CENTRAL ARMY HOSPITAL (HCE)

HOSPITAL CENTRAL DO EXÉRCITO

Address: Rua Francisco Manoel, 126, Benfica, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Repressive Structures
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Snyder

The Central Army Hospital (HCE) was an important component of the repressive structure mounted by the military dictatorship in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The space served to rehabilitate political prisoners who had been tortured in other official or clandestine facilities and to forge expert reports for victims killed by agents of the State. The locale is still associated with the assassination and forced disappearance of activists who opposed the dictatorship. Standout cases include that of Manoel Alves de Oliveira, who died in 1964 in the HCE after being imprisoned and tortured in the Military Villa [69]; Raul Amaro Nin Ferreira, who passed away in 1971 after being interrogated and tortured under the hospital’s care; and Marilena Villas Boas, who died in the hospital in 1971 after having been kidnapped and tortured by state agents (Rio de Janeiro, 2001).

Current headquarters of the Central Army Hospital.

Source: CNV. Used with permission.

Current headquarters of the Central Army Hospital.

Source: CNV. Used with permission.

The Central Army Hospital was founded in 1890 through a decree signed by Marshal Manoel Deodoro da Fonseca (1889-1891), replacing the old Military Hospital that had stood in an old mansion in Morro do Castelo since 1768. The name change was accompanied by the construction of new hospital facilities in the Benfica neighborhood in the central region of Rio de Janeiro. The hospital was inaugurated in June of 1902.

During the military dictatorship, the activists sent to the HCE were kept in specific wings of the hospital, such as the psychiatric infirmary and the thirteenth prison infirmary.

 The decision to hospitalize political prisoners was aimed, in many cases, at guaranteeing the physical recovery of the victims so that they could be interrogated under torture again at a later date, as well as at continuing their psychological torture. A series of testimonies makes this evident. The case of Estrella Bohadana is one of the most emblematic. Detained and tortured in the 1° Battalion of the Armored Infantry of Barra Mansa (1° BIB) and later taken to the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-Codi) where she was submitted to violent torture that caused a miscarriage, Estrella was moved to the HCE, where she arrived in a coma. In the words of the activist:

The state in which one returned from torture was, in general, a very, very unfortunate state. Really, if it hadn’t been for the move to the hospital…I got there, I went into a coma and had no idea what was going on. When I came to, I was already in a hospital cell. And then for a long time I couldn’t walk, I was really weak. But even so, the interrogations continued, there, inside the same hospital, without physical torture, of course, but with obvious psychological, emotional torture, I mean, with lots of threats. You’re imprisoned in the hospital and being threatened with, “as soon as you get out of the hospital, we’re going to break you, it’s going to happen, we’re going to make you disappear.” So, it was a very violent business, from an emotional point of view. Right there in the HCE, I had contact with other comrades. Marcos Arruda, who was in the male wing, was also barbarously tortured. There, no one had been less than barbarously tortured. And when your body couldn’t take it anymore, you had to make a stop in the hospital. The hospital wasn’t a guarantee of anything. Me I , for example, when I left the hospital, I went back to being tortured. I went back to Barra Mansa, and then I went back to being tortured, everything all over again. I mean, when I thought that the thing had ended. Because, really, what could they want from a prisoner after three months of torture? There is no more information to give. There is a sadist, Machiavellian side[…] In fact, it was a situation of absolute inequality (Estrella Dalva Bohadana. Testimony given to Project “Shield-Bearer Tower”).

Marcos Arruda, in his testimony to the Rio de Janeiro State Truth Commission (CEV-Rio), described being transferred directly from the HCE to the DOI-CODI, highlighting that the hospital served to “prepare” the activists for new interrogations: 

In the DOI-Codi of Rio de Janeiro, the only person whose name I remember is Captain Gomes Carneiro, who oversaw my transportation from the Central Army Hospital to the DOI-CODI on December 22, 1970. I went through three days of terror in the DOI-CODI until December 25, Christmas day, and spent all of Christmas night listening to screams of those being tortured, waiting for my turn to be taken. Maybe I had been spared because I had a seizure. They stopped giving me medicine for three days, and then they took me back to the HCE. […] the director of the HCE at the time was General Galeno, the vice director was Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Aquino and Doctors Elias and Mota were still there. The head of security was Major Sadi, later replaced by Captain Morais, who by exception treated us like human beings. The person responsible for the treatment of the prisoners was Major Boia, who prepared us to return to torture once we had gotten better (Marcos Arruda, testimony given to CEV-Rio and CNV on September 17th, 2013).

Maria Dalva Bonet, in turn, confirmed having been taken to the HCE because of torture she had suffered in the Pavilion of Criminal Investigation (PIC) in her testimony to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. She was sent to the PIC again after her recovery: 

[…] on January 28th, 1969 she was imprisoned for the second time; […] she was taken to the PIC (Pavilion of Criminal Investigations) which would become the DOI-CODI/RJ, in the Army Police building on Barão de Mesquita Street […] she was left at the HCE because she was badly bruised with hematomas; she lost the skin on her hands and feet because of electrical shocks; […] after the HCE, the testifier returned to the Barão de Mesquita, not to go to the DOI-CODI/RJ but instead to the infirmary; in this period she was not physically tortured, but the soldiers would go there just to torment her psychologically; the testifier wasn’t walking, and the soldiers would go there to say that the testifier would become a paralytic; they told her of atrocities that they had committed with other imprisoned activists (Maria Dalva Bonet. Testimony given to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (Brazil and Rio de Janeiro, August 2013).

 But there is evidence that in addition to being the space for the recovery of the political prisoners, the HCE was also a space for interrogations and physical torture. This was recently proven in the case of Raul Amaro Nin Ferreira, a member of the aid network for the Eighth of October Revolutionary Movement (MR-8). He was imprisoned on August 1, 1971, taken to the Department of Social and Political Order of the State of Guanabara (DOPS/GB), and later, to the DOI-CODI, where he was interrogated under torture. Due to the violence suffered, Raul was taken to the HCE by recommendation of an official doctor on August 4 of that year, where he passed away about a week later. An investigation undertaken by the family of Raul Amaro and by the CEV-Rio verified that he had been interrogated while in the hospital’s care on August 11, which was confirmed in an official letter authored by the Ministry of the Army (Brasil nunca mais digital, p.81). The document reports that on that date, Sylvio Frota, Commander of the Army, ordered Commissioner Eduardo Rodrigues and a clerk, Jeovah Silva, to report to the director of the HCE “in order to interrogate the prisoner Raul Amaro Nin Ferreira.” Later, on August 12, a report from the Ministry of the Army revealed that “the subversive confesses his connection with MR-8; based on our understanding of the material found in his possession and the ties that he maintains with Eduardo Lessa Peixoto de Azevedo, Raul Amaro is openly a militant of the organization. There was no time to inquire of him regarding all of the material found in his possession” (Brasil nunca mais digital, p. 90). According to the National Truth Commission (CNV), this document is a tell-tale sign that Raul died while being interrogated in the HCE.

More recently, the medical-legal report elaborated by expert Nelson Massini and presented in a public hearing organized by the CEV-Rio in August 2014 proved that Raul Amaro was physically tortured in the HCE in at least two distinct moments. The report points to the existence of “a difference in the quantity and types of lesions described between the exam done in his admission to the Central Army Hospital and those described in the autopsy, which are greater in number than those that the admission exam identifies” (Rio de Janeiro, 2014). This indicates that Raul suffered new lesions after checking into the hospital. The expert concludes that the lesions “stemmed from a process of physical suffering (torture)”. This was the first case in which the practice of physical torture within a military hospital during the dictatorship was proven.

In addition to the assistance and cooperation with the practice of illegal imprisonment and torture, the HCE also helped to falsify official reports on victims of state repression. Such action was taken mainly to conceal the true causes of death of the activists, who had been assassinated by agents of the State, and the systematic practice of torture against those who opposed the dictatorship. Therefore, in the majority of the cases, the doctors made statements about the death of the individual in the hospital, when, in reality, he or she was already dead upon arrival at the hospital; they attributed false causes of deaths, alleging “suicide”, “trampling”, or “gunshot wound” as the cause, when in fact, they had been assassinated by State agents; and they omitted from their reports information about the lesions that indicated torture.

National Truth Commission and CEV-Rio visit to the Central Army Hospital.

Source: CNV. Used with permission.

National Truth Commission and CEV-Rio visit to the Central Army Hospital.

Source: CNV. Used with permission.

In this context, it is worth highlighting the case of Severino Viana Colou, killed in 1969 while held in the First Company of the Army Police, in the Military Villa [69] of Deodoro, in Rio de Janeiro. The autopsy report, modified by the medical service of the HCE, reiterated the official version that Severino had committed suicide inside his cell. A team of experts with the CNV managed to deconstruct this version of events and identify inconsistencies in the report, concluding that Severino was assassinated by state agents. According to the CNV, his death happened “by homicide, strangling, or another cause possibly omitted from the medical-legal analysis.” Another relevant case is that of José Mendes de Sá Roriz, a member of the Brazilian Communist Party, who, according to the CNV, was killed during torture in 1973 in the DOI-CODI. His death certificate stated, however, that José Mendes had died in the HCE and did not identify the cause of his death, claiming that this information would depend on “the requested laboratory tests.”

The history of the HCE brings up an important discussion about the role of medical professionals during the military dictatorship. Instead of saving lives and attending to the health of the sick, some of these professionals were accomplices in the carrying out of grave human rights violations. The participation of doctors in torture even involved their presence during interrogations, where they would supervise torture and resuscitate the prisoner, administering treatment before, during, and after the sessions. During the sessions, the doctor determined if the prisoner could continue being mistreated or if it was necessary to reduce the degree of violence so the prisoner would not lose consciousness and thus be able to continue giving information. The participation of doctors also involved the omission of tests and the falsification of reports, autopsies, and death certificates. In this sense, covering up clear signs of torture and concealing of real causes of death of those who had been assassinated was common. Finally, medical professionals concealed bodies. Coroners were normally tied to the Secretariat of Public Security and would, in some cases, contribute to the forced disappearance of activists. We can identify the names of the doctors who served the military regime in Rio de Janeiro. They are: Rubens Pedro Macuco Janini, Amílcar Lobo, Ricardo Agnese Fayad, and Olympio Pereira da Silva (Brazil, 2014, v. 1, p. 877, 918, 923, 926).

On September 23, 2014, the CNV and the CEV-Rio began to investigate the HCE in order to search for the patient medical records from the military dictatorship era and to identify the places where political prisoners were held inside the hospital. The patient medical records were not found, and the Army denied their existence. Despite changes to the physical building, mostly caused by renovations that began in the late 1980s, former political prisoners that accompanied the investigation – Marcos Arruda, Ana Miranda, and Paulo César Ribeiro – managed to recognize the wing in which the prison/infirmary had probably been located during the time of their imprisonment.

Later, on November 14, 2014, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office with the support of the Federal Police, fulfilled the search-and-seizure warrant inside the HCE. An anonymous tip made to the MPF, revealed that patient medical records for political prisoners were deliberately hidden on the eve of the investigation carried out by the CNV and the CEV-Rio in September of that year, and that they could be found in a building attached to the hospital. During the search, patient records from 1940-1969 and 1975-1983 were found in a locked room in an adjacent building, in addition to plastic bags with records of patients attended to during the military dictatorship, proving that the Army had, in fact, concealed relevant documents. Dossiers with names, photos, and information on members and advisors of the commissions that had participated in the investigations during the dictatorship were located during the same search.

On December 9, 2014, the CEV-Rio held a public hearing to hand over the medical patient records of three activists that were admitted to the HCE between 1970-1971: Maria Dalva Bonet, Abigail Paranhos, and Vera Silvia Magalhães. The documentation was found by the Commission in the archives of dictator Médici in the Brazilian Institute of Geography and History. This was one more piece of evidence indicating that the military presidents were always aware of the torture carried out by state agents and that patient records exist and are being concealed by the Brazilian Army in a fully democratic period. Even today, family members of the dead and disappeared, as well as former political prisoners, fight to have access to these medical patient records.

In partnership with the Ministry of Justice Amnesty Commission’s project Testimony Clinics of Rio de Janeiro, the CEV-Rio promoted the “Testimony of the Truth about HCE”, on July 30, 2015. During this event, testimonies of former political prisoners were heard. Ana Bursztyn Miranda, Antonio Rodrigues da Costa, Fátima Setúbal, Marcos Arruda, and Paulo César Azevedo Ribeiro shared their experiences from when they had been held in the HCE, the conditions they suffered, the heavy medication that was utilized, and the hospital’s refusal to hand over the medical patient records. Antônio Rodrigues da Costa, an ex-Army parachuter who interned for nine months in the psychiatric division of the HCE, said:

They threatened to give me shocks in the testicles if I didn’t take the medicine they ordered. At first I tried to joke with the doctors, because I was very drugged up, and at times, I would sleep two days straight (Antônio Rodrigues da Costa. Testimony given to CEV-Rio on July 30th, 2015).

Invited by the CEV-Rio to participate in the event, attorney Sérgio Suiama told those present that the progress of the search-and-seizure of the HCE had been suspended due to an injunction that the Regional Federal Court gave to retired General José Antonio Nogueira Belham, commander of the Rio de Janeiro DOI-CODI between 1970-1971. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office appealed the decision, and since the beginning of 2016, family members of the dead and disappeared political prisoners as well as former political prisoners themselves continue fighting for access to the medical patient records.

METALWORKERS’ UNION OF RIO DE JANEIRO

SINDICATO DOS METALÚRGICOS DO RIO DE JANEIRO

Location: Rua Ana Nerí, 152, São Cristovão, Rio de Janeiro, RJ.
Themes: Unions and Workers
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Snyder

The Metalworkers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro, or the “Metalworkers’ Palace”, as it came to be known since its conception, hosted several notable events in Brazilian history. It can be argued that the metalworkers’ division was the group of organized labor most affected by military police repression during the dictatorship. The metalworkers of Rio de Janeiro were among the most sought after groups, since they were one of the most organized and active divisions of the trade union movement on the national level. The union headquarters were invaded, and its facilities were not only ransacked ^d, but were also destroyed in search of documents that could prove the “subversive” nature of the organization. Along with the seizure and destruction of documents that other institutions suffered, this raid greatly affected the way history and memory are constructed in Brazil.

