Brazil

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1898–1990 ○ Natural causes

The Knight of Hope: Brazilian revolutionary who marched 25,000 km

Many people think I'm crazy. Most men who reach a certain age find their senses. In their youth, they are revolutionaries. Then they marry and must look after a family and settle down. But here I am at my age and I still haven't got good sense. — Interview, 1984

Brazilian revolutionary and politician. As chief of staff of the Prestes Column (1925–1927), he led rebels on a 25,000-km march through Brazil, earning the name 'Knight of Hope.' Elected to the Comintern Executive Committee in 1935, he directed the ANL uprising and spent nine years in prison. He served as general secretary of the Brazilian Communist Party for 37 years (1943–1980), leading labour organizing and anti-dictatorship resistance from underground and Soviet exile. Expelled in the 1980s for opposing the party's Eurocommunist turn, he remained a revolutionary Marxist to the end.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1911–1969 ✕ Shot by police

From congressman to urban guerrilla theorist: the military dictatorship's enemy number one

“Não tive tempo para ter medo” — "I didn't have time to be afraid" — epitaph on his tomb, designed by Oscar Niemeyer

Brazilian Marxist-Leninist revolutionary and theorist of urban guerrilla warfare. Born to an Italian immigrant father and Afro-Brazilian mother in Bahia, he joined the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) in 1934. Elected federal deputy in 1946, he lost his mandate when the party was outlawed in 1948. After the 1964 military coup, he broke with the PCB over its rejection of armed struggle and founded the Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN), an urban guerrilla group, in 1968. His Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla (1969) influenced revolutionary movements worldwide; he was shot dead by police in a São Paulo ambush later that year.