Tiradentes Revolutionary Movement (1969–1971)

The Tiradentes Revolutionary Movement (MRT) was an organization that was active in the armed struggle against the Brazilian military dictatorship and existed between September 1969 and April 1971. During this period, it was responsible for a series of guerrilla actions that sought to destabilize the regime while reorganizing the working class to bring about a socialist revolution. Unlike the majority of guerrilla organizations of that period, formed mostly by students, the MRT had almost exclusively worker members in its composition.

The organization was formed from a meeting in Campos do Jordão, gathering the group that orbited around Devanir José de Carvalho and Plínio Petersen Pereira, former members of the Communist Party of Brazil Red Wing (PCdoB-AV). It was baptized as the Tiradentes Revolutionary Movement in honor of the group of the same name, linked to the Peasant Leagues, which operated between 1961 and 1962, as well as to confuse the repression. Acting in a period in which other organizations of the armed left went through difficulties, MRT tried to articulate itself with other revolutionary groups, such as Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN) and Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária (VPR), to carry out actions of expropriation, sabotage, and propaganda.

Among its main actions were the assault on an armored car of the Brink's cash transportation company, considered one of the most profitable actions of the armed struggle in Brazil, and the murder of the businessman Henning Albert Boilesen, in reprisal for the murder of Devanir de Carvalho, when the organization was already very weakened. The MRT was dismantled by repression in April 1971, after a series of arrests of ex-militants, whose information extracted by repression, led to a domino effect that led the group to close its activities.