of a politicized and active generation,
and politicians angered by the cassation of their political nights. Inspired
by the experience of the Cuban and Chinese revolutions, Marxist texts, the
book Revolution in Revolution? by Regis Debray, and texts of Althusser,
almost all were young men, less than 30 years of age, and did not have any
military experience for combating the ideological power that censured and
controlled the print and broadcast media and the army, and they were at the
mercy of violent repression, tortures and death.
Herbert Daniel participated in his first "armed action" at the end of
January, 1969, when the revolutionary group COLINA (Command of National
Liberation) made an assault on a bank to obtain resources necessary for the
continuation of the group. Those "armed actions" and "disappropriations"
were also the only opportunities that these groups throught could alert
and raise the consciounsness, of society about the fascist regime and about
the tortures to which citizens who dared to disagree with the system were
subjected. At times, when the political action was acknowledged, they sought
to explain the operative function of that event.
The military government created organizations, such as the SNI
(National Service of Information) that was intended to eliminate structures
opposed to the regime. Invariably, when the government succeeded in
capturing a member of one of the militant organizations, the lives of the
remaining militants were at risk, because of the revelation of information
prompted by systematic tortures, and the tactical structures were
demobilized.
The political exile of Herbert Daniel began when he entered
clandestinity, some days after his first participation in armed struggle.
Because of the tactical and structural fragility of these groups, the
governmental repression dismanteled the organizations with ease. Ângelo
Pezzuti da Silva, university friend and militant, was captured and tortured
with many others, some of whom died. Herbert Daniel saw himself obliged to
abandon family society and his studies in the medical school, going to Rio
de Janeiro, while his face figured on posters of "terrorists wanted"
throughout the country.
One of the most spectacular actions of disappropriation in which
Herbert Daniel participated was when his group at the time, the Armed
Revolutionary Vanguard, stole the strongbox in the residence of "Dr. Rui",
code name of the lover of Governor Adhemar de Barros. The simple amount of
two-and-a-half million dollars was part (a small part) of the "little box"
of the governor who "robbed, but did".
From Rio de Janeiro, he left for the Valley of Ribeira, an area
chosen by the group Popular Revolutionary Vanguard for military training and
preparation of guerillas. After the army located the group and surrounded
the area with a formidable war apparatus, he escapes with tranquility
through the rear guard, returning to Rio de Janeiro. Captain Carlos Lamarca,
one of the commanders of the Popular Revolutionary Vanguard most sought by
the repression for having deserted from the army "disappropariating" some
dozens of FAL guns, also escaped the encirclement.
Some months after the first successful experience of the kidnapping
of American Ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick, organized by the group MR-8,
together with the National Liberation Alliance commanded by Carlos Marighela,
Herbert Daniel participated in the kidnapping of German Ambassador
Ehrenfried von Holleben. The kidnapping was organized by the Popular
Revolutionary Vanguard (second formation) and had as objective an exchange
for comrades imprisoned under torture. The ambassador was freed on June 15,
1970, after being traded for forty political prisoners, among them, Daniel's
friend Ângelo Pezzuti da Silva and Fernando Gabeira, who participated in the
kidnapping of the American ambassador. When the newspaper published the
photo of the banished militants, Daniel commented that it would be one of
the happiest moments of his life. Today, some of these liberated militants
belong to the governing body of the PV (Green Party).
During another action of the group, in December of 1970, the
kidnapping of the Swiss ambassador, Daniel commemorated secretly his
twenty-fourth birthday in the "secret room" where he passed forty days
before he achieved the exchange of the ambassador for the freedom of seventy
political prisoners.
In November of 1971, he met Cláudio Mesquita, an "ally" who was
responsible for providing a front for the house that for months sheltered
"one of the guerillas most sought after and dedicated to death by the
DOI-CODI". For sheltering so sought after a "terrorist", Cláudio began to
be pursued and, from then on, commenced Daniel's flights with his friend,
with whom he lived for twenty years, until his death. Cláudio's sister,
wife and mother were tortured in order to procure the whereabouts of the
two men.
Herbert Daniel militated until 1972, by which time the great
majority of militant activists had been killed, imprisoned or exiled to
other countries. The political moment no longer favored the "dynamic of
survival", in which the few remaining activists no longer reflected on the
checks and challenges of that specific political moment without exit, the
unique finality of which was to persist, survive. There followed then "the
epoque of immobility and confusion, an exile without name that was passed in
the fields of a planet unknown and sad."
During all of the year 73 and until September of 74, they pursued
an exile of two, without contact with companions imprisoned or banished.
Herbert Daniel and Cláudio Mesquita left Brazil through the Argentine
frontier on September 7, 1972, headed for Europe. Here begins the
the patriotic exile of Herbert Daniel...
Stretch of music "Alegria, Alegria" (by Caetano Veloso) - sung by Caetano Veloso:
Stretch of music "Alegria, Alegria" (by Caetano Veloso) - sung by Caetano Veloso
Activists banished in the trade for the German ambassador
BIOGRAPHY