When the uprising reached Recife, also in the northeast, the government’s response was a slaughter, as the military put down the uprising and executed the leftist rebels. “It was brutal, tremendous repression! They killed left and right, crooked and straight. The life of a communist wasn’t worth ten bits of raw honey,” said Lieutenant Lamartine Coutinho, using an old Portuguese expression we might translate as “wasn’t worth shit.” Then the final act came, on a small beach just around the bend from Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro. The attack began in the wee hours of the morning on November 27,
...more
