Cliff Welch, Ph.D.

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THE SHOOTING OF JOFRE CORRÊA NETO:

WRITING THE INDIVIDUAL BACK IN TO HISTORICAL MEMORY


As published in

The Radical History Review 75 (Fall 1999), 28-55.

1998 © by Cliff Welch


Introduction

On Wednesday August 5, 1959, the peasant leader Jofre Corrêa Neto was about to leave for São Paulo, the capital city of São Paulo state, when he was shot in the face at point blank range. One .38 caliber bullet smashed through his teeth before lodging at the base of his tongue; another bullet hit his upper-leg when he turned to escape his assailant. In the confusion, the shooter ran off, and word spread that Jofre had been killed. But the man many called "Captain Jofre" and the newspapers dubbed "the Fidel of the Backlands," had not been killed. Severely wounded, he was carried to a local clinic where he waited nearly seven hours before beginning a long trek to the Hospital das Clínicas in São Paulo, some 400 miles to the southeast. As soon as Jofre arrived in São Paulo, militants, labor leaders and politicians denounced the shooting and a flood of reporters and well-wishers came to visit him in the hospital. Jofre, whose name and dramatic photographs had recently become a regular feature of Brazil's daily news, had missed martyrdom by a fraction of an inch. (1)

Brazil's São Paulo state is rarely associated with peasant struggle. When people hear the name, they commonly think of São Paulo the megalopolis, with its huge industrial parks and harsh social contrasts. Others may associate the name with the vast coffee plantations that once covered the state. In either event, images of peasants struggling to protect their land from encroaching modernization do not generally come to mind. And yet, São Paulo's history is punctuated with disputes over land control. Until the early twentieth century, skirmishes with Amerindians were common as the coffee frontier extended into undeveloped territory. As the value of São Paulo's land increased, so too did land shark aggression against those workers who tried to escape the formal economy by establishing subsistence farms in out-of-the-way areas. In recent years, "peasants" have become the aggressive ones in Brazilian land disputes, with thousands of migrant families organized by the Landless Laborers Movement (MST) and the National Confederation of Workers in Agriculture (CONTAG) struggling to take control of underutilized land in São Paulo and other states. Nearly four decades ago, an earlier group of poor landless laborers confronted landlords and the state on land near Santa Fé do Sul, in the western reaches of the state. By most accounts, Jofre Corrêa Neto was their leader.

The details of the organization and struggle Jofre led deserve more extensive coverage than a single article can provide. Clodomir Moraes, who was the first author to offer a synthesis of Brazilian rural social movements, described Jofre as one of "two authentic peasant leaders of national reputation" that the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) could count among its ranks. And the press, both mainstream and militant, covered his exploits with regularity from 1959 to 1964, a time period of unprecedented social ferment in Brazil, one that ended with the ouster of popular government and the institution of twenty-one years of military rule. Jofre's national reputation began in Santa Fé do Sul when he became the spokesperson for several hundred tenant farmers who sought to prolong their tenure in the area. After two to three years of tenancy, few of the farmers had managed to harvest substantial crops due to drought and other negative conditions and yet the land owner and his agents wanted them off the land in order to turn it into winter cattle pasture. The landlord and subcontractors ordered the tenants to uproot their crops and plant grass. When they resisted, tensions rose in the region. Jofre, the origin of whose presence in the area remains obscure, appears to have then worked to attract considerable press and political attention to the conflict. Dramatic photos of Jofre yanking up grass appeared in the populist, pro-labor Última Hora and other newspapers. One oft-repeated scenario had him defiantly challenging the landowner to eat the grass, vividly questioning the justice of forcing people to leave the land that fed them in order to make way for grazing beef cattle whose expensive meat they could hardly afford to eat. It was in this context that Jofre became the victim of a shooter's bullets. (2)

The shooting incident is the most dramatic of a series of dramatic incidents, each worth further examination. But the heightened attention caused by Jofre's near assassination offers a unique opportunity to study the discrete problem of reconstructing a specific event. As the anthropologist Gerald Sider found in examining the history and commemoration of the 1912 Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile workers' strike, historical writing can be driven more by the perspective of historians and commemorators than by evidence. The story of Jofre's shooting has been represented in varied ways, many of them driven as much by the author's needs as the evidence. This account depends on the careful weighing of documented and remembered evidence, much of it unavailable to earlier writers. (3)

The problems encountered in documenting Jofre's shooting reveal the challenges of doing rural social history in a developing nation like Brazil. Some of these problems are shared by all researchers who rely upon oral history, or any other type of record, for that matter, since almost all texts begin with oral sources, as the Italian oral-history analyst Alessandro Portelli has pointed out. The more one depends on the memory of informants, the more the account of an event shifts toward legend. "Memory manipulates factual details and chronological sequence," Portelli writes. For him, this manipulation produces a new order of "symbolic... psychological...and formal" detail that can create a story at once more profound and revealing than accounts based solely on written records. "The discrepancy between fact and memory ultimately enhances the value of the oral sources as historical documents," wrote Portelli, concluding an examination of the shooting of Luigi Trastulli, an Italian worker killed by police in 1949. (4)

Unlike Trastulli, Jofre lived to tell the tale of his own shooting, adding interesting twists to the story, diluting some of its mythic qualities, and complicating the good versus evil motif typically associated with the rural poor's struggle for land control. These complications reveal truths about Brazil and help demonstrate the value and utility of blending sources and modes of analysis. To the extent Jofre exists in the historical literature, he has come to symbolize the "authentic peasant leader" of Moraes's portrayal, a fearless defender of the rural poor, who is of, by and for the people. This image was reified in most contemporary accounts of his shooting and the image might have remained that way had Jofre not lived to tell his own tale. In 1988, with uncanny simultaneity, several independent researchers (myself included) "discovered" Jofre alive when all had assumed him dead since he was incarcerated for "terrorist activities" by São Paulo's brutal political and social police department (DOPS) in 1973. For me, Jofre's sudden reappearance in his own story shattered the icon left by contemporary sources as well as the historical treatments that depended on them. Here was Tom Paine, ready for a live interview. The collective memory of his story had been preserved in historical memory but now, thirty years later, the subject suddenly emerged to participate in shaping his own story. It was almost too much to bear, and some of those who had historicized him naturally refused to reconsider their analysis. Overwhelmed, I gave up the story, only to cautiously re-approach it a decade later. (5)

The historian Susan Crane recently challenged scholars to "write the individual back into collective memory." Jofre's reappearance and his active participation in the history of his life is the literal personification of her challenge. His contributions expand the historical discourse and change the way we think about the role of the rural poor in Brazilian history. But memory can be faulty and, as Crane recognizes, there is a danger of letting "subjectivity run amuck." (6) Jofre's memory adds to the history but it is not history. In the multiple accounts of Jofre's shooting that follow, we can find the complementarity of his account and others, of collective and historical memories, bringing fresh insight to those who use the legend of Jofre's shooting in their struggle to democratize Brazil.

First Reports of the Shooting

The first narrative of the shooting comes from Jofre himself. On August 6, the morning after the shooting, an unidentified Última Hora reporter met Jofre at São Paulo's Congonhas airport and drove him to the Hospital das Clínicas. While en route, Jofre told the story of the apparent attempt on his life, the atentado. This legal term (meaning "criminal assault," on the one hand, and "attempted assassination," on the other) quickly became the most common reference word used to describe the incident. Despite admitted difficulties communicating with Jofre, due to his wounded mouth, the reporter paraphrased Jofre as recounting that hired gunmen (jagunços) of various landlords (latifundiários) had long been persecuting him, especially one named "'Silva,' a dangerous and fearless element known in the region as the author of various barbarous crimes." Hereafter, the story takes the form of a long quote, interrupted by occasional reminders of Jofre's background and condition.

This individual ["Silva"], a gunman for Zico Diniz [José de Carvalho Diniz, the landlord blamed for the peasants' anguish in the region], spent the night in Santa Fé do Sul in order to kill me. He picked up a pile of thousand cruzeiro notes to carry off after the shooting..

¶It was mid-day yesterday when I was going to the train station to come to São Paulo to participate in a rally protesting the high cost of living. From about nine in the morning, I had the feeling that "Silva" was following me to put an end to my life. Always on guard (desafinado), I alerted my companions and friends to the intentions of the hired gun.

¶I had planned to take the bus to go to the station. But due to the insistence of an associate, my friend Antônio Pinto da Silva and I entered this man's automobile. We sat in the back seat.

¶Then "Silva," all of a sudden, before the car pulled away so we could escape the attempt, "Silva" pulled out his revolver and yelled: "You are going to die right where you sit!"And pointed the weapon at my chest. I ducked and he fired quickly, shooting me in the mouth. Antônio Pinto jumped out of the opposite door like a lightening bolt and I followed, taking another blast in the back. "Silva" then fired one more time at me, missing his shot. The gunman turned toward my friend, shooting twice without hitting him. In the confusion, I managed to duck into a nearby house and "Silva" ran off.

As word of the shooting spread, residents and friends appeared and carried the wounded man to the town clinic, undoubtedly a modest facility in this recently settled locale. But even here, Jofre felt neither safe nor well-attended. No one was on hand to remove the bullet from his mouth and rumor had it that his life was still in danger, that other gunmen sought to finish the job "Silva" had botched. "Hundreds of farmers (lavradores) appeared," Antônio Pinto, who accompanied Jofre to São Paulo, told the reporter. "They were angry with the injustices practiced in the backlands and anxious to bring justice with their own hands." But Jofre rose from his cot to calm them, Pinto told Última Hora, and most returned to their farming. Only a few remained to keep an eye out while transportation arrangements were being made. Around 7:00 PM, a plane arrived to take Jofre, Pinto, and Benedito Barbosa Mille -"all agriculturalists in the region"-- out of Santa Fé. (7)

A banner front page headline drew readers to the story: "Farm Leader (Executed) Survives!" In a large photograph under the headline, a disheveled but confident Jofre looks at the camera as two men, one under each arm, help him walk. Inside the paper, the headline is repeated, this time with a flying subhead, which reads: "Gunmen Fail to Eliminate the 'Fidel Castro' of the Backlands." Over the course of the next ten days, Última Hora covered the story nearly everyday, emphasizing Jofre's unflinching commitment to peasant struggle and contributing to the pressure on authorities to resolve the plight of Jofre's followers. (8) In this clearly sympathetic series of articles, Jofre's identity as a fearless defender of the rural poor and the victim of vile henchmen in the employ of reprehensible landlords comes across with Biblical clarity, a David wounded in his battle with Goliath.

A short, August 7th story on the shooting in the more established and conservative Estado de São Paulo newspaper confirmed the broad outlines of Jofre's narrative, without naming the assailant. Under the title "Rural Leader Wounded by Gunman," the Estado reported that Jofre, "leader of a group of rural laborers," had been interned at the Hospital das Clínicas after being shot by "a gunman of the planter Zico Diniz" just before leaving for São Paulo "to attend to the interests of his comrades." Rather than call Jofre a "Backlands Fidel Castro," the Estado refers to him as "captain" (in quotes--Jofre preferred this salutation), describing him as the "chief" of "a group of numerous squatters (posseiros) set against the great property holders of the region." In this story, Jofre was said to have been hit in the thigh by a second bullet which was removed by Hospital das Clínicas doctors along with the one lodged in his mouth. The article also adds to the story a night's stay in São José do Rio Preto, where he was "medicated," before flying to São Paulo on the morning of August 6th. Despite the brevity of the piece, the story not only adds new details but strengthens key aspects of the Última Hora narrative, especially the sense that a spokesman for the poor had been victimized by powerful property owners of the region. (9)

The close correspondence between these two stories tells a lot about the era. The reference to Fidel Castro reminds us that an apparently small, rural-based revolutionary army had just come to power that January in Cuba. Última Hora clearly assumed readers would be drawn to the suggestion that Brazil had its own Fidel. Última Hora had been founded in the 1950s and its owner-editor Samuel Wainer was a scrappy journalist who owed much of his paper's success to an alliance with former dictator and president Getúlio Vargas (d.1954) and his Brazilian Labor Party. In sharp contrast, O Estado de São Paulo, founded in the nineteenth century, was owned and edited by Júlio de Mesquita Filho, a member of one of the state's most prominent landholding families. And yet even the Estado added credibility to Jofre's story of peasant victimization and resilience. Not only Jofre but "peasant leaders" nationally and internationally had become actors on the stage of history in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Cuba is one case in point, Vietnam another, and yet another was northeastern Brazil, where in 1959 the "Peasant Leagues" led by Francisco Julião were credited with winning the expropriation and distribution of an old sugar plantation. In this Cold War context, peasants called out to be heard around the world, with communists taking up their cause, and capitalists designing reform projects to muffle their anger. Thus, there was a convergence of interest in the issue, characterized by general agreement on the sources of peasant discontent (i.e., exploitation by bad landlords) and sharp divergence on solutions (i.e., expropriation of property held by foreign investors and their allies vs. relocation and development projects) . (10) These circumstances heightened media attention to Jofre's cause. (11)

Perhaps because back issues of the Estado de São Paulo have long been more accessible than Última Hora, the shorter article has served most analysts as the main primary source and Jofre's own narrative has not been a part of their studies. As noted above, the Estado's report maintained the essential features of Jofre's Última Hora account. In both stories, the shooter was presented as a gunman hired by the landlord Zico Diniz to attack Jofre, a popular leader of a peasant movement. Although both contemporary and later accounts of the shooting -- including Jofre's own recollections -- denied the veracity of this simple version, this black and white story of good versus evil, of the heroism of the humble in the face of the powerful, has endured as the most compelling account of the event.

The Shooting: New Reports

The clarity of the early reports began to fade within days of the shooting. Curiously, the fog rolled-in on what would seem to have been the least variable of matters: the nature of Jofre's wounds. All sources agreed that one bullet hit him in the mouth and lodged there. Questions arose about second and third wounds. Right after the shooting, Jofre spoke only of the bullet in his mouth but O Estado de São Paulo reported that a second bullet was removed from his thigh the day after the event. On that same day, Última Hora carried an eyewitness report that Jofre had been shot in the pelvis (iliaca) and that the operation was yet to occur. Then, on the 15th of August, Última Hora reported that "Jofre has three big bullets in his body. One in his throat and the others in his buttocks," suggesting not only new targets but the idea that no bullets had yet been removed from his body! Many years later, Jofre himself told me and Nazareth dos Reis, a history graduate student working on his master's thesis, that he had been shot in the groin and that one bullet remained lodged in his mouth, disrupting his ability to speak clearly. From political and historical perspectives whether Jofre was hit in the leg or the fanny hardly matters. But the lack of clarity on such a concrete issue raises fundamental questions about the reliability of explanations provided by the press in more abstract realms, such as who or what was to be held responsible for the crime. (12)

Other interesting questions were raised by Benedito Mille, a bricklayer (a pedreiro not a farmer, as ÚH had originally reported), who accompanied the wounded Jofre to São Paulo and described himself as an eyewitness to the shooting. Última Hora published his account within ten days of the incident.

I was working a few meters from the locale, having observed, at a distance, the scenes. But the whole story, with its antecedents, was told to me by Jofre himself, with Antônio Pinto, who was also a victim of the gunman "Silva's" fury, right there to witness it. This same individual [Silva], some days earlier, had led my friend [Jofre] into a trap, leaving him at the mercy of ten bloodthirsty men. Jofre, however, managed to escape, which left "Silva" in a bad situation. On Wednesday, around 11:30 AM, little Jofre arrived in Santa Fé, with the intention of going to São Paulo, in the company of Antônio Pinto.... At that point, the assassin showed up, begging Jofre not to blame him for the earlier event. "I'm your friend, Jofre," he said. "When I took you over there, I had no idea they planned to kill you." After these words, he returned Cr$ 500 to my friend, due to some debt between the two, and offered to take them to the station in his car. Jofre tried to refuse, but ended up accepting the ride. Before arriving at the train station, "Silva" stopped at a bar, inviting them to have a drink on him. Since the train was scheduled to stop soon, Jofre refused the offer. Seeing that it wouldn't do any good to go on, "Silva" took out the revolver and, less than a yard away, fired into the farmer's face, hitting him right in the mouth.

¶Fleeing the threat of another shot, Jofre opened the right door of the car. But before he could increase his distance from the gun, he took another bullet in his pelvic area. The assassin took off....[and]...Jofre Corrêa was carried to the hospital on a makeshift stretcher.

¶The people that saw the whole act quickly called for the police, in order to gain protection for Jofre, since several gunmen threatened to invade the hospital to "finish the job." But the police station was empty, as if the police knew in advance what was going to happen. A little later, about three hours after the crime, two squads showed up, ready to look for the assassins. According to what I heard, the police went in the direction "Silva" and his companion had taken in the car. They found the two, duly protected, in the house of Zico Diniz's administrator....

Printed as the spoken word of Mille, the story differs in significant ways from Jofre's straightforward report of the event. For one thing, the form of the tale is quite different. Whereas Jofre is presented as telling a linear story in short paragraphs, using simple, declarative sentences, the bulk of Mille's account is condensed into one paragraph of complex sentences and includes two significant flashbacks. It also contains several new elements, including an entirely new sense of an established relationship between the shooter and the victim. Mille offers himself as an eyewitness yet goes far beyond what he might have actually seen by emphasizing the "as-told-to" perspectives of others. (13)

Mille's allegation about the involvement of Diniz's "administrator," rather than Diniz himself, received some corroboration in a September 1 Estado de São Paulo article. Near the end of this lengthy, general story on the Santa Fé land dispute, the Estado reported the state governor's envoy as telling Diniz's administrators that no more violence against the farmers would be tolerated. According to the article, administrators Joaquim Nogueira and José Lira Marin "are accused as having given the orders for the attempted murder of the farmer Jofre." Nogueira and José Lira were revealed as the renter-managers of Diniz's 39,000 acre estate in the region. They each had contracted large portions of Diniz's undeveloped land promising to turn it into cow pasture. While Diniz claimed to know nothing of their methods, Nogueira was a well-known land developer whose method was to sublet the land to farm-families and individuals. Working on the basis of verbal contracts of one to three years, these rural workers cut down trees, cleared away brush, plowed the land, and planted crops. They received no payment but temporary use of the land and whatever slight profits the sale of their crops produced. Jofre had become the leader of these secondary tenants when Nogueira moved to oust them from the land before their crops matured. (14)

Thus, within two weeks of the shooting, few aspects of the event seemed as solid as they had when Jofre's narrative was reported in Última Hora. Nearly everything about the event, from where he was hit and how many shots were fired to who and what was responsible for the crime, was already in doubt. Although the linear, straight-forward nature of Jofre's initial account suggests the reporter took liberties in paraphrasing his remarks, it remains the seminal narrative for this analysis. Mille's version is based, in part, on what Jofre told him, stories he apparently chose not to tell the Última Hora reporter. Because Mille's story was somewhat structured by Jofre's insights, it should not surprise us that it builds on Jofre's narrative by associating Silva with Zico Diniz, confirming him as the shooter, and relating Jofre's intention to go to São Paulo by train. Jofre is still pictured as a peasant leader attacked by a landlord's thug. But the differences between Jofre and Mille's account-divergent ideas about who Silva was, what happened that day, and why Jofre was shot-make it difficult for us to accept Jofre's story at face value. A careful historian would have to probe these differences before forming conclusions about the event.

Memories of Friends and Enemies

Given universal agreement on the name of the perpetrator, it comes as a surprise to find so much conflicting information about his identity. Jofre's initial narrative leaves little doubt that he knew of Silva but Mille's observations add the notion that the two men had a relationship. Since Jofre called Silva "a gunman known in the region for various barbarous crimes," it seems unlikely that he would ever trust him. And yet, in Mille's more complicated account, Jofre is said to have loaned Silva at least Cr$ 500 and to have accepted two ill-fated rides into ambushes, one soon after the other. So, who was this shooter?

Police records give "Silva's" real name as Sinésio Silva but his nickname was "Silva Preto (Black Silver)." Described by all as a "Negro," he came to Santa Fé from the northeast state of Bahia, an area of dense Afro-Brazilian population, and the origin of many new immigrants to São Paulo's frontier. He may have been small in stature, for various sources place the diminutive "inho" on his name and add it to other words used to describe him, such as "baianinho (little Bahian)" and "negrinho (little Negro)." It is also quite probable that the diminutive had less to do with his stature than his status in Brazilian culture. As in many cultures, the diminutive can connote endearment but it is doubtful that this was its only significance in Santa Fé. Having a nickname like "cute little black man" in a society where racism is ever-present and continually denied, suggests that Silva fit in by accommodating racist stereotypes. The fact that so many of his nicknames emphasize his color also suggests that this was a distinctive feature in Santa Fé do Sul and that, as an Afro-Brazilian-a slave descendant-he had a deferential demeanor.

It is unknown when, why, and how Silva Preto came to Santa Fé do Sul. Jofre seems to suggest that he was hired and brought to the area to intimidate the peasant movement and kill its leader. He strengthened this point in a 1997 interview, claiming he knew who had brought Silva from Bahia to Santa Fé and that he worked with Nogueira. (This recollection differs from Jofre's earlier ones by emphasizing Silva's relationship with Nogueira rather than Diniz, a point of view that may have been influenced by Dos Reis's research.) Mille's 1959 recollection, with history of borrowed money, drinking bouts, and shared rides, casts doubt on this version.

Interviewed in 1987 by Dos Reis, Joaquim Nogueira's memory of the event lends some credibility to Mille's story (and vice versa, considering Nogueira's hostiltiy toward Jofre). He describes Silva not as a gunman but as a traveling salesman who was educated and happy-go-lucky. Silva sold goods to tenant farmers on the disputed land and Nogueira claims to have met him there. Finally, important testimony comes from José Correia de Lira, one of Jofre's right hand men in Santa Fé. Correia said that he knew Silva, that Silva lived in town, sold goods in the countryside, and befriended members of the rebellious peasant group. "He walked around with us, saying: 'Aye! I'm on the side of Captain Jofre. I'm on your side.'" Interviewed twenty years after the event, Correia's tone was one of disdain for Silva. For Correia, Silva's assault on Jofre proved he was a spy for the police. "The police lived embracing him!" Correia said. Adding to the mystery, Silva disappeared after the crime, though in 1997 Jofre claimed to know that he had received land in Bahia from another of Diniz's overseers in payment for the atentado. (15)

Although Silva's identity remains obscure, it was clearly more complex than that presented by Jofre the day after the shooting. The surprising thing is that most secondary accounts of the event ignore this issue or present an uncomplicated version, much like Jofre's original account. Vera Chaia, whose 1980 master's thesis in sociology examines the Santa Fé conflict, wrote that Jofre was shot twice by "a hired gunman...on orders from Zico Diniz." This claim is repeated in her 1997 article on the tenant struggle: "Jofre suffered an attempted assassination, on orders from Zico Diniz, ...by a hired gunman...." Luiz Noboru Muramatsu, another University of São Paulo sociology master's student, wrote in 1984 that "a gunman sent by Zico Diniz...tried to kill Jofre." In 1988, O Jornal de Santa Fé ran a story revisiting the land conflict, recalling that "Jofre suffered an attempted shooting....carried out by a gunman of Zico Diniz." Only Dos Reis explored the idea, first revealed by Mille, that Silva had worked for Nogueira. "As everyone knows," Dos Reis wrote, "the shooter was 'Silva Preto,' a little Bahian that ran around the area selling goods. He was a great friend of Nogueira." To support this last point, Nogueira himself is quoted as saying: "He wasn't a hired gun at all. He was a very cultured person, very good natured. I thought him a good guy. That he was a hired gunman, this was groundless rumor." Nevertheless, Nogueira's familiarity with Silva, and Nogueira's own role as the person immediately responsible for the development of Diniz's land, lends credibility to the argument that if Silva was a hired gunman, he was not Diniz's man but Nogueira's. Moreover, he was not a feudal henchman, but a capitalist one. (16)

The events that day raise still more questions about Silva's identity as a professional killer. If he was a professional killer, as Jofre claimed and most secondary accounts conclude, he was either not a very good one or an unlucky one. To have shot a man with a .38 two or three times at close range, hitting him in the face, without killing the victim, seems a highly unlikely outcome for someone with a reputation for committing "barbarous crimes." According to Jofre's original story, only his own quick maneuvers saved him from being killed. Mille's story is similar, though Jofre's evasive action is even more fabulous when you consider that Silva was supposed to be right in the car with Jofre when he started firing his gun. These stories depend quite a bit on the listener's faith in miracles and transcendent justice.

