The strategy of producing and disseminating in the political debate is not new in Brazil.
Long before the emergence of the internet, agents from the SNI (National Information Service), an agency of the latter (1964-1985), invented readers to try to demoralize members of the progressive clergy, through the letters section of newspapers in Salvador.
In 1980 and 1981, a period of political openness, when prior censorship was suspended, the arapongas of the SNI in Salvador created Operation Church, producing 57 letters from people who said they were outraged and countered articles with statements from left-wing priests and bishops.
The strategy followed one of the organization’s guidelines: combating opponents of the regime with counterinformation.
The Operation Church material was located by historian Grimaldo Zachariadhes, doctor in history, politics and cultural assets from CPDOC-FGV, in the dictatorship’s archives related to Bahia and Sergipe. He participated in the Memórias Reveladas project, which collected secret documents from the military regime, currently in the National Archives.
“This preserved documentation gives us the idea that the creation of false documents is not something of the post-internet era, of so-called fake news, but something intrinsic to national politics”, he commented.
The operation began in May 1980 and continued in the context of the repercussions for the expulsion from the country of the Italian priest Vito Miracapillo — who refused to celebrate mass commemorating Brazil’s Independence. It was also motivated by a curious episode: the collegiate work on the life of Leonid Brezhnev, then president of the Soviet Union.
In the reports, the agents boast of the good results of the action: “This Agency, through modest and economical work, but relatively effective, produced dozens of mischaracterized letters, which were sent to the newspaper offices […] in order to try to neutralize, weaken and discredit the ‘progressive wing’ of the Catholic and Protestant Churches”.
The typed originals and clippings of letters published by the newspapers A Tarde, Jornal da Bahia, Tribuna da Bahia and Correio da Bahia were attached to the material.
The (National Conference of Bishops of Brazil), run at the time by the so-called progressive wing of the Church, was one of the targets of the attacks.
A letter signed with the pseudonym Áurea Trindade criticizes a supposed lack of dialogue between the Church and the government, as the institution would be controlled by “revolutionary and Marxist” bishops. It was published in the newspaper A Tarde, on December 13, 1980.
The SNI also monitored religious education, and the Jesuit school Antônio Vieira, founded 113 years ago, came into the body’s focus, which opened its doors to opposition events.
A report dated August 4, 1980 says that the school gave high school students work on the “personality of Leonid Brezhnev”, leader of the group between 1964 and 1982, “forcing students to seek contacts with leftist elements in the area”.
Soon after, the agency creates two characters who send letters with similar content to newspapers.
In one of them, a man pretending to be the father of a student complains about his school work and says that his son is receiving “calls all the time from well-known and non-well-known communists, offering their services to carry out the research”.
Professor Sérgio Silveira, general director of the college, was surprised by the existence of SNI monitoring, but not the work on Brezhnev. He explained that, historically, the type of teaching of the Jesuit order, aimed at forming critical and conscious citizens, may displease authoritarian regimes.
He said he was sure that “this professor, when giving research like this, was encouraging his students to seek knowledge about history, what impact this history has on their lives and how their lives are intertwined with the formation of society.” He added that every political regime “that attacks life” will have an opponent in the school.
The school’s progressive stances cause controversy even in times of democracy. In May of this year, the mother of a student complained on social media about the fact that the school had adopted in religion classes the book “Pequeno Manual Antirracista”, by , writer and columnist for Sheet. In 2019, another student’s parent criticized the institution for adopting the book.
The report contacted CNBB by phone and email to find out if its current leaders would like to comment on Operation Church, but did not receive a response until the conclusion of this report.
