Died 1995 | ||
Jefferson Cardim de Alencar Osório (1912-1995), son of the Brazilian Navy officer Roberto de Alencar Osório, born Robert Ernest Hoomenark, and Corina Cardim de Alencar Osório, was a Brazilian Army officer who reached the rank of colonel and was purged from the army by AI-1 in the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état. Because of his political beliefs, during his military career, he suffered various persecutions from his superiors, particularly from Ernesto Geisel, who turned to be, in addition to a great personal enemy, the fourth general dictator of the Brazilian military government from 1974 to 1979. Colonel Jefferson Cardim is the author of the first armed response to the military regime, an episode known as the Três Passos guerrilla. He is also considered one of the first victims, if not the first, of the joint repression made by two South American countries during the 1970s, which would later turn to become known as the Operation Condor.
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Três Passos Guerrilla
Being purged from the Army together with several other soldiers, Colonel Jefferson Cardim had a fixed idea: give a military response to the new government before the coup could complete one year. He met Leonel Brizola in Uruguay, trying to find support for military action which could destabilize the government. His hope was a network of Brizola supporters would show him solidarity when his insurgency plan began to take place. In Uruguay, find some other military purged who would support his ideas, bought some weapons and later decides to enter Brazil together with two others fellows, along the border cities of Rivera and Santana do Livramento. His plan was to visit several cities and military offices at the south of Brazil, making the population rise against the new government, overthrowing Castello Branco. His first military action would take place in the city of Três Passos in the northeast region of Rio Grande do Sul state, together with other 20 new supporters found in the way. On March 26, 1965, he takes a military police barrack and invades a local radio station, where a manifesto is read while radio live broadcasting is running. Afterwards, he heads to north where he would find a group of five thousand army men with the mission to stop him. Another confrontation occurs on the next day, near the town of Medianeira at Parana state, where his group of men is surrendered. Then, he would be tortured and kept imprisoned, accused of killing a sergeant during the confrontation of Mediadora. In 1968, together with his son also impriosioned with just 15 years old, he escapes from prison and becomes a political refugee, first in Mexico and then in Algeria.
Arrest and Extradiction at Buenos Aires
With an Algerian passport, he starts to live in Uruguay together with his wife who was born there. During an international conference, he is presented to Salvador Allende who, after being elected president of Chile, invites him to participate in his government. Jefferson accepts the offer and leaves Montevideo by car heading to Chile, with his son aged now 18 and an Uruguayan nephew aged 20. On the December 11, 1970, once he lands in Argentina, after crossing the Uruguay–Argentina border in a ferry, he is arrested and kept imprisoned for the drug traffic false accusation. The operation was monitored by the Brazilian military attaché in Buenos Aires, Colonel Nile Caneppa da Silva, since from his early landing in Argentina. The three travellers were arrested by the Argentina Federal Police and remains incommunicado at the police headquarters. They would be interrogated and tortured, while the police was seeking denounces of peronist political personalities or motoneros and tupamaros guerrilla combatants. Two days later, the Uruguayan nephew is released by the Argentine police, but Jefferson and his son are conducted to a flight back to Brazil in an aircraft serving a Brazilian minister while visiting Buenos Aires. One of the flight members recognizes Jefferson and is able to call his mother by phone before getting in the plane, informing he is returning to Brazil. This call some believe prevented his "disappearance" in his way back to Brazil. Already back in Brazil, continues to be tortured in the first weeks, together with his son who is released on January 20, 1971. Jefferson remain imprisoned until November 2, 1977.