Dilma Vana Rousseff (Rusev), Badass Guerilla Warrior

Dilma Vana Rousseff

Economist; 36th President of Brazil. First woman to hold the office;

Brazil; 5th largest population and 8th largest economy in the world; complicated; Glenn Greenwald; 190million people there (compared to 319million in USA);

In 2002, the Worker's Party of Brazil has won 4 elections in a row; the ruling class hates the Worker's Party;

Dilma Vana Rousseff is the daughter of a member of the Communist Bulgarian Party who immigrated to Brazil for political reasons.

Dilma's Bulgarian father, Petar Rusev, died in 1962 when she was 15.

As a student in the 60s, she campaigned locally at first for better street lighting,

and then, during the 21-year dictatorship, for revolutionary change in Brazil’s politics.

Apolo Lisboa, a comrade from her early days in the clandestine Marxist group Política Operária (Workers’ Politics, or Polop), recalls Rousseff as a familiar figure among the activists who held debates on the Vietnam war and fundraising parties dancing to Tropicália music.

“Dilma was better at debating than dancing, but she was not very good at public speaking. She wasn’t really a leader of the masses. She was more of an organiser,” he said over a beer at the centre, which still boasts a cinema and debating area.

Dilma's life was deeply affected by the military regime which ruled Brazil from 1964 till 1985, “The Dictatorship”, after the 1964 coup d'etat against the democratically elected government of left-wing President Joao Goulart.

She became a socialist during her youth, and following the 1964 coup d'état

joined various left-wing and Marxist urban guerrilla groups that fought against the military dictatorship.

Activity: 1967 - Militant of the Worker's Politic (POLOP);
October 6, 1968 - Robbed the Bank of the State of Sao Paulo (BANESPA) Iguatemi Street, $80,000 [taken];
October 12, 1968 - Planning the murder of Captain Charles R. Chandler;
December 11, 1968 - Robbed Diana Gun Shop, Seminario Street, 48 weapons stolen;
April 1969 - Entered COLINA, National Liberation Command;
January 24, 1969 - Robbed the Quitauna Fourth Infantry Regiment, Osasco, Sao Paulo, 63 rifles, 3 machine guns, 4 pallots of ammunition [stolen];
June?/July 18, 1969 - Robbed the house Ademar de Barros;
August 1, 1968 - Robbed Sao Paulo's Mercantile Bank;
September 1969 - VAR Palmares Congress, Teresopolis;
September 20, 1969 - Robbed the State Police Headquarters, Barro Branco

The Brazilian military government was the authoritarian military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from April 1, 1964 to March 15, 1985. It began with the 1964 coup d'état led by the Armed Forces against the administration of the President João Goulart, who had assumed the office after being vice-president, upon the resignation of the democratically elected president Janio Quadros, and ended when José Sarney took office on March 15, 1985 as President.

The military revolt was fomented by Magalhães Pinto,Adhemar de Barros, and Carlos Lacerda (who had already participated in the conspiracy to depose Getulio Vargas in 1945), Governors of Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. The coup was also supported by the US Embassy and State Department.

The military dictatorship lasted for almost twenty-one years; despite initial pledges to the contrary, military governments in 1967 enacted a new, restrictive Constitution, and stifled freedom of speech and political opposition with support from the U.S. government. The regime adopted nationalism, economic development, and Anti-Communism as its guidelines.

Over the next couple of decades she participated in organized resistance of leftist and Marxist groups.

Dilma emerged as a leading figure in VAR Palmares, a political-military organization of Marxist-Leninist partisan orientation. The attorney who prosecuted the organization called her "Joan of Arc of subversion."

She was the mastermind of a robbery of USD 2.5 M from a former governor of Sao Paulo to be used for funding leftist resistance activities.

As the political climate grew more charged, Rousseff left Polop and joined a guerrilla group that robbed banks and took hostages.

In her early youth she joined Communist groups and became a guerilla leader. At age 21 she was already participating in bank robberies to fund guerilla activities. After one of these actions, the police found the group's meeting place and invaded it. The members received the police with machine guns and two police officers were killed.

Rousseff has sometimes been described as the mastermind of the theft of a safe belonging to former governor of São Paulo, Ademar de Barros. The action was carried out on 18 June 1969, in Rio de Janeiro, and netted 2.5 million U.S. Dollars. It became the most spectacular and profitable action of the armed struggle.

On at least three different occasions Rousseff herself also denied participating in the event. Testimonials and police reports indicated that Rousseff was responsible for managing the money from the robbery, paying the salaries of the militants, finding a shelter for the group, and buying a Volkswagen Beetle. Rousseff only remembers purchasing the car, and doubts that she was the one responsible for managing the money.

