Episode 14: The False Messiah & The Years of Lead

 Sources:

REFERENCES/ADDITIONAL READING:

Publica: Atentados de direita fomentaram AI-5

The Guardian: Brazil cult leader who 'contacted aliens' backed dictatorship with terror attacks

Kraspedon Contact Claims

Mysterious Universe: Investigation Finds Brazilian UFO Cult Leader Was a Terrorist

The Guardian: Brazil President Weeps

Encyclopedia: Krasperdon, Dino

Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s

Penn Today: Cult or Religious Movement

Eccentric Lives and Particular Notions by John Michell

USC NEWS: Powerful Years for Religion

Archive of Freeservers

Aladino Félix: From Contactee to Terrorist

Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s

Religion in Brazils Free Market Faith

Dino Kraspedon: MY CONTACT WITH FLYING SAUCERS

Cambridge University: Labor and Dictatorship in Brazil: A Historiographical Review

Brasil Wire: Britain Brazil Dictatorship

BBC: World Latin America

nacla: remembering brazil’s military coup

World Politics Review: Brazil Dictatorship Era Wounds Never Really Healed

Foreign Affairs: Brazils Military Dictatorship

NPR: Brazillian Believers of Hidden Religion Step out of Shadows

Independent: Dommsday cult in Brazil

The Cult (and Cults) of Brasília By Julian Dibbell

Liberations School: Remembering the years of lead

The Unpast

BBC: Brazillian Torture Survivor

Financial Times

Merco Press: Testimony Centre Survivor

MUSIC:

Golden by Midnight Daydream 

Brenner by Falls

The Grid by Cody Martin 

Miles Away by Michael Briguglio 

Departure by Alice in Winter

Lucid Dreaming by Elision 

Perfect Spades by Third Age

IMAGES:

Brazil Nut Tree : Posted on Flikr by Mauro Halpern

License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

Agouti by Tomfridel

License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

Cachoeira dos Macocos- Ibitipoca Posted by Lique Gavio

License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Cachoeira da Fumaca (Carrancas) Posted by Cid Costa Neto

License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

The Students For Democracy Protesting [the government’s tyranny] Posted by Stevan Kragujevic

License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Mountains near in Pedra do Bau posted by Lina Louverm

License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

FULL SCRIPT

If you want to see Mother Nature at work in its most dazzling complexity, you need to visit the Amazon rainforest. It’s the largest collection of plant and animal species in the world – one in every ten living species on Earth calls this place home. 

 It can be chaotic, and it can be dangerous, but it’s also thriving with diversity. While many of the countless millions of living things here evolved out of a need to survive predators, it’s not every creature for itself. In remarkable ways, the residents of the rainforest depend on one another to survive.

 The Brazil nut tree is one of the tallest in the Amazon, and some of them can live up to a thousand years; but in order for new trees to grow, they need help from the agouti, a small rodent. The agouti is the only creature on land in the rainforest with teeth hard enough to crack open the Brazil nut tree’s seed pods. It will eat some and then, like many rodents, bury the rest for storage. This spreads the seeds of the tree far and wide. 

 There are species of caterpillar that have evolved to produce chemicals on areas of their back. We call them “dew patches”, and they have one specific purpose – the chemicals taste sweet and delicious to the ants of the Amazon. In order to keep eating from those dew patches, ants will swarm to defend these caterpillars from other predators, even carry the caterpillar over long distances.

In biology, we refer to this as symbiosis – two species that have a win-win relationship, each providing something that helps the other. If you’re one of the species in a symbiotic relationship, the rewards can be great. But it might not work out so well for anyone who tries to get in the middle.

Just over 60 years ago in Brazil, a very different story of symbiosis began. It’s a story where a highly flammable concoction of politics, conspiracy, and personal ambition changed the course of history for one of the world’s largest nations, bringing about years of evil as two ambitious individuals – one within the government and one outside it – decided they could help each other out. It’s one of the darkest stories we’ve told here – the story of a man who became famous for saying he saw a UFO, and who became a terrorist because his own government invited him to. The UFO wasn’t real, but the bombings, terror, and death that followed – they’re as real as it gets.

