"O sangue da mocidade está correndo": A classe política e seus filhos enfrentam os militares em 1968

Abstract

1968 in Brazil has long been remembered for the violent showdown between the student movement and military regime This article argues that we cannot understand the crisis of 1968 without taking into account a group that most studies have ignored - the civilian politicians who were bound to university students by ties of social class and blood. As they grew increasingly frustrated after four years of authoritarian military rule that had taken away many of their prerogatives, many politicians were infuriated as the regime violently repressed protesting students, and they joined marches and defended the students with their actions and words. This support for leftist students, culminating in Márcio Moreira Alves's speeches attacking the military, created irreconcilable differences between politicians and the military, leading in December to the decree of Institutional Act no. 5.