Another early rendition of the event specifically references the miraculous quality of Jofre's survival. This was a 1961 poem by another of Jofre's right hand men, the remarkable Olímpio Pereira Machado. Although Machado did not claim to have seen the shooting, his poem proved influential by adding an image that had never been in the picture before. Published in the Revista Brasiliense, a leftist journal edited by renowned historian Caio Prado, Jr., the "Poem of the Land" was an epic ballad some twenty pages in length. In it, Machado placed the shooting "at the front of" the Farmers and Agricultural Laborers' Association of Santa Fé do Sul, the organization Jofre, Machado, Correia, and hundreds of others had founded just a few weeks before the assassination attempt. Machado wrote :

Jofre lived a life of persecution

At the front of the Association

That defended the poor class

Against the usury of the boss

He was the target of intrigue

Cooked up by profiteers

Accustomed to dominating

To ruling over slaves

They avoided open combat

Negotiated not with the Association

But advanced against it

With artifice and treason

They tried to kill Jofre

But by a miracle he escaped

It was the gunman who sent

Two bullets to lay him down

And the Association this day

With his blood was baptized

Although Machado's poem does not explicitly place the shooting in front of the association office (a desk in a small boarding house in Rubineia, a village on the outskirts of Santa Fé), these verses created that impression for some readers. Hence, Chaia, Muramatsu, and the Jornal de Santa Fé place the shooting incident there rather than on Santa Fé's central avenue. When Dos Reis framed a question for Nogueira, stating that the shooting occurred "in front of the union," the informant interrupted him, bursting out, "No! It wasn't there at all!" The obvious allure of the legend--the class fighter gunned down on the steps of the union hall--may continue to have a stronger appeal than the less colorful yet comparatively well-documented truth. This story of persistent mis-telling reminds us of similar instances of rumors run amuck in Sider's account of the "Bread and Roses" strike. (17)

Perhaps the most frustrating truth to document is what precisely happened that day. The most detailed accounts remain those of Jofre and Mille. Between them, the most extraordinary difference is found in the relationship between Silva and Jofre. Jofre's story leaves the impression that Silva approached the car from outside and shot him while sitting in the back seat. In Mille's story, Silva appears to be the one who has offered Jofre a ride. Linking together information from the two stories, it is easy to imagine Silva turning in the front seat to shoot Jofre in the back seat. There is also the matter of an exchange between the men: of money and words. If only we could hear the views of two additional eyewitnesses: Antônio Pinto and "the" driver. Of all the great silences of this event, Pinto's is the most inexplicable. As Jofre's confidant and partner, it seems logical that he would have granted interviews to whomever would listen and yet no further record of his story has emerged. The driver's voice, however, breaks through the silence indirectly in interesting ways. In his initial narrative, Jofre signaled a special relationship with the driver: "...due to the insistence of an associate [we] entered this man's automobile." Why did he insist? How was he associated with Jofre? The only clue comes in Mille's account, where an ambiguous reference suggests that the driver was an associate of Silva's -- Silva's driver? Had Silva been the associate who insisted on giving Jofre a ride? Could it be that Jofre and Pinto entered a car occupied by two alleged gunmen? Was it the same driver who had carried him into a trap not long before?

More information can be gleaned from the police investigators sent to look into the case. In their brief August 18th report, the driver is identified as Manoel Espigarra, "who drove those involved in the event." (Does "those" include or exclude Silva?) With no answer to this question, the report continues:

no argument occurred at the moment of the aggression, the indicated shooter said to the victim that he should stop telling stories about him and that he wasn't a coward, immediately thereafter seizing Jofre by the head he shot one bullet at point-blank range into his mouth, at which point the driver opened his door and fled the scene so as not to become involved in the case.

The report ends with this episode and Espigarra disappears from history until Jofre resurrected him in his later recollections. As suggested by this excerpt, the investigators' account has an objective-"Just the facts, ma'am" -feel to it. Espigarra's second-hand testimony gives weight to the idea that Jofre and Silva knew each other and adds a curious detail about Jofre's disdain for the shooter. Apparently, Silva thought Jofre told disparaging stories about him. Is this why Silva targeted Jofre? (18)

In interviews conducted with Jofre twenty and thirty years after the event, the role of the driver and his complicity in the crime grew significantly. While Jofre never mentioned the man's name, Espigarra became one of the key characters in the plot to kill him. Other individuals appear as well.

Dos Reis: What can you tell me about Dr. Nuno da Gama Lobo? (19)

Jofre: Dr. Nuno da Gama Lobo, I failed to express well my opinion about him because...lawyers, what can you say about scum like that [canalha dele], whether good or bad!? But I have particular views on him because, for me, it was his brother who held up the car, who asked to let the guy [Silva] go to the Station, from where we were going to depart for São Paulo. And there, the guy caught us [boto o joelho na frente]. The driver had worked everything out with the guy. He stopped in a spot they'd pre-arranged, the place where he was to shoot me. The little kid gave the signal -- the brother of Dr. Nuno da Gama Lobo -- for the driver to stop. He said: "No!" -- I noticed all of this -- "No!," he said. "It's Dr. Nuno da Gama Lobo's brother! How about that!?" And I said, "Watch out, folks, I don't want to have anything to do with that kid, he already threatened me with a gun...and that other fellow..." "No, he's alright," said the driver. "He's going to have to pay for the crime he committed, dishonoring the daughter of our bricklaying friend." And I said, "He's not too high on my list. I just don't like him. But if you want to stop, go ahead." He stopped, and that's when the guy showed up and put his knee where there's a little door on the car. Thirty-eight! The bullet that I've got lodged here -- you can take an x-ray -- the doctors will prove it's a .38!

¶ And so, the guy shot me right in the mouth! He wanted to put the other bullet in my heart but when Ze Correia (20) and another man and I ran to get outside the car, the shot, conforming to the way I jumped from the car, ducking my body down to get out the doorway, the bullet caught me here in the butt [popa] and stopped just below the groin.

Momentarily setting aside information unrelated to the driver, Jofre adds to the story an elaborate conversation which emphasizes the driver's role in stopping for the shooter despite Jofre's expressed wishes. It also strengthens the idea that Jofre had considerable knowledge of Silva, as well as the feeling that he posed a threat to him. What was once the driver's insistence on giving him a ride has now become his insistence on stopping at the scene of the crime, of leading him into a trap. (21)

In his 1997 recollection of the incident, Jofre implicates the driver directly. "The driver was also in agreement with him [Joaquim Nogueira], participating in the crime." In this account, Jofre recalls a different conversation with the man. "I said: 'Driver, step on it, cause this guy is going to shoot me -- let's get out of here!'" When I asked him: "What did the shooting mean to you?" Jofre answered,

For me, it meant these guys wanted to kill me. And I got out with a corporal [cabo], my friend, who yanked me out [escoltava] and threw me a gun and I didn't say anything because I had a bullet in my tongue, my teeth all busted up, and the damn driver that took me there, he didn't get anything. He said: "I'll catch up with you later and you'll get it." He took off and I let him know: "Later on, we're going to settle the score, us two." (I couldn't speak real well but he got the message.) Because he caused it all, he and that son of Nuno that took off, son, nephew, grandson...who knows...it was one of these things. They caused it.

Gone is the gentle disagreement about stopping. Now, the driver is shown as countermanding a direct order from Jofre not to stop. He had become a co-conspirator and co-gunman, who threatened to "give it" to Jofre at a future time. Moreover, a wounded but armed Jofre threatens revenge, not on Silva or Nogueira but on the driver. This is key: Jofre targets the traitor not the shooter. By comparison to the driver, who presented himself as a friend, Silva was only doing his job as a gunman for Nogueira, Jofre's enemy. (22)

Revenge gradually supplants correction as the motif of Jofre's recollections. Earlier, the emphasis of his narrative was on the mistake of accepting a ride with "an associate." Two decades later, he almost blames himself for letting the driver stop. But by 1997, Jofre himself defines the meaning of the event as revenge. Although there is no record of him ever tracking down the driver to make good on his remembered threat, a subtle form of revenge takes place in the opportunity he now has to influence the historical record. Responsibility for the shooting itself has shifted from Jofre's decision to accept a ride rather than walk, from failing to keep the driver from stopping, to the driver's active betrayal. The earlier elements have not disappeared. Symbolically speaking, Jofre takes control of the event by showing how he could have prevented it by making better decisions, by staying on guard. But he also suggests that the worst danger comes from enemies within one's own ranks. This factor is more difficult to control. Jofre gets on top by his counter-threat. Now armed and dangerous himself, he keeps them from completing the job and causes the driver to disappear from the scene and thus from history.