***

Hi, I’m MF Thomas and this is the My Dark Path podcast. In every episode, we explore the fringes of history, science and the paranormal. So, if you geek out over these subjects, you’re among friends here at My Dark Path. Since friends stay in touch, please reach out to me on Instagram, sign up for our newsletter at mydarkpath.com, or just send an email to explore@mydarkpath.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Finally, thank you for listening and choosing to walk the Dark Paths of the world with me. Let’s get started with Episode 14: The False Messiah and The Years of Lead

PART ONE

The world after the Second World War looked more peaceful on the surface, but was tumultuous in all-new ways. Open combat between nations had given way to nuclear brinksmanship among superpowers, with other countries unwittingly serving as proxy battlefields in the Cold War. People who had seen institutions like governments and religions betray them, who had witnessed the human race’s true capacity for evil, were adrift, desolate, looking for meaning and purpose. They were desperate for fresh hope, and a way to avoid the mistakes other generations had made. Members of the Baby Boomer Generation rebelled against the restrictive expectations of postwar culture. They dropped out. Whether it was to find themselves, escape the military draft, or just chase fun and pleasure, they left the path that their parents and their country had tried to force them down.  

This created an opportunity for people who called themselves teachers, guides, healers, and many other terms. What the rest of the world called them, were cult leaders. As the 1950’s passed into the 1960’s, and the Vietnam War created even more disillusionment and anger and social upheaval, cult movements grew all over the world.

David Berg, Jim Jones, Charles Manson. They stepped in when people felt lost, when they needed a community. Put yourself in the shoes of a penniless, vulnerable teenage runaway. When a charming intellectual offers them the love and understanding they didn’t think they were getting at home, when someone whose trust in every institution has been broken finally finds someone who seems to listen to them, you can understand why they could fall under the spell. The followers wanted peace and love; and each of these charismatic leaders would start out preaching harmony and togetherness. But in the end, violence always followed.

Here’s the thing about cults – pretty much anyone is capable of joining one. If you haven’t been in one, it may be hard for you to wrap your mind around how anyone could fall into the trap, but the reality is that cult leaders know exactly how to reel a member in and keep them there. It’s not about intelligence, or your level of success, or what community or country you live in. Everyone is vulnerable.

Psychoanalyst Leonard Shengold coined the term “soul murder.” Psychology Today describes this concept as “the intentional attempt to stamp out or compromise the separate identity of another person.” Whether a cult leader is consciously aware of it or not, this is their ultimate goal – to brainwash a person so deeply, that they kill whatever parts of them were freethinking, unique individuals. Total, blind, unquestioning submission. The definition of “cult” can seem somewhat slippery, since so much of what they do can have innocuous similarities to legitimate religious or self-help groups. The word wasn’t always considered pejorative. But it’s that annihilation of individual thought, that soul murder, that we think defines a cult.

Science has helped us to recognize the patterns in a brainwashing process. One method is the manipulation of the senses. A cult leader uses sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch to reframe how a person perceives the world. It’s like you’re reprogramming a person, loosening their ties to their previous beliefs.

Then there’s what’s known as “love bombing”. A successful cult leader has an instinct for people who feel lonely, misunderstood, and deprived. By focusing on them with laser intensity and showering them with attention and affection, they smother their victim’s defenses.

Turning again to the words of Psychology Today, quote, “they assault and overwhelm their senses by using various techniques to induce a dissociated state, an altered state of consciousness, a trance state, in which mind and body are disconnected from each other.” Cult leaders will weaken the resistance of their followers by depriving them of basic needs. Maybe food, maybe shelter, maybe warmth. They’ll pitch this as a form of self-improvement, making you stronger by doing away with creature comforts. Again, we see the insidious similarity to the devotion and self-sacrifice of mainstream religions. But in the cult, what all this self-denial really does is sap your strength, make you vulnerable to new ideas.

The cult leader is relentless – they might lecture you for hours on end, they might disorient you with extreme physical tests, or even something as simple as spinning around in a circle until you’re dizzy. You’ll be pressured to participate in group behaviors like ritualistic chants. Conformity, obedience, and surrender are all treated as virtues. But you’re not surrendering to love, or peace, or any higher power. You’re surrendering to the leader who now controls you.

