DEPARTAMENTO DE ORDEM POLÍTICA E SOCIAL (DOPS/GB)
Address: Rua da Relação, 40, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ.
Themes: The 1964 Coup D’état; Unions and Workers; Repressive Structures; Gendered Violence
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard
The historic building on the corner of Rua da Relação and Rua dos Inválidos, in the center of Rio de Janeiro, was the center for the Brazilian political police force over the course of the 20th century. There, the Department of Political and Social Order of the former State of Guanabara (DOPS/GB) operated between 1962-1975, and the General Department of Special Investigations (DGIE) of the State of Rio de Janeiro from 1975-1983. These institutions carried out the same functions. The political police force was one of the principal agencies in the complex system of surveillance, persecution, imprisonment, torture, forced disappearance, and death of people during the military dictatorship. Infamous and widely feared, the building came to be known simply as the “DOPS building.”
In the early 20th century, the building was one of many structures meant to glorify the Republican State and urban modernization. In 1908, a decree from the National Congress authorized the construction of the building, which would host the Central Police Department and related services. The project, designed by architect Heitor de Mello, is eclectic in style. Its mix of exuberance, sophistication, and severity was meant to represent the essence of the police, affirming the force’s scientific character and symbolizing the maintenance of order. There were two phases of the construction: the first took place from 1908-1910, when two wings were built in the shape of an L, forming the front and sides of the building running along the street corner. The second was in 1922, when another two wings were built also in the shape of an L, closing the architecture into the Panopticon-inspired form that still stands today.
During the first decades of the 20th century, the Police Service of the Federal District had as its objective the “maintenance of order,” meaning that the force’s goal was to control the growing urban population, which was largely poor. “Vagrancy,” “drunkenness,” “loitering,” “begging,” and “prostitution” were repressed, with actions directed against “vice-ridden” orphaned children and the indigent. The police also suppressed capoeira and other cultural practices, labeling them “vagrancy,” “magic,” “witchcraft,” and “shamanism.” The head of police also targeted political organizations, movements organized by workers and low-paid soldiers, and European immigrants spreading anarchist and communist ideas in Rio de Janeiro.
The first police precinct specializing in political repression was founded in 1933 during Getúlio Vargas’s provisionary government (1930-1934). It was called the Special Precinct for Political and Social Security (DESPS). Inheriting the policy roles already in effect in the 4th Auxiliary Precinct, the DESPS was put under the command of well known chief of police Filinto Strubing Müller (1933-1942). The branch expanded and received a new name, the Department of Social and Political Order (DOPS) in 1938, following a coup that established Vargas’s Estado Novo dictatorship (1937-1945), which was grounded in the National Security Law of 1935.
During Vargas’s rule, and particularly between 1935 and 1945, members of organizations tied both to communist uprisings in 1935 and the conservative Integralism uprising in 1938 suffered surveillance, censorship, persecution, imprisonment, torture, and death. That was the fate of workers active in the factory-worker movement and leftist thinkers, whether connected or not to the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB) or the National Freedom Alliance (ANL). This includes Graciliano Ramos, Carlos Marighella, Francisco Solano Trindade, Gregório Bezerra, Apolônio de Carvalho, Luiz Carlos Prestes, and Nise da Silveira, among others. Though right wing movements were not the Estado Novo’s main target, members of the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB), like Severo Furnier, who led the uprising, were also imprisoned, killed, or exiled.
One of the most emblematic cases of Vargas-era repression is the arrest and imprisonment of Olga Benário and Luiz Carlos Prestes in 1936. Olga Benário – Jewish, German, and pregnant with Anita Leocádia, Prestes’s daughter – was deported to Nazi Germany and executed in a concentration camp after giving birth. Their story had international repercussions and became one of the symbols of the struggle against the Vargas dictatorship.
From 1945-1964, Brazil was officially democratic, allowing organized social movements to act politically. However, in the post-WWII context with the intensification of the Cold War, the new de facto policy meant the “hunting down” of communism, resulting in the persecution of those registered as members of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB) [05], foreign immigrants, neighborhood organizations, samba schools, women’s associations, as well as other groups (Duarte e Araújo, 2013. p. 24-25). The DOPS building was the central to the network of political surveillance, serving as the primary site for the production and collection of intelligence.
During the same period, a group of police officers working under General Amauri Kruel, the chief of police for the Federal District, created a type of repression in 1957 that would later be coined “Death Squads.” These groups of “elite” policemen, among them the well known Cecil Borer, served in different precincts and battalions such as the so-called Invernada de Olaria and the 4th Subseção de Viligância do Alto da Boa Vista, infamous for torture and murders, denounced by newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s.
The DOPS/GB was established in 1962 after Brazil’s capital moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília under the Carlos Frederico Werneck de Lacerda administration (1960-1964). The DOPS/GB was directly tied to the State Department of Public Security, which was generally under the command of an officer in the armed forces (Arquidiocese de São Paulo, 1985, t. IV, p.13). In practice, the new institution inherited, updated, and developed the building’s previous functions and also centralized intelligence information coming from other states in the country (Arquidiocese de São Paulo, 1985, t. IV, p.13). Moreover, the DOPS/GB underwent administrative reforms in 1967 and 1968, such as a “major expansion” of political policing. The goal was somewhat clandestine surveillance and control and the oversight of other branches of the so-called intelligence community within the armed forces and in the National Intelligence Service (SNI), which centralized the collection of intelligence after its creation in 1964.
With the fusion of two states, Guanabara and Rio de Janeiro, in 1975, the General Department of Special Investigations (DGIE) replaced the Department of Social and Political Order (DOPS) of each state. The DGIE – located in this building – was largely constituted by the Department of Political and Social Police (DPPS), which acted as the political police in the capital and interior of the state. During the period known as the “political opening,” its role changed and largely refocused to monitor unions that formed at the end of the 1970s, public events, and media reports about the dictatorship. The DGIE was officially shut down in 1983.
During the military dictatorship, political policing expanded greatly, both administratively and in terms of personnel. The repressive structure also swelled, incorporating existing and new agencies in order to increase efficiency (Arquidiocese de São Paulo, 1985, t. I, p.72). The DOPS/GB was very important for the Armed Forces within this structure. During the entirety of the dictatorship, the DOPS/GB agents participated in joint operations with the military, carrying out police raids on the streets and in specific locations, issuing thousands of “search warrants,” to monitor, capture, interrogate, torture, and eliminate political opposition, often falsifying official reports about the deaths. The political police was also the agency responsible for giving the so-called “atestados de antecedentes,” which were required for receiving employment, generally in public agencies. Beyond this, the infiltration and surveillance that had taken place in previous decades continued and deepened. There were military interventions in worker and student organizations, both urban and rural, as well as the persecution of soldiers who had resisted the coup, leftist militants, members of the communist party and, later, members of leftists organizations involved in armed resistance.
The DOPS/GB building was a center for detention, torture, and death, as well as a processing site for prisoners being sent to other official or clandestine centers where they would be interrogated, tortured, and even killed. These other centers include the Caio Martins Stadium, the Ilha das Flores Naval Base, the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODI), the Galeaão Airforce Base, and the House of Death. Transfers also went to the Talavera Bruce Penal Institute and the Frei Caneca Penitentiary Complex, among others.
João Figueró’s testimony demonstrates the brutality of the political police who operated out of the building. At 88 years old, the former PCB militant stated to the Rio de Janeiro State Truth Commission (CEV-Rio):
My fingernails were torn off twice: during the Vargas dictatorship and the military dictatorship. […] I feel bad [near the building] because it makes me remember how we were tortured, in the pau de arara and the cadeira do dragão. I can’t stand listening to cats meow at night because it makes me think about my friends screaming when they were tortured. It’s terrible. I have nightmares. It never goes away (João Figueiró. Testemunho concedido à CEV-Rio no 4 de novembero 2013).
