Leoncio Basbaum, reviewing the years that followed the Communist-inspired uprisings of 1935 in Brazil, wrote in 1962 that "the reaction that was unleashed has no parallel in our history, not even in the appalling times of the state of siege of Artur Bernardes. It was a period of black terror that lasted until 1941, during which the police savagery respected neither social nor political position, neither age nor sex." 1 Following the dismantlement of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB) in Rio de

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... Janeiro in 1940 and in São Paulo in 1941, the represssion continued severe for three more years and the nation's press continued to be censored. In an effort to recount episodes which involved the PCB and Brazilian Trotskyism from 1935 to 1945, I have been assisted by the large collection of papers loaned me by Hermínio Sacchetta, who headed the PCB in São Paulo before he became involved in the "Sacchetta schism" of 1937-1938 and organized the Trotskyite Partido Socialista Revolucionário. Other Communist documents are to be found, together with police reports and the declarations of prisoners, in the Brazilian National Archives, and in that connection I am grateful to Daphne F. Rodger for consulting the archives in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, thus adding to information that I had previously collected. Mention should also be made of the papers in the files of O Estado de S. Paulo, in the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de Historia Contemporânea do Brasil (CPDOC) in Rio de Janeiro, and in the Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, of the University of Campinas. Much help was furnished by researcher Pedro Rodrigues, who taught me a great deal about the participation of Brazilians in the Spanish Civil War, and by some victims of the Brazilian repression (and contributors to it), who recalled their experiences when I interviewed them. It was good to have the cooperation of veteran militants, such as Apolônio Pinto de Carvalho, fighter for the Spanish Republic and French Resistance, and Sebastião Francisco, who