Suddenly, you’re spending less and less time with people outside of your group. You’re handing over your money, and your possessions. And what’s wrong with that? Your group will use the money to do good in the world. But if you ever want to leave, you’ll discover that you have no willpower, no possessions, and no friends. What do you do then?

The rise in cults was a global phenomenon – even though some of the more famous cults originated in the States. In Japan, new religions were popping up by the dozens. In Brazil, a growing middle class felt disillusioned by the Catholic Church after it backed the military dictatorship, and were looking for something new to believe in. 

And that’s where we meet a man named Aladino Félix.

PART TWO

If you ever find yourself in the muggy, wet forests of Angatuba around São Paulo, you’ll see tangled tree branches twisting over babbling creeks. You might visit the Cachoeira dos Mineiros, a waterfall that cascades over shining towers of black rock. You’ll be able to wander narrow paths of sloshy brown mud.  

You won’t, however, stand on a mountaintop and stare into the open sky. The sleepy town of Angatuba boasts rolling green hills and thick, tropical forests – but it isn’t home to a mountain range. That’s an important thing to remember when we tell the story of Aladino Félix.

Félix got his first taste of fame in 1957 by writing a book called My Contact With Flying Saucers. He published it under a pseudonym – Dino Kraspedeon. 

As we’ve discussed in previous episodes, the late 40’s through the 50’s saw a steadily-rising fascination with aliens all over the world. UFO sightings were rampant, pop culture was filling peoples’ heads with images of flying saucers and invasions from other planets. Even if you considered it all crazy, you couldn’t avoid the stories. 

Aladino Félix had his own story to tell in his book, about striking up a deep friendship with an alien from Jupiter. He claimed it was a true account, and the book struck a chord with UFO enthusiasts in both North and South America. But we must point out something that would have been a lot more difficult for people to know in 1957 – he claimed that his otherworldly encounter happened in the mounts of Angatuba. And, as we’ve mentioned, Angatuba has no mountains.

If you think that such an easy-to-verify falsehood stopped Félix from building a following, then you need to remember cult psychology. When you’re within a cult, it’s considered a virtue to defend your cult’s story against outsiders and skeptics. And for a cult leader, when one of your followers believes with all their heart that two plus two equals five because you told them so, that’s when you know you have achieved ultimate power over them. As George Orwell wrote in 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” That power is an addiction, and cult leaders will do anything to continue feeding it.

So as we share the story Félix told, we’ll point out a few other details which are obviously false even before the aliens enter the picture. But we have to remember as we move forward that for Félix and his followers, the truth was only what he believed it to be, and it was his willpower against that of the people he brought into his fold.

Almost nothing is known about Félix’s life before the publication of My Contact With Flying Saucers. The only source we could find that lists his birthplace is a barebones Wikipedia page, which states he was born in Pedra do Baú in 1905. But Pedra do Baú, is the name of a rock formation in the Mantiqueira mountains of Southeastern Brazil. The rocks are popular among serious climbers and hikers – but no one actually lives on them. 

It’s possible that Félix grew up in the municipality of São Bento do Sapucai, where the rock formation is located. The surrounding mountains could be why Félix imagined a mountain range when describing his first meeting with aliens. 

It is known that Félix fought in World War 2 – so could he have suffered from severe PTSD that led to delusional thought and behavior? It’s certainly possible – the hardships endured by the Brazilian Expeditionary Force in World War 2 are legendary – but we just don’t have enough to go on. To the world, his story begins with the book.

In My Contact With Flying Saucers, Félix and his friend are out for a walk on a rainy day. They’ve hiked up into the supposed Angatuba Mountain Range from the town of Parana. In real life, by the way, Parana is about 400 miles from Angatuba – so this was quite a hike.

On the summit of an imaginary mountain in Angatuba, they stop in the hopes of looking up at the stars, but the heavy clouds from the rainstorm block their view. Strangely, though, they can see five glowing objects hovering in the air above them, objects that look remarkably like the flying saucers they had read about in newspapers. 

