Communists with knives drawn, ready to stab you in your sleep, became a common trope in Brazil’s voluminous anticommunist material over the next few decades. In the press, you could also find illustrations indicating that communists were insects that could only be “exterminated” with liberty, the family, and morality. Communism was called a plague, a virus, or cancer, terms that were also hurled at communists at the time in nearby Argentina.46 More often than not, communism was associated with pure evil or witchcraft, drawn with the use of demons or Satanic beasts, such as dragons, snakes, and
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