-The insurgents' fate. Initially a fighter cleans himself at a river and then moves through the jungle. He is fed at a peasant's house and keeps moving. He's captured while sleeping and kept in a pit blocked off at its top (this was an actual imprisonment method at the war). He is then taken to an abstract prison/torture chamber that is similarly dark, featureless and somewhat abstract, with red cell bars. Other captured militants are present. The torturers are the two generals.
-Three modern-day gommie activists sift through a briefcase with personal documents and photographs of the Grabois family -Maurício Grabois led the guerilla until his death in 1973. At the end they grab a loaded revolver. Then, quite disturbingly, the two generals are shown tied down in front of a wall. They try to negotiate and promise to give the militants names of "gringos and businessmen", but then one woman (who also appears in the interview part) picks the revolver and shoots them. The three activists then move into a street demonstration.
The film traces the Party's history since the 40s: it was repressed under Vargas but then allied with him during the World War. It was then legalized but then made illegal again. The Maoist/Stalinist wing then breaks to form the PCdoB. The interviewees don't mention that this was due to their opposition to Kruschev's "revisionism" and focus on disputes about the revolutionary process: the orthodox pro-Soviet line wanted participation in electoral politics and an alliance with sections of the bourgeoise. This is said to be a bad decision, because bourgeoises in commodity-exporting countries are irrevocably loyal to imperialism. In contrast, the Maoist wing was open to armed struggle and hostile to any sort of cross-class alliance.
The breakup is finished in the early 60s. By then the Right was maneuvering to take power and the PCdoB began to prepare for military action even before '64 and its coup d'etat. The story diverges a little to mention that there were as much as five thousand communists and other leftists as officers in the Armed Forces, some in high ranks, but their social democratic and orthodox communist civilian political leaders told them to stay quiet and not fight the government. This demoralized them and they were easily demoted/expelled.
The Left is then said to have been given an unwinnable dilemma: to be neutered as a nonviolent moderate opposition or to be isolated and crushed in a futile armed struggle. This is compared to "1930 or 1935": the former saw what could be called a bourgeois revolution in Marxist terms, while the latter year saw an idiotic and short-lived attempt at a Communist revolution. Several groups in the far left followed the secound course, most fighting an "urban guerilla" through bank robberies, kidnappings and so on. The most famous revolutionary theory of the time was Foco theory, which sought to replicate Cuba's experience. But the PCdoB rejected foquismo-after all, Castro was nothing but a pawn of the Soviet revisionist social imperialists- and instead embraced Maoist Protracted People's War. This theory emphasizes mobilizing the masses in a political-ideological, not military, struggle and surrounding the cities by taking over the countryside.
This requires a proper starting point. It must be rural, have difficult terrain and face both the hinterland and the core. For this reason the Party scouted out the country and handpicked the Araguaia region.
Then there's an interesting bit: Maurício Grabois and other high-ranking Party members visit China and meet Mao Zedong in person. He gives the Helmsman a realistic briefing of the Party's condition and its odds of success. Mao simply puts his hands behind his head in great consternation. He later advises them caution because their situation is complex.