Félix was determined to find out what these strange objects were – and frustrated that the cloudy skies blocked their view. He returned to the mountain a few days later, when the weather had cleared, hoping to see them again. For two long and sleepless nights he waited, and nothing happened.

Details like this interest me – they remind me of the story of Jesus spending 40 days in the desert before founding his ministry, or of the Buddha spending years meditating and living as a beggar before teaching about transcendence. It seems as though a leader’s story must set an example for their followers of a faith that has endured a long test.

And so, Félix claims, he was ready to turn around and give up when, on the third night, a flying saucer not only appeared again, but actually landed on the mountaintop. The captain of the ship invited Félix to come aboard and meet the crew. Félix never describes the alien Captain physically, except to note that he wore a pair of intricately woven gloves. In Félix’s words, quote: “we stayed on board for about an hour looking at the various pieces of equipment in the machine. The Captain was kind enough to explain how they all worked. At the end of our visit, this fascinating individual promised to come and see us as soon as he was able.” End quote.

As Félix tells it, about four or five months later, he was enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon back at home with his wife when the doorbell rang. Mrs. Félix answered it, and told her husband that it was a parson hoping to speak to him. This was nothing new – according to Félix, Christian parsons went door to door in the area on Sundays, trying to convert anyone who answered. Félix, at the time, considered himself an atheist, and had no interest in entertaining them. As we said earlier, the Catholic Church was struggling with its reputation in Brazil at the time.

Despite all this, Félix decided to invite the eager parson inside. Just because it was the polite thing to do. When he greeted the parson, however, he was immediately struck by his appearance. He was much better dressed than most of the parsons of his town – in a crisp white shirt and blue tie, wearing a shining black pair of dress shoes which looked brand new. 

Most unusual, though, were the man’s gloves – they looked exactly like the strange gloves he remembered his alien friend wearing. Félix leapt to a stunning conclusion: this was not a parson at all. It was the Captain of the UFO. The Captain apologized for disguising himself as a parson, but explained that he did not think Félix’s wife would have invited an alien inside. 

The pair talked for the entire afternoon – switching throughout the conversation between Portuguese, Hebrew, English, and Greek. The alien Captain did not have a name in the earthly sense of the word, but said that he hailed from a “satellite of Jupiter.” 

To Félix, the alien’s extraordinary scientific and linguistic intelligence was all the proof he needed. The encounter even conquered Félix’s atheism – after the visitor from a satellite of Jupiter quoted the Old Testament multiple times in Hebrew, Félix, he writes, converted to Judaism. 

Call it delusions of grandeur, or an opportunistic con – we’ll never know since we can’t see inside Félix’s mind. What matters is, his belief in the story he told was unbreakable. 

The book, despite its outlandish story and obvious falsehoods, was a source of fascination among UFO enthusiasts – maybe because of the inherent power of stories about faith and revelation, maybe the unusual detail of a story like this coming out of South America instead of the American settings of the most famous encounters. Maybe it added to the sense that they were not alone in their own beliefs.

In the years after publishing My Contact With Flying Saucers, Félix made even more sensational claims. One night, he says, he heard the voice of Jehova, who commanded Félix to unite Jewish people across the world. He proclaimed himself a prophet, and began delivering speeches around the city of São Paulo to anyone who would listen.

In 1960, he published another book, Message to the Jews, under another penname – Dunotas Menorá. In this book, he writes that the Old Testament is the true word of God, as given to Earthlings from their friends on Jupiter. But the New Testament, he warns, was written by evil aliens from Venus. Jesus himself, in the words of Aladino Félix, was an alien sent from Venus to wreak havoc on the world. 

But for anyone filled with fear by this news, Félix reassured his readers that the reign of the Venusian aliens would soon be over. He prophesized that the Jewish people would take control of Jerusalem, causing a crusade by the Catholic Church. And when this great, final battle erupted, Jupiter would send aid in the form of UFOs, and defeat the enemy once and for all.

It’s important to take some time here and discuss just how often conspiracy theories and cults have woven Judaism and the Jewish population into their narratives. It dates back for well over 1,000 years, and has been used to justify some of the worst horrors ever committed by humanity.

