Brazil's “Dominican Affair”

Extract

In late 1969 and early 1970 the Brazilian press carried a story which it called the “Dominican Affair”. It told of how an important urban guerilla had been shot dead by the police owing to his betrayal by two student-brothers of the Dominican Order. The story had the widest implications for Church-State relations at a national and international level, and it got world coverage. Recently more information has come to light, which makes possible an hypothesis (but not yet a definitive statement) of what really happened. It is fascinating, whether or not one is a Brazilian or a Dominican. It reveals very dramatically the complexity of the ways in which the apparatus of government and the media may distort—and continue to distort—even the most localized of events. And it shows how, in spite of these distortions, a seemingly modest man, Frei Tito de Alencar, whose sufferings and ideals have been written about several times in New Blackfriars, can emerge eventually with the stature of a martyr.