ABSTRACT
Francisco Julião became known national and internationally for his actions as the leader of the Peasant Leagues in Pernambuco, from the mid-1950s to the civil-military coup of 1964. A lawyer for the peasants, and a,state and then federal representative for the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), Julião was arrested in June 1964, and got political asylum in the Mexican Embassy of Rio de Janeiro in October of the following year. In historiography, this is the best-known period of his political trajectory. This paper, however, studies his actions in exile from 1979 on, emphasizing the period of re-democratization of Brazil, and more specifically the Diretas Já movement. It seeks to analyze how Julião operated his past as a leader of the Peasant Leagues, putting his memory in dialogue with the present in his writings through the country's democratization process.
Keywords:
politics; memory; Diretas Já.