The year of 1968 in Latin America was marked by upsurges of both hope and violence. From Mexico to Argentina, students and workers united to demand university reforms, higher wages, better working conditions and improved accessibility to public services. These movements would later come to be defined as the ‘New Left’ of Latin America, a generation that mobilised Che Guevara as a symbol of Latin American unity and liberation, emerging in tension with the traditional Left and its reformist and populist predecessors. This New Left cut across traditional class lines to unite around specific political and economic objectives; they shared the goals of ‘anti-authoritarianism, direct democracy, social equality, and opposition to the Vietnam War’ with parallel movements in Europe and North America. But there were crucial, unique dimensions to Latin America’s New Left, which drew inspiration from a range of regional currents and was by no means homogenous: Che Guevara and Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution; Tricontinentalism, Third Worldism, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism; political exile; liberation theology; armed urban guerrilla action; and Salvador Allende’s ‘democratic road to socialism’, to name a few.

Compared to their Western European counterparts, Latin Americans were met with much more severe repression. An often cited example is the student massacre of Tlatelolco, where, on the 2nd October, hundreds of students were shot dead by police during a peaceful protest in the heart of Mexico City. In Uruguay, a breakthrough in Left-wing student militancy was met with severe police brutality. In Brazil, 1968 marked the installation of Institutional Act Number Five (AI-5), setting in motion what would become known as the ‘years of lead’ – os anos de chumbo. AI-5 legitimised the use of extra-legal repression against political crimes, allowing the regime to clamp down on suspected opposition by suspending political rights and employing torture and execution. In 1970, AI-5 was reinforced with the creation of the Internal Defence Operations Centre–Operation and Information Detachment (DOI–CODI) which spread across the country, acting as one of the regime’s core mechanisms for systematic torture and assassinations.

It is worth emphasising just how broad the remit of supposed political opposition and subversion was for the Brazilian and neighbouring Latin American regimes.