There’s a Byzantine Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean history, it’s called Suda and it was written sometime around the 10th century. The book claims that, every seven years, Jewish people capture non-Jewish strangers and cut them to pieces in a ritualistic sacrifice. This is just one of many examples of what’s known as blood libel, a lie used to excuse antisemitism. 

In 1903, a text was published in Russia titled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was a forgery, claiming to be a secret Jewish book describing their barbaric rituals and their plot to take over the world by controlling the economy and the media. The creation of this forgery would be worthy of a My Dark Path episode all by itself; but we’re not sure we want to give any more publicity to such a loathsome document. Even after it was proven to be a fake by a British newspaper, the lie continued to spread; taking what once were whispers and malicious legends and putting them into the mass media. 

American industrialist Henry Ford believed it was true, and he had his own newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, publish a series of articles based on the text, which were then translated into 16 languages. He even sent copies to Nazi sympathizers like Charles Lindbergh, and Nazi Party leaders in Germany.

Blood libel has been twisted and turned and stretched into even more gruesome, versions over the centuries. It took hold throughout Nazi Germany, where newspapers openly accused Jewish people of murdering Christian children for their blood. If you have heard of the modern QAnon conspiracy, which claims that a secret group of politicians, celebrities, and media organizations are controlling the world and drinking the blood of children, it’s only the latest version of a very old canard. 

There’s a psychological concept at work here – that it’s easier to oppress others if you imagine they are the ones oppressing you. The lies of antisemitism allowed people to play victim, and oppress and terrorize others.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, an even more insidious phenomenon arose, that of people like Aladino Félix labeling themselves as saviors of the Jewish people, new prophets who could unite them against the evil forces that sought to eradicate them. But only if they followed him, of course. Before he started making Kool-Aid, Jim Jones was helping to expose American Nazi Organizations, positioning himself as a crusader against ethnic and religious hatred. 

Whether anyone believed that part or not, when Félix cast Christians as the villains in Brazil, he found many people there willing to listen to him. Enough for people in the country’s government to take notice. And that’s when one person’s delusion led the way to very real violence.

PART THREE

After he published Message to the Jews, Aladino Félix started to give television interviews. He would claim that his alien friends had given him psychic powers, and he would make predictions of disasters to come in the future. According to Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions by John F. Mitchell, Félix accurately predicted the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and even an earthquake that struck South America. 

Even though most people thought Félix was out of his mind, when some of his predictions turned out to be true, he gained a devout following of supporters – who gathered for his speeches in São Paulo and clung to his every word.

Now, you might say that, given the violent political climate of the 1960’s, you wouldn’t be off-base to predict the possibility that figures like JFK and MLK might be assassinated. But Félix went further, and made a prophecy that was much bigger, and more dangerous, and much harder to get right by guessing. He proclaimed that in the future he saw, a wave of terrorist attacks would take place across Brazil. 

And he was right. Between December 1967 and August 1968, 14 bombings, a bank robbery, and a string of arms and explosive robberies, terrorized Brazil – just as Félix promised. People who had been skeptical before suddenly began to wonder – could his outlandish tales actually be true? 

It turns out that there was a much simpler, and much darker reason why his predictions were true. Aladino Félix knew the bombings were coming because he was the one carrying them out. And he had help and support from inside the government.

To understand how a nightmare like this could have happened, we need to spend a little time describing the political climate in Brazil in the years leading up to this. Suffering and chaos had been growing for a long time.

In 1964, three years before the terrorist bombings of Félix began, the government of Brazil was overthrown in just two days. On March 31st and April 1st, 1964, members of the Brazilian Armed Forces overthrew the democratic government. The military president, Artur da Costa e Silva, replaced President João Goulart and went to work consolidating their hold on power. 

This new military dictatorship referred to itself as the United States of Brazil; and the name is no accident, because this coup was backed by the American government.

Why would we do this? During the Cold War, America’s government was willing to do anything to halt the spread of Communism. Leaders in the military and intelligence circles believed what they called the “domino theory”; that if one country embraced communism, its neighbors inevitably would as well. 

