Brazil
Disobedience challenges military
By JIM GERSBACH
Of the Emerald
While U S. media highlight Polish unions' struggle
against government repression, an even larger
movement for social justice in Brazil goes almost
unnoticed, Brazilian labor activist Maria Helena Moreira
Alves said Thursday on campus.
After 17 years of military rule and the Western
Hemisphere's largest dictatorship, Brazil is being
shaken by massive acts of civil disobedience organized
by community action groups opposed to the Figueiredo
regime ,
"We don't get the press Poland gets because we
work for Ford,” said Alves, who is closely involved with
Brazil's leading metalworkers’ union. "We’ve been
doing it (actively fighting authoritarian rule) for three
years — Poland’s only been doing it for one .”
As in Poland, dissatisfaction with governmental
economic policies has led to popular demands for civil
rights and economic reform. And in both countries, the
Roman Catholic Church is siding with workers and
peasants against the government, Alves said.
As public awareness of government repression has
increased, middle-class Brazilians, who used to react to
strikes with fear, have also joined with workers in
opposing the military.
Collapse of Brazil's much-touted "economic mira
cle,” which brought rapid industrial growth during the
early 1970s, has further alienated Brazilians from the
regime, Alves said. Prices are rising 113 percent a year,
increasing middle class poverty, and plunging more
than 30 million Brazilians into near-starvation.
Catholic lay groups and neighborhood associa
tions have started challenging military control of the
press, labor unions and the government itself, she said
"We are changing a dictatorship slowly from the
womb,” Alves said.
So far the military largely has given in to demands
for civil rights, ending press censorship, restoring the
right of habeus corpus and promising free elections of
state governors in 1982.
But the government nas resisted public demands
that Brazilians be given a larger role in national
development policy. Under that policy, American,
Japanese and European investors enjoy substantial tax
and financial advantages not offered Brazilians. Labor
and wages also are controlled by the government,
which prohibits strikes and sets salary levels.
This lenient policy has made Brazil a haven for
multinationals, she said.
“Ford manufactures all its Pinto engines in Sao
Paulo and ships them back here because they pay our
guys only 50 cents an hour.”
Official American interest in Brazil, however, ex
tends beyond preserving its favorable investment
climate. Since the 1964 overthrow of Brazil’s mildly
reformist democratic government, Brazil has “done the
dirty work” for the United States by becoming a model
of repression in Latin America, she said.
“What the military did became a model for what
others in Latin America did. Brazil was the first such
country with people disappearing," she said. Brazil
continues doing the dirty work of the United States in
Latin America, including aiding military takeovers in
Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and most recently Bolivia.
Brazil also has cooperated closely with the military
regime in Argentina, she said, where over 16,000
people suspected of opposition to the government have
"disappeared ”
Although Brazil’s government has officially ended
repression, para-military death squads assassinate
political opponents of the regime, she said. In Nova
Iguacu, a working class district of Rio de Janeiro, over
2,000 people have been kidnapped, tortured, and found
shot to death, with the death squads’ skull and cross
bones emblem carved into their skin.
But Brazilian troops have so far refused to shoot on
strikers and protestors.
“They would have to kill millions of Brazilians if they
(the military) crack down now,” Alves said. But hard
liners in the military could clamp down any time they
wish, she stressed
Alves’ speech was part of the Human Rights in Crisis
Conference held Thursday and today in the EMU.
Graphic by Rene Castro
El Salvador
FDR offers Salvadoran reforms
Dr. Ruben Zamora of the Democratic Revolution
ary Front (FDR) roundly denounced El Salvador’s
government Thursday afternoon in the EMU Ballroom.
The FDR is an umbrella organization of political
parties, trade unions, religious, student and peasant
groups that oppose the Salvadoran government.
In a speech to a near-capacity crowd, Zamora said
the current regime is “the most cruel, the most brutally
repressive government in our whole history."
The picture conveyed to the American people of a
moderate Salvadoran government struggling to im
plement reforms in the chaos of warring political
factions is false, Zamora said.
“Everybody in El Salvador knows that the people who
commit the social barbarities of assassination, of killing
and torturing people in civilian clothes are the same
people that, during the day, wear uniforms as
policemen, as members of the security forces, as
members of the army,” he said.
Charging the recent Salvadoran agrarian reforms
are “window dressing," Zamora said the vast majority
of the arable land belongs to an elite oligarchy.
Zamora added the broad-based FDR coalition
provides the only "truly democratic alternative” to El
Salvador’s military-dominated government.
The FDR advocates a four-point reform program
that includes the establishment of a democratic
government, the nationalization of foreign commerce
and financial institutions, the reconstruction of the
armed forces to include both “freedom fighters” and
democratic officers from the army, and the pursuit of a
non-alignment foreign policy.
”We don’t want to be under the umbrella of one
superpower, neither under the umbrella of another
superpower,” he said. "We don't want to be the servant
of one superpower, neither the servant of another
superpower.”
Zamora called “complete lies” recent allegations
from the State Department that Salvadoran rebels were
getting Soviet arms via Vietnam and Cuba.
"We have not asked for nor recieved arms from the
socialist countries because we consider that if we do
that we are furnishing the American government with
the excuse, not the reason, the excuse for all-out
intervention in El Salvador," he said. We don’t want
that intervention.”
Group asks U.S. aid be dropped
SALEM - A delegation from El Salvador appealed to
Oregonians here Thursday to demand the federal
government cease all aid to El Salvador.
