“The Violence of the Peaceful”

The International Catholic Working Youth against oppression in Brazil (1969)

Abstract

The persecution of priests and young Catholic workers in Brazil was the beginning of serious open tensions between the military leadership and the ecclesiastical leadership organized at the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), shortly after the implementation of Institutional Act no. 5 in december 1968. Conceived by the young priest Joseph Cardijn, in Belgium, the Catholic Workers Youth (JOC) was officially recognized in 1925 by the Holy See. Within a decade, the JOC spread throughout the world and in 1932 it finally arrived in Brazil. The military coup (1964) placed new challenges on the agenda for the labor movement and, consequently, for the JOC, which began to carry out a deeper reflection on the socio-political-economic conditions of the working class in that Latin American and Brazilian context. This did not go unnoticed by the agents of the authoritarian State who began to accompany the militants and severely persecuted them, culminating in the arrest of many of their leaders. It was in this situation that a transnational solidarity network led by JOC Internacional exposed to the world, at least to the West, the modus operandi of the Brazilian military regime that frontally attacked Human Rights. The article describes the common strategies and experiences lived by a socio-political-religious organization in a political culture marked by a strength regime in which the main and unifying element was solidarity of a political nature, and struggle forms and political action beyond collective action.