When revolutionaries in Cuba succeeded in building a Communist government just miles from American soil, the U.S. responded by strengthening their military influence in much of Latin America. They had one goal: enforce control over the local populations, and suppress any revolutionary movements. Even if the revolution was against an oppressive government, a murderous government, the American government considered it a communist threat.

A military dictatorship in Brazil was free to brutalize its own people without limit. No atrocity was out of bounds, as long as they claimed to be doing it to prevent communism. The United States government worked closely with Brazil to build support for the new regime. Public campaigns claimed the new government was a savior – providing the, quote, “law and order” necessary to keep the country from plunging into chaos, or the dreaded communism. 

Meanwhile, in private, CIA agents taught torture techniques to hundreds of military officials and police officers – referring to them as “Scientific Methods to Extract Confessions and Obtain the Truth.” 

Anyone who might have supported communism, or who fought against this new regime, was subjected to vicious torture. Everything from electric chairs to sexual assault. It was an atmosphere of terror. 

But for those people who weren’t revolutionaries, the marketing tactics seemed to work. Cold War paranoia and a suffering economy had created a long sense of disorder in the country. And for many, the new government seemed to provide just that sense of stability they craved; in the first years of the dictatorship, the changes weren’t terribly drastic for most citizens. Many civilians – including Catholic Church leaders, high powered businesspeople, and members of the middle class – actively demonstrated in favor of the military rulers. 

Still, there were protests, civil disobedience, armed demonstrations, and a growing, organized underground planning revolution. The government saw a threat to its total power over the country. Just as the power of total control over another can be addictive to a cult leader like Félix, a government that achieves total power over its population will do anything to hold onto that power.

They were aware of the growing number of new, alternate religions providing faith and community to the people who had walked away from Christianity. A major example was Candomblé, a religion based in West African traditions and beliefs, which originated on the slave ships to Brazil centuries before. Its popularity blossomed in the 1960’s and it has over 150,000 followers in Brazil today.

In addition to new religions, though, cults were also growing in popularity, particularly in and around Brazil’s capital, Brasilia. As recently as 2019, a slave cult was discovered there which had been operating since 1960.

(It’s important that we note that by the 1970’s, the Catholic Church had turned against the military dictatorship, and played a crucial role in its eventual destruction. In the 1960’s, though, it was still in full support.)

Aladino Félix was one of the cult leaders they saw, rambling on TV and on the streets of São Paulo. Félix was no threat to the regime. He was a vehement supporter of their coup, volunteering any information he could learn about left-wing organizations that resisted. He preached against the old, democratic government, and encouraged his followers to support the new one. His loyal following grew to include local soldiers and police officers.

And this is where we arrive at that concept I told you about back in the beginning, about symbiosis that develops between separate species. Félix was addicted to his sense of power and importance, and eager to help his government. And his public image as a deranged self-proclaimed Messiah worked as a kind of camouflage. No one would believe him capable of being a part of complicated, secret scheme.

The government was looking for ways tighten its grip – to stop revolutionaries in their tracks. They didn’t mind if it became violent – if you control the military, and can paint your enemies as a violent threat to the social order, that works to your advantage. So they were open to ideas that could add fuel to the fires already appearing. Aladino Félix, it turned out, was perfect for their purposes.

Félix was approached by the Military House of the Planalto Palace, and specifically General Paulo Trajano. Together, they hatched a plan for a string of terrorist attacks. Félix would “predict” the attacks, then carry them out, while framing Brazil’s protest groups for the crimes. The attacks would frighten the local population so much that they would support the government cracking down on left-wing groups by any means necessary.  

Félix himself later wrote:

“Terrorism was then like an emergency exit for the federal government.”

He took on his new task with great enthusiasm. To build his credibility, he even went as far as to publicly denounce the alien sightings that had made him so famous. His ego boosted by his newfound power, he no longer needed such outlandish stories to give him the notoriety he craved.

Using a group of 14 military policemen loyal to him, Félix carried out 14 bombings, stole explosives and weapons, and committed a bank robbery. 

The wave of terror began when they stole dynamite in December 1967; they quickly followed this up by seizing military-grade weapons from the Headquarters of the Public Force in January 1968. While the original plan called for just two months of attacks, they didn’t commit their first bombing until April 10th. But they continued for four solid months. 