The delegation asked the United States to “sus
pend arms sales and provisions, return military advi
sors to the U S. and stop all economic aid to the military
Christian-Democrat junta," the group s translator said.
“This aid is used to violate the freedom and democracy
of El Salvador.”
Sen. Ted Kulongoski, D-Junction City, told the
delegates he saw dire developments at the federal level.
"The statements in the last couple of days by the
Reagan Administration through Alexander Haig have,
in my opinion, been nothing more than warning to the
American people that this nation is planning to become
militarily inlvoved in that country."
According to Kulongoski, such intervention would
be counter to U S. interest.
“Not only will it not bring the desired results in El
Salvador, but I think it will perpetuate the image Third
World nations have that we do not attempt to deal with
them as equals, but enforce our will militarily."
When asked if Oregonians should submit to a draft
designed to create an army to go to El Salvador,
Kulongoski hesitated.
"As you know, I oppose the registration that was
implemented by the Carter administration. However, I
must tell you that I do believe there will be a draft this
year. The question of whether one should serve goes to
the very nature of the relationship an individual has with
his government and the obligation that individual feels
he’s under."
ONE WEEK
FROM NOW!!
Find out Why Burroughs
Offers the
BEST CAREERS for YOU.
As a world leader in Information Management, with particular expertise in computer
technology, Burroughs has all the ingredients to offer you the best in careers.
At Burroughs, you work on small, highly visible teams, while enjoying the stability of a major
corporation. You are involved in state-of-the-art technology in a dynamic industry. And, you
maximize your talents in a sophisticated environment which encourages innovation.
Your Burroughs career also offers you an excellent salary, and complete benefits package,
including educational assistance.
CAMPUS INTERVIEWS: Wednesday, February 25
CAREERS IN: MBA Accounting/Finance
Operations Research
Computer Science
Burroughs facilities are located in the following Southern California locations: Santa Barbara,
Pasadena, Mission Viejo, Carlsbad, Rancho Bernardo, Westlake Village, Irvine, San Diego and
City of Industry.
If you are unable to see us, please feel free to contact the corporate manager of professional
employment, COLLECT at: (714) 768-2011.
Censorship forces Chilean writers, artists into exile
By GLENN BOETTCHER
Of the Emerald
Censorship or “manipulation
of the signs’’ can be fought
through "self-censorship,”
Chilean writer Fernando Alegria
told a full EMU Ballroom crowd
Thursday.
Speaking during the 1981
Northwest Conference on
“Human Rights in Crisis: Latin
America,” Alegria said a re
pressive regime changes the
meaning of signs in a country
when it takes power.
"A green light no longer
means go through,’’ he said.
Instead, a green light means the
sign has not yet been given to
go through.
But those opposing a
dictatorship can maintain maximum resistance
but make their actions appear to meet tjTQ
dictatorship’s desires, Alegria said.
As an example, Alegria described a
Chilean play in which the actors build a brick
wall on a bare stage. When the wall is finished,
an official tells them it must be removed to
make way for a new road. The play ends witt)
the builders christening the new wall and
sharing a bottle of wine with the truck driver
who will demolish the wall.
Alegria said audiences react to the play'6
own country ' are choosing
exile.
Latin American students who
have formed committees,
signed petitions and participat
ed in hunger strikes to protest
repression have disappeared,
been expelled or been pen
alized with higher tuition, Ale
gria said.
More than 100 “first-rate"
Chileans are writing from exile,
he estimated. And Alegria said
those who leave Universities of
ten are not replaced
“Research is at a stand-still."
How long will it take a Univer
sity that has closed for one or
two years to regain its stature?
Alegria asked.
“One generation, two
generations?”
VWs-MERCEDES-BMWs
DATSUN-TOYOTA-AUDI
Reliable service for your foreign car
342-2912
2025 Franklin Blvd.
Eugene, Oregon
U of O Rugby Club
Sponsored by UO Club Sports Program
Spring Tour Fund
presents
Folk Singer
Dennis Fridulin
A Roadside Record’s Artist
Vancouver, B.C.
with
Rob & Laurie
A Folk Duo
Feb. 22
in the
EMU Ballroom
7:30 p.m.
Tickets $2.00
Available at the Main Desk, at the Door, or from U of O Rugby Club Members
symbolic references to repression and injus
tice with emphatic applause and shouts. And
the Chilean government can’t stop production
of the play, now in its second year, because it
doesn't refer to the government, he explained.
"Dictatorships cannot do away with cul
ture."
Alegria, a poet and novelist, said despite a
"deeply rooted humanist tradition” in Latin
America and Chile, Universities are being
closed and intellectuals, teachers, painters,
writers and musicians who "are afraid of their
We Give You a
Lot of Wall Units
for Your Money!
$73 each
For only $73, you will have a bookcase that
will go where you go for years to come!
Each unit measures 12" deep, 72" high,
and 30" wide, giving you plenty of space
for books, radios, records and plants! With
just a twist of a screwdriver you can put
these units to work in 10 minutes .or take
them apart just as easily on moving day
You can add doors and drop lid desks on
them, too! Buy three units at once and save
$10 on each one ...For a few dollars more,
you can have 16" deep units big enough
for most stereos. So bring your friends, and
carry home some bookcases today!
4 Popular Finishes
• White • Walnut
• Dark Butcherblock
• Light Butcherblock
Save even more!
3 for $189!
RUBEN
SHOP SATURDAY & WFFkDAYS II) AM Tit S III FRIDAY NIT I III 4 SI INI )AY N( K IN III S • EIGHTH AND Ol IVF. • 4H5-H I4I