By William Schomberg

BRASILIA (Reuter) The Brazilian congressman who kidnapped a U.S.
ambassador, wrote a bestseller while working as a night watchman in exile
and sported what may be the world's smallest swimming trunks feels another
change in life coming on.

``I'm overexposed,'' said Fernando Gabeira, the lone Green Party lawmaker in
Brasilia, who has a knack of hogging the headlines. ``I'm going to go
lowprofile for a bit.''

It is hard to imagine Gabeira undercover. For nearly 20 years he has
campaigned against destruction of the Amazon rainforest and he once shut down
a nuclear power station.

Last year he was being threatened with drug charges by outraged colleagues in
Congress for importing a sackful of hemp seeds, a nonnarcotic strain of
cannabis he says could be a cash crop for Brazil's arid northeast. Then he
defied Brazil's dominant car culture, cycling to work along the capital's
monumental esplanades to protest urban pollution.

Gabeira, who may the only Brazilian politician to defend legalization of
drugs as a way to tackle inner city violence, also took part in a campaign of
civil disobedience by marijuanasmokers and sympathizers on Ipanema Beach in
Rio.

Physically, too, Gabeira stands out. His hair is shorter and grayer than in
the 1970s, when he challenged Brazil's conservative attitudes towards
bisexuality by wearing a tiny, crochet codpiece to the beach. But he still
looks more like a fashion writer than a politician, standing out in an
otherwise staid Congress with his highbuttoned jackets, colorful shirts and
diamond earstud.

MORE MEDIA INTEREST IN HIS BEHAVIOR THAN HIS POLICIES

``The media is more interested in my behavior than my policies,'' Gabeira
grumbled in an interview with Reuters.

In the heady days of the late 1960s, however, when students led marches
against military rule and found themselves up against an increasingly
repressive regime, Gabeira's profile could not be low enough.

He was one of a group of intellectuals turned guerrillas who in 1969 snatched
U.S. Ambassador Charles Elbrick as he was being driven through Rio and traded
his life for the release of 15 revolutionaries from jail. Secret police
tracked the kidnappers down and a leader of the group, a veteran member of
Brazil's tiny armed resistance, was kicked to death in a cell.

Gabeira was tortured. His lover was crippled. But Gabeira eventually walked
free and into exile when another group of guerrillas staged a copycat
kidnapping of Germany's ambassador and included him in the list of prisoners
they wanted freed.

Gabeira ended up in Sweden where he worked as a train driver, a gardener in a
cemetery and a night watchman in a hotel. While there he wrote ``O Que E
Isso, Companheiro?'' (''What Do You Mean, Comrade?''), a bestselling account
of his trasformation from intellectual into armed rebel and a wistful lament
about what might have been had the guerrillas persuaded the masses to forget
about soccer and demand freedom.

It also remains one of only a few Brazilian books to deal with the barely
healed scars of the 196485 dictatorship. A film based on the book was
released in May to good reviews at home and abroad.

UNDER FIRE FROM FELLOW LEFTWINGERS

Gabeira was back in the headlines, and back under fire. Angry members of
Brazil's hard left raged about its portrayal of a torturer as a man racked
with guilt while the guerrillas appeared either naive or coldblooded.

``So little is known about the period, what people did, how they died, that
the film has been taken as absolute truth, which it isn't,'' Gabeira said.

Other former members of his gang said the film glorified Gabeira and
exaggerated his contribution to the kidnapping. ''Don't talk to me about
Gabeira. Find somebody who's got something nice to say about him,'' one said.

But the public flocked to see the film, which is faster paced than the rather
dense book, captures all the furtive passion of young rebels in love and is
set against the stunning backdrop of Rio's mountains and bays.

Gabeira said the critical reception given the film by Brazil's left was
typical. ``The trouble with the left is they have not yet understood they
must change. They haven't even analyzed the falling of the Berlin Wall,'' he
said. ``Until they take in the Tony Blair effect they won't win any
elections.''

Blair was elected Britain's prime minister in May, ending 18 years of
Conservative Party rule, after he moved his Labor Party closer to the center
of the road.

LEFTWING PARTIES SEEN AS REACTIONARY DIEHARDS

Although he considers himself ``part of the family,'' Gabeira sees Brazil's
halfdozen leftwing parties as reactionary diehards, unswerving in their
opposition to all the government's reforms from privatization to education.

He believes Brazil is making progress, albeit slowly, after decades lost to
the struggle for democracy and the chaos of rampant inflation. ``Change in
Brazil happens very slowly and you have to be very astute to see it,'' he
said, attributing growing demands for social improvements to the rising
numbers of Brazilians who travel abroad.

Like most people in Brasilia, he thinks social democratic President Fernando
Henrique Cardoso, riding high on an antiinflation plan, will win another
term next year, having recently rewritten the constitution to allow his
reelection.

Gabeira said he would not be running for Congress again next year. ``I don't
want to become a professional politician,'' he said, prefering instead a
return to his first profession, journalism, and a spell covering Europe's
resurgent left.

``In 2002 (when Brazil holds elections again) the country might be ripe for
the kind of the change happening elsewhere,'' he said.

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