Official and Partisan Reports

In addition to the driver, other new characters have appeared in the narrative, notably Nuno and his variously described relative or relatives. These individuals add new layers to the question of motive, of why Silva shot Jofre. Officially, Nuno figured as one of three explanations that framed an inconclusive police investigation of the shooting. These hypotheses can be found in the August 17, 1959 memo that DOPS agent Tasso de Oliveira wrote to his superiors following a four-day investigation in Santa Fé. In the report, Oliveira suggested that Nuno and the mayor of Santa Fé hired Silva to kill Jofre because they felt threatened politically by his growing popularity. Oliveira offered this as his third hypothesis and we shall return to the notion of a political conspiracy after discussing the first two motives he outlined.

Oliveira's second hypothesis had Silva shooting Jofre on orders from Diniz or one of his managers. This theory, which best fit the popular image, received support from Paulo Emílio Vanzolini, a representative of Governor Carvalho Pinto sent to Santa Fé to resolve the land conflict shortly after the shooting. During his first visit, in late August, Vanzolini made notes of hearsay about Silva, including the idea that he had "built up his courage to shoot Jofre Corrêa Neto by drinking a liter and a half of brandy," missing his target out of drunkenness. Recording his activities for the evening of September 18, 1959, Vanzolini made the following notation in his journal:

Tonico [Antônio] Barbosa...ended up telling the story of Jofre: 1) the black, caught up in a mess, caught a bullet in the back; 2) Cotrim paid eight to nine contos for his hospitalization; 3) the black, perhaps to thank Cotrim, carried out the attack (fez o serviço)....As to the money the black had, it came from a [rice exchange deal]....A lovely tale! (23)

Perhaps to cover-up for his boss, Barbosa (who worked directly for Diniz) attributed the shooting to a seemingly circumstantial quid pro quo between Silva ("the black") and Cotrim, an entrepreneur who sublet 1,200 acres of the land Nogueira had rented from Diniz. Many of the people in the farmers' association actually dealt with Cotrim rather than Nogueira or Diniz. Vanzolini does not question or elaborate on this account in his diary. Although he met frequently with Oliveira, neither this specific story nor any other official scenario related to the idea that Diniz or his agents had been the masterminds behind Jofre's shooting.

The authorities clearly favored Oliveira's first hypothesis, in which the crime was reduced to a confrontation between two unsavory characters. In essence, this was the theory Nogueira presented to Dos Reis in 1987: that Silva shot Jofre for personal reasons, perhaps a fight over a woman. In their report, the DOPS investigators quoted sources as overhearing Silva say "he was going to look for Jofre in order to collect on a debt and if Jofre didn't pay it, Silva would kill him." Oliveira's contemporary report (like Nogueira's later account) also alleged that the two had fought over "a blond whore." Nogueira told Dos Reis that Silva came to him complaining that Jofre had "taken" a blond-haired woman from him by offering her more money. "I said to him: 'Go and give Jofre a shot in the mouth!' I said it for sport; it was just a joke! But then he went and shot him!" (24)

Inconsistencies and contradictions make Oliveira and Nogueira's stories difficult to accept at face value. Since they issue from the powerful class Jofre confronted, they must be considered biased against him. The message behind them is clear: the shooting was not based in politics, class conflict, or ideology, it was simply a "personal matter" between two men of questionable character. The prime example of this is the way Nogueira, who may very well have ordered the botched slaying, argues instead that he was "just kidding [farra minha]" when he told Silva to get even with Jofre by shooting him in the mouth. This explanation packages the event as a tiff between two individuals, with no symbolic or political meaning whatsoever. At least this is what the speakers wanted the public and historians to believe because, for them, the rise of Jofre also symbolized a loss of control, something they could not admit.

Their campaign to dismiss the shooting quickly influenced the way the case was handled by the conservative press and officials. The conservative Estado de São Paulo stopped reporting on Silva and concentrated instead on disparaging the victim. A multi-part series on the troubles in Santa Fé carried no mention of the shooting, yet included a full list -- right out of police files -- of Jofre's rap sheet, showing him to have been arrested previously for vagrancy, fist-fights, and the like. Eventually, the police investigation came to a standstill. No charges were brought against Silva, Cotrim, Nogueira, or Diniz, while Jofre was arrested and jailed on the pretense that his behavior threatened to violate the national security law against social agitation. (25) Except for the miracle of Jofre's survival, his shooting falls into a long list of unpunished assassinations of rural labor activists, a pattern which began long before the Santa Fé dispute and continued long after it. With the apparent collusion of the governor's hand-picked representative, the state police, and the state's leading newspaper, the powerful landed class, confronted by the tenant farmers of Santa Fé, clearly tried to strip the shooting of significance in order to suppress Jofre's near-martyrdom and restore control.

In the meantime, Jofre's advocates sought to endow the event with as much symbolism and significance as possible in order to maximize its disruptive impact. The shooting became an opportunity to document injustice and inequality in the countryside and to underscore the necessity for organized struggle. For the PCB, it also provided a chance to emphasize the party's leadership role in the countryside, for Jofre was (and is still) a member of the party. Until the military coup d'etat of 1964, stories about him regularly appeared in PCB newspapers such as Terra Livre and Novos Rumos. Following the shooting, a Novos Rumos story placed the shooting incident at the climax of the tenants' fight against the ruling class.

The land had been rented verbally, following traditions imposed by the feudal landlords. But Zico, covered by the local judge and sheriff, decided to disrespect the contract and ordered his henchmen to throw the farmers off the land. Every sort of violence was used against the laborers and their families. The farmers' leader, Jofre Corrêa Neto, was shot by revolver in a cowardly manner and remains hospitalized in grave condition. But all the resources used against the tenants proved ineffective. The struggle of the farmers was victorious thanks to their organization and the solidarity of working class unions and various personalities. (26)

As time would tell, the PCB celebrated the tenants' victory prematurely. The pressure generated by sensationalizing Jofre's shooting in PCB tabloids as well as populist dailies like Última Hora, moved the governor to send a special emissary (Vanzolini) to the region to resolve the case. By mid-September, a number of tenants had accepted written contracts and others had quit Santa Fé, accepting sacks of rice and indemnity payments for the losses they had sustained. Some accepted opportunities to be relocated. From his hospital bed, the press reported Jofre's bold promise to return to Santa Fé to continue the fight. The PCB put a spotlight on Jofre as he stood on the frontlines of the peasant struggle for land, risking his life and liberty for this very serious cause. As in the Novos Rumos story quoted briefly above, no PCB account thoroughly examined the details of the shooting or the dispute. Instead, the party put the event into categories that fit official analysis of the nation's feudal past and imperialist present. (27)

Returning to the political conspiracy theory put forward by some, including DOPS agent Tasso de Oliveira, we can see that the accusations against Nuno partially stem from the political overtones of Jofre's story. While Jofre never ran for public office, he did campaign for Brazilian presidential candidate Marshall Henrique Lott, who had PCB support, and for mayoral candidate Deraldo da Silva Prado. In the course of their campaigns, both Lott and Prado attended the founding ceremony of the farmers' association. Prado donated office supplies to the group and Nuno's newspaper covered its activities and celebrated Jofre's election as association president. Jofre recalls these close relations in denying the credibility of the accusations. In 1997, he claimed Prado "was a Communist...and he wouldn't do anything like that...he was our comrade." In this same interview, he describe Nuno as "a traitor" but also stated that "it wasn't Nuno who ordered me killed." The police offered no evidence to support this line of inquiry except to note that Silva spent the evening before the shooting drinking with Ivonne, Nuno's brother, and "his son." (28)

In Jofre's later recollections of the event, Ivonne appears as Silva's accomplice in the crime. His role in the story grew in importance as time passed. This may have been due to some questions Dos Reis asked Jofre in 1988. He wanted Jofre to comment on an organization the lawyer had established to compete with Jofre's association. Called the "Legion of the Hoe," the organization fit the Catholic tradition of social clubs and "workers' circles" designed to minimize class conflict and build social harmony. But when Dos Reis asked his third question about Nuno, emphasizing the legion, Jofre responded, "I never had any knowledge of the movement of his." This seems quite possible since the legion was founded away from Santa Fé in Santa Rita d'Oeste on November 15, 1959, a time when Jofre was no longer living in Santa Fé. (29)

Despite Jofre's apparent ignorance of the legion, this and other threats to the farmers' association became part of the lore explaining why Jofre was shot. Machado relates Jofre's shooting to efforts to suppress the association in his "Poem of the Land." This must be the sub-text for his reference to Jofre being shot "at the front of the association...the profiteers...advanced against." An earlier Machado poem, "Santa Fé Association," made this connection more explicit. Published in a June 1960 Terra Livre, Machado's poem included the following stanzas:

Risking his own life

For this newborn entity

Baptized with the blood

Of Jofre -- its president.

