Kenneth P. Serbin

How and why did arm-toting Brazilian revolutionaries of the 1960s and 1970s adopt a new strategy of nonviolence and democracy? To what extent could they be considered “terrorists” (as Brazil’s military labeled them), and how do they themselves interpret their abandonment of violence? How have these militants’ more recent actions contributed to the impressive flowering of post-authoritarian civil society, including the human rights movement? How do their lives reflect Brazilian, Latin American, and world history during the Cold War and its aftermath? The study answers these questions through examination of the state of Latin American democracy by focusing on how 21 former members of Brazil’s most important guerrilla organization entered the mainstream.