Manoel Lisboa de Moura, founder and top leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Brazil, had been a militant since his school days, as well as an actor and theater director. He began his medical studies at UFAL, but abandoned them to dedicate himself to the clandestine struggle against the fascist military dictatorship. He was an example of the “New Man” advocated by Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara.

Bluma | GO Newsroom | A Verdade | July 4, 2024 | Translated from Portuguese–

HEROES OF THE PEOPLE — The struggle against capitalist imperialism and the oppression of the Brazilian bourgeois state requires study, action, dedication, vigilance, discipline and, above all, fidelity to the principles and practices of Marxism-Leninism, as well as an iron will to improve and enhance the Revolutionary Communist Party. Such was the life and struggle of its founder and top leader, who dedicated his best years to this fight: the hero Manoel Lisboa de Moura, who died at the age of 29 in the cellars of the fascist military dictatorship.

Childhood and adolescence

As the book “A vida e a luta do comunista Manoel Lisboa – Depoimentos” (“The life and struggle of communist Manoel Lisboa – Testimonies”) thrillingly recounts, our hero dedicated himself to organizing his peers from an early age. Active in the student movement as director of the Union of Secondary Students of Alagoas (UESA), he was a lover of the arts and popular culture, directed and acted in plays inspired by the Popular Culture Center (CPC) of the National Student Union (UNE) and was passionate about soccer. Manoel was “calm, introspective, cheerful, averse to personal violence, he conveyed confidence and the impression that he was always a little ahead of us,” recalls Valmir Costa, his youth and party colleague.

The young man from Alagoas began his youth activism in the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) at the age of 16, in 1960. Two years later, realizing the right-wing revisionist opportunism in the PCB, he joined the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB). However, not noticing a substantial difference in practice between the two parties, he decided to found the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR) in 1966, together with other comrades, on the basis of the paradigmatic document Letter of 12 Points to Revolutionary Communists.

Galego, Celso, Zé, Miguel, Mário: the Marxist-Leninists

A dedicated student, Manoel Lisboa passed his first medical course, but didn’t hesitate to drop out of college to go underground, a harsh necessity in the fight against the fierce repression of the dictatorship. He adopted various aliases and dedicated himself entirely to building the Party throughout the Northeast, leading everything from clandestine agitation and propaganda activities to military operations such as the assault on the Recife Air Force Park to obtain weapons in March 1973, as well as training courses and student congresses of the PCR.

In spite of all the adverse conditions, he was a cheerful young man with a keen sense of humor. One of the anecdotes in the book of testimonies highlights this characteristic:

“On one of these trips, Zé [Manoel Lisboa], I [José Nivaldo Júnior] and another comrade were discussing the arrival of socialism. I argued that socialism in Brazil was a distant dream. Zé then told the following fable, which I have never forgotten and have quoted many times. He said: Imagine, comrade, the workers building a pyramid in Egypt. There was a socialist who was trying to win comrades to his party. Then he would say: Comrade, here comes slavery, then feudalism, then mercantilism, then capitalism, and then socialism. Indeed, at the time of the pyramids, socialism was a long way off. But today, mate, slavery has passed, feudalism has passed, mercantilism has passed, capitalism has arrived, socialism already exists in ⅓ of the world and you think it’s far away, mate?”

A humble and affectionate man, only one thing angered him: the oppression and exploitation committed by the bourgeoisie. And the only thing that annoyed him was the lack of attention and responsibility from his comrades.

“Overcoming torture is the duty of every revolutionary”

Manoel had already faced repression and imprisonment before going underground. The first was at the age of 20, in 1965, “for selling books and magazines in a small bookshop.” His last arrest took place on August 15, 1973, at dusk, when he was surprised by dozens of dictatorship agents in Ian Fleming Square in Recife. For nearly two weeks, Manoel Lisboa suffered the most brutal torture that the fascist minds of the military, very well trained at the War College under CIA command, could conjure up.

Beaten all over his body, subjected to electric shocks and burns, physically and psychologically abused in every way, he ended up losing feeling in his lower limbs and reaching a state of semi-paralysis. But his will was unbreakable. His firmness was a true Bolshevik fortress. Armed with the most profound revolutionary theory, Manoel Lisboa de Moura truly embodied one of the fundamental principles of the PCR: “Delusion is betrayal, and betrayal is worse than death.” Thus, transforming theory into profound and invincible material strength, the Party’s structure remained intact and the fascists were truly defeated on the darkest and most adverse battlefield of the class struggle.

Born on February 21, 1944 in the Farol neighborhood of Maceió, in the state of Alagoas, Manoel Lisboa shone throughout his revolutionary life and militancy. His last weeks were filled with such an intense glow of loyalty to Marxism-Leninism, to the Party and to the oppressed working people of Brazil, that the brutal torturers would never forget him, nor would anyone who knew him. On September 4, 1973, at less than 30 years old, Manoel passed into immortality, becoming a true beacon for the revolutionary struggle against fascism and for socialism, as he watered the seed of tomorrow’s freedom with his own blood.

Continuing the Party’s work

In every activity and task, in every brigade, leafleting, toll, conversation, study and planning meeting, hall pass, student and union election, we follow and must follow the example of Manoel Lisboa. Capitalist society employs its most obstinate campaign against the organization of the working class in every way, because it knows about and fears the greatest weapon that history has ever presented against its existence: the Revolutionary Communist Party, the instrument of the workers and the masses exploited and oppressed by the regime of private ownership of the means of production.

Supported by imperialism, propagandized by the bourgeois media and their allies on the right, the phonies of social democracy are dragging the people out of political life with their strictly parliamentary and electoral proposal. By demobilizing and immobilizing the class struggle, these traitors to the working class seek to maintain the status quo of the capitalist state, now in high positions as government officials. However, the Brazilian people feel the misery and crimes committed by this rotten and putrid mode of production: police violence, violence in the countryside, low wages, sexism, racism, LGBTphobia, unemployment, rising prices, the inability to live a dignified life.

Therefore, it is our honorable and historic duty to follow the principles of Marxism-Leninism for the true and consequent struggle against oppression and exploitation. To the question of the policemen who raided his sister’s house one early morning (“How does such an intelligent boy get involved in communism?”), we reply with the words of our hero: “This bourgeoisie has to go.” And we will do just that. With fervor and ardor, renewed with every small victory, with support and camaraderie at all times, with study of theory and improvement of revolutionary practices and actions, we will carry out his final request to continue the Party’s work.

Categories: Brazil, History, International, Revolutionary History