All know the treachery

Of the criminal assault

When fearless Jofre

On the streets was shot.

All this we know

Was hatred of the Association

Because she holds no interest

For big shots and profiteers.

Here is a specific political motive for the crime, one which builds on the fact that Jofre was on political business when he was shot and asserts that there must have been a causal relationship between the founding of the association on June 14th and the attack on its president six weeks later. Jofre was not only on his way to a political rally but, as DOPS reports, Jofre was scheduled to address an "extraordinary meeting" of the clandestine, Communist influenced, Interunion Unity Pact (PIU) during his visit to São Paulo. Through Jofre, the farmers' association had developed contacts with a vast network of support groups as well as the national press. These contacts drew critical attention to the farmers' plight, helped turn Jofre into a media star, and may have elevated him into an assassination target. By establishing a link between Jofre's shooting and the association (baptismal blood on the Santa Fé Association), Machado brought attention to the organization as the immortal offspring of the courageous quasi-martyr. In all probability, this attention contributed to the organization's longevity. (30)

Machado's idea of a linkage between Jofre's shooting and the association showed-up in Oliveira's August 17th investigation report. Ironically, Oliveira did not see suppressing the association as a motive for Jofre's shooting, but rather, he used Jofre's shooting to urge his superiors to have the association shut down, no matter the cost, so as to avoid further chaotic incidents.

It is necessary-I believe-to get control over the situation, that day after day grows more grave. To make the farmers understand that they will never become owners of José de Carvalho Diniz's land, something the crook Jofre Corrêa Neto constantly promised them, it is necessary to close the association. This precautionary move -- I am certain -- will come about only through drastic, even violent measures. But the palliative measures taken until now only aggravate the situation, creating more difficulties in the long run. (31)

Thus, the DOPS's agent prescribed closing the association as a "tough love" measure for the misled tenant farmers. Like authority figures elsewhere, Oliveira presented the state as a stern father, anxious to protect the interests of childlike citizens by taking control of the situation. The farmers' association threatened that control. Machado and other militants drew attention to the potential for making a scapegoat of the association, protecting it through public sympathy for Jofre, depicting him as the first target of the "profiteers'" surreptitious campaign to destroy his offspring: the organized tenant movement. Oliveira's report shows Machado had sound political instincts.

This examination of the evidence leaves unresolved the shooter's complete identity, what happened that day, and why Jofre was shot. Silva could have been a hired gunman, a traveling salesman, a drinking buddy of Jofre's, or all of these things. It may have been that Jofre was shot while riding in Silva's car, the car of an accomplice, or one of his own associate's. The driver may have stopped to chat, to close a trap, or because he had no other choice. Jofre and Silva may or may not have exchanged words and money before Silva fired two to five times, hitting Jofre two to three times. Jofre may have had a gun or he may have been unarmed. He may have been shot over a debt, a woman, or an offense. He may have been shot to eliminate him as a political or organizational threat. Or, he may have been shot to silence a militant voice, intimidate the tenants, and shut down the peasant movement. The more we investigate the evidence, the more confusing the answers to these questions become. And yet, as we have seen, the most enduring answers are straightforward in depicting Silva as a gunman hired to kill Jofre in order to cripple if not end the peasant movement in Santa Fé. The militants themselves told this story and students and scholars sympathetic to the cause of rural workers have expanded upon it.

Conclusion: Reconstructing the Event

My intention has not been to deconstruct the heroic Jofre but rather to examine revealing similarities and differences among the various stories about the shooting. This is where the work of Portelli and other postmodern analysts hold such importance for those who are interested in social movements and the extraordinary struggles of ordinary people. In decades past, historians emphasized the rational over the irrational in confronting myths such as those associated with social bandits. By debunking myths, historians generally sought to liberate us from false consciousness. What if we also consider myths as a "fundamental component of human thought," as something solid, no matter how imprecise, that real people "live by"? What if we look at remembered accounts to see what it is that makes people believe such stories and act on the basis of something historians know to be false? This paper asks both sets of questions about the story of Jofre Corrêa Neto's shooting. (32)

The durability of the initial accounts shows the power of populist imagery in Brazil. For sympathizers, the story is immediately satisfying as a confirmation of Brazilian class relations, of the conflict between landlord and peasant, with the resilience of the latter inspiring another round of struggle. Its veracity is confirmed by repeated evidence of rural violence and the constant outrage of landlord impunity. The landlord's use of private enforcers and the state's unwillingness to prosecute is as old as Brazilian history. The great flood of international attention given the murder of Chico Mendes, the Amazon rubber-tapper union leader gunned down in 1988, noted the exceptional nature of the judgment against his executioners; in contrast, nineteen rural workers massacred by police in April 1996 had yet to see their killers prosecuted, despite a wave of media attention, and the certain identification of those responsible. So, the David and Goliath image of Jofre's shooting persists due, in part, to the realistic assumptions Brazilians have of rural violence and the need to overcome the legacy of impunity. (33)

The uncomplicated version of Jofre's shooting may be all one can expect to persist due to the mutable nature of social memory and the corrosive instability of life among Brazil's rural poor. The migrant pattern of life followed by nearly all rural workers today had roots in the era of Jofre's militancy. While Jofre himself adopted an itinerant lifestyle, most other rural workers would soon find themselves following his lead as a result of the very pattern of exploitation the Santa Fé farmers' association tried to resist. The need to remain mobile to find work or unclaimed land made community an elusive reality and militated against the construction of a coherent peasant culture-with its ability to nurture collective memory-in Brazil. Today, scholars seem to be the ones keeping the story alive as an example of peasant resistance in the face of an oppressive ruling class linked to landed interests. One need look no further than a 1989 survey of rural social movements in Brazil, published by a popular organization intent on placing such stories "at the disposal of rural laborers," to find the uncomplicated version of Jofre's shooting repeated. It is clear that, in the main, the migratory life to which the rural poor have been condemned and the habits of distortion common to collective memory make it difficult to keep a complex account of the story alive. All that has a chance of remaining is the mythical essence, a proverb if you will. (34)

Much has been written about memory in recent years to help make sense of Jofre's reappearance in his own story. The problem here is two-fold: on the one hand, Jofre's memory challenges documented accounts; on the other, the accumulated evidence challenges Jofre's memory. A third level of complexity is added to the mix when Jofre is seen to contradict himself in rendering the story in 1959, 1988, and 1997. Because of such inconsistencies, our first inclination is to distrust memory. And yet, as psychologist Daniel Schacter writes, "there are good reasons to believe that our memories for the broad contours of our lives are fundamentally accurate." We can merge this finding with Portelli's faith in oral history as a preserve of meaningful myths. Some conclude from these ideas that no "text" is more valid than any other or that history, as French historian Pierre Nora writes, "besieges memory, deforming and transforming it, penetrating and petrifying it." But in the case of Jofre's shooting, memory and history do not oppose one another, they interact and enrich each other. Historians, whether professional or casual, have a role to play in weighing the evidence and finding the most accurate and most meaningful account. (35)

The best version of Jofre's shooting would accept the ambiguity of conflicting sources as an opportunity to probe the incident for its most accurate rendering. For example, Silva and Jofre probably did have a relationship. The close approximation of shooter and victim tells us more about Brazilian reality than an image of the two as class warriors. Here were two salesmen, two men who lived by their wits, one of whom became a mouthpiece for the tenant farmers while the other became, perhaps for just a moment, an agent for landed interests. In this light, the two probably did interact, they may have loaned money to one another, and encountered one another in the company of prostitutes. A subtle competition may have led each of them to denigrate the other in person and in private. Nogueira himself may have taken advantage of the tension between them to encourage Silva to shoot Jofre.

