WOTW 2022/João Amazonas

João Amazonas de Souza Pedroso is a Brazillian Marxist politician and National President of the Communist Party of Brazil. He is a supporter of China and is often described as Maoist or Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist due to his aforementioned support of China and support for a violent revolution to establish socialism.

He is currently in exile in China, often visting Albania and other pro-China countries.

Political career
Amazonas joined the National Liberation Alliance (ANL) in 1935 before joining the Socialist Youth and soon after its parent organisation, the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB). In 1943, he was elected to the Central Committee of the PCB as a member, becoming part of the Executive Committee and the Secretariat where he was responsible for trade union efforts and mass work. He was one of the main organizers of the Workers' Unifying Movement (MUT) in 1945. That same year, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. In 1943, he travelled to the Soviet Union to take part in a course in Marxism-Leninism at the higher party school of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

After the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the publication of Khrushchev's Secret Speech, the PCB followed the Moscow line of denouncing Stalin. Amazonas was hostile to destalinisation which resulted in him being expelled from the Central Committee of the PCB and its organs in 1957. He was then removed from the party itself in 1961 along with other militants. Those removed from the party held the 5th (Extraordinary) Conference of the Communist Party of Brazil. During the Conference, they founded the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) with a hardline Marxist-Leninist party manifesto.

Transition to anti-revisionism
As an ardent opponent of Khrushchev's revisionism adopted by the Soviet Union in the 50s, Amazonas gradually increased his support of Mao Zedong. He reorganised the PCdoB into an anti-revisionist pro-China party and it became the largest communist party in Brazil besides the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) which he had been expelled from.His support of China would prove beneficial to his political career as the Chinese government began to back his efforts logistically and economically. Amazonas ultimately became the key ally of China in Brazil. He also became a great ally of Enver Hoxha's Albania and has adopted some ideas from Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism.