[1][2] Critical of nonviolent resistance to the Brazilian military dictatorship, he founded the Ação Libertadora Nacional, a Marxist–Leninist urban guerrilla group, which was responsible for a series of bank robberies and high-profile kidnappings.

His father was a blue-collar worker originally from Emilia, while his mother was a descendant of enslaved Africans, brought from the Sudan (Hausa blacks).

In 1934, he left the Polytechnic School of Bahia, where he was pursuing a degree in civil engineering, in order to become an active member of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB).

The following year, Marighella was elected constituent federal deputy by the Bahian branch of PCB, but he lost his office in 1948 under the new proscription of the party.

In Havana, he wrote Some Questions About the Guerrillas in Brazil, dedicated to the memory of Che Guevara and made public by Jornal do Brasil on 5 September 1968.

The Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) attributed the assassination of Charles Rodney Chandler to Marighella and nine others according to the Folha da Tarde  [pt] at the time.

[14] In September 1969, ALN members kidnapped the U.S. ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick in a coordinated move with the Revolutionary Movement 8th October (Movimento Revolucionário 8 de Outubro – MR-8).

[17] Marighella's most famous contribution to revolutionary struggle literature[11] was the Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla,[12] consisting of advice on how to disrupt and overthrow a military regime as part of a Marxist revolution.