Nogueira's role in the shooting is another aspect of the story left out of the original narratives, yet the story makes so much more sense when his participation is included. In the history of Brazil's agricultural expansion, there are thousands of middlemen like Nogueira and Cotrim. They were there to produce pasture for Diniz at the lowest cost possible. Diniz may have been involved, but it is far more likely that he knew nothing of Silva and precious little about Jofre. By blaming Diniz, the PCB could vilify Brazil's great landholders and their feudalistic methods, but misjudge the fundamentally capitalist nature of São Paulo agriculture. Indeed, there is striking irony in the Communists' persistent demonization of Brazil's "feudal lords" when their natural ideological enemies-capitalists-were all around them. Political calculations, which proved inexpedient in the end, drove them to seek alliances with "progressive capitalists." Elites like Diniz who would neither ally with them nor treat their workers fairly, fell into the backward, feudalistic enemy camp. In the meantime, the Marxist critique they never made would have emphasized how the profit-motive drove Diniz to hire contractors like Nogueira and Nogueira sub-contractors like Cotrim and Silva in order to maximize receipts and minimize social responsibility.

Among the many reasons presented to explain why Silva shot Jofre, we could find compatibility among various motives. Silva may have used a personal conflict between himself and Jofre to get angry enough to carry out the crime. His anger and availability may have served Nogueira's interests in rubbing out Jofre, who had indeed become bothersome and whose connections to urban militants, the press, and politicians threatened to bring closer scrutiny to his operations in remote Santa Fé. DOPS agent Oliveira revealed that Jofre's shooting itself helped create an excuse for authorities to take greater control of the region. In fact, a struggle for power seems to be the central issue which motivated the crime.

Jofre's various memories of the event have proven to be extraordinarily powerful. Even though the Última Hora report of his first testimony has not been part of the historical record until now, its essential features found their way into the literature through a brief Estado de São Paulo story. The power of his 1988 and 1997 interviews depended, in large part, on the existence of corroborating accounts. With other sources at hand, Jofre's memories expanded the discussion of participants and motives, and strengthened suspicions about the roles of Nogueira and Silva. The richness of his recollections extended beyond "certifiable" facts. His interviews stressed the "mistakes" that led him into Silva's trap, "wrong turns" that have no representation in any other source and yet seem loaded with meaning. Like the Communist militants Portelli studied in Italy, Captain Jofre here asserts control over history by linking the shooting to his failure to be wary and act accordingly. "Blaming the 'wrongness' of history on 'our' side means, for one thing, that it is still our side that makes history," Portelli writes. (36) Jofre's tale puts him in the driver's seat, as it were, offering the left yet another chance to bring things around. It is more than coincidental that Jofre concocted these versions at a time when the ideology and the party he had devoted his life to were in retreat and threatened with extinction. What better time to revise failed tactics and strategy? Unschooled though he may be, Jofre shows up on our doorsteps and calls across international boundaries, keeping the flag of Communism aloft by teaching his students how to tell his story.

None of these reflections alter the appeal of the legend surrounding Jofre's shooting. In its fundamentals, the story captures much that is true about rural social relations in Brazil, yet it leaves out much that is also true. To say that somebody named Jofre once risked his life to help tenant farmers stay on the land is cause for celebration from a grassroots perspective. But it does not arm succeeding generations with all the information the story contains, so it cheats posterity. By critically analyzing the evidence from every possible perspective and maintaining faith in the utility of historical research, Jofre's shooting can be shown to contain an empowering and insightful legacy.

ENDNOTES

I would like to thank Barbara Weinstein and two anonymous RHR reviewers for their comments on the article. I am also grateful for comments made on an earlier version of this essay by members of the 13th Annual Latin American Labor History Conference, which met in April 1996 at Duke University.

1. The major secondary sources on Jofre's career as a peasant leader are: Vera Lucia M. Chaia, "Os conflitos de arrendatarios em Santa Fé do Sul, São Paulo, 1959-1969" (Unpub. Master's Thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, 1980); José de Souza Martins, Os camponesas e a política no Brasil (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1981); Clodomir Santos de Moraes, "Peasant Leagues of Brazil," in Agrarian Problems and Peasant Movements in Latin America, edited by Rodolfo Stavenhagen (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 453-501; Luiz Noburu Muramatsu "Revoltas do capim: movimentos sociais agrários do oeste paulista, 1959-1970" (Unpub., Master's thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, 1984); Leonilde Sérvolo de Medeiros, História dos movimentos sociais no campo (Rio de Janeiro: FASE, 1989), 42-45; Nazareth dos Reis, "Tensões sociais no campo: Rubineia e Santa Clara D'Oeste," 2 vols (Unpub. Master's Thesis, Pontifica Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 1990); and Vera Chaia, "Santa Fé do Sul: A luta dos arrendatários," Cadernos AEL 7 (1997), 11-49. These are contrasted with various primary sources below.

2. Moraes, "Peasant Leagues," 841. For contemporary coverage see, for example, "Interior paulista em pé de guerra: surge um 'Fidel Castro' sertanejo!" Última Hora (UH) (16 May 1959), 1.

3. Gerald M. Sider, "Cleansing History: Lawrence, Massachusetts, the Strike of Four Loaves of Bread and No Roses, and the Anthropology of Working-class Consciousness," Radical History Review 65 (1996), 48-83. The new evidence used here includes contemporary newspaper accounts from Última Hora and Terra Livre, police reports and documents, and interviews conducted with participants in 1988 and 1997.

4. Quotations from Alessandro Portelli, "The Death of Luigi Trastulli: Memory and the Event" in The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History by Alessandro Portelli (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), 1-26. On myth and postmodern analysis see The Myths We Live By, edited by Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson (New York: Routledge, 1990).

5. On Jofre's arrest, see "Jundiaí prende Jofre Correia," O Estado de São Paulo (hereafter, OESP) (8 Feb 1973), 18. Unbeknown to me, Jofre had been interviewed in May 1988 by Dos Reis and a reporter for O Jornal de Santa Fé do Sul. I was introduced to him in Ribeirão Preto in August. Chaia, reports that Jofre showed up at her home without warning in 1989 when they met for the first time. (She had assumed he was dead when we met in 1988.) Remarkably, this encounter, revealed in Chaia's 1997 essay about Santa Fé, had no apparent impact on her thinking. The article, representing the first public airing of her 1980 master's thesis research, included no quotes or explicit insights from her meeting with Jofre. See, "Santa Fé do Sul: a luta dos arrendatários." On collective and historical memory see "AHR Forum: History and Memory" in American Historical Review (Dec 1997), 1371-1412, especially Susan A. Crane, "Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory," 1372-85 and Daniel James, "Meatpackers, Peronists, and Collective Memory: A view from the South," 1404-12. (My thanks to John French for the Chaia article and Barbara Weinstein for the AHR reference.)

6. Crane, "Writing the Individual Back In," 1372 and 1383.

7. The block quote is my translation of Jofre's statement, presented without the reporter's interventions, but in the paragraph style established by Última Hora. See "Líder lavrador (fuzilado) sobrevive: jagunços não conseguiram eliminar o 'Fidel Castro' do sertão," ÚH 6 August 1959, 2nd ed.,1 & 6.

8. Follow-up stories included: "Santa Fé em pé de guerra. Lider do sertão vai voltar para defender 2 mil camponeses. 'Fidel Castro' sobrevive e a luta continuará," ÚH (7 August 1959), 1, 4, & 6; "Deputados prometem a Jofre no HC: lavradores serão donos das terras-projeto na Assembleia expropriando latifúndios," ÚH (8 August 1959), 1 & 3; "Intervenção pessoal do governador para resolver litigio de Santa Fé," ÚH (13 August 1959), 6; and "Jofre não teme ameaças: voltará ao sertão para continuar a luta-lider camponês recupera forças no HC," ÚH (15 August 1959), 3.

9. "Dirigente rural baleado por jagunço," OESP 7 August 1959, ?.

10. For Julião, Mesquita, and Wainer, see entries under their names in the Dicionário Histórico-Biográfico Brasileiro, 1930-1983, edited by Israel Beloch and Alzira Alves de Abreu, 4 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: FINEP, 1984).

11. Other mainstream coverage of the Santa Fé conflict included "Na greve do capim-colonião: enxada vai virar metralhadora," a story in the 15 August 1959 weekly news magazine O Cruzeiro and regular reports on radio, which was certainly the most important media in Brazil at the time. The leftist and Communist (PCB) press covered the story extensively, especially Terra Livre, a monthly tabloid produced to support PCB organizing in the countryside, Novos Rumos, the PCB's weekly newspaper, and Revista Brasiliense, an independent leftist journal.