Since the goal was to frame the protestors and revolutionaries, they purposely targeted government buildings or crucial infrastructure. They hit the headquarters of the II Army, the Dops Building, the Headquarters of Public Force, the São Paulo Stock Exchange, the Utinga oil pipeline, railways that connected to the capital, and criminal courts. 

Following the attacks, General Paulo Trajano, the very officer who had secretly ordered them, told the public that,

“the federal government should seize the moment to harden the regime, putting an end to the disorder prevailing in the country.”

In the meantime, even though Brazil’s revolutionaries weren’t responsible for these attacks, there were plenty of violent elements among them who were inspired by them, and started to carry out their own. On March 19, 1968, they set off a bomb in the library of the United States consulate, injuring three students. Then in June, they set off a second bomb in the II Army headquarters, killing a soldier. 

To the average citizen, it was chaos. The government fed on it, promising to stamp out the terrorists and restore law and order. 

The head of the Federal Police in São Paulo committed to finding the perpetrators. He believed firmly that every attack had been by the same leftist organization. He even told the media, “we know where the coup came from: it was the men on the left.” He was completely unaware that his own government was responsible, and that some of his own police officers were a part of it.

Meanwhile, Félix was working with General Trajano to raise the stakes even further. There were still officials in the government left over from the old democracy. They had been mostly stripped of power but were still advocating for more openness and freedom. Trajano and Félix came up with the most audacious prediction Félix had yet made in public – he predicted that these democratic holdouts were conspiring with rogue Public Force officers to overthrow the new President, Costa e Silva. Félix even put a hard date on his prediction: January 25th, when Costa e Silva would be traveling to the capital. 

Félix did his part, spreading the rumor like one of his prophecies. Meanwhile, he and the general falsified “evidence” of the conspiracy, typing it into an official government report then passing it on to the Military House of Planalto Palace. President e Silva believed it, and canceled his trip to the capital. 

Newspapers reported that a coup had been dismantled single-handedly by the predictions of Aladino Félix. He was held up as a hero by supporters of the regime, and gave a series of TV interviews boasting of his patriotic deed. 

And with his profile and credibility as high as they had ever been, Félix went right back to setting off bombs. They needed to sustain the idea that the revolutionaries had not given up on their efforts to overthrow the President, or even assassinate him. 

In response, the government issued the act that would keep its dictatorship in power for years to come. In the fifth of its 17 Institutional Acts, the military government of Brazilian government disbanded Congress for good. In addition, they banned political demonstrations, increased censorship laws, and gave the president the power to overrule the Constitution and suspend democratic rights. 

What followed, as a direct result of these terrorist attacks, are now known as the Years of Lead. People who opposed the government vanished from the public by the hundreds. Many were tortured to death. Government spies were planted everywhere – from preschools to public administrations. Movies, books, and the news were heavily censored – everything that citizens watched or read was chosen for them. There was zero freedom of information.

Nightclubs, most famously the Kerosine Night Club in São Paulo, were converted into torture chambers – where prisoners endured 20 straight days of torture, intended to force information out of them. In a torture center in Petropolis, nicknamed The House of Death, only one person, Ines Etienne Romeu, ever came out alive. She later spoke of what she endured during her harrowing 96 days there. She was hung upside down from an iron bar, drugged, raped, dragged around by her hair. One of her torturers, she recounted, didn’t even need information from her – he said he just wanted to practice his art. 

Years later, there was a National Truth Commission, and its report revealed that the Years of Lead saw the arrests of more than 50,000 Brazilians, and the death or disappearance of nearly 500. This grim period finally ended in 1978, more than 10 years after Aladino Félix began his bombing campaign. In 1979, new President João Figueiredo passed an Amnesty Law for anyone who had committed political crimes. Free elections were finally restored in 1982; and by 1988, a new Constitution passed, and Brazil returned to democracy. Although if you’ve been following the news, that democracy is now in terrible danger.

And as for Félix, who helped instigate one of the darkest periods in his nation’s history, what happened to him?