In 1969, VAR Palmares allegedly planned the kidnapping of Antônio Delfim Netto, a symbol of the "Brazilian Miracle" and the most powerful civilian in the federal government at the time.

Even with large amounts of money, the organization failed to maintain its unity. At a conference held in Teresópolis between August and September 1969, there was a major dispute between those who supported the armed struggle and those who advocated working with the masses. Rousseff was in the second group. While the first group split into the paramilitary VPR, led by Lamarca, the second—including Rousseff—continued as VAR Palmares. There was a dispute over the money and weapons. After the split, Rousseff was sent to São Paulo, where she was in charge of keeping her group's weapons safe. She avoided the risk of keeping them in apartments by moving with a friend (Maria Celeste Martins, who would become her Chief of Staff assistant decades later) to a simple boarding house in the eastern zone of the city, where they hid the weapons under their beds.

In 1968 she was important enough to dispute with the famous Communist guerilla leader Carlos Lamarca for the leadership of the Palmares Revolutionary Armed Vanguard [VAR Palmares]. In that dispute over the future of guerilla movement, the group split, and among the 37 leaders present, 30 of them stayed with Rousseff and only 7 went with Lamarca.

She, along with two successive lovers, planned many of the group's actions - including the robbery of the house of Ademar de Barros, governor of the State of Sao Paulo, the break-ins of military headquarter and gun shops to steal weapons and ammunition, and a frustrated attempt to kidnap Brazil's Treasury Minister Delfim Netto.

Dilma Rousseff is Caught:

José Olavo Leite Ribeiro, who met three times a week with Rousseff, was captured by the military. As Ribeiro reported, after a day of torture, he revealed the place where he would meet with another militant, in a bar on Rua Augusta in São Paulo. On 16 January 1970, he was forced to go to the bar accompanied by undercover policemen, where his colleague was captured and, when they were preparing to leave, Rousseff unexpectedly arrived. Realizing that something was wrong, Rousseff tried to leave the place without being noticed. The officers suspected Rousseff and searched her, discovering that she was armed. "If it was not for the gun, it is possible that she could have escaped," says Ribeiro. Rousseff was considered a big enough catch that a military prosecutor labeled her the "Joan of Arc" of the guerrilla movement.

However, she was captured in January 1970, and was tortured for 22 days, and kept in prison for 3 years.

she was arrested with a gun in her handbag in 1970. She was sent to Tiradentes Prison, which was nicknamed the Tower of the Maidens because most of the prisoners were young women. The guards tortured her with electric shocks, sexual abuse and beatings. Rousseff said later that she still had trouble chewing because of the damage to her jaw.

Rousseff was taken to the OBAN headquarters, the same place where Vladimir Herzog would be tortured and killed five years later. She was allegedly tortured for 22 days by punching, ferule, and electric shock devices. As Maria Luisa Belloque, a cellmate, said "Dilma was shocked even with car wiring." Some ex-military officers have dismissed Rousseff's account, saying that she could not have survived that extent of torture.

Later, Rousseff denounced the torture she suffered in court proceedings, citing even the names of those who tortured her, such as Army Captain Benoni de Arruda Albernaz, mentioned by several other witnesses. Although she revealed the locations of some militants during torture interrogation, Rousseff managed to preserve the identities of Carlos Araújo (who would be arrested several months later) and Maria Celeste Martins. Rousseff's name was on a list found at Carlos Lamarca's home, on a list of the prisoners who would get priority in exchange for hostages, but she was never exchanged and served out her sentence.

Carlos Araújo was arrested on 12 August 1970. After Rousseff was captured, he had an affair with actress and fellow militant Bete Mendes. After his arrest, he met Rousseff on some occasions, during displacements regarding the military lawsuits both were being prosecuted for. They were even a few months in the same prison in São Paulo, where during conjugal visits they reconciled, planning to resume married life after being released from jail. Rousseff was convicted in the first instance to six years in prison. She had already served three years when the Supreme Military Court reduced her sentence to two years and a month. She also had her political rights suspended for eighteen years.

She was arrested by the police in 1970 and condemned to 6 years in jail. After 3 years, however, her sentence was shortened and she was released.

She was released in 1972, when she moved to Porto Alegre.

Murdered by Dilma's "Terrorist" Group:

1- Journalist Regis de Carvalho, in a bomb explosion at Recife Airport;

2- Retired Admiral Nelson Gomes Fernandez, in a bomb explosion at Recife Airport;

3- Lieutenant Alberto Mendes, Jr. who offered himself as ransom and whose head was smashed by being beaten with rifle butts;

4- 19-year-old soldier Mario Koezel Filho, killed in an explosion of 100 pounds of dynamite;

5- Captain Charles R. Chandlers [American], murdered by 14 rounds from a machine gun