The contestation on wheels: Passo Fundo, the “agitators” and the bikers revolt in the context of the military dictatorship political opening

Abstract

This article aims to deal with how the military regime’s surveillance in Passo Fundo / RS took place during February 1979, through the Serviço Nacional de Informações (SNI), a public spy agency created in 1964. It also seeks to analyze the background and developments of the event popularly known as the Revolta dos Motoqueiros, organized in protest over the death of Clodoaldo Teixeira, 17 years old, shot in the back by a military policeman after a persecution. The SNI produced processes around this case, presented as a “disturbance of public order”, identifying and overseeing the alleged agitators of the revolt. In this sense, the monitoring of the federal agency on the situation is paradigmatic for Passo Fundo in the period, resulting from questioning the instituted powers and their forms of action in full regime of exception. The reviewed documentation had confidential status in the past, but is now freely available on the Arquivo Nacional website.