It has been confirmed that the DOPS/GB worked together with the Armed Forces. General to the Adur Fiúza de Castro Brigade testified to the National Truth Commission (CNV) that representatives from the DOPS, the Federal Police, and the National Intelligence Service (SNI) acted in the DOI-CODI in Rio de Janeiro (Brasil, 2014, v. I, p. 141). During the Commission’s site visit in 2014, Heleno Cruz, a former soldier in the Marine Corps at the Ilha das Flores Naval Base between June 1970 and June 1971, revealed that Navy Intelligence Center (CENIMAR) officials, Federal Police agents, and agents at the DOPS/GB carried out torture sessions (Brasil, v. I, 2014, p. 159). Another confirmed case is that of the assassination of Raul Amaro Nin Ferreira, whose death was caused by torture at the hands of DOPS/GB agents during an interrogation in the Central Army Hospital (Ferreira et al., 2014). This same collaboration can be seen in the case of the disappearances of Antônio Joaquim and Carlos lberto, which was carried out in a joint operation between the Army Intelligence Center (CIE) and the DOPS/GB, according to National Truth Commission (CNV) investigations. Inês Etienne Romeo corroborated that information, stating that both men were kidnapped and taken to the House of Death in Petrópolis (Brasil, 2014, v. I, p. 538). Additionally, according to the Relatório Brasil Nunca Mais, the political police – the DOPS – and the Federal Police reworked Military Police Case Files (IPMs) with the goal of giving legal grounds to allowing “preliminary questioning” to be conducted via torture at the DOI-CODI (Arquidiocese de São Paulo, 1985, t. 1, p. 74).
João de Souza, a black man and member of the Rail Workers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro, was one of the political prisoners officially labeled dead at the hands of State agents during the dictatorship. He died inside the building on Rua da Relação in 1964. José Ferreira, another political prisoner, gave a statement to the Human Rights Commission and to Legal Assistance with the State of Rio de Janeiro Bar Association (OAB/RJ). He recounts:
[He was…] brought into the DOPS/GB around April 8, 1964 and kept in a room in the building with over 100 other people, including José de Souza. He said that José de Souza appeared very nervous since he had been imprisoned. According to the account, prisoners woke up on April 17th when repressive agents came to tell them that José da Souza’s body had been found in the police station courtyard” (José Ferreira. Testemunho reproduzido do Relatório da CNV).
According to data provided by the Truth Commission, DOPS/GB agents were also involved in the deaths of Reinaldo Silveira Pimenta, Marcos Antônio da Silva Lima, Carlos Eduardo Pires Fleury, Marcos Pinto de Oliveira, Lígia Maria Salgado Nóbrega, Maria Regina Lobo Leite de Figueiredo, Wilton Ferreira, Edu Barreto Leita, Luiz Paulo da Cruz, Cloves Dias de Amorim, and Luiz Carlos Augusto. Alberto Aleixo, who died due to torture and neglect in the Souza Aguiar Hospital, and Caiupy Alves de Castro, who disappeared in 1973, also passed through this building.
Amintas Maurício de Oliveira was vice-president of the Parada de Lucas residents’ association at the time. He created a communication network in the neighborhood using megaphones and gave the community access to potable water and electric light. He was taken prisoner on April 6, 1964, right after the military coup. Individuals opposed to a completely different neighborhood association, one tied to journalist Carlos Lacerda, accused Amintas Maurício de Oliveira. The military police arrested Oliveira and took him straight to the DOPS/GB:
Then they took us to the DOPS there in the Central Police Station and we walked in between rows of officers. And inside the DOPS there was a big room, totally dark and full of people, like in a nightclub. […] They were workers from the Naval Arsenal, their overalls all covered in oil. They were there because officials in the navy thought they were communists […] When I got in, I met nine Chinese people who had come to negotiate with Brazil […] One of the Chinese men was older, he was kneeling with his feet crossed, […] and his leg was all purple, raw and bloody from being tortured. Look, this muscle here, just raw flesh on both sides. And he had a black eye from where they’d punched him.
[…] there was talk about going to Ilha das Flores, going to who knows where, and no one slept because they’d call out people’s names on a megaphone. Then one day they called my name and the president’s name. Then they put us on a bus, and we still had no idea where we were going. […] And they took us to Frei Caneca (Amintas Maurício de Oliveira. Testemunho concedido à CEV-Rio em 20 de fevereiro de 2014).
The building has two detention areas, which the agency used to separate men and women. Women were held prisoner in the São Judas Tadeu Holding Cell, on the ground floor. The men went to the jail on the third floor, where to this day there exists a soundproof room that looks to have served as the torture chamber and cells, including two cells known as “big rat” and “the stadium.” Both prisons had solitary confinement (See the floor plans for the first and third floors below).
Newton Leão gave his testimony to the CEV-Rio on November 4, 2013. He describes what took place in the DOPS/GB after the 1964 coup:
[…] the DOPS was the main agency for repressing political movements. At that time, all of us, students and members of the student movement […] for us, the DOPS squads were our shadows, our fear. They haunted us. The squads would show their presence at protests, in universities. Anyone who was a student at the time has to remember the gray vans with their yellow stripes reading “DOPS”. […] And then they also acted in secret, hidden, infiltrating movements and protests. So during that period, from 1966 to 1968, that building was the house of repression. (Newton Leão Duarte. Testemunho concedido à CEV-Rio em 4 de novembro 2013).
Leão’s testimony also outlines the relationship between the civil police, armed forces, and agents known to be part of the “Death Squads,” specializing in repression and execution:
My first visit to this building was in 1969. I was already a member of the [communist guerilla movement] ALN; the police officer Mariel Mariscot de Matos, an agent in the Police Precinct for Armed Robbery and Grand Theft Auto detained me and a friend, Jorge […] who was a minor at the time, and I was 19 […] I was taken here, to a building annexed to the DOPS. Here in this precinct, my friend Jorge and I […] were brutally tortured, both through beatings and electric shocks, just as all political prisoners in Brazil were tortured after the DOI-CODI was established. In other words, the civil police used the military’s methods. After a while, Jairo de Lima, head of the Precinct at the time […] decided to take a visit to the DOPS […]. He decided to send me to the DOI-CODI on July 20, 1969, during the time of the Platoon Criminal Investigations for the Army Police. I suffered the same torture that I’d started to go through here [in the DOPS]. It lasted longer and they asked for more far-fetched information, but the method was the same (Newton Leão Duarte. Testemunho concedido à CEV-Rio em 4 de novembro 2013).
More testimonies from former prisoners describe the use of torture inside the DOPS/GB building. Samuel Henrique Maleval, a member of the Bankers’ Union, was taken prisoner in 1968 during the March of the One Hundred Thousand. He remembers how torturers from the DOPS/GB would beat people with batons:
We would bleed from our mouths, our hands, our legs. I lost a lot of teeth, but many others lost their lives (Samuel Henrique Meleval. Testemunho concedido à CEV-Rio em 19 de novembro 2013).
Paulo Gomes was also a prisoner in the DOPS/GB in 1968. He describes the torture he suffered:
I was violently tortured on October 31, 1968. They made me keep my arms outstretched for five hours, a phone book in each hand, standing on top of a trashcan. And I didn’t resist, even though I was young at the time. They beat me, punched me, boxed my ears… I stood trial at the First Army Hearing of the 1st Military Region and was sentenced to twelve months in prison. During the ride back in the van, […], I tried to escape […] but I was caught and taken back to the DOPS, where I was put in solitary for five days. The cell, disease-ridden and filthy, had no water, no bathroom, no nothing. Those were a terrible five days (Paulo Gomes. Entrevista em No porão da ditadura, 16 dezembro 2012). (See the second floor plan).
