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To reduce the chances of betrayal, he recommended the formation of "firing groups" consisting of no more than four or five persons. "No firing group can remain inactive waiting for orders from above," writes Marighella. "Its obligation is to act." Who is eligible for Marighella's firing groups? Just about everybody, including students, since they are "politically crude and coarse and show a special talent for revolutionary violence," and women, for their "unmatched fighting spirit and tenacity."
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Marighella did not live long enough to see many of his ideas put into practice. Last year, after his followers kidnaped U.S. Ambassador C. Burke Elbrick, Brazilian police set up an elaborate ambush for Marighella. Two Dominican priests who had harbored Marighella on numerous occasions were arrested and forced to arrange a meeting with him. When Marighella's trusted bodyguard, Gaúcho, appeared to case the rendezvous site, he saw two couples necking in a Chevrolet, laborers languidly unloading materials at a construction site, bricklayers working on an unfinished building across the street. Gaúcho gave the all-clear sign, and Marighella, carrying a briefcase and wearing a brown wig, swung into view. He saw the two familiar Dominicans, waiting in a blue Volkswagen across the street, and climbed into the car.
Immediately the bricklayers pulled weapons from their work clothes, the laborers streamed from the construction site, the passionate couples broke their clinches and reached for their guns. All were police. The fusillade lasted a full five minutes. A dentist unwittingly drove down the street and was fatally struck by two bullets. A policewoman who had been "necking" in the Chevrolet was mortally wounded. Police bullets killed both of them, for before Marighella could whip his gun out of his briefcase, he was riddled with five slugs. Two days later, Marighella was buried in pauper's grave No. 1106 in Sāo Paulo's Vila Formosa cemetery.