Assassination of Charles Rodney Chandler

Charles Rodney Chandler (Arcadia, July 23, 1938 – São Paulo, October 12, 1968) was a US Army officer and veteran of the Vietnam War assassinated by members of the Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária (VPR) and the Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN) in São Paulo, Brazil.

Assassination
On an October morning in 1968, Chandler entered his Chevrolet Impala, backed out of the garage, and was blocked by a Volkswagen Beetle from entering the road. Diógenes José Carvalho de Oliveira unloaded the six rounds of his Taurus .38 caliber revolver on Chandler, then Marquito opened fire on the American veteran with a machine gun.

According to the report prepared by the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS), or Brazilian political police, organizations resisting the US-backed military dictatorship in Brazil considered him to be a spy of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to US state sources, he was in Brazil to study Portuguese

The assassins dropped pamphlets with the text:

"Criar um, dois, três Vietnãs, eis a palavra de ordem do comandante Che Guevara, que foi cruelmente assassinado na Bolívia por agentes imperialistas do nível deste Chandler, notório criminoso de guerra no Vietnã, e hoje punido e executado pela Justiça Revolucionária. Create one, two, three Vietnams, these are the words ordered by the commander Che Guevara, who was cruelly assassinated in Bolivia by imperialist agents such as this Chandler, notorious criminal in the War in Vietnam, today punished and executed by the Revolutionary Justice." According to an article published by Folha da Tarde at the time, the DOPS attributed the assassination to Carlos Marighella and nine other "terrorists": Diogenes José Carvalho, Dulce de Souza, João Carlos Kfouri Quartim de Moraes, João Leonardo da Silva Rocha, Ladislaw Bowbor, Manoelina de Barros, Onofre Pinto, Pedro Lobo de Oliveira, and Marcos Antonio Braz de Oliveira. Those who carried out the assassination were Diógenes José Carvalho, of the Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária (VPR) and Marco Antônio Brás de Carvalho, or Marquito, of the Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN).

Legacy
The historian Carlos Fico characterizes the assassination of Chandler as having had a major impact on the Brazilian military regime, as he was a "North American captain, with such an aura."

Involvement in the planning of the assassination is among the baseless accusations supporters of Jair Bolsonaro spread about Dilma Rousseff.

In popular culture
The assassination of Charles Rodney Chandler was portrayed in Wagner Moura's 2019 film Marighella.