The Runaway Colonel

One night last October, police knocked on the door of a modest house in the back-country capital of Belo Horizonte. A scrawny, nervous man in pajamas opened the door. He was Olimpio Ferraz de Carvalho, a retired colonel of the Brazilian army, and his name was high on the list of some 22 officers and men in the area suspected of being key agents in Communist infiltration in the Brazilian army. The pro-Communist editor of an influential army journal, until finally booted from the job, Ferraz de Carvalho was president of the Communist-front Committee for World Peace in Belo Horizonte. Faced with the police, the ex-colonel stood on his military dignity, excused himself to change out of his pajamas. Instead, he jumped out the bedroom window and fled down a back alley.

Tipped off last week that the Belo Horizonte peace ' movement planned a quiet meeting to re-elect the colonel as president, police called in army men and set a joint trap. When the colonel scurried in to join five former leaders of the outlawed Communist Party, the cops arrested the Reds and closed in on the colonel. Shouting "I will not leave here alive," he fell back. The cops, not too sure about collaring colonels, also fell back. For three hours they stood guard until the local garrison commander was finally found at an afternoon movie. "Remove him by force, if necessary!" he roared.

Before a large crowd, infantrymen bore the kicking, screaming colonel out the door and off to military prison, where he faces trial and a possible three-year jail sentence. The army announced that it would henceforth issue communiques to disown the retired "pajama" officers who have served as military dressing for Communist-front platforms. Justice Minister Negrao de Lima ordered police to ban all further "peace" meetings. "Evidence indicates," he said, "that notorious Communists are found among virtually all peace committees. These peace movements are merely a pretext for Communist propaganda."

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