As early as April 1964, minister of Labor Arnaldo Sussekind, appointed by the general president Castelo Branco, formalized the interventions in hundreds of unions, including the metalworkers of Rio de Janeiro. While the board of the directors, headed by president José Lellis da Costa, was overthrown, persecuted, and imprisoned, a junta of interveners was appointed to “normalize” the activities of the union. Unionized metalworkers were the target of investigations about Communist activities, assembled in a Military Police Inquiry (IPM), and the union headquarters were used as a location for interrogations. The loss of labor rights, imprisonment, and exile marked the period.

Founded in 1917, the Metalworkers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro represents one of the most important workers’ institutions in the political and social history of Brazil. After the decline of the Estado Novo (1937-1945), the metalworkers exerted strong influence on the trade union movement at a regional and national level. In the late 1940s, the union had to fight against repression sparked by the Dutra administration, during which the Ministry of Labor invaded the board of directors, which was led by organizers from the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) [05] and of the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB). In the 1950s, leaders in the metalworker movement managed to navigate state control while acting within the union structure.

Throughout the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, the organization mobilized workers from other union divisions, organized strikes, and fought for higher pay and better working conditions. In this period, under the leadership of communist and labor activists, the number of unionized metalworkers soared, thanks not only to the industrial expansion that took place during Brazil’s developmentalist phase, but also to the union’s growing capacity to mobilize workers and represent their interests. Thus, the Metalworkers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro progressively developed a base of support, having adopted the strategy of connecting with company union councils to organize politically within factories ^j. The basic work accomplished by the union delegates in the manufacturing units proved to be fundamental in securing the division workers’ participation in the campaign to build the entity headquarters – the “Metalworkers Palace”.

The Metalworkers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro headquarters, inaugurated on May 1 after a long and conflicted push for its construction, became an object of pride for its members. The tallest building in the São Cristovão neighborhood at the time, the headquarters was a modern six-floor facility. It had space for a theater, cafeteria, classrooms, and even a print shop, in addition to two elevators and bathrooms for men and women on every floor. With the accelerated process of urbanization that developed in the following decades, the headquarters lost its impressiveness. However, its importance extends to today. In the early 1960s, the metalworkers of Rio de Janeiro were one of the few groups that had their own headquarters. After years of struggle, the union board of directors finally managed to construct a space that represented the significance of this union division for organized labor (Jordan, 2004, p.163). On December 29th, 1999, the headquarters was named a Rio de Janeiro state historical and cultural heritage site by Municipal Law No. 3.336.

From 1955-1963, during the presidency of unionist Benedicto Cerqueira, the union gained influence in the organized labor movement by connecting with interunion entities. A Nationalist and member of the national-reformist division of the PTB, Cerqueira maintained close relations with president Goulart, representing what academic analyses typically call “populist relations.” Before Cerqueira, still in the 1940s, the union actively participated in the formation of the Unifying Laborers’ Movement (MUT). The group became part of the Interunion Commission Against Integral Assiduity (CISCAI) and the Permanent Commission of Union Organizations (CPOS) in the next decade. However, it was in the early 1960s that the organization reached the apex of its political engagement at the national level by joining the General Command of Workers (CGT) alongside the country’s strongest, most organized unions. The creation of the CGT made it possible to organize a more cohesive trade union movement that would seek to break with the vertical, corporatist structure controlled by the State. Through CGT, the organized metalworkers of Rio de Janeiro actively participated in general strikes that demanded better work conditions and wage increases while also addressing the political demands aimed at preserving the democratic regime, such as the 1961 campaign upholding the legality of João Goulart’s claim to the presidency.

In 1963, Cerqueira was elected a federal deputy. The union board of directors then passed to Communist leaders’ control. In the short period when the Communists led the entity before 1964, the union headquarters was the stage for several political and ideological clashes. In the midst of heavy political-ideological polarization, the “Metalworkers’ Palace” became a reference point not only for the union division, but also for the entire workers movement in Rio de Janeiro and leftist activists more broadly. In its spacious auditorium, as it was considered at the time, it hosted various meetings facilitated by partisan nationalist and leftist leaders. Hundreds of assemblies, public functions, parties, dances, tournaments, campaigns, congresses, and dozens of other activities took place in the building.

However, one of the most notable events held in the “Palace” was, without a doubt, the celebration organized by the Sailors and Marines Association. It was held during the leadership of sailor José Anselmo dos Santos, “o cabo Anselmo”, who would later be known as one of the most important collaborators with the dictatorial regime. On March 25, 1964, the metalworkers gave the sailors the headquarters for the commemoration of their second anniversary. In the midst of heavy political tension between the opposition and support for the Goulart administration, Anselmo gave what the mainstream press considered a passionate speech in defense of the broad-based reforms. The event caught the attention of the Armed Forces, since the sailor leadership had already criticized minister admiral Sylvio Motta in the past. The expectation was that the movement’s leadership would be arrested. It was then that the participants decided to stay at the union headquarters in a permanent assembly until their demands were met. They called for there to be no punishment whatsoever until the board of directors of the Association were set free and its demands to end the punishments were met. Though the union board of directors tried to dissuade the sailors, they would only leave after three days of occupation.

Even in a turbulent political climate, the March 31 coup took a large part of the metalworker leadership by surprise. Even though the directors of PCB [05] had considered the possibility of a right-wing coup, the central committee of the party believed that the left-leaning members of the military would resist. The secretary-general of the union, Ulisses Lopes, confirms this version by revealing that even he himself became aware of the coup only when military troops invaded the union headquarters, which he directed at the time (Testimony of Ulisses Lopes given to Marco Aurélio Santana and José Ricardo Ramalho on August 29th, 1988).

Throughout the dictatorial regime, metalworkers tried to resist in factories without the efforts of the union, which had been taken over by “fat cat” boards of directors. Inspired by the “new unionism” movement led by the metalworkers in the ABC region of São Paulo, the Rio de Janeiro metalworkers initiated a new phase in Brazil’s redemocratization struggle in the late 1970s. Metalworkers in the region involved themselves in the fight for union autonomy and freedom alongside social movements emerging on the national stage in this period. During the 1990s, like the majority of workers throughout the entire country, the metalworkers suffered under the neoliberal agenda implemented during the Fernando Collor de Mello administration, later maintained during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration. The dismantling of the naval industry profoundly impacted the entity and its stocks: the tightening of wages, mass layoffs, and a high cost-of-living index decimated the sector n. Currently, the union focuses its struggle on the recovery of the Rio de Janeiro naval sector, considered fundamental to restoring regional development and generating employment.

ÚLTIMA HORA NEWSPAPER

JORNAL ÚLTIMA HORA

Address: Rua Sotero dos Reis, 62, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ.
Themes: Political-Cultural Resistance and Memory; Civil and Corporate Participation
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Snyder

Última Hora was an important newspaper that supported Jango in his candidacy and accompanied him throughout his administration. The military regime persecuted the periodical after the coup, destroying its headquarters and forcing Samuel Wainer, its founder and visionary editor, into exile. Experiencing censorship, it gradually adopted a more moderate stance, losing its place as an opposition newspaper in Brazilian media.

The newspaper printed its first edition in 1951. Aided by loans from important individuals and the Bank of Brazil, its founding was indirectly supported by Getúlio Vargas, who was searching for a source of government support in the press. The first edition even contained an editorial signed by Getúlio himself. Because of this, Última Hora ended up being a target of intense criticism from the opposition, especially in the figure of Carlos Lacerda and his newspaper Tribuna da Imprensa. Wainer and Lacerda squared off in notorious collisions, considered an important period in Brazilian press history.

Despite this, Samuel Wainer asserted that his publication sought to serve as a sort of popular and independent press, with news directed towards the masses. It distanced itself from the oligarchic press that mostly opposed Vargas. Starting in 1953, the periodical experienced widespread criticism and allegations of illicit transactions for the loans secured for its founding. This led to the establishment of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, although nothing of legal note was found. Última Hora had simultaneous distribution in several parts of Brazil, due to a national network that had been forming since the late 1950s. Wainer longed to create a national network of daily newspapers, even if they were to carry only one name, based on the templates that Assis Chateaubriand had already been producing with his Associated Dailies. This network included Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Niterói, Curitiba, Campinas, Santos, Bauru, and the ABC Region of São Paulo (Santo André, São Bernardo de Campo, and São Caetano).

Committed to the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB), the newspaper supported João Goulart for vice president in the 1960 election, and opposed Jânio Quadros’s presidential campaign. However, the paper changed its position during his administration as Quadros’s foreign policy drew Brazil closer to socialist countries.

When Jânio Quadros resigned in August 1961, Última Hora supported João Goulart, and during his administration, remained favorable to the president’s position in regard to workers, broad-based reforms, and land reform initiatives. In 1963, which was already a politically polarized moment, the paper published news that attributed claims of a Communist offensive in Brazil to the conservative branches of the National Democratic Union (UDN), which were against the reforms and banded together to lead a coup against Jango. Última Hora was the only newspaper to support the sailors revolt in the Metalworkers’ Union and Jango’s intervention with regards to the event. It was seen as a newspaper that appealed to the common person, aligned itself closely with Jango, and sympathized with the left and the PTB.

Consequently, on April 1, 1964, the day of the military coup, the Última Hora headquarters were attacked, its windows broken, its company cars destroyed, and its printing presses rendered useless. The attack was led by by the Anti-Communist Movement (MAC), the same group that set the National Union of Students (UNE) building on fire. They forced open the garage door, hauling the vans onto the street, busting them up and lighting them on fire. Samuel Wainer was politically persecuted and fled to Europe, where he remained until 1967. Danton Jobim and Jânio de Freitas were two important journalists who directed the newspaper while Wainer was in exile.

During the military regime, the newspaper had to make concessions to survive, but even so it covered protests against the regime and reported on many of the violent acts that students suffered. As a result, the military tried to systematically boycott the newspaper by pressuring ad agencies to avoid the publication. During President Costa e Silva’s administration, the periodical denounced the torture of political prisoners and pitted itself against the liberalizing economic measures that benefitted foreign capital, reaching a significant print run.

Última Hora saw the implementation of the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) in 1968 as a victory of one military group over another. The newspaper published reports that analyzed the political situation and what would become of individual liberties in the country, reporting that the act marked a coup within a coup. After AI-5, the political pages of the newspaper lost their spot to culture, art, and cinema, and little by little, the newspaper lost the critical stance that had characterized it since its founding (Faber, 2010 p. 172). In fact, the culture section was always one of the most important and recognized features of the newspaper’s history, as it maintained celebrity columns written by figures such as Nelson Rodrigues (“Life As It Is”) and Chacrinha (“Chacrinha’s Newspaper”).

In 1971, already going through a financial crisis, Última Hora was sold to the Metropolitan Company, a group of contractors headed by Maurício Nunes de Alencar. The group had a political agenda and mounted a campaign for Mario Andreazza, at the time the minister of Transportation, to the Presidency of the Republic; the same group that had already acquired the Última Hora newspaper in 1969.

Front page story on the fire and destruction of the Última Hora headquarters on April 1, 1964.

Source: Jornal Última Hora from April 2, 1964. Used with permission.

Story on fire in Última Hora on April 2, 1964.

Source: Jornal Última Hora from April 2, 1964. Used with permission.

Story on fire in Última Hora on April 2, 1964.

Source: Jornal Última Hora from April 2, 1964. Used with permission.

Story on fire in Última Hora on April 2, 1964.

Source: Jornal Última Hora from April 2, 1964. Used with permission.

After being sold, Última Hora essentially became a different newspaper. With its newsroom closed, it was transferred to the headquarters of Correio da Manhã on Gomes Freire Street. Almost all of the employees, 86 people, were laid off in one fell swoop (Pinheiro Junior, 2011). The Metropolitan Company took the helm of Última Hora at the same time as it edited Correio da Manhã. With their improvised newsrooms, the two papers were gradually dismantled, both politically and editorially.

Última Hora ended up maintaining a position of timid support of the military government, of president Geisel’s policies against the so-called “hard line,” and of the process of political opening. It also supported the “April Package,” affirming that it would bring a renewing impulse to the nation and would allow Brazil to keep moving forward, which was consistent with its stance throughout the Geisel administration.

In this sense, Última Hora, along with Correio da Manhã, leased by the same group of contractors, gradually ceased to be newspapers critical towards the dictatorship and assumed a less hostile position, slowly approaching Governism. The newspaper considered expressing a merely informative and linear vision of events sufficient, as in 1981, during an attempted attack in downtown Rio. On that occasion, Última Hora did not present the stances that important organizations took on the event, such as the Order of Attorneys of Brazil (OAB), the Brazilian Press Association (ABI), and political parties. What is more, it kept itself from questioning the rigor of official investigations, refraining to ask if they would fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Police or the I Exército, a division of the Brazilian army.

The decline persisted, and in 1987 the newspaper circulated for only a part of the afternoon. Sales were bad, and the paper was sold. Later, in 1991, it declared bankruptcy with a debt of 450 million cruzeiros. Despite this, Última Hora went through a series of leasings. For example, the Paulista branch was leased to Grupo Folha in the 1960s and the Porto Alegre branch later turned into Zero Hora, one of the main daily newspapers in circulation in Brazil today.

OIL WORKERS’ UNION OF RIO DE JANEIRO (SINDIPETRO-RJ)

SINDICATO DOS PETROLEIROS DO RIO DE JANEIRO

Address: Avenida Presidente Vargas, 52, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ.
Themes: Unions and Workers
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Snyder

The Oil Workers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro (SINDIPETRO-RJ) was one of the organized labor groups most targeted by civilian and military conservatives that took power in 1964. Like the metal workers and the workers in steelmaking industries in the region, oil workers gained visibility throughout the 1950s and the early 1960s by means of their large mobilizing capacity and the advances in political consciousness-building. In 1964, oil workers represented one of the key sectors of the political-ideological clashes that culminated in the civil-military coup of the same year. Not by coincidence, the Armed Forces invaded the entity’s headquarters soon after, occupying the building for 17 days. All union files were confiscated, and the board directors who were linked to the PCB were removed from power, forced to flee in order to avoid prison. The union remained under control of the Ministry of Labor until 1968.

The trajectory of the Rio de Janeiro SINDIPETRO is intertwined with the history of oil exploration in Brazil. In the late 1940s, a dispute over whether to maintain the state oil monopoly or sell the natural resources to foreign multinationals began. In the years that followed, the campaign “The Oil is Ours” gained strength, spreading through the entire country and, in 1953, Petrobrás was created. In the second half of the 1950s, oil workers from the Manguinhos Refinery, a private company founded in December 1954, organized, fighting for better wages and work conditions. Manguinhos’ first strike took place in 1958, marking the group’s struggles. During the same year, the Professional Oil Workers’ Association of Rio de Janeiro was founded. Soon after, on March 23rd, 1959, the ‘Oil Workers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro was founded. The next year, SINDIPETRO-RJ came to also represent the Petrobrás workers. The first two branches of the union were established in São Cristovão and the third in Cinelândia, on Alcindo Guanabara Street. Later, the third branch would be moved to Presidente Vargas Avenue, then finally settle on Passos Avenue, in the downtown part of the city.

SINDIPETRO-RJ was present at the main political events that marked the pre-1964 era. It participated actively, for example, in the “Center Station Rally,” which occured on March 13th, 1964. Linked to the General Command of Workers (CGT), the entity also carried out a series of strikes, among them a shutdown in solidarity with the Guarapuava oil workers in Paraná, which took place in November 1963 (Badaró, 2004).

With military action against SINDIPETRO, union leadership and workers experienced persecution, imprisonment, torture, and layoffs. The organization’s president, Fernando Autran, known for being one of the main oil worker leaders, was able to seek asylum in the Uruguayan embassy. In an interview given to TV Petroleira, he acknowledged that he doesn’t like to touch on the subject of the torture and imprisonments he went through during the military regime. He was first imprisoned on the border of Rio Grande do Sul with Uruguay. In Porto Alegre, Autran was interrogated in the Army premises. After the interrogation, the unionist was left locked up, naked, without a shower, in a dark, cold room. In his words:

When you “land” here, the first thing that they do is take off your clothes to break your morale. At night, the rats and cockroaches would come. The cockroaches would eat our skin. They attack more than the rats. The next morning, it burned like hell (Fernando Autran, Interview given to TV Petroleira on September 24th, 2014).

He remained imprisoned for three months in the Political and Social Order of Porte Alegre Police Station (DOPS), a place where he endured repeated physical and psychological torture. By now, the oil workers had experienced persecution carried out by the soldiers that had taken control of Petrobrás. During an interview with the National Truth Commission (CNV) in partnership with the State Truth Commission of Rio de Janeiro (CEV-Rio), the oil worker union leader, Francisco Soriano, a militant with the Brazilian Revolutionary Communist Party (PCBR), relates the abuses committed by Petrobrás soon after the coup erupted :

The employees endured horrors. They would ask: where is so-and-so? Generally, the unions have the so-called advisors on the board of directors, and those poor devils suffered a lot. And Petrobrás was considered a strategic sector. It was a witch hunt. At Petrobrás, they removed 17 high-ranking officials, among them generals and colonels, to promote the purging, the cleansing. They created broad investigation commissions. The person would go to testify and, upon leaving, would already receive their letter of dismissal or suspension. In the worst case scenario, they would be asked to collaborate. Some went to the other side (Francisco Soriano. Testimony given to Alejandra Estevez and Vítor Guimarães on August 18th, 2014).

As confirmed by the CNV, the monitoring of public sector companies by the Security & Intelligence Advisory Councils (ASI) led to the dismissal and imprisonment of hundreds of workers. This agency created files that tracked workers’ political actions. Any activity could be considered an “incriminating” fact to put on the employee’s file, such as participating in a union assembly or reading a newspaper considered to be suspicious.

The monitoring undertaken by Petrobrás’ Division of Intelligence (DSI), which acted as an arm of the National Intelligence Service (SNI) as pointed out in the CNV report, shows how large state companies became “laboratories” for implanting the system of control and repression. In 1964, approximately three thousand Petrobrás workers were suspected of “subversion”. Of these, 712 of the names were listed in a Military Police Investigation (IPM) established to investigate the political activities of the state company. From April to October of 1964, around 1500 prosecution investigations began targeting Petrobrás employees, and 516 employees were fired as a result. The monitoring of Petrobrás workers generated 131,277 files of social-political control produced by the intelligence agencies. According to the CNV, “there is, therefore, evidence that Petrobrás organized, already in the first days after the coup, a new repressive system, possibly reproduced in other large companies” (CNV Collection, 2014, p. 13-14).

In 1967, oil worker activists tried to take back control of the union. After the Ministry of Labor, under the command of Colonel Jarbas Passarinho, allowed for free elections in unions to occur, the “Azul” slate in opposition to the military intervention in the union declared itself the winner. However, it was prevented from taking office, due to alleged fraud in the elections. The entity, then, continued under military control. Francisco Soriano was one of the members of the winning slate prevented from taking office. According to him, the entire slate was fired, causing the winning leadership to lose ties with the entity. Soriano served in the union between 1965-1968, until he was fired and left Petrobrás (CNV Collection, 2014).

Soon after the kidnapping of U.S. Ambassador Charles Elbrick, in 1969, repressive agencies intensified their persecution of activists engaged in the armed struggle. Fernando Autran, who lived in hiding with a false identity, became a wanted man. According to him, it must have been the directors of Petrobrás, under the command of Marshal Waldemar Levy Cardoso, who sent his photo to be published in the newspaper Correio da Manhã. His family started to receive threats, and, under threat, the union member had to turn himself in. He was taken to the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODI) and then to the Barão de Mesquita barrack. According to his testimony, he must have been imprisoned in place of Fernando Gabeira, who was involved in the kidnapping of the U.S. ambassador. 

Throughout the dictatorial regime, oil workers continued laboring under intense surveillance, making it impossible for them to organize in their union. However, during the Geisel and Figueiredo governments, the oil workers were very engaged in the redemocratization movement, such as in the 1984 Direct (Elections) Now campaign. On April 10th, in the midst of the movement for elections, a crowd gathered near the Candelária Church to demand the right to vote in the presidential elections. At the same time, the union headquarters was the target of attempted arson, an attack that remains a mystery to this day. There were three arson attempts, and the criminals were seen running away on the roof of the building (Surgente, 2006). When the military regime ended, the union moved forward with its activism, carrying out a series of strikes, such as one that took place in 1988, an occasion in which seven oil workers were fired for having organized a shutdown. Some of them, including Jorge Eduardo, Eduardo Machado, and Emanuel Cancella would later became directors of the entity.

A new phase of the struggle began with the deepening of the neoliberal economic project under Fernando Collor de Mello’s administration. The beginning of the 1990s was marked by an attempt to dismantle the Petrobrás system. With the business administrative reform, thousands of oil workers were laid off. The union played a crucial role in the fight for reintegrating workers who were laid off and in their involvement with the Remove Collor campaign. The privatization of oil companies like Nitriflex and Petroflex left thousands of workers unemployed. SINDIPETRO-RJ and SINDIPETRO of Caxias resisted, occupying the headquarters of Interbrás in 1990. The group managed to reverse hundreds of layoffs. In the following year, the oil workers declared a national strike, demanding the suspension of the privatizations and the reintegration of laid-off workers. The strikers occupied the headquarters of Petrobrás for 44 days, experiencing heavy retaliation that was reminiscent of repressive moments from the violent “Years of Lead.”

The fight against privatization continued in the next governments of Itamar Franco and Fernando Henrique Cardoso. It was a period marked by large strikes, negotiations, defeats, and some victories. In a strike that lasted 32 days, during Cardoso’s administration, Army tanks entered the refineries. It is worth highlighting that this strike became a paradigm for the history of twentieth century Brazilian workers movements. As the moment unfolded, other groups of oil workers joined the cause. With the money acquired from the reimbursement of fine payments that the Superior Labor Court (TST) had imposed on the union during the strike, SINDIPETRO-RJ was able to remodel the building that today is the entity’s headquarters. It is located on Passos Avenue, 34, in downtown Rio de Janeiro.

In 2003, Lula’s administration marked a new phase. Among the many actions SINDIPETRO-RJ took in this important moment, fighting against the continued auctioning of the National Agency of Petroleum (ANP) and attacks on retired workers rights stands out. The union also fought to ensure the continued nationalization of oil, with the campaign “Oil Must Be Ours.” The entity still participates heavily in social activism, frequently promoting large public demonstrations, educational materials, debates, and major events. It is a reference in the national trade union movement, and works alongside social movements all over the country.

RIO-NITERÓI BRIDGE

PONTE RIO-NITERÓI

Address: Ponte Presidente Costa e Silva – trecho da BR-101, rodovia Governador Mário Covas, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Civil and Corporate Participation
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Snyder

The Rio-Niterói Bridge, which links the cities of Rio and Niterói, was one of the main construction projects carried out during the dictatorship. Built between 1969-1974, the bridge has the official name of dictator Artur da Costa e Silva, serving as both emblem and example of the regime’s propaganda. The name is representative of a figure who represents one the harshest, most authoritarian periods of Brazilian history, as it honors the president who signed the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5). Nowadays, there is an intense movement demanding a change of name. The construction itself exhibits several signs of the dictatorship, such as the participation of soldiers in the project management, the profiting of businessmen affiliated with the regime, the strengthening of the highway transportation model, and neglect for worker health and security. There were several injuries and illnesses associated with the construction, and dozens of laborers and engineers were killed during the project’s completion.

During the dictatorship, infrastructure projects such as viaducts, bridges, and overpasses proliferated. With civil society gagged and projects implemented without regard for public support, “strange cathedrals” were erected in major Brazilian cities. Viaducts such as those of Rio and of São Paulo created large transportation routes, to the detriment of surrounding neighborhoods. Some projects represent the authoritarian context of the dictatorship: in Rio, the Paulo de Frontin Overpass not only degraded the Rio Comprido neighborhood, but also resulted in 26 deaths caused by the falling of a container during construction; the Lilás thoroughfare, an expressway between the Santa Bárbara Tunnel and the Santo Cristo neighborhood that includes the 31 de Março Viaduct, destroyed the Catumbi neighborhood; Perimetral Avenue, downtown, defaced and devalued the port. In São Paulo, one example is the Cebolão (Presidente Costa e Silva Overpass), which also degraded the downtown area of the city.

The Rio-Niterói Bridge is also representative of how the dictatorship opted for a highway transport model, as it was a component of the National Highway Plan. The model was clearly stated in public policy guidelines and in other projects including the Trans-Amazonian, Rio-Santos, and Northern Perimeter highways, in addition to the expansion, paving, and remodeling of highways like the Fernão Dias, Régis Bittencourt, and Belém-Brasília. The model was sustained by private interests of economic groups such as the large automotive industry multinationals established in the country and the manufacturers who supplied equipment and materials for the highway construction, in addition to Brazilian public works contractors specializing in highway construction since the Juscelino Kubitschek period.

Since the first road-linking projects between Rio and Niterói that started back in the 19th century, there has been debate over whether a tunnel or a bridge would be the better means of connecting the two cities. This debate continued until just before and even during the building of the bridge, when members of the government suggested that a railway tunnel could complete the connection. Despite authorization from the National Department of Highways (DNER) and other agencies, the tunnel did not move forward. The choice in favor of the bridge was made by the Ministry of Transportation, citing lower costs than the underground connection. Before its construction, ferries transported up to 54 vehicles each trip in the crossing between Rio and Niterói.

During the Castello government, the Funding Authority for Studies and Projects (FINEP) was tasked with contracting the Rio-Niterói connection project. The agency consulted three U.S. firms, causing the Engineering Club to claim in protest that Brazilian companies were capable of developing plans for the project. During the Costa e Silva government, the project was transferred to the DNER. With the plans settled in 1968, it was agreed that the bridge would be 13.9 km long, with 8.9 km over the bay, making it the third-longest in the world. The Navy and Air Force wanted to limit the bridge’s height. Ultimately, a compromise was reached and the height of the central gap was set at 72 meters.

The National Congress approved the construction in the form of a bill sent to dictator Arthur da Costa e Silva, which was signed on October 16th, 1968, becoming Law no. 5512/68. The work relied partially on foreign financing, with a loan from a group of British banks led by the Rothschild family. The English financing of a sum of 31 million pounds (equivalent at the time to Cr$ 438 million or R$ 674 million in current money IPC-SP/FIPE) brought Queen Elizabeth II to the country to break ground on the project in December 1968. Of the three consortiums contracted to complete construction, one was disqualified, and the Rio-Niterói Construction Consortium (CCRN), composed of the Brazilian Road Construction Company (CCBE), Ferraz Cavalcanti, Servix, and Improvements and Construction Company (EMEC) was ultimately chosen to complete the task.The contract was signed on December 4th, 1968 – nine days before AI-5 – at a cost of Cr$ 238 million (equivalent to R$ 366 million in 2014 values, according to IPC-SP/FIPE), and the initial deadline was March 1971.

Construction began in December of 1968 and encountered a series of problems, mainly in the initial phase of building the foundations. Technical difficulties and work accidents were constant, concentrated in the major problems that arose with the support structures on the bottom of the Guanabara Bay. Without the use of modern technological innovations developed from deep-water exploration of petroleum, the foundations were constructed with caissons. The studies completed on the bottom of the bay indicated a maximum depth of 15 meters, but in the area of the central gap, the riverbed was found to be more than 40 meters deep.

Facing continued delays and a lack of progress in installing the bridge foundations, the dictatorship took a measure of force. On January 26th, 1971, the dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici signed a decree expropriating the construction consortium of the bridge, which included all of the equipment and material used in the work. Everything was nationalized, and the consortium tried, unsuccessfully, to reverse the decision in court. The consortium that had landed in second place was contracted. For Cr$ 438 million or R$ 674 million in current values (IPC-SP/ FIPE), the Guanabara Construction Consortium Ltd. (CCGL), formed by Camargo Corrêa, Mendes Júnior, and Rabello and Sérgio Marques Souza, took over the project. The work, nevertheless, would be completed by a separate contract for each administration – different from venture contracts, which were more common in public works at the time.^l A state-owned company, The Construction and Exploration of the Presidente Costa e Silva Bridge Company (ECEX), was created to handle the project. It was subordinate to DNER, which contracted the services out to consortium contractors, paying a profit margin for each service. The contractors complained about this system, overseen by Colonel João Carlos Guedes.

The project ran through the peak of the dictatorship and caused various accidents, many fatal. Ten thousand workers and two hundred engineers worked on the endeavor. Photos of the time reveal the little regard for worker safety, picturing workers with rubber sandals and shorts, shirtless and smoking while they hammered or carried objects. Hardhats and boots were scarce. The number of deaths is unclear. Officially, 33 people died during the project, but some estimate up to 400 casualties, including deaths on the pillars. The engineer Bruno Contarini from the Rabello contractor, contests this version of events:

The idea that the workers were buried in concrete is a myth. During the most serious accident, still with the first consortium, there wasn’t even concrete when one of the foundations toppled over during the load test and eight people died. If any bodies were not rescued, it’s because they disappeared in the bay, not because they were buried in concrete (Cited by Otávio e Góes, 2012).

The worker Raimundo Miranda, who worked on the project, notes the little regard for safety and even for the deaths:“If someone died, we quickly forgot and continued the work. Management came quickly to remove (the bodies). Then, we moved on.”

Despite the problems, the project advanced with the new consortium under the nationalized system. New foreign equipment was ordered, and the foundations were completed with the assistance of German drill rig machines. The work continued on at an accelerated pace in the final stages, and the bridge was inaugurated at the beginning of 1974, three years behind schedule. The minister Mário Andreazza took the first car ride across it on January 15th, 1974, and the dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici led the formal dedication of the bridge on March 4th of the same year. During the ceremony, Andreazza said:

The Presidente Costa e Silva Bridge, a monument to the Revolution of 1964, a great longitudinal coastal highway over the sea, the BR-101, is a majestic endeavor that represents: the decision of the Brazilian people to overcome all obstacles to achieve full economic and social development; the capacity of our engineering to study and execute undertakings of the greatest complexity; the dedication and competence of the Brazilian worker, whose spirit, even in the most dramatic moments, never faltered, having, on the contrary, finished stronger than ever because of the very setbacks that he faced (Cited by Otávio e Góes, 2012).

It is interesting to note that Andreazza directly compared the bridge to the regime established through the 1964 coup d’état. In 1999, Eliseu Resende, acting as a federal deputy and the general director of DNER, did the opposite of what Andreazza did when he made a tribute for the 25-year anniversary of the Rio-Niterói Bridge in a National Congress session. He rightly tried to disassociate the construction of the bridge from the dictatorship:

Although the project was initiated while the military regime was at its peak, the decision to build the bridge was far from an authoritarian one. If only public investment had been, in our history, marked by the same amount of planning and the same legal, democratic, and transparent procedures that preceded the approval of the project and authorized its fulfillment. […] Unlike typical public works in Brazil, the undertaking was completed with less than a year of delay and with an increase in costs of no more than 10% of previously estimated expenses (Cited by Octávio e Góes, 2012).

The bridge traffic exceeded expectations, and within the first year, 20,000 vehicles crossed it each day. The highway model implemented in the country’s transportation system generated heavy demand for the bridge. Soon, the daily flow reached 100,000, nowadays reaching about 150,000 vehicles. The prediction was that the toll charge would compensate for the cost of the bridge within 20 years, but the value was reached in eight years, and since then the toll has been eliminated. In 1995, the bridge was privatized, a toll charge reinstated, and is still managed by contractors today.

The total cost of the project was never ascertained, and the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), even during the dictatorship, tried unsuccessfully to establish a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) in Congress to investigate the issue. The Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) tried to determine the cost of the undertaking, but the investigations were shelved. In 2014, the Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated judicial action to modify the name that makes one recall “a legacy of authoritarianism and belligerence.” Nevertheless, in December of 2014, a judge blocked the name change via judicial means, asserting that the decision must be made by society through its representatives. In the same year, the National Truth Commission proposed a name change to Deputado Rubens Paiva Bridge. Congressman Chico Alencar’s (PSOL – RJ) proposal to change the bridge’s name to the Herbert de Souza-Betinho Bridge was approved by the Chamber of Deputies Committee of Culture in November of 2014. The measure must still be approved in the Constitutional Committee, Chamber Justice, and the Federal Senate. Therefore, the dispute over the name change of the Rio-Niterói Bridge continues in the Legislative Branch.

INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE (IFCS – UFRJ)

INSTITUTO DE FILOSOFIA E CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS (IFCS – UFRJ)

Address: Largo de São Francisco de Paulo, 1, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Universities and the Student Movement; Political-cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro’s Institute of Philosophy and Social Science (IFCS-UFRJ) is an international reference for academic research in the human sciences. The institute is located in an historic building in São Francisco de Paula Square and formed from reforms in higher education that took place in the late 1960s. In 2015, the building held the departments of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and political science (all parts of the IFCS), in addition to the Institute of History (which separated from the IFCS in 2010). During the military dictatorship, the IFCS was one of the key spaces for the student movement in Rio de Janeiro. It was marked by active political participation of academic centers and regular strikes on the one hand and, on the other, violent repression that the regime lodged against students and professors, who were persecuted, thrown out of the university, taken prisoner, tortured, or killed by the State.

IFCS building.

Source: Coletivo Fotoexpandida/Felipe Nin. Used with permission.

IFCS building.

Source: Coletivo Fotoexpandida/Felipe Nin. Used with permission.

The IFCS was founded in 1968 after the dictatorship disbanded the National Faculty of Philosophy (FNFI). At the time, it was known as the Social Science Institute and was located on Marquês de Olinda Street in the Botafogo neighborhood. Many students and professors from the defunct FNFI were transferred to the Institute. Later, in 1969, it took on its present name and moved to the São Francisco de Paula Square in the city center, where it functions to this day.

In 1968, a terrorist attack caused a bomb to explode in the IFCS. Even though the source of the attack remains unknown, it is associated with the Command for Hunting Communists (CCC), since the group also attacked the University of São Paulo (USP) Faculty of Philosophy at a similar time.

The Institute inspired fear in the extreme right during this period, which motivated the attack. Academic centers were highly active and student strikes, constant. The centers organized assemblies and lectures that discussed issues including: university reform, land reform, and cutbacks in universities. They distributed pamphlets that explicitly criticized the country’s political situation. Moreover, some professors incentivized these student activities and organized their own events on similar topics. One such event was a lecture that a professor of American history, Eutália M. L. Lobo coordinated on the topic “Current Problems in Latin America.” Later, that same professor would be forcibly retired and would spend a week in prison in 1969.

As was common on other UFRJ campuses and in other universities, plainclothes state agents, disguised as students, installed themselves in the IFCS to monitor the activities of both students and professors. Consequently, professors’ freedom to organize and plan their classes was curtailed. Assigning readings by authors with Marxist affiliations or ties to the Brazilian left was enough to get the professor in trouble with the police. In the case of students, many disappeared and were tortured because of allegations made by supposed peers.

When law-decree 477 passed in February 1969, the regime started purging professors accused of subversive activities from public universities. The IFCS professors affected include Guy de Holanda, Eulália Maria L. Lobo, Maria Yeda Linhares, and Manoel Maurício de Albuquerque. Those that managed to stay were investigated up until the 1980s. They included Francisco Falcon and José Luiz Werneck. The sociology professor Lincoln Bicalho Roque, an activist in the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) who was forced to retire in 1969, was killed in an attack carried out by Brazilian state agents.

Police return to the streets of the State of Guanabara during a general strike at the University, but there are no clashes or marches.

Source: Arquivo Nacional, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

Plaque in homage to students and professors killed during the military dictatorship.

Source: Coletivo Fotoexpandida/Felipe Nin. Used with permission.

The IFCS departments were devastated in terms of quality of education, since there was not enough faculty to replace those who had been forced to leave. As the public push for Amnesty grew after 1979, professors were allowed to return to the IFCS.

The IFCS students who were killed or disappeared for political reasons during the military dictatorship include Kleber Lemos da Silva, Luís Alberto Andrade de Sá e Benevides, Maria Célia Correa, and Adriano Fonseca Filho (we could also include Lincoln Bicalho Roque who, before coming a professor, was a student at FNFI).

In 2015, the IFCS was still a center when students met to discuss political topics. It was the gathering point for protests and the location for public lectures and assemblies. During the June 2013 demonstrations, the IFCS served as a space of refuge for protesters escaping police brutality and the São Francisco de Paula Square in front of the Institute held a lecture with more than 3,000 participants that would decide on the focus and organization of new protests.

Professors and students defended their convictions during a grave moment in Brazilian history. Today, the IFCS keeps the memory of these individuals alive. Those who have not given up the belief that they can change the world still see this space as a place where discussing the future is possible.

JORNAL DO BRASIL

JORNAL DO BRASIL

Address: Av. Rio Branco, 118, Centro; in 1978, it was transferred to Av. Brasil, 500, Região Portuária, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Civil and Corporate Participation
Translated from the Portuguese by Dylan Blau Edelstein

From unconditional supporter, to moderate critic, to openly declaring itself the newspaper of opposition to the dictatorship in the late 1990s, the history of Jornal do Brasil (JB) is filled with contradictions. Despite suffering censorship and repression, the newspaper was one of the most influential vehicles for disseminating military ideology and supporting the 1964 coup. Even as repression became institutionalized in 1968, which provoked the JB to take a slightly more critical stance, the newspaper continued to follow the path of least resistance, expanding and retracting its support for the regime based on public opinion. A window into censorship under the dictatorship, JB is a benchmark for understanding the history of the press in Brazil.

Founded in 1891 as a monarchist newspaper, one of its founders was the abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco. The paper’s aggressive and doctrinaire support of the monarchy repulsed much of their readership and earned them low regards in public opinion. As a result, the JB newsroom was invaded and plundered on the night of December 16, 1891. In 1893, the newspaper was purchased by a group linked to Rui Barbosa and began to assume a republican stance.

JB would rebrand itself several times. In 1894, it abandoned its more dogmatic style, instead taking a more informative approach to journalism. Due to the excessively high construction costs of its headquarters on Central Avenue, now Rio Branco Avenue, the paper entered into a crisis. This pushed it to rebrand itself once again, this time filling up its pages with classifieds and providing very little in the way of informative content. This lasted until 1954, when new leadership carried out a series of editorial reforms, and the publication once again became a source of information. In 1956, the paper entered a phase of modernization, during which it increased its productivity by 40% and also enacted a number of changes within individual sections of the paper, allowing it to become one of the preeminent news sources in Rio de Janeiro. This reform, spearheaded by Odyla Costa Filho, Janto de Freitas, and subsequently Alberto Dines, was considered one of the most important graphic and editorial reforms in the history of Brazilian journalism. This revamping lasted through 1961, when Dines assumed leadership of the paper.

JB was also the first Brazilian newspaper to adopt a stance of impartiality; or, in other words, it was the first to officially move to avoid providing opinions, instead legitimizing its reporting and winning over readers’ trust with informative and impersonal coverage (Chammas, 2012, p 26).

Following the controversial resignation of president Jânio Quadros, the paper defended the action’s legality and supported João Goulart’s (Quadros’ Vice President, popularly referred to as “Jango”) assumption of the presidency. Carlos Lacerda — the governor of the State of Guanabara, and one of Goulart’s rivals — retaliated with censorship; in 1961, 90% of the paper’s articles were censored. At first, JB supported Jango’s basic reforms and foreign policy. However, the failure of his Three-Year Plan, in addition to his government’s leftist leanings, pushed the paper to break with the president.

The paper denounced the Sergeants’ Rebellion led by commanders, sergeants, and lower ranking officials on September 12, 1963. They also criticized the famous Central Station Rally, the Sailors’ Revolt at the Metalworkers’ Union on March 25, 1964, as well as Jango’s stance on these issues. JB began to cover the government’s reforms as “radical,” affirming in its editorials the existence of a “threat” to democracy. With this, they advocated for an institutional action against the government, even proposing a military intervention, rallying diverse groups to action, namely the military (Chammas, 2012, p. 33).

Following the coup, JB editors celebrated the end of Jango as a democratic victory, treating the coup as a legalist revolution, but also emphasizing that the military regime was just a transitory step towards reestablishing democracy. On April 3, 1964, the front page headline read: “Goulart flees and Brazil returns to normalcy.” On April 5, 1964, the paper announced: “Magalhães comes to Rio to consolidate the revolution’s democratic ideals.” In conjunction, the paper published photos and stories about the new government’s actions against subversive behavior. On April 8, 1964, JB published:

Subversive material weighs in at 15 tons.

Since the revolution’s victory, the Guanabara Dops has carried out 900 investigations, resulting in the apprehension of nearly 15 tons of subversive propaganda material and arms, in addition to “astounding documentation found at ex-President Goulart’s farm in Capim Melado, in Jacarepaguá. At the Campos Railroad Workers Union, authorities discovered subversive material and a list of names of three parliamentarians who were to be shot in the case of a revengeful communist revolution (Jornal do Brasil, April 8, 1964, cover).

Meanwhile, the paper abstained from covering the extreme right’s offensives during the coup, such as the destruction of the headquarters of the newspaper Última Hora and the invasion and destruction of the National Students’ Union. It also failed to mention the political persecution and imprisonment of opposition leadership.

JB had a positive take on General Castelo Branco’s election, believing that a strong executive branch would give continuity to the coup. When the first Institutional Act was established, the paper adopted the military government’s discourse that the intervention would be brief and oriented towards the construction of peace in the country, thus trusting the military with the delineation of rights as a means of overcoming the crisis generated by the previous government. This argument, which used the previous government’s failed measures in order to justify and legitimize the military regime’s actions, was present in the paper’s editorials throughout the dictatorship, particularly during the early moments of the coup.

The newspaper silenced political persecutions and saw the dismissal of public officials as necessary in the face of the country’s recent crisis, especially when it came to the persecution of former president Juscelino Kubitschek, which the paper considered to be legitimate due to the corruption allegations against his government

With the proclamation of the Second Institutional Act (AI-2), JB editorials seemed to oscillate between criticism and praise. At times, they reaffirmed the decree as a response to political crisis; at other times, they criticized the suspension of rights and specific measures, such as incentives for informants, which they categorized as contrary to the “interests of the revolution.”

In 1967, with the indirect election of Costa e Silva, crackdowns in the street increased, intensifying public mobilization against the regime despite the expectation of a gradual opening of democracy. The democratic yearnings that the newspaper had banked on under the army general grew frustrated, particularly following the 1968 prohibition of the Broad Front. Despite this, the paper did not break with the regime, continuing to show its support during various other episodes, including the Osasco and Contagem strikes in the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, respectively, and the student protests of 1968.

From the many important protests in Rio de Janeiro, two in particular stand out: the death of the student Edson Luis in Calabouço, and the so-called “Red Beach Massacre” at the National Faculty of Medicine (FNM), on September 22, 1966. The latter took place following an assembly of the Rectory of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). As students exited, they were surrounded by police and agents from the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS/GB). Restrained and shepherded to the Botafogo Club’s soccer stadium, the students were beaten and arrested. In both protests, JB elected to criticize the specific students for their radical demonstrations, noting that they left the government no choice but to retaliate.

JB’s stance changed following the “Bloody Friday” protest on July 21, 1968, when students organized against the harsh crackdowns they had suffered in previous days. The demonstration began at the Ministry of Education (MEC) and crossed Cinelândia, moving towards the US embassy, where policemen confronted the protestors (students, political party activists, workers, and unionists). The suppression of the protest was extremely violent, resulting in the death of 28 people (Chammas, 2012, p. 95). The newspaper blamed the violence on the federal government’s negligence.

Following this, the press began to cover the regime’s violence and repression more closely. This provoked a host of legal proceedings, as the government viewed increased public mobilization against the regime as a result of images disseminated in newspapers.

Support for students and the mobilization of new sectors of civil society against the dictatorship resulted in the March of the One Hundred Thousand in July 1968. Here, JB assumed a more neutral stance, upholding the protest as legitimate, but expressing reservations for the potential for leftist radicalism and communist infiltration, which would in turn incite an even more violent reaction from the regime.

Following the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5), decreed on December 13, 1968, two military officials invaded the JB headquarters. The next day, the newspaper published an indirect critique of the regime:

Dark times. Suffocating temperatures. Unbreathable air. The country is being swept by strong winds. High: 38^oC, in Brasilia. Low: 5^oC, in Laranjeiras. (Jornal do Brasil, Dec 1, 1968, cover page).

In response, two of the paper’s directors were imprisoned. In protest, the newspaper did not circulate on the following day. That same year, groups from the Center of Army Informations (CIE) led an attack on the JB’s paper depository.

By the start of the Geisel government in 1974, the newspaper began to show signs of a critical shift, denouncing the regime’s nationalizing measures and nuclear deals, the excessive concentration of decisions in the executive branch, and the exclusion of input from the business community when making political decisions. In response to these critiques, the government enacted a range of economic boycotts against JB, pressuring the paper to change its story content. Notably, knowing that a large portion of JB’s revenue (nearly 15%) came from advertisements, the government sent dozens of telegrams to ad agencies demanding that they withdraw their content from the paper. As a result, deals were struck regarding what could and could not be published.

Despite this, the newspaper generally portrayed the Geisel government — as well as the government of his successor, Figueredo — in a favorable light. When the Amnesty Law was passed in 1979, Jornal do Brasil viewed it as a significant step forward for the country, denouncing the way that investigations and prisons had been conducted over the course of the regime. In 1981, the newspaper condemned the sham of an investigation into the Riocentro attack. For this report, JB was awarded the Esso Prize in Journalism.

In 1984, JB took on a more moderate posture when it came to the “Direitas Já” (“Direct [Elections] Now”) movement, criticizing the proposal — put forward by the movement’s most radical segments — for a general strike at the Chamber of Deputies on the day of amendment voting. According to JB, this would inhibit the return of democracy and political normalcy. At the same time, the paper denounced censorship of the free press, as well as the military invasion of Brasília.

In 1988, with the proclamation of the Constitution, Jornal do Brasil put forward various critiques, as they found it to be filled with demagoguery and that its text would render the country ungovernable. In 1991, they released a commemorative edition to celebrate 100 years of the paper, with a retrospective on JB’s long trajectory. When discussing the 60s and 70s, in an article by Zuenir Ventura, the paper referred to itself as an “expression of resistance on behalf of liberty” (Chammas, 2012, p. 25), and also as the paper that “resisted the empire of five dictators.” The edition briefly discussed its support of the military coup, characterizing it as unfortunate, but emphasized the paper’s attitude of resistance in defense of democracy and liberty. As such, JB sought to promote its own image of resistance within the popular imaginary. In 2010, in the midst of a grave financial crisis, Jornal do Brasil stopped selling print copies, instead shifting to an exclusively online platform, which still exists today.

CIVILIZAÇÃO BRASILEIRA PUBLISHING HOUSE

EDITORA CIVILIZAÇÃO BRASILEIRA

Location: Rua Sete de Setembro, 97, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Political-cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

The Civilização Brasileira Publishing House stood out during the military dictatorship for publishing books, magazines, and articles with critical and leftist content. Founded in the late 1920s, the press was later integrated in 1932 into the National Publishing Company (CEN), which at the time was directed by Octalles Marcondes Ferreira. However, it was in the 1950s, when editor Ênio da Silveira became the major shareholder, that the publisher took on the more innovative and progressive editorial lines that it would come to be known for. In 1955, the publisher starting working out of a building on Sete de Setembro Street in the center of Rio de Jainero, a space that became the center of political debate and a meeting place for writers and intellectuals.

With the goal of circulating publications with content, Ênio transformed the publishing house into an important vehicle for cultural resistance. In the testimony he gave to historian Marcelo Ridenti, Carlos Nelson Coutinho states:

The early 1960s is a time when culture flourished. It’s the period, for example, in which Ênio Silveira effectively transformed Civilização Brasileira into a new publishing house for progressive culture. It’s the period in which the Peoples’ Notebook by Violão da rua was published, the time in which some critical Marxist authors began to be published (Ridenti, 2014, p. 48).

The press published leftist intellectual works, released collections and series analyzing the country’s socio-political context, and edited magazines and cultural journals such as Revista Civilização Brasileira, Revista Política Externa Independente, Revista Paz e Terra and newspapers like Reunião and Folha da Semana. The publisher was defined by ideological independence and autonomy even in the most intense moments of repression and censorship during the military dictatorship.

After the 1964 coup d’état, Ênio da Silveira and his publishing house became targets for heavy political persecution. The editor’s stance was combative, and he insisted on publishing works aligned with leftist perspectives and those that expressed explicit opposition to the dictatorship – authors included Antonio Callado, Nelson Weneck Sodré, Ferreira Gullar, Dias Gomes, and others – which landed him in prison and court trials on multiple occasions. During the first months following the coup, Ênio published Moacyr Felix’s first books of poetry and Carlos Heitor Cony’s prose; both were critical of Brazil’s political situation. The editor even hung a banner that read: “poetry is the peoples’ weapon against tyranny.” The sign was later destroyed.

In June 1964, the first Military Police Investigation (IPM) was opened to look into Civilização Brasileira’s actions. According to Heleno Claudio Fragoso, Ênio’s lawyer, the IPM’s goal was to investigate commercial transactions between the publisher and João Goulart’s administration, Ênio’s participation in the Intellectual Workers’ Command (an organization founded in 1963 that acted as a space for activism and represented artists and intellectuals; Ênio directed the group, which held the majority of its meetings in the building of the publishing house), the relationship between the editor and Miguel Arraes, the governor of Pernambuco who was taken prisoner on the first day of the coup, and the publication of the Cadernos do Povo Brasileiro (Notebooks of the Brazilian People), a project overseen by the National Student Union’s Center for Popular Culture (CPC/UNE) and by the Institute of Brazilian Higher Education (ISEB) that Civilização Brasileira then edited and printed. The investigations concluded that the publishing house was guilty of subversive activities and collusion with the National Student Union and João Goulart’s administration. A criminal case was filed against Ênio for the “distribution, either open or clandestine, but always premeditated, of boletins or pamphlets through which prohibited propaganda was spread” (art. 11, parágrafo 3, da Lei no. 1,802, de 1953). In October 1965, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) determined that Ênio was innocent, stating that it was not possible to commit the crime of distributing subversive propaganda through books. Ênio faced two other criminal charges – that of editing “subversive” books (Fundamento de Filosofia (Foundations of Philosophy) by V. Afanasiev and Brasil: guerra quente na América Latina (Brazil: Hot War in Latin America) by João Maia Neto) – after the Department of Political and Social Order of the State of Guanabara (DOPS/GB) carried out a wave of raids of the publishing house in 1969, apprehending the press’s books. The STF determined that the editor was innocent on both charges.

Covers from the Civilização Brasileira Magazine.

Source: Acervo NDH/PUC-Rio. Used with permission.

Covers from the Civilização Brasileira Magazine.

Source: Acervo NDH/PUC-Rio. Used with permission.

Covers from the Civilização Brasileira Magazine.

Source: Acervo NDH/PUC-Rio. Used with permission.

Under the strict censorship of the years that followed, the state seized and destroyed various publications. Many booksellers were intimidated and stopped working with Civilização Brasileira. On top of political persecution, the publishing house was not allowed to enter into business with public institutions and its credit was cut, putting the press in a critical financial situation. In 1966, Ênio was forced to plea bargain and bail himself out with a large portion of his own estate. Civilização Brasileira Magazine, one of the most influential periodicals in politics, culture, and arts at the time, had to shut down in 1968 after the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) was established. Two months after the AI-5 passed, at dawn on October 14, 1968, the publishing house’s bookstore suffered a bomb attack that destroyed half of its facade.

Almost twelve years later, in November 1980, a mysterious fire destroyed the publishing house’s warehouse. One can assume that this attack and others during the period, which were carried out by paramilitary groups, were motivated by right-wing groups’ unhappiness with the process of political opening.

Despite having managed to arrange a plea bargain and lift the publisher out of debt, Ênio still had an unstable business on his hands. In 1985, the editor ended up selling 80% of Civilização Brasileira to the Portuguese businessman Manuel Bulhosa, who later bought the remaining 20% of the company and allowed Ênio to continue as director of the publishing house – a role that he continued to occupy until his death in 1996. Shortly thereafter, the Record publishing group bought Civilização Brasileira, where it came to function as an internal seal of approval, republishing important titles from its former catalogue.

THE BANK WORKERS’ UNION OF RIO DE JANEIRO

Sindicato dos Bancários do Rio de Janeiro

Address: Avenida Presidente Vargas 502, 21 e 22 andar, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Unions and Workers
Translated from the Portuguese by Alby Ferrer Recierdo

One of the fiercer sectors of the labor movement of the 1950s and 60s, the Bank Workers Union of Rio de Janeiro, was one of of the hundreds of labor organizations that were targets for repression soon after the military takeover in 1964. The reputation the union earned during the democratic period (1945-1964) made it a target of the repressive state apparatus installed after the overthrow of President João Goulart. The Bank Workers Syndicate’s first operation happened soon after the coup. On April 28, the Ministry of Labor appointed an inspector to describe the conditions at the headquarters. According to him, the facilities appeared to be “normal,” although there were “unlocked desk drawers and other open drawers, which revealed that they had been lightly tampered with” (Lima Filho, 2006, p. 102). One can note the inspector’s careful description of the conditions of the headquarters after the secret police raid in how he says there was a difference between “unlocked desks” and those that were “lightly tampered with.” The inspector also noted that “even though everything appeared to be in order, there was a clutter of different papers and documents,” adding that vaults had been opened by the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS/GB).

Activist Ronald Santos Barata, a bank worker since 1957, directly participated in the coup on April 1, 1964. Affiliated with the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) [05], Barata was 25 years old when the military assumed power and was working in the Madureira chapter of the group’s grassroots organization, in the North Zone of Rio. When the coup broke out, Ronald and other workers went to Rio Branco avenue and made their way to Cinelândia [09], intending to wait for further instructions and for arms to fight, but the command to spring into action was never given. Left in charge of clearing out the PCB headquarters, Barata got rid of books, documents, and any other material the secret police could use as evidence. According to his testimony to the National Truth Commission (CNV) on August 25, 2014, a parliamentary inquiry was started to investigate the Syndicate’s activities and he and other labor activists were forbidden to enter the organization’s headquarters. For this reason they started meeting with the security guards working at the building, allowing the union to maintain its connection.

Since its founding on January 17, 1930, the Union achieved a number of successes, with the six-hour work day in 1933; the right to job security, achieved after the group’s first strike in 1934; and the founding of the Office of Retirement and Pensions of Bank Workers (IAPB) in the same year.

During the Estado Novo dictatorship (1937-1945), established by Getúlio Vargas, the bank workers decided to invest in their own headquarters using the funds they collected from union taxes. The Syndicate acquired two floors of a building still under construction, located at 502 Presidente Vargas Avenue, in the center of Rio de Janeiro. Since then, the headquarters of the Bank Workers’ Syndicate has remained at the same address.

After the end of the Estado Novo, the organized labor group moved forward in mobilizing bank workers, playing a central role in the organization of the syndicalist movement both regionally and nationally. In the early 1950s, the bank workers carried out the longest running strike at the time, which lasted 69 days. The strike was considered a turning point in Brazilian labor history. Also during this decade, one should note the leadership of Aluísio Palhano, elected president of the Syndicate in 1958 and re-elected in 1961. In 1963 and 1964 he was president of the National Confederation of Credit Company Workers (CGT). Palhano was one of the hundreds of people who disappeared under the post-1964 military regime. He was tortured and killed by the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODI/SP) in São Paulo in 1971. In October 1961, the year President Jânio Quadros stepped down from office, the bank workers of Rio de Janeiro participated in a national strike, achieving various workers’ rights, such as a professional salary and bonus pay. In 1962, the bank workers gained the right to a day off on Saturday.

With the introduction of the military dictatorship, the Rio de Janeiro bank workers were subject to intense persecution, and many of the victories won in the 1930s were taken away, such as the IAPB, abolished in 1966. Regarding this political persecution, the names of four leaders of the bank worker movement appeared on the list of citizens whose political rights were taken away by the First Institutional Act (AI-1), implemented on April 9, 1964 by President Marshal Castelo Branco. They were Aluísio Palhano Pedreira Ferreira, president of Contec and Popular Revolutionary Vanguard (VPR) activist, disappeared in 1970; Salvador Romano Losacco, from the Bank Worker Syndicate of São Paulo and member of the CGT; in addition to Olympio Fernandes de Mello, Luiz Viegas da Mota Lima, and Humberto Menezes Pinheiros, all from the Rio de Janeiro syndicate.

The advisory board appointed by the Ministry of Labor to head the Bank Worker Syndicate ousted the more militant leaders, including president Humberto Campbel. Soon after, at the first meeting organized by the inspectors held in the auditorium of the Automobile Club of Brazil, conflict broke out between the new management and the members, who gathered in large numbers. Military police (PM) were called and stormed the auditorium, dispersing the crowd.

The bank workers suffered massive layoffs, aside from the persecution, imprisonment, and torture at the hands of the the government. According to testimony from Auri Gomes da Silva, who was elected director of the Syndicate in 1963 and had his rights stripped by the military government, military police raided the union headquarters on April 1, 1964. He and others on the board were imprisoned, taken to DOPS/GB [01], and interrogated. Following syndicate elections in 1966, the opposition ticket defeated supporters of the dictatorship, the Regional Labor Agency (DRT) annulled the election, forcing the Syndicate to form a single ticket. More conservative Catholics and more progressive voices/members still affiliated with past leadership settled their differences in order to end the investigation into the organization. By 1967 the Syndicate began to resume its activities, managing to dodge government suppression and organizing small campaigns, like the Bank Worker Housing Cooperative, which had an active role in the Second National Conference of Syndicalist Leaders and in the Anti-Wage Cut movement.

The Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5), established in December of 1968, dealt another blow to the bank workers, with even more intense government suppression. This time, the leaders were imprisoned and taken to the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODI). Auri Gomes da Silva states:

[…] I was put in an icebox, hooded, for days. They didn’t let me sleep, they beat my head against the wall, punched me, kicked me. I was psychologically tortured as well. They told me they would get my family, that they would rape my wife. Thirty days later they brought me back to the bank. They wanted to get some information out of me (Auri Gomes da Silva, testimony to the National Truth Commission on November 19, 2013).

In the years that followed, bank workers were hit hard by the anti-labor policies carried out by the military dictatorship, as were all other workers. In 1972, after intense reorganizing to avoid further problems with the Ministry of Labor, the opposition ticket headed by Edmilson Martins de Oliveira won the syndicate election. However, four months later, their headquarters were once again raided by the police. Some of the union leaders were imprisoned, including the recently inaugurated president. The climate of surveillance and political repression only started to change in 1978, with the beginning of re-democratization.

In the 1980s, after founding the Unified Workers Central (CUT) in August 1983, the bank workers created the National Department of Bank Workers of the CUT (DNB-CUT) – a national organization that brings members of the profession together, currently known as the National Confederation of Workers of the Financial Branch of CUT (CONTRAF-CUT). Bank workers had a strong presence in the struggle for re-democratization in Brazil, aggressively participating in the campaign for Diretas Já (Direct [Elections] Now) in 1984. At the start of the 1990s, the bank workers took part in organizing the Fora Collor (Out With Collor) movement, demanding the impeachment of the first democratically elected president since the end of the dictatorship. They resisted the neoliberal policies of the decade, opposing the privatization of the Rio de Janeiro State Bank (BANERJ), under the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration. The bank workers’ nationally orchestrated resistance hindered the privatization of dozens of public banks.

In the 2000s, during the two Lula administrations, the bank workers got back together under a unified campaign, organizing a series of strikes all over the country. They won new rights, like profit sharing (PLR bonus), a thirteenth salary, and food assistance, among other benefits obtained by way of collective agreements.

PRISON SHIP

NAVIOS-PRISÃO

Address: Baía de Guanabara, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Theme: Repressive Structures
Translated from the Portuguese by Katy Blake Burch-Hudson

Shortly after the military coup in April 1964, the Armed Forces faced overcrowding in prisons and needed to quickly find a space that would hold political prisoners. Their solution was to use military and private ships as locations for prison for the opposition. The majority of prisoners were military personnel that were considered insubordinate and many were members of the Navy and the Air Force involved in offshore activities. Many of them had participated in insurgency movements that preceded the coup and did not support the decisions made by the higher military commanders. Among the prisoners there were also civilians taken as enemies of the recently installed regime, principally, leaders in shipping unions and leftist activists.

According to the National Truth Commission (CNV), the ships were adapted and transformed into clandestine detention centers. The space was divided into small cells and some of the compartments were used as solitary confinement cells or methods of punishment (boiler rooms, freezer rooms, fecal disposal sites). The transformation of the ships into prisons was also motivated by the need to isolate the prisoners, making it difficult for the incarcerated to access relatives, lawyers, and the press, while guaranteeing that the population remained far from these makeshift prisons.

The current President of the Democratic Movement of Amnesty and Citizenship (MODAC), Raimundo Porfirio Costa, told the CNV that the ships were not only used as prisons but also as screening locations. According to his report, when Raimundo was then a Navy Corporal in 1964, he was in charge of receiving the prisoners on the Bracuí Ship. There, they were signed in and then sent to the Princess Leopoldina Ship. The Commission did not find documents that corroborated this report, but during the research for The Ship Book, the Center of Historical Documentation of the Navy, verified that documents referring to March and April 1964 were missing.

Despite this scarcity of information, it is known that in its early years, the dictatorship used a fleet of prison-ships as part of its repressive system, one that functioned officially with public knowledge. This was demonstrated by the warning stamped in the pages of the Correio da Manhã newspaper, on April 8, 1964, issued by Admiral Zilmar Campos de Araripe Macedo to the members of yacht and regatta clubs:

The commercial Princess Leopoldina Ship anchored in Guanabara Bay, halfway to the lighthouses on Laje and Vilegagnon Islands, will now serve as a prison-ship. Access to this ship is strictly monitored and dependent on the pre-approval of naval authorities. In light of the situation articulated above, the anchor area of the ship in reference (characterized by a surrounding 500-meter radius) is considered a prohibited zone, any ship risks hostile retaliation, with firearms (Correio da Manhã, 8 abr. 1964, p. 12).

 The Princess Leopoldina Ship belonged to the Coastal Navigation Company and was taken by the Navy to use as an improvised prison in the days following April 1, 1964. However, it was not the first prison ship. According to a report in the newspaper Última Hora (Última Hora, 9 abr. 1964, p. 2 e 21), this would be the third ship to perform this function: the Ary Parreiras and Raul Soars ships were already completely full (the capacity of the former was 1,000 prisoners). However, it is not known where these ships were moored.

There is little information about the conditions of the prison-ship Ary Parreira, however the sources are more thorough regarding the uses of the Raul Soares. Two books, present witness reports of those who were kept locked in the cells: Raul Soares: A Boat Tattooed on Us; in which Lidia Maria de Melo tells her father’s experience in the prison and Ship Prison: The Other Face of the Revolution, written and released by journalist Nelson Gatto in 1965. The latter was automatically censored and apprehended by the political police. In both cases, the prisoners denounced torture and degrading conditions. However, the reports reference the period in which the ship was under the command of Admiral Júlio Bierrenbach, in Santos. According to the CNV, the ship arrived in São Paulo on April 24, 1964, having then stayed in the waters of Rio only during the first days of the dictatorship.

News outlets emphasized the prisoners’ complete isolation. On May 8, 1964, the newspaper Último Hora reported: “Seclusion suspended: 17 officials visited by relatives” (Última Hora, 8 maio 1964, p. 3). No one, besides authorized officials and prisoners, could board the ships, so the family visits occurred on land, with the prisoners brought to a meeting point in the São João Fort in the Urca neighborhood. The press could not attend these events – only O Globo and Jornal do Brasil newspapers were permitted access – but the relatives told the newspaper, Última Hora that they had not been informed of the motivation behind the arrests or how long the incarcerations would last, and stated that their family had not yet been interrogated. The incarcerated also did not show interest in political circumstances or the state of their fellow prisoners, avoiding statements about the treatment they had received or the hygienic conditions of the premises. The paper was still able to obtain from an unofficial source that there were 500 prisoners on the Princess Leopoldina Ship, most of whom had no contact with the outside world. Later on, other “visits” occurred in similar fashion. In May 1964, the paper Última Hora announced that it was expected for the Leopoldina Ship to stop being used as a prison and would return to the Coastal Campaign. Because of this, the prisons were gradually transferred to other locations on land:

Of the 150 military personnel [on the ship], 60 have already been transferred onto land, some fully released, some released on parole and others transferred to prisons in Army quarters, such as CPOR, Fortaleza de Laje and Duque de Caixas Fort (Última Hora, 8 maio 1964, p. 3).

CNV research also shows that the Custódio de Mello Ship was also functioning as a prison-ship. Belonging to the Navy, with arms and the possibility to be used to transport troops, it was transformed into a prison between April 1964 and January 1965 (Última Hora, Forças Armadas Desmentem Borer: Não Mandaram Prender Etcheverry, 30 abr. 1964, p. 2). During that period, it stayed moored at the east pier of the Cobras Island in the Port of Rio de Janeiro. Its fifteen cabins were converted into cells and the majority of prisoners were sailors, many coming from the Princess Leopoldina Ship.

NATIONAL RADIO

RÁDIO NACIONAL

Address: Praça Mauá, 7, Centro, Rio de Janeiro
Themes: The 1964 Coup D’état
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

The National Radio, which began functioning in Rio de Janeiro in 1936, was hit heavily by the 1964 military coup. It lost important journalists, all of whom were accused of membership in the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB).

It was during the Estado Novo dictatorship (1937-1945) that the São Paulo-Rio Grande Railroad Company handed ownership of the National Radio to the state. In March 1940, president Getúlio Vargas nationalized all companies that belonged to the São Paulo-Rio Grande Railroad Company on the grounds of the debts the company had accumulated, its role in national heritage, the relevance of the companies to public utility, and their importance to national interests.

In the 1960s, Brazil experienced a transition from radio to television. The National Radio was modern with national reach and transmitted by short and medium wave. Its varied programming included popular Brazilian music (MPB) and discussions about the country’s current events. It continued to have high ratings, drawing an audience from “radionovelas” – serial soap operas – and talk shows.

In the early morning of April 1, 1964, Representative Rubens Paiva from São Paulo made a live statement on National Radio defending the legality of president João Goulart’s administration. Paiva would be removed from his position in congress on April 10 after the First Insitutional Act (AI-1) was established and, in 1971, state agents would kidnap, torture, and kill him, according to testimonies in the National Truth Commission (CNV). In his public radio statement, the Representative called students and workers to listen to the National Radio, which was one media institution that defended the legal system of governance.

Pay attention to the message that the National Radio transmits here, and to messages from the other radios in this network of legality. We see it as essential that the people come together peacefully to defend the legality of the reforms João Goulart has taken on, whose administration is, at this moment, listening to the demands of the Brazilian people (Rubens Paiva. Áudio em defesa do governo Jango no dia do golpe de 1964, in Melito, 2014).

In the hours following the military coup, the National Radio gave airtime to other speeches defending legality. Radio actor Gerdal dos Santos remembers that he was at the radio early on April 1 and listening to “Legality Network,” led by Abelardo Jurema, Minister of Justice under João Goulart (“Jango”). That afternoon, various individuals and union leaders took the microphone to defend Jango, and army soldiers and marines had to come take control of the network. When they arrived, the opposition to the military coup had already left the National Radio building on the advice of Maoel Barcelos, president of the Brazilian Radio Broadcast Association.

On April 2, 1964, Mário Neiva Filho was named the new director of the National Radio. From then on, programming would operate under his supervision. An investigative commission was immediately arranged and a process of political persecution against many employees at the radio began. On July 23, 1964, a decree fired the following staff from the National Radio: Heitor dos Prazeres, Dalísio Machado, Edmo do Vale, Elias Haddad, Gerdal Renner dos Santos, Iracema Ferreira Maia, Jorge Neves Bastos, José Rodrigues Calasans (the Jararaca), José Marque Gomez, Mário Lago, Penha Marion Pereira, Rodnei Gomes, Severino do Brasil Manique Júnior, Antônio Ivan Gonzaga de Faria, Adelaide Andrade Teixeira, Epaminondas Xavier Gracindo (Paulo Gracindo), Fernando Barros da Silva, Francisco de Assis Pires, José Palmeira Guimarãesm Jairo Argileu de Carmo e Silva, José Geraldo da Luz, João Anastácio Garreta prates, Jorge Viana da Silva, Mário Farias Brasini, Newton Marin da Mata, Oduvaldo Viana, Ovídio Chaves, Paulo Grazioli, Sérgio Moura Bicca, Vanda Lacerda, Alfredo de Freitas Dias Gomes, Antônio Teixeira Filho, José Gomes Talarico, João de Sousa Lima, João Fagundes de Meneses, and Helmicio José Fróis.

Television would grow in reach in the following years, absorbing many of employees who had been fired from the National Radio. TV Globo, established in 1965, hired writers Dias Gomes and Mário Brasini, actors Mário Lago and Paulo Gracindo, and host Paulo Roberto.

By the time the Military Police Investigation (IPM) was complete, a total of 67 employees were suspended and 81 were fired. The IPM was closed due to lack of evidence, but the broadcaster did not immediately re-hire the accused employees.

In 1975, Decree-Law no. 6,301 established the Brazilian Radio Broadcasting Company (Radiobras), which would manage a range of state broadcasters, including the National Radio. The Radiobras administrative headquarters was located in Brasília, and a manager was selected from each of the broadcast systems scattered around the country.

As part of the struggle for amnesty at the end of the 1970s, those who had been purged from the National Radio formed a commission led by Mário Lago. The amnesty decree was issued in 1979, but it was only in 1980 after a long process that a limited group of punished employees were reintegrated to the National Radio’s staff: 12 could return to work and 14 retired. Though they received amnesty, there was no compensation for the loss of salary from the 16 years in which the employees could not work at the broadcast network – even with proof that the firing had no cause. When the staff rejoined the radio, the National Radio had changed its programming significantly, which meant that only a select few of the former employees could remain at that broadcast service. The others were sent to different companies within the Radiobras umbrella.

A process to revitalize the National Radio began recently, in 2003, through renovations of its facilities and new public positions opened to fill its staff. The Brazilian Communication Company (EBC) came to manage the broadcast network in 2007. Since that date, the radio has functioned out of a new address in the center of Rio de Janeiro: 474 Gomes Freire. The National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN) named the original National Radio site in the Mauá Plaza a national heritage site, but the radio can only return to the building once it undergoes renovations. The 22-floor building was erected in September 1929 and, as the first skyscraper in Rio, was considered a tourist site in the city for many years.

CANDELÁRIA

CANDELÁRIA

Address: Praça Pio X, s/n, Centro, Rio de Janeiro
Themes: The 1964 Coup D’état; Repressive Structures; Civil and Corporate Participation; Universities and the Student movement; Actions by the Catholic Church; State Racism and Black Resistance; Political-cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard.

The Candelária region in the center of Rio de Janeiro has the same name as the church that was built there long ago by Antônio Martin da Palma and Leonor Gonçalves, a Portuguese ship captain and his wife. The pair survived a storm that had threatened to destroy the ship they took to arrive in Rio de Janeiro. Both were devotees to Our Lady of Candelária and promised to erect a church in her honor if they made it to their destination alive. They fulfilled their promise, building a small chapel in the Pio XI Plaza in 1634. The structure was badly maintained, however, and in 1775 construction began to replace the building with a new place of worship, which would only be completed in 1898 and is what we refer to today as the Candelária church. Considered one of Rio de Janeiro’s most beautiful churches, Candelária has the story of its founding told through six panels painted by artist Zeferino da Costa on the church’s roof. The building’s interior is filled with marble, its façade made of stonework, and its doors crafted in bronze by Portuguese sculptor Antônio Teixera Lopes. The vertical façade is part of a gothic tradition, but the building also has neoclassical traces in its detailing and in the ornamented triangular pediment.

The beautiful church bore witness to tragic political events in the 1960s. In a context of increased political polarization and ideological radicalism under the administration of president João Goulart (“Jango”), in conjunction with a worsening economic crisis, groups of right-wing civilians and soldiers openly carried out strategies to destabilize the government through massive anticommunist propaganda. Government agencies in the U.S. and Brazilian and multi-national companies – organized through the Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD) and the Institute for Research and Social Studies (IPES) – financed this propaganda. Many of the domestic business groups, tied to international capital, had benefitted from Brazil’s economic, financial, fiscal, and social policy. Tied to the construction sector, heavy industry, the banking system, and telecommunication, they had become true economic empires.

IPES formed at the end of 1961 and was made up of businesses and military officials.¹ Its central tasks included developing anticommunist propaganda – in the form of lectures, classes, publications, and films – and coordinating other opposition groups – such as Women for Democracy, Christian Workers, War College Alumni – to organize against Jango and the broad-based reforms that the president and his allies on the left defended. ²

When the political crisis was at its worst, João Goulart held events and public gestures, but there was also a key episode for those who organized against the government: the rally that took place on March 13, 1964 next to Central Station and the Ministry of War building in the Republic Plaza. Jango gave a speech while residents of Rio’s wealthy South Zone lit candles in the windows of apartment buildings to protest the broad-based reforms their president announced. With increased pressure from the conservative offensive as well as popular mobilization on the left demanding an articulation of the administration’s stance on policy and way forward, the president stated the need to review the Constitution and signaled coming land reform by announcing that he would sign one decree to expropriate land around highways, federal dams, railroad tracks, and another that would affect private oil refineries. In the same speech, he also questioned the Rosary Crusade religious movement, which brought together women to pray against communism, saying: “rosaries [can’t] be used against the will of the people and their legitimate aspirations.” In the weeks following the speech, this criticism would trigger massive “Marches of the Family with God for Liberty.”

The Central Station rally served as the pretext conspirators were searching for to incite a movement to depose João Goulart from the presidency. After the rally, the process building to the coup progressed dizzyingly quickly, fed by a series of actions and decisions carried out by actors directly involved in the plan. On March 15, Jango sent his proposal for broad-based reforms to Congress, emphasizing the urgent need for structural and institutional reforms in Brazil, implemented through presidential power, and indicated the utility in organizing a plebiscite to gauge popular support for the measures. The first “March of the Family with God for Liberty,” which took place on March 19, had as one of its catchphrases “It’s time for Jango to go.” On March 20, General Castelo Branco, chief of staff for the Army, circulated classified documents criticizing the Central Station rally and the plebiscite proposal. These documents had enormous consequences in the military. In fact, they served as “permission to begin preparations for the coup” (Fico, 2014, p. 56). On March 25, the Association of Sailors and Marines, a group that the Navy did not recognize, organized a celebration of its second anniversary in the Rio de Janeiro Metalworkers’ Union building.

Even though the Ministry of the Navy banned the event, thousands of soldiers attended it and decided to occupy the union building, demanding official recognition for the organization, improvements in meals, changes in disciplinary codes within the Navy, with no consequences for taking part in the protest. After the Ministry failed to arrest the leaders of the movement – thanks to intense loyalty in the marines and support from rear admiral commander Cândido de Aragão, who, however, would quickly be dismissed from his post – Goulart decided to resolve the situation by replacing the Minister of the Navy with another, considered more left-wing, reinstating Aragão as a commander, and sending troops from the Vila Militar to the union building. The sailors involved were taken to the First Army Guard Battalion but were released shortly thereafter. Far from mitigating the situation, the decision caused indignation in the highest ranks of the Navy and Army, as they saw it as proof that military discipline and hierarchy were crumbling. Then, on March 30, Goulart attended the celebration of the 40^th anniversary of the Military Police Sub-officer and Sergeant Association at the Automobile Club of Brazil – another event organized by sub-officers just days after the “sailors’ revolt.” In a speech that was broadcast live via radio and TV, Goulart criticized those who invoked the church in the recent “March of the Family with God for Liberty” in São Paulo and the other similar marches planned in other cities. He also criticized those who accused him of exacerbating a break in military discipline, reaffirming that:

my mandate, as determined by the people then confirmed by the people for a second time, will be carried out in full, in the name of our people, and in defense of popular interest. Those who think reactionary forces are capable of destroying an administration that represents the people are very mistaken (Jornal do Brasil, 31 mar. 1964).

It was in this extremely agitated context that on March 31, in anticipation of other events soon to follow, troops moved from Juiz de For a towards the Guanabara Palace, the government building in Rio de Janeiro. On April 1, 1964, Army tanks occupied the Centro neighborhood of Rio, and particularly the Candelária region, violently repressing protests. At the same time, according to newspaper reports, residents of the South Zone went onto the streets of Copacabana to greet Army troops with carnavalesque fervor and threw paper confetti from their windows.

The second “March of the Family with God for Liberty” took place in Candelária the day after the coup. The march surrounded Candelária church and, because it celebrated the removal of Goulart from the presidency, is also known as the “Victory March.” The rally took place with military support – a convoy of 20 members of the Military Police Cavalry Regiment accompanied the march – and extensive media coverage. Newspapers published ads inviting the people to the demonstration. There was also live coverage of the event on National Radio. People held signs with the following phrases: “The only good kind of red comes as lipstick”; “Real students leave the UNE and wish them well as they burn in hell” – a reference to the fire that took place in the National Student Union (UNE) on the day of the coup; “One, two, three, put Brizola under lock and key” (Jornal do Brasil, 3 abr. 1964). These slogans show the vitriol of the discourse and the extremity of political and ideological confrontation, similar to the dozens of other marches that took place around the country.

On April 9, the Supreme Revolutionary Command, made up of commanders-in-chief of all three branches of the armed forces, established the Institutional Act that granted the temporary Command itself and the future president discretionary power to punish opposition through June 15. The military leaders could terminate the terms of elected officials, suspend political rights, transfer members of the military to the reserves, etc. The Act also specified that the next president would be determined by an indirect, congressional election – they would select General Castelo Branco – and mandated that the elections would take place in 1965, which were subsequently cancelled by the General in the presidency. Delaying the elections shows the power struggle that took place after the coup in terms of institutionalizing the military dictatorship as permanent. The Institutional Act (later called the First Institutional Act, or AI-1) already shows that in its preamble, which stated: “The victorious revolution is determined to exercise its constituent power […] it legitimates itself [and possesses] ruling power” (Brasil, 1964). The 1946 Constitution remained, as did Congress, but with limitations and reservations. In reality, the military in control of political life in the country allowed for the rise of so-called “hard-liners” – more radical groups of high-ranking officials (lieutenants, captains, lieutenant-colonels, and colonels) in charge of Military Police Investigations aimed at persecuting members of the armed forces who supported Goulart, communists, union members, and politicians through an onslaught of violence, repression, and fear that began on the first day of the coup. These radical groups did not just push for a continuation of the “clean operation” beyond the previously determined date; they also called for autonomy to carry out “revolutionary punishments” (arbitrary arrest and detention, the use of torture in interrogations, suspension of political rights, dismissals, transfers of soldiers to the reserves, etc.) against opposition and “subversives.” These are the roots of the Second Institutional Act (AI-2), established in 1965, and the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5), established in 1968 – pillars of authoritarian state repression, expressions of the regime’s political will and determination to remain in power, and the basis for a future “intelligence community.”

Costa e Silva’s tenure began in March 1967 and caused the military regime to intensify its repression. The new president’s cabinet was almost entirely made up of members of the military. Government measures in economics and education generated increased dissatisfaction amongst the population, leading to important workers’ strikes, particularly in the ABC region of São Paulo. The student movement was the most mobilized sector of the population, reaching its apex of activism in March 1968. Youth radicalism took a clear anti-authoritarian stance and generated numerous protests for freedoms and better teaching conditions. A standout protest was one calling for improvements in food distribution and the end of interminable renovations in the Calabouço Restaurant, a space frequented by students in the center of Rio de Janeiro. The aggressive police response to the protest caused the death of high school student Edson Luís de Lima Souto. The student’s schoolmates carried his body to the Legislative Assembly, causing significant public commotion. The lines of protesters against police brutality also communicated a message to the middle class: “They killed a student: it could be your child.”

It was the first clear political killing. The middle class was shocked. It is not random that a chain of dozens of protest would take place in every major Brazilian city (Elinor Brito, president da Frente unida dos Estudantes do Calabouço (FUEC). Depoimento em Reis Filho e Moraes, 1998, p. 163).

In Candelária church, two masses commemorated Edson Luís’s death on April 4, 1968. The first, which took place at 11:30 A.M., found 1,000 people inside the church, not to mention the much greater number that congregated outside. Soon after the commemoration, the police attacked the crowd that was honoring the murdered student. Navy helicopters and Air Force planes flew overhead to monitor the repressive strategy and agents from the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS-GB) fired tear gas indiscriminately at the crowd.

Inside the Candelária Church during the mass honoring Edson Luís.

Source: Arquivo Nacional, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

Gathering in front of the Candelária Church during the mass honoring Edson Luís.

Source: José Inácio Parente. Used with permission.

That same afternoon, soldiers and state agents still tried to disperse the crowds gathering around Candelária, since a second mass had been scheduled for 6:15 PM. Even though the police made their presence in the region clear, nearly 2,500 people gathered inside the church, and the Military Police dispersed people outside. Priests formed a protective line at the end of the mass to avoid a repetition of the police repression that had occurred that morning. The priests managed to stop police brutality around the church, but the police and DOPS agents surrounded countless people elsewhere in the central zone of the city, attacking them with kicks and blows. The result was 380 wounded people and nearly 200 detained in the Santa Cruz Fortress in Niterói.

Edson Luís’s death provoked a series of protests in major Brazilian cities between April and June 1968. On June 21, students gathered in front of the U.S. embassy and were the target of intense violence at the hands of police. According to information from area hospitals, 28 people died from the brutality, while according to the official version, there were only 3 casualties. Hundreds were wounded and nearly one thousand arrested. An outcome of this episode, known as “bloody Friday,” was a protest in Candelária on June 26 that would go down in Brazilian history. With banners and signs reading, “Organizing the people topples dictatorship” and “Down with imperialism,” thousands of people came together around Candelária church to protest repression of the student movement. The protest came to be known as the “March of One Hundred Thousand” because, after 3 P.M., it brought together more than 100,000 people equipped with signs and spray paint who tagged the streets of the city center with grievances and criticisms of the military dictatorship.

The leaders of the student movement planned and directed the march, mobilizing intellectuals, members of the church, artists, and workers. Hélio Pellegrino stated: “People use public space, and then go back to their homes. This is a right to property that needs to be respected” (Arão Reis Filho e Moraes, p. 80). Soon, the march continued to Tiradentes Palace, the Legislative Assembly building for Rio de Janeiro and ended at 5 P.M. without incident.

Soldiers during protests in front of the Candelária Church.

Source: Arquivo Nacional, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

Soldiers during protests in front of the Candelária Church.

Source: Arquivo Nacional, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

There was still no law censoring the media at that point, and so the protest had wide coverage. The newspaper Última Hora even emphasized the ability protestors had to maintain order without police presence, which would have only served to disrupt the peace at that moment. President Costa e Silva agreed to meet with the students as a result of the march, and scheduled a meeting with the movement’s commission. The four basic demands were: reopening the Calabouço mess hall, the release of detained students, the end of police repression, and no more censorship of the arts. Costa e Silva decided, however, to reject all of the commission’s demands.

Given the president’s rejection, a new protest took place in the center of Rio on July 4. Even though it was smaller than the March of the One Hundred Thousand, the protest, deemed the “March of the Fifty Thousand,” stands out for its political radicalism.

During the March of the Fifty Thousand there was a group that shouted: “Organizing the people topples dictatorship.” Another said: “Arming the people topples dictatorship.” And the crowd, in its wisdom, began to shout: “Organizing and arming the people topples dictatorship” (Vladimir Palmeira. Depoimento em Arão Reis Filho e Moraes, p. 113).

However, this would be the last large protest against the regime before the most significant instrument of repression was established on December 13, 1968: the Fifth Institutional Act. This Act, which had already been debated in the highest ranks of the government and military since January of that same year, prohibited any protest of any activity of a political nature, installed permanent political censorship in the press, suspended habeas corpus, and gave the state discretionary power to revoke positions and suspend political rights, to intervene in states, and to shut down the National Congress in addition to determining that cases of state repression could not be heard in court. According to the preamble of the AI-5, the act contained the elements necessary to achieve the goals that the revolution had named for itself, “in order to possess the indispensable means to rebuild Brazil, economically, financially, and morally” (Brasil, 1968). On this grounding, the regime organized a complex system of repression in the heart of the Brazilian state and society ³ that functioned as a web of different agencies (restructured or new, legal or hidden) directed towards surveillance, control, and physical and structural violence. This constituted a structure that would immediately enable a systematic policy of fear in Brazil, one that was inherent to the dictatorship since the coup, and one which would become unprecedented in intensity, scale, and efficiency.

Mechanisms for political violence came into effect with the AI-5, and mass protest movements shrunk drastically as opposition to the dictatorship was forced to go into hiding. This opposition included both the group that did not opt for armed resistance as well as urban and rural guerilla organizations that threatened the regime through military force, until they were completely defeated and dismantled at the end of Médici’s rule (1969-1973) and the beginning of Geisel’s (1974-1978). It was only with Geisel’s political opening (which still maintained security safeguards and continued the repressive practices of torture, killings, and disappearances of leftist militants, albeit with more selectivity) and, above all, with the repeal of the AI-5 and other suspensions of the rule of law in 1978, that a slow but growing set of social movements, civil associations, and political forces could reorganize in Brazil. After Ernesto Geisel assumed the presidency in 1974, a plan for political opening took root in the armed forces, originally conceived of as a “slow, gradual, and safe” opening. (This did not occur without tension and open resistance from the “intelligence community,” which protested the move in the form of attacks that took place through 1981). It was during Figueiredo’s term in the late 1970s and early 1980s that the political opening grew, always with the military under full control of politics.

The regime needed to take a series of crucial measures in order to put their plan into effect. First, it needed to disassemble the major apparatuses of the state of exception, which took place in 1978, and second, it needed to make two decisions that would directly impact the organization and re-articulation of social movements and partisan political life in Brazil. The first decision was passing the Amnesty Law in 1979 which, beyond the “broad-based, general, and unrestricted amnesty” for political prisoners that a growing social movement had called for since 1979, guaranteed impunity and immunity for agents of the state and those responsible for repressive policies. The law formed the political-ideological basis for a deliberate strategy for forgetting, covering-up, and “national pacification and reconciliation” in respect to crimes perpetrated by the dictatorship. At the same time, the law freed the majority of political prisoners and allowed Brazilians to return from exile. The second decision took place in 1980 and consisted in Congress sanctioning the Organic Political Parties Law that reestablished a multi-party system and allowed for the formation of new parties, in addition to other measures.

In 1982, the first direct elections for governor since the beginning of the military dictatorship took place as planned, and resulted in the opposition’s victory in three major Brazilian states: Leonel Brizola of the Democratic Workers’ Party (PDT) won in Rio de Janeiro; Tancredo Neves of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB) won in Minas Gerais; and Franco Montoro, also of the PMDB, won in São Paulo. This victory took place in a political and climate filled with democratic demands from civil society and served to reinforce the call for direct elections of the President of the Republic, so much so that one year later, the Diretas Já – Direct Elections Now – campaign emerged. The nonpartisan movement aimed to pressure the government to reinstate direct presidential elections. The campaign took the form of huge marches and began in 1983 with its first public rally in the state of Pernambuco. In March 1983, Representative Dante de Oliveira (PMDB-MT) presented a constitutional amendment to congress that proposed the return to direct elections for the president and vice-president in the elections planned for 1985, which launched the Diretas Já movement. It was in 1984 that the public organized en masse for the movement. Dozens of demonstrations took place in hundreds of cities in almost every state. To this day, it was the largest popular movement in Brazil’s history. Thousands of people demanding direct elections took to the streets in major cities around the country and various musicians took the stage at Diretas Já movements: Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, Moraes Moreira, who sang the song “Frevo das Diretas,” Fernanda Montenegro, Sônia Braga, and many others.

In Rio de Janeiro, major rallies took place on three dates: February 16, March 21, and April 10, 1984. On the first two days, the gathering point was Candelária and the march moved towards Cinelândia. The final demonstration, which was the largest to take place in all of Brazil, happened in the Candelária plaza and came to be known as the “Candelária Rally.” The Candelária area held roughly one million people on April 10, 1984. The crowd went wild during one speech, when lawyer Heráclito Fontoura Sobral Pinto read aloud the constitutional principle of popular sovereignty: “All power is derived from the people and applied in the name of the people.” Garnering wide-reaching press coverage, the protest featured musicians like Fafá de Belém, who sang the national anthem, in addition to politicians like Leonel Brizola, Franco Montoro, Tancredo Neves, Ulisses Guimarães, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who all shared the podium. Despite the success of the campaign, congress rejected Dante’s proposed amendment. Indirect presidential elections still took place in 1985, and Tancredo Neves was selected with José Sarney as his vice president. Tancredo Neves died due to illness and Sarney was sworn in as president in March. This was the combination organized by the Democratic Alliance, made up of dissenters in the regime’s party – the Democratic Social Party (PDS) – and moderate opposition. And so the New Republic was inaugurated, representing the official end of the military dictatorship in Brazil and the beginning of a “top-down, seamless” transition to democracy, which took place under the strict guidance and veto power of the armed forces.

After the turbulent years of the military dictatorship, the Candelária region was the site of one of the massacres that took place in Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s. At dawn on July 23, 1993, a group of military and civil police opened fired at approximately 70 children and adolescents sleeping around the church. Eight children and teenagers were executed and dozens were wounded that night. The Candelária massacre had repercussions throughout Brazil as well as abroad, and is still remembered in vigils and protests carried out by the mothers whose children were murdered by the state, and by groups and networks of activists organizing against police brutality. Other massacres took place in the city, like the Acari massacre in 1990, which resulted in the kidnapping of 11 people who remain disappeared to this day, and the Vigário Geral massacre in 1993, in which 21 people were executed. Many acts of violence and massacres continued – and continue – to take place in favelas and peripheral communities in Rio de Janeiro, and the vast majority target black and low-income people.

New political protests also took place in Candelária and continue to occur in the area to this day. Notable are the Painted Faces movement in the 1990s and the 2013 protests. The Painted Faces movement brought together young people and students across the country in public protests throughout September 1992, during the impeachment of president Fernando Collor. The youth who participated in the movement painted their faces black, green, and yellow and took to the streets throughout the country to call for Collor’s impeachment and the arrest of businessman Paulo César Farias, who was treasurer for Collor’s campaign and had orchestrated the administration’s corruption scheme. The emblematic Painted Faces march took place in Rio de Janeiro, drawing students from public and private high schools and universities throughout the city and the region. Candelária was the gathering point and the march moved on Rio Branco Avenue to the Mahatma Gandhi plaza, near Cinelândia. Popular pressure for impeachment, along with other factors pushing for the same outcome, had results: after the decision passed through Congress, president Collor was removed from his position and was not allowed to participate in politics for eight years.

Recently, in 2013, Candelária became the gathering space for a movement that came to be known as the “June Journeys.” The increase in public transportation fees was the starting point of the movement, but soon it expanded to include demands for a broad and unrestricted right to the city. Masses of people would meet at Candelária at 5 P.M. and march to the Cinelândia region or to the Rio de Janeiro Legislative Assembly building. Police brutality against the protestors was intense, and people were arrested and wounded from truncheon blows and tear gas. From the 2013 protests through today, many other protests have chosen Candelária as the location to meet and mobilize in Rio de Janeiro.

PEDRO II SCHOOL – CENTRAL CAMPUS

COLÉGIO PEDRO II – CAMPUS CENTRO

Address: 80 Marechal Floriano Avenue, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Universities and the Student Movement
Translated from the Portuguese by Benjamin Brooks

The Pedro II School is a historic federal institution and a standard-bearer for elementary and higher education in Brazil. The school, originally established to meet the Brazilian elite’s need for formal education, first stood on what today is Marechal Floriano Peixoto Avenue, which at the time was Largar de São Joaquim Street (the building was named a national heritage site in 1983 by the Institute for National Historic and Artistic Patrimony – IPHAN). In 2015, it educated more than 12,000 students across the institution’s 12 campuses. During the military dictatorship, the school suffered oppression from the government, and its staff, teachers, and students fought back.

The Pedro II School was founded in 1837, a mere fifteen years after Brazil’s independence, and before Pedro II officially assumed the throne. In an intensely contested period for politics, the school served to reaffirm Brazilian values as it emerged as a nation. The student body was composed of the children of the political and economic elite who would eventually take on important roles in public administration. All other Brazilian schools were meant to follow the education model of the Imperial School of Pedro II (also known as The Pedro II School). Graduating students received the Bachelor in Science and Letters diploma which granted them access to higher education.

The curriculum of the Pedro II School followed European norms and sought to simultaneously affirm Brazilian national identity and establish parity between the “empire of the tropics” and European nations.

After the Proclamation of the Republic, the name of the school changed, first to the National Secondary Education Institute, and later to National School. The republicans’ intention was to extricate the school from its imperial past and the nation-state project it had represented. In 1911, Hermes da Fonseca, president and alumnus of the School, restored the original name.

During the so-called Revolution of 1930, the Pedro II School served as a provisional barracks for displaced troops who supported President Vargas in Rio de Janeiro. During the Vargas regime, the institution served as a laboratory for developing education policy. In 1930, the Minister of Education, Francisco Campos, officially established Pedro II as a “benchmark school” for secondary education.

From 1945-1964, student activism at Pedro II grew threw strikes. Among various internal demands, students called for participation in the school’s decision-making process and an education oriented towards understanding the reality of Brazil. Externally, they collaborated with the university student movement. In 1956, they went to the streets to support a decrease in streetcar fares and, in 1963, to demand discounted entries to theaters and cinemas. They also participated in important political moments, like the demonstration to guarantee tenure for João Goulart’s presidency in 1961.

The coup of 1964 changed the course of education in Brazil. Students and professors that represented threats to the government were persecuted. Therefore, the student movement – university and secondary – became illegal.

In the post-coup context, educators’ proposals for a free, quality public education at a national level were boycotted. The military’s education project responded to the demands of North American agencies (with agreements like MEC-USAID – United States Agency for International Development). The regime’s conception of education was essentially technical in nature.

Within the school, the government also tried to expel professors it considered inconvenient. The director for external affairs, Roberto Accioli was removed and replaced by the assistant director, Carlos Potsch. A director general was installed to supervise the entire school. Teachers were still being fired or ousted throughout 1964, largely through the Commission for General Inquiry of the MEC, using the First Institutional Act. (AI-1). The fired teachers included Hélio Marques da Silva and Bayard Demaria Botteux. Others, like Cleantho Rodrigues de Siqueira, Alberto Coelho de Souza, Roberto Bandeira Accioli and Hélio Marques da Silva were forced to retire without their pensions under the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5), which took effect in 1968.

In 1968, students continued fighting for more freedoms for the student body and for improvements to their education. That year, the Academic Board for the School of Pharmacy of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) met to organize a secondary school students’ movement. But they lost hope after the AI-5 and ordinance no. 477 forced unions to shut down and limited students’ ability to organize. Beyond this, nearly a hundred students were expelled from the school, accused of involvement with leftist movements. From then on, student resistance movements went underground. Meanwhile, despite these challenges, students maintained their access to an outstanding, critical education. Historian Francisco Carlos Teixeira, student of Pedro II School during the military dictatorship, describes his experiences in school as productive, even during this period of authoritarianism:

It was a very creative school. I was in the classic humanities program, which prepared me to study philosophy and letters. We had Latin, Greek, literature, history, and geography classes and two language classes, which in my case were French and German. We read everything from Homer to Brecht […] The environment of Pedro II was far richer than what I found in university (Silva, 2008).

In the 1970s, the school remained under observation for suspicious activities. Throughout the decade, the director general consistently awarded students’ work that aligned with the ideas of the military dictatorship. At the same time, it repressed any kind of opposition. For example, it vetoed the appearance of Chico Buarque and MPB4 in 1972.

The following former students of the Pedro II School were some of the victims killed or disappeared by the state during the dictatorship: Aldo Sá Britto Souza Neto, Alex de Paula Xavier Pereira, Anselmo André Amador Jr., Antônio Sérgio de Mattos, Fernando Augusto Valente da Fonseca (known at school by his