A Single Show in Three Shows – Folha de S. Paulo, January 29, 1977
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
The interest in my last article, “The Show,” published on the 13th of this month, has led me to fulfill the promise I made in it. Thus, I will now explain how the Tupamaro crisis in Uruguay was nothing more than a show—albeit a bloody one.
Here I am merely condensing and organizing, in journalistic form, the material from the lucid work Leftism in the Church: The Communists’ Fellow Traveler on Their Long Journey of Failures and Metamorphoses, which the Uruguayan TFP launched in Montevideo on December 16.
First, a word about what could be called the prehistory of the subject: before the Tupamaro adventure began in 1964, Uruguay had already been the target of several attempts at communist penetration. All had failed. The number of communists remained insignificant, and the likelihood of their numbers increasing was virtually nil. Moreover, the label “communist” provoked almost universal revulsion.
Unable to win with its own forces, the only option left to the Uruguayan Communist Party was to seek victory through the non-communist majority. This would constitute a large mass of maneuver, with some sympathizers assigned purely executive duties in less risky roles. Leadership roles and those involving risk to life would fall to members of the Communist minority.
Based on this principle, Moscow devised a plan of action, likely to bring Uruguay under a regime that is not directly communist but rather socialist-reformist. This would make it easier to attract the country’s non-communist majority to the regime or at least to tolerate it. Of course, the new regime would be led by “hardline” leftists, meaning communists and their “soft-left” acolytes, the socialists.
The architects of the communist offensive had all the data they needed to conclude that their plan would be met with indifference, if not outright hostility, by most of the population. To bring this majority to capitulation, two simultaneous shows would be necessary: a media show and a terrorist show.
Communist intellectuals, writers, and broadcasters, firmly entrenched in the media, would give the impression that the socialist-reformist current was gaining ground in public opinion, an overwhelming force that would be useless to resist.
At the same time, terrorists would create the impression of having the material force capable of flooding the country with blood if reformist socialism did not win or, once in power, if its leaders failed to implement the planned reforms fully.
Therefore, you had two shows. One announced to the country by television, press, and radio, and the other by firing machine guns, exploding bombs, and violently kidnapping people.
Naturally, when machine guns and propaganda speak together, the former speaks louder.
The Tupamaro show developed alongside the media show, but it quickly gained such prominence in the public imagination that the latter ended up playing only a “background music” role.
* * *
Things are strange in this vale of tears. Yet another force made itself felt immediately, helping the revolution win. Far less ostentatious than the media show, its mentors preferred having pastoral letters read from pulpits or whispering discreet advice in confessionals. Instead of terrorist explosions, a melodious ringing of bells was heard. This force was the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which, for the most part, supported reformist socialism. Clerics provided material for long “communist-Catholic” tirades in the media show, making the Tumaparo guerrilla crimes appear favorable in the public eye.
Thus, Catholic Church dignitaries instilled in the people principles contrary to those of the Catholic religion. They taught a false doctrine in the name of the true Church. This was the third, most astonishing and compelling show of all—the ecclesiastical show.
* * *
In Brazil, dwelling on introductions is not a waste of time. Our agile and intuitive people, highly accustomed to following political ups and downs, can decipher a tangled historical narrative at a glance, provided the introduction gives them the thread that ties the facts together.
In this sense, the following article, the last in this series, will be almost exclusively a chronology, in which the reader will see clearly because he already knows the facts.
Thus, the following article will be a test of political skill that readers can take to gauge their own acumen.