Testimony from women held prisoner and tortured show that the DOPS/GB used gendered violence, both physical and psychological, to intensify torture. Rosalina Santa Cruz testified to the torture that she and her comrade Geraldo suffered on December 3, 1971, in the DOPS/GB before transfer to the DOI-CODI and to the DOPS/RJ in Niterói:
The guy came into the room and said: ‘Take off your clothes.’ I said: ‘No!’ […] The tore my clothes off, put me in a chair, opened my legs, and started to put electric shocks in my vagina, on my foot, on my ear. My comrade was in the other cell. They set up a pau-de-arara [hanging torture device] there. Electric shocks are terrible, you can only know if you’ve been through it. It tears you apart […] And then at one point I jumped onto the torturer in front of me and grabbed him, and I couldn’t let go because of the electric shocks. I remember everyone around me laughing. […] Then they brought me to the other room, where my comrade was. […] I saw Geraldo on the pau-de-arara and there was shit on the floor. It was so disturbing. They told me: ‘Look, your friend already took a shit, now it’s your turn.’ And while he beat me, while he gave me electric shocks, he told him: ‘Look, this is your wife! Look at what I’m doing to her. I’m beating her! (Rosalina Santa Cruz. Testemunho concedido à Comissão de Verdade de Niterói em 26 de março de 2014).
Maria Helena Pereira recounts her experience being tortured, which induced an abortion and resulted in long term health effects, also causing a miscarriage months later:
January 15, 2013 […] I was taken to the DOPS. There, some guy was the most violent, but I don’t know if he used his real name. It was captain Jair. He immediately started to beat me. First he starting hitting me, he kicked me in the stomach, hit me with a rod, and beat me up. I quickly started losing blood and miscarried, right there. He punched me and boxed my ears, but mostly he hit me in the stomach. And I asked: why do you keep hitting my stomach? And he said: because then there’ll be one less communist. And he kept beating me, beating me, beating me. And then I started to bleed even more. I didn’t even say anything at the time, actually, because I was so messed up. And then they took me to solitary. Which was under the holding room. And I stayed there. I didn’t receive any medical attention, I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have a bed, nothing. Just the hole that was the ‘bathroom’, nicknamed the ‘boi’. All the normal prisoners could go there. They saw how much I was bleeding and gave me some rags. The rags seemed like they were for the floor. They were pretty dirty. But it’s what I had. I don’t remember how long they kept me in solitary. I remember that they’d take me up to interrogation all the time. I was there for maybe a week or ten days. No medical attention, nothing. And they took me upstairs every day. Beat me a bit more, took me downstairs. Beat me a bit more, took me downstairs. Until they put me in a normal cell where there were two other political prisoners, and the rest were normal prisoners. We wanted a cell for just us, the political prisoners. But there wasn’t any more space. That was just a holding cell. Everyone was going from one place to the next, to Talavera Bruce, etc. […] It all happened again, even in the normal cell. They’d call me to answer questions, beat me up a bit, threaten to rape me, touch me, take off my clothes. Nothing actually happened, but I don’t think it’s because they were decent people. It was because there was something nauseating…about all that bleeding […] Then, they sent me to the CENIMAR. They were even more heavy handed over there, even though I’d already lost the child. […] They didn’t tell me to take anything with me to CENIMAR, meaning that there was the possibility I would go back to the DOPS, and I did. […] And after 5-6 months, [the lawyer] managed to get me out. That’s when I went to the doctor. After all that time without any care . . . (Maria Helena Pereira. Testemunho concedido à CEV-Rio em 19 de junho de 2015).
DOPS cells also held some people who had been convicted and were carrying out their prison sentences. Newton Leão Duarte describes the day-to-day in the building, and what the space meant for the prisoners held there for long stretches of time:
I came to the DOPS in 1970, around August or September. I stayed there for around three months before I was transferred to the Frei Caneca Penitentiary, the idea being that I would then be sent to the Ilha Grande Prison. Back then there was a certain kind of calm in the DOPS. Everyone who had just been at the DOI-CODI or the CENIMAR or another military organization got here with the illusion, or at least the hope, that there wouldn’t be any more abuse or torture. And really there wasn’t, in general. I say in general because whenever there was some need for an investigation, we were taken to DOI-CODI or the CENIMAR or to the CISA, where they’d interrogate us, or we’d be transferred to other states where other investigations were happening. Nothing guaranteed that there wouldn’t be torture, but it was calmer regardless. It was an unsettling kind of calm […] It was a perverse paradise. […] We were able to have good political discussions. It was a good situation, but at the same time we felt doubtful, and conflicted. All of us thought that there might be spies. It was so easy for soldiers to put agents in the group, have them participate in the political discussions, and then pass along the information. That was something that haunted us. And I confirmed it when I went to get my file from the Rio de Janeiro Public Archive and found reports from moles that included references [to those conversations], listed the names of all of the prisoners, describing the behavior of every single one, the ideas that each had, and gave notes for further surveillance (Newton Leão Duarte. Testemunho concedido à CEV-Rio em 4 de novembro de 2013).
Ana Miranda describes her detention in the São Judas Tadeu Holding Cell in the DOPS (see floor plan). She was held there from May 1973 to February 1974 after having being kept prisoner in São Paulo for three years.
[…] I was taken here, to the Depósito de Presos São Judas Tadeu in the basement of this building. […] There was a group of normal prisoners held for different crimes. Most hadn’t stood trial. Our cell was for people considered “highly dangerous.” . . . Terrible noises started early and lasted the whole day […]. I can’t even describe how many rats and cockroaches there were. Do you see that corridor all white and swept clean? It was disgusting. It was trash. Swarms of cockroaches would run up the metal door in the summer. I still dream about it. […] There were only some rats. […] The rats were terrifying. They would squeak at night and come into the cells. The cells had metal bars, so they could get through the openings. The imprisoned women asked their families to bring them cats, but that didn’t work. The rats scared away they cats. They were aggressive. They were lions. The lions of the DOPS.
Since they didn’t know how to deal with political prisoners, I was the only person who couldn’t go out into the courtyard and take in the sun. I went nine months without sunlight (Ana Miranda Bursztyn. Testemunho concedido à CEV-Rio em 4/11/2013).
The DOPS/GB and its successor, the DGIA, were also the agencies responsible for the political persecution of thousands of people through surveillance. Geraldo Cândido, a factory worker in the 1960s and 1970s and member of the Rio de Janeiro Truth Commission (CEV-Rio) (2012-2015), describes the political persecution and ideological monitoring that the dictatorship and the political police applied to the administrations of companies and unions throughout the 1970s. He gave his testimony to the CEV-Rio in front of the building:
[…] I was called up one day. They brought five workers to this part of the building. […] The union handed a list to the DOPS. […] They said these five were involved in handing out flyers in the factory and tagging walls. I was held here overnight before being released. […] They didn’t have anything on me. But I was fired […] Then my life got really hard because they watched me. When I’d find a job, I’d work for one month, maybe two, before getting fired. I got the job because I was qualified. […] But once I started at the factory I’d get fired because they followed me […] It started that way until 1978. I couldn’t pay my rent because I was always unemployed. I moved to Complexo do Alemão with my two little kids. Living in a favela wasn’t that bad. The problem was that I couldn’t get a job, so I didn’t have money to buy food for my wife and kids. […] That’s how I suffered from political persecution, along with thousands of other workers. They’d put you on a list, distribute it to companies and say those people were ‘militants’ or ‘communist agitators’ […] Some of what they said wasn’t even true, but they’d do it anyway (Geraldo Cândido. Testemunho concedido à CEV-Rio em 4 de novembro de 2013).
The main type of political persecution for thousands of Brazilians was the so-called “political affiliation certificate” issued by the political police under the governor Leonel Brizola, until the agency went extinct in 1983. Geraldo Cândido also testifies to how this kind of persecution functioned:
One day, back when I worked in Galeão, my boss told me, ‘Look, the company asked for a political affiliation certificate for everyone who’s working here.’ And I thought: ‘I’m screwed.’ Because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get one. […] They gave out political affiliation certificates here, at the entrance to the DOPS. So, when I went back [to Galeão], he’d say: ‘Yours hasn’t come.’ And then I came here. […] I talked to the director’s cabinet chief (..). He said: ‘Not for you. No way. You can only get that certificate if you bring me a document signed by three major company executives or three officers in the Armed Forces.” […] That’s why I lost my job (Geraldo Cândido. Testemunho concedido à CEV-Rio em 4 de novembro de 2013).
After the DGIE shut down on February 5, 1983, the majority of the political police archives from Rio de Janeiro were moved from the DOPS building to the Superintendent of the Federal Police building located at Rua Valenzuela 2, Centro, Rio de Janeiro. According to a report from the newspaper Jornal do Brasil, the transfer of eight trucks filled with documents took place without any official report and was carried out by a private company and ten members of the police agency (Barros, 6 fev. 1983, Cidade/Nacional, p. 19). The documents were collected and brought to the Public Archive of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Aperj) in 1992. Those documents make up the DOPS/GB archive and include the individual files of those who had been investigated, books of correspondence, both sent and received, the registry of work shifts in the building, the book registering certificates, records from the arms reserve, and records from photographic services. At the time, Cecília Coimbra, the then-president of the Rio de Janeiro branch of the organization Torture Never Again, noted: “[…] we saw very clearly how the Federal Police removed documents about disappearances from the DOPS archives. It’s as though there was never a prison, it’s as though they never existed.” (Coimbra, 1996, p. 6).
In the years following the military dictatorship in Brazil, movements organized by those who suffered political persecution and the family of the dead and disappeared have fought for access to the documents, for material and symbolic reparations, and, more recently, for the ability to redesignate this space known as the “DOPS building.”
The building itself fell out of use on May 7, 1987, during Leonel Brizola’s first term as governor of Rio de Janeiro when the Rio de Janeiro State Institute of Cultural Patrimony (INEPAC), at Darcy Ribeiro’s suggestion, indicated that the building should no longer be a “police space” (Souza, 24 out., 2014). In 2000, it was proposed that the building should hold the state archives (APERJ), which lacked its own location and space to increase capacity. The Carlos Chagas de Amparo Foundation passed along the project to the Rio de Janeiro State Research (FAPERJ), where it developed under historian and former political prisoner Jessie Jane Vieira Souza’s tenure. She recalls:
Having withstood huge resistance from the top levels of the police, the much-awaited handing over of the building to the Archive took place in a ceremony in early 2002. State legislative representatives, state secretariats, the group Torture Never Again, and dozens of other people who had been political prisoners in the building were present. The then-Security Secretary, Coronel Josias Quintal, transferred the building’s management to APERJ on the occasion. The habeas data were immediately issued to the archive’s new site (Souza, 24 out. 2014).
The State Archive project in the building intended to produce a new reading about the space for the first time: “the creation of a memorial about the political and social struggles that took place over the course of the Republic would reaffirm the Brazilian commitment to democracy and feedom” (Souza, 24 out. 2014). However, the initiative was interrupted. The building was handed back over to the Civil Police and continued to deteriorate.
Movements made up of those who suffered political persecution and the families of the dead and disappeared continue voicing their demands to this day. In 2013, when the Rio de Janeiro State Truth Commission (CEV-Rio) began, then-governor Sérgio Cabral made a public promise to turn the building into a memorial to the dictatorship. This led to the foundation of the DOPS Task Force (GT DOPS) coordinated by the CEV-Rio with participation from former political prisoners, the families of the dead and disappeared, and researchers. The GT DOPS developed a plan for the use of the building for the future site of memory and sent it to the then-governor. When it was functioning, the CEV-Rio also carried out investigations into the building based on what former political prisoners remembered of the space and the technical support of the National Archives and of APERJ. These organizations concluded that documents of historical importance inside the building were in an advanced or permanent state of decay and at risk of being destroyed (CEV-Rio, 2014).
With this additional justification for a site of memory, the Occupy DOPS campaign (Ocupa DOPS) launched in 2013, bringing together former political prisoners, movements of those who suffered political persecution, the families of the dead and disappeared, human rights institutions, and artist and activist collectives. In recent years, the group organized a series of political and cultural actions to promote the memory of resistance and social struggle against State violence in the past and present. Despite these extensive actions and support from state, national, and international entities, the Rio de Janeiro State Government has yet to address the demand for a site of memory.