PART FOUR

This was truly a case where one hand of the government didn’t know what the other hand was doing. Throughout the summer of 1968, government officials were feverishly working to discover who was behind the attacks, not knowing that one of their own Generals had hatched it all.

After a careful criminal investigation, four of Félix’s police officer followers were finally arrested. But even under torture, none of them gave their leader’s name. 

Finally, on August 21st, 1968, after bombs detonated at the Dops and in two district courts, another police officer was arrested; and this one gave up the name of Aladino Félix. Félix was arrested the next day and, after being severely tortured, gave a 25-page written report about his involvement with the attacks. Given his past history of writing fiction that he claimed to be the truth, you could understand peoples’ skepticism, until the government discovered correspondence between Félix and General Trajano – for the first time since his fame began, the cult leader was telling the truth.

His arrest destroyed his heroic reputation among the fanatical supporters of the government. To them, he was the man hailed for stopping a coup and saving the President from assassination; and, in the blink of an eye, those same people now viewed him as a maniac. 

The government officials that were not involved in Félix’s attacks were genuinely baffled that anyone had trusted him with so much power. They were reluctant to probe too deeply into the sources of his support; and reveal their own complicity in building the atmosphere for the disbanding of Congress, and the slandering of the leftist movements.

Félix himself, despite all the proof they had against him for the bombings, was only charged for the stolen weapons. He was sentenced to just five years in prison. General Trajano was freed from any charges, and even argued for the acquittal of all involved. He thought Félix deserved an official position within the Public Force. He stated,

“whoever is with the government cannot be condemned by the government.”

Félix escaped prison through the front door in the middle of his sentence; but was found and returned to jail a week later. The worst aspect of the punishment to him was likely the loss of his public fame, and that he was locked up alongside the leftists he hated so violently. He was released after serving only a little over three years. 

Aladino Félix died in November 1985 after undergoing hernia surgery. He was 68. The fact that the terrorist attacks he committed were ordered by a commander of the Brazilian military, and lead directly to the darkest period of the dictatorship, would not be exposed until 2018.

***

According to an investigation by Publica, quote, “the police later described [Félix] as a mystic who said he had been contacted by aliens and who presented himself as the anointed one who would reunify the 12 tribes of Israel, in short, a Messiah.” End quote.

General Luiz Carlos Reis de Freitas described him as a, quote “smart and opportunistic lunatic in search of notoriety.” 

Alice Moreira, the wife of one of the police officers that followed Félix, said that Félix, quote, “presented himself as an anti-Christian and anti-communist Jew, spoke of flying saucers, religion – part of an esoteric proselytism that the police called ‘golden bait’ – and, in what really mattered, ended his lectures with a radical political discourse, preaching the destruction of public establishments.” End quote.

When I think of Aladino Félix, I think of those creatures in the rainforest who evolve their way into unexpected alliances. A delusional would-be spiritual savior and a brutal anti-democratic soldier make for bedfellows as strange as any in the wild kingdom. But in a way, they shared the same delusion – each saw themselves as protectors, necessary for the survival of the people. And they didn’t care how many of those people died to preserve that delusion.

At the heart of democracy is the famous saying by Baron John Acton: that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That can mean absolute power over a country, or even absolute power over just one person. History has countless examples of people who gain power, and devote themselves to preserving and expanding that power at any cost. The mutually-beneficial relationship that brought terror to Brazil could evolve quite naturally anywhere with the same ingredients – a loss of faith in institutions, leaders who use falsehoods to defame and dehumanize their opponents, a rising violent tension as the population is driven into opposing camps, and those dangerous individuals with the willpower to turn vulnerable souls into radical followers. The dark path we’ve found running through Brazil doesn’t end there, it passes through every nation on Earth.

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Thank you for listening to My Dark Path. I’m MF Thomas, creator and host, and I produce the show with Emily Wolfe and Evadne Hendrix; and our audio engineer is Dom Purdie. This story was prepared for us by Laura Townsend. Our senior story editor is Nicholas Thurkettle. Our lead researcher is Alex Bagosy; big thank yous to them and the entire My Dark Path team.

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Again, thanks for walking the dark paths of history, science and the paranormal with me. Until next time, good night.