logo
episode-header-image
May 2024
10m 5s

Carlos Lamarca: From army captain to Bra...

Bbc World Service
About this episode

In 1964, João Goulart, the president of Brazil, was overthrown in a military coup.

In the repression which followed, hundreds of people were disappeared or killed, and many more detained and tortured.

Carlos Lamarca was a captain who deserted the army and joined in the armed struggle against the military regime. He was shot dead in 1971.

His friend and fellow fighter, João Salgado Lopes, tells Vicky Farncombe about their time together hiding in the Caatinga, the Brazilian outback.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: Wanted poster of Carlos Lamarca. Credit: Memories of the Dictatorship)

Up next
Yesterday
The man who said ‘no’ to Disney
In 1941, Walt Disney made a tempting offer to a fellow pioneer of the animation industry, Quirino Cristiani - the author of the first animated feature film.Cristiani was an Italian immigrant raised in Argentina who built a career creating animated political satires in the early d ... Show More
9m 55s
Jul 10
Ni Una Menos women’s movement in Argentina
On 3 June 2015, tens of thousands of people gathered in the capital, Buenos Aires, and in dozens of cities and towns demanding an end to violence against women. There were demonstrations in Chile and Uruguay in solidarity too. Argentina was reporting a female murder rate of one e ... Show More
9m 31s
Jul 9
Argentina’s national genetics bank created to identify stolen babies
In 1982, Argentine geneticist Victor Penchaszadeh was living in exile in New York when he received a call that would change the course of his career. Two founding members of the campaign group, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, were asking for his help to find their kidnappe ... Show More
10m 41s
Recommended Episodes
Sep 2022
Brazil
Stories from Brazil, ahead of the presidential election in October, including the murder of Tim Lopes, the hero of Brazilian democracy and the Candelaria Massacre. Plus the creation of the capital, Brasilia, and the history of the Fusca - the car that charmed Brazil. This program ... Show More
51m 22s
Nov 2021
Sudan's October Revolution
How in 1964 Sudanese civilian protesters first brought down a military regime, plus the hunt for former Serbian leader Radovan Karadžić later convicted of genocide and war crimes. Also in the programme, Russia's public outcry at the killing of human rights pioneer and leading fem ... Show More
50m 19s
Oct 2017
The Death of Che Guevara
In October 1967 the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara was captured and killed in Bolivia - we hear from the CIA operative who was one of the last people to speak to him. Plus, the plan to rescue Italy's art from the Nazis; remembering a hero of Catalan nationalism; the policeman ... Show More
51m 21s
May 2021
Amilcar Cabral: an African liberation legend
We remember Amilcar Cabral, who led the armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in West Africa in the 1970s and speak to Dr Nayanka Perdigao about his legacy. Plus the shocking fallout of the Indian rail strike in 1974 which was - at the time - the biggest industrial acti ... Show More
49m 36s
Jan 2011
The Mexican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Mexican Revolution.In 1908 the President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, gave an interview to an American journalist. He was 77 and had ruled the country in autocratic fashion for over thirty years. He discussed the country's economic development ... Show More
42m 6s
Sep 2023
371. The 1973 Chilean Coup: General Pinochet Seizes Power (Part 2)
The U.S. have given up on ousting the socialist President Allende through democratic means, and shift to a more militaristic approach, in the form of General Pinochet. Once known as the ‘dull dog’, a man who had a reputation for procuring Jeeps for his fellow troops, the son of a ... Show More
52m 34s
Sep 2022
Trailer - Pablo Escobar: Escape from La Catedral
Pablo Escobar was one of the most powerful men in the world in the 1980s. Through terror and a network of corruption, he came to have almost total control over the police, the army and much of the Colombian government while operating a gigantic international cocaine trafficking n ... Show More
30s
Nov 2023
383. Young Napoleon: The Shadow of the Guillotine (Part 2)
Within the turmoil of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte stands out to his military superiors, first by defeating the British at Toulon, then by putting down a royalist mob in Paris when outnumbered four to one, with a “whiff of grapeshot”. Having finally shaken off the hu ... Show More
53m 52s
Apr 2022
Algeria's War of Independence
Sixty years after Algeria's independence from France, first-hand accounts of a traumatic 'birth of a nation': a female Algerian bomber who was part of the battle for Algiers; how the French military responded with brutal tactics; a massacre on the streets of Paris; and reprisals ... Show More
53m 57s