Founded in Recife in May 1966, the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR) was organised by a group of militants who criticised the line of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB). From the outset the PCR faced a fierce struggle against deviations from Leninism in the international communist movement: Soviet revisionism on the one hand, and the deviations of the Chinese Communist Party, with its mixture of leftism and conciliationism, on the other.
The task of the PCR was therefore to declare financial and political independence from these two anti-Leninist tendencies and thus “irrevocably separate the revolutionary communists in Brazil from the revisionists and opportunists.” (PCR Statutes)
The first nucleus of the PCR was formed by Amaro Luiz de Carvalho, an experienced peasant leader, and the youths Manoel Lisboa de Moura, Selma Bandeira, Valmir Costa and Ricardo Zarattini.
In 1966 the Party published its first programmatic document, the 12-Point Charter for Revolutionary Communists, in which it defended the working class as the vanguard of the Brasilian socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
ARMED STRUGGLE AND MASS STRUGGLE
The PCR established itself particularly in the capitals and sugar cane regions of the states of Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte. The organisation spent a period of about seven years playing a strong role in the armed resistance struggle against the military dictatorship, promoting clandestine actions such as attacks on barracks and the burning of sugar cane fields, as well as various mass actions such as leafleting at factory gates and student strikes and marches.
With the intensification of the dictatorial regime from 1968 onwards, many revolutionary organisations fighting for democracy and socialism were subjected to brutal and increasing persecution. The PCR resisted bravely, but suffered successive hard blows and was partially disbanded.
On 22 August 1971, Amaro Luiz de Carvalho was executed two months before his release from prison in Recife, where he was serving his sentence. Between 1971 and 1972, another peasant leader of the PCR, Amaro Félix Pereira, was murdered. In August/September 1973, the police arrested, tortured and killed three other prominent leaders of the Party – Manoel Lisboa de Moura, Emmanuel Bezerra dos Santos and Manoel Aleixo.
In fact, the loss of these comrades’ lives represented a major blow to the Party’s organic structure, its experience in the struggle against the dictatorship and, last but not least, to its political leadership, crystallised in the person of comrade Manoel Lisboa, who was tireless in his work of helping Party collectives, defending ideological principles, formulating tasks and preparing actions.
Nevertheless, throughout the whole of the 1970s, the PCR acted decisively in the university student movement, influencing the student movements in the main universities in Pernambuco, as well as the Pernambuco Student Union (UEP). The PCR also played an important role in mobilising for the restructuring of the National Union of Students (UNE), launched in 1979, and in 1981 obtained the vice-presidency of the organisation, represented by comrade Luiz Falcão, today editor of the newspaper A Verdade.
Another important event of this period was the arrest of Edival Nunes Cajá, leader of the PCR and student leader at the Federal University of Pernambuco. Cajá was kidnapped and arrested in Recife on 12 May 1978, and three days later more than 12,000 UFPE students demonstrated for an end to torture and for Cajá’s release. There were also solidarity actions throughout Brazil and abroad, as well as the participation of sections of the Catholic Church affiliated to Dom Hélder Câmara.
At the end of the first week the physical torture was stopped, but Cajá remained in prison until 1 November. He was arrested again on the 21st of that month for giving interviews denouncing the torture he had been subjected to and was only released on 1 June the following year. Today Cajá is president of the Manoel Lisboa Cultural Centre in Pernambuco.
UNIFICATION OF THE COMMUNISTS AND THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PCR
In July 1981 the militants of the PCR decided to merge the Party with the Revolutionary Movement of October 8 (MR-8) in order to better express themselves at the national level in order to carry out their political agitation and a broader mass work aimed at the unity of the Brazilian communist forces. However, this nascent organisation failed to cope with its tasks and gradually drifted away from revolutionary principles, away from the Leninist form of the Party and compromised with the interests of the national anti-imperialist bourgeoisie. Thus, in February 1995, after a long internal political struggle, the original core of the PCR definitively separated from the MR-8 and initiated the reconstitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
With the re-founding of the PCR, a youth organisation (UJR) was established for the first time in the Party’s history.
In 1998 the Party held its Second Congress, at which the development of capitalism, the class struggle in Brazil and the world, and the tasks of the Party in the face of this situation were formulated in a more mature and precise way. In December of that year, the first issue of the PCR’s organ, A Verdade, appeared and was largely responsible for the growth of the Party’s agitation, propaganda and organising work.
Since then, the Party has become more organised and has continued to grow at the national level. In August 2003, the Third Congress was held, which reaffirmed the revolutionary line of the Second Congress and promoted a profound reformulation of its statutes.
Since 2004 the PCR has been a member of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations (CIPOML).