12. Fernando Perreira, "Desfaz a ação do governo a tensão reinante em Santa Fé," OESP (1 September 1959), 2 and, from ÚH "Santa Fé em pé de guerra" and "Jofre não teme ameaças." Dos Reis, interview with Jofre Correa Neto, 12 May 1988, Santa Fé do Sul, transcript in Terceiro Relátorio de Bolsa, vol 2 (PUC-São Paulo, August 1989), 59. (Hereafter, referenced as 1988 Corrêa transcript.) Cliff Welch, "Field Notes: Jofre" (24 August 1988), in author's possession.

13. "Sante Fé em pé de guerra."

14. Perreira, "Desfaz a ação."

15. Tasso de Oliveira ao Diretor, Departamento de Ordem Política e Social do Estado de São Paulo (DOPS-ESP), 17 August 1959, in Arquivo Públio do Estado de São Paulo (APESP), Locator No. 50-Z-764-46. (Hereafter, citied as Oliveira ao Diretor.) Nogueira interview (7 September 1987, Santa Fé do Sul) transcript in Dos Reis, Relatório, 79. Lira interview (18 March 1989, Santa Clara D'Este) transcript in ibid., 127. Jofre Corrêa Neto, interview by author, Brasilia (19 July 1997) (Hereafter cited as 1997 Corrêa interview.)

16. Chaia, "Os conflitos," 68 and "Santa Fé do Sul: A luta dos arrendatários," 18; Muramatsu, "As revoltas," 159; "A Operação 'Arranca Capim'," O Jornal de Santa Fé do Sul (24 June 1988), n.p.; and Dos Reis, "Tensões sociais," 196. By 1997, Jofre himself had come to the conclusion that Nogueira was at least partially behind the shooting: "Who arranged this, I'm telling you, for I know it from a clean source, who went to get [Silva] in Bahia, I know it for sure and all the world knows it, was Joaquim Nogueira." There is reason to doubt Jofre's certainty since he is not recorded as having credited Nogueira with the crime at an earlier date. By the time he made this claim, he had read and discussed Dos Reis's thesis, and this may have influenced his thinking on the subject. 1997 Corrêa transcript.

17. Olímpio Pereira Machado, "Poema da terra," Revista Brasiliense 36 (July/August 1961) in Chaia, "Os Conflitos," 245-65. Sider, "Cleansing History."

18. Investigadores 805-1574-1858, "Investigação sobre tentativa de homicidio que foi vitima JOFRE CORREIA NETO, na cidade de Santa Fé do Sul," (18 August 1959) DOPS-ESP, APESP, 50-Z-764-78.

19. Dr. Nuno da Gama Lobo's actual name was Nuno Lobo Gama D'Eça. A lawyer and advisor to Santa Fé do Sul Mayor Deraldo da Silva Prado, he also published O Santa Fé, a weekly newspaper.

20. José Correia de Lima, the Jofre lieutenant introduced above, claims not to have been with Jofre that day due to illness. Since Jofre's reference is the only one to place him at the scene, Correia's account is probably more reliable. "I was supposed to be going to São Paulo with Jofre but I got sick and couldn't go," he told Dos Reis in 1989. "I was the one who went with Jofre to São Paulo most of the time. There's just one thing: if I'd been there, it wouldn't have happened that way. No, sir! It isn't that I would have killed anyone, no sir! But that guy was a coward to have all alone shot down a man!" Correia interview transcript, 112.

21. 1988 Corrêa transcript, 58-59.

22. 1997 Corrêa interview.

23. Quote of Silva's drunkenness is from "Relatório de trabalho de Paulo E. Vanzolini, apresentado ao governador do Estado de São Paulo, Carlos A. de Carvalho Pinto" in Chaia, "Santa Fé do Sul: A Luta dos Arrendatários,"18. "Diário da Segunda Viagem a Sta Fé do Sul, 16 a 30, IX, 59" (Photocopy in author's possession), 12. (I am grateful to Chaia for generously providing me with this document.)

24. "Oliveira ao Diretor;" "Investigação sobre tentativa;" and Nogueira transcript, 78.

25. "Como se formou o nucleo de agitação social na zona de Santa Fé do Sul,"OESP (5 August 1960), n.p. The series appeared about two months after Jofre's "preventive arrest" in Jales on June 2.. "Serviço Secreto: Jofre Correa Neto," DOPS-ESP (25 June 1965), Brasil:Nunca Mais, Box 144, vol. 11, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Universidade de Campinas, São Paulo (hereafter "Serviço Secreto"), 1875. Various sources, included the "Serviço Secreto" report, claim his arrest was precipitated by an increase in tenant farmer resistance following his return to Santa Fé in May. See also Terra Livre (June 1960), 3; Terra Livre (July 1960), 1; "Declara-se a policia capaz de manter a ordem em S. Fé do Sul," OESP, 7 August 1960, 20; and Dos Reis, "Tensões Sociais," 208

26. "Latifundiário Perdeu a 'Guerra do Capim'," Novos Rumos (25 Sept - 1 October 1959), n.p.

27. On August 6th, the day the wounded Jofre arrived in São Paulo, the state committee charged with directing the PCB's rural campaign concluded that Zico Diniz had ordered Jofre's shooting and that the state was partly responsible for having failed to resolve the tenant farmers' problems earlier. They agreed to use the incident to apply pressure on the state legislature and the governor to intervene in the case. They also adopted a "word of order" -- "'to respond to further attempted assassinations by burning down the plantations and not save a single tree. It will be violence against violence!'" -- intended to ward off further violence with a threat of violence. This may be an exaggerated report, since it comes from a DOPS spy who observed the committee meeting. Nevertheless, there is no record here or in other sources of a PCB interested in investigating the event. See "Reunião da 'Secção do Campo' do Comitê Estadual de São Paulo, do PCB, para tratar de assuntos relacionados com o atentado sofrido por Jofre Correia Neto (7 August 1959), DOPS-ESP, ASESP, 50-Z-764-37.

28. 1988 Jofre transcript, 35. 1997 Jofre interview and "Investigação sobre tentativa." See also "Noticias do interior: Santa Fé do Sul elege prefeito apoiado pelas forças populares," Jornal Noticias de Hoje (13 January 1959).

29. On the legion, see Dos Reis, "Tensões sociais," 112-22 and the 1997 Corrêa interview..

30. The cornerstone of an association building was ceremoniously set in November 1959 and the Rural Laborers' Union now in Santa Fé can trace its roots to Jofre's organization. For the poem, see Olímpio Pereira Machado, "Associação de Santa Fé," Terra Livre (June 1960), 3. On the PIU see, "Reunião do Pacto de Unidade Intersindical, para tratar de assuntos vários," (5 August 1959), DOPS-ESP, APESP, 50-Z-764-34. DOPS agent Tasso de Oliveira, who spent four days in Santa Fé following Jofre's shooting, argued that the association's Communist connection had been exploited by Jofre to turn every disagreement between a worker and landlord into "a revolution" in the press. In "Oliveira ao Diretor."

31. Oliveira ao Diretor.

32. For examples of myth debunking, see Eric J. Hobsbawn, Bandits Rev. Ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1981) and Linda Lewin, "The Oligarchical Limitations of Social Banditry in Brazil: The Case of the 'Good' Thief Antônio Silvino," Past and Present 82 (Feb 1979), 116-46. For the quotes, see Samuel and Thompson, "Introduction," The Myths We Live By, 1-22.

33. On Mendes, see Andrew Revkin, The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest Rev ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992). On the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre the Movimento dos Sem Terra protestors, see José Saramago, "Introdução" in Sebastião Salgado, Terra (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997), 9-13. On the general problem of impunity see, for example, Medeiros, História, passim; Biorn Maybury-Lewis, The Politics of the Possible: The Brazilian Rural Worker's Trade Union Movement, 1964-1985 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994) and Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, Assassinatos no Campo: crime e impunidade, 1964-1986 2nd ed, rev. (São Paulo:Global, 1987).

34. For a recent restatement of Santa Fé events, see Medeiros, História, 42-43. The book is published by the Federation of Social and Educational Assistance Agencies (FASE) with the intent of being "the first of a series of books on the countryside which FASE intends to publish and place at the disposal of rural laborers and their assessors, but that will also be of interest to all those who believe that is it possible to change our society" (8).

35. Daniel L. Schacter, Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 84. Nora cited in Crane, "Writing the Individual Back In," 1379.

36. Allesandro Portelli, "Uchronic Dreams: Working-Class Memory and Possible Worlds,"in The Myths We Live By, 155