Common Front for Latin America (COFFLA) and Coalition Against Repression in Brazil (CARIB) records (MS.2014.004)

Biographical/Historical note

The Committee against Repression in Brazil was founded in 1971 by Marcos Arruda, Harry Strharsky, and Loretta Strharsky to protest U.S. foreign policy, and to raise awareness about human rights violations in Brazil under Emílio Garrastazu Médici’s military dictatorship. Common Front for Latin America, which focused on publicizing human rights abuses by dictatorships across Latin America, grew out of more specific organizing work on Brazil by the Committee against Repression in Brazil. Both were made up of a mix of academics, clergy, church activists, and Latin American political exiles; they were heavily influenced by both Marxism and liberation theology. The groups eventually fractured around 1974.