Boanerges de Souza Massa (born January 7, 1938 – disappeared June 21, 1972) was a Brazilian physician who joined the resistance against the military dictatorship. He was the field surgeon of the National Liberation Action (, ALN) founded by Carlos Marighella. After the police liquidated Marighella, he went to Cuba to take guerilla courses and co-founded the People's Liberation Movement (, MOLIPO). The army captured him in 1971 in Pindorama and he disappeared shortly thereafter. 25 years later, the Brazilian government officially acknowledged its responsibility.
Biographical record
Boanerges de Souza Massa was born on January 7, 1938, in Avaré, São Paulo, to Francisco de Souza Massa and Laura Alves Massa. He married Maria Lucia Sant'Anna Saadi Kerbeg in São Paulo on January 9, 1969. In the 1980s the authorities granted her a divorce because her husband had disappeared for a decade. In the 1990s the authorities granted Boanerges' brother Cyro Massa a 100,000 reais compensation because his brother had disappeared for two decades after being in government custody.
Early life and education
Boanerges de Souza Massa was born in a rural area and worked as teacher and accountant to pay for his studies. He was admitted to the Medicine School and the Law School of the University of São Paulo. He graduated from the former in December 1965 and the latter in June 1966. He interned at the University of São Paulo Faculty of Medicine Clinics Hospital. He is the co-author of a published academic research article on leptospirosis.
In July 1962, Boanerges was invited to speak to John F. Kennedy on the lawn of the White House as part of a delegation of the Alliance for Progress. A journalist reported: "Wagging his finger, the student from Avaré questioned the President of the United States on his interference in poor countries." In medical school he was designated as commencement speaker for the Class of 1965, but his speech was censored for being critical of the military dictatorship.
Doctor of the ALN
Over the years, Boanerges de Souza Massa gravitated towards the militant group Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN). On May 8, 1969, the ALN robbed a bank and killed a policeman, but one of their members, Takao Amano, was wounded. It was Boanerges who gave him emergency medical care and extracted the bullet.
On June 4, 1969, the ALM conducted another bank robbery, leaving one soldier dead. Two bullets wounded Francisco Gomes da Silva, the brother of ALN leader Virgilio Gomes da Silva (codename Jonas in the Oscar-nominated movie Four Days in September about the kidnapping of US ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick). Boanerges, along with the rest of the ALN commando, hijacked a hospital to treat the wounded. This 4-hour operation was medically successful, but Boanerges was recognized by the hospital staff and forced into clandestinity.
Over the course of 1969, the most actively sought-after opponents to the military dictatorship became known as the "Marighella 7", among which Boanerges. He escaped from Brazil thanks to false identity papers provided by Dominicans. Traveling through Uruguay, Boanerges linked up in Argentina with other ALN operatives, and they hijacked an airplane to fly to Cuba where they took refuge.
MOLIPO
In Cuba, Boanerges de Souza Massa lived with other exiled Brazilians in a house provided by the Cuba. They took guerilla classes: physical training in the morning, political in the afternoon. Their goal was to return to Brazil and liberate their country from the military dictatorship. To this end they formed a new Marxist revolutionary organization, the MOLIPO, abbreviation of Movimento de Libertação Popular (in English: People's Liberation Movement).
Boanerges de Souza Massa was the first MOLIPO operative to be sent back to Brazil to establish a rural guerilla base in the Northeast region. But counter-insurgency forces were aware of his return. He was the first to be captured, in Pindorama, on December 21, 1971. According to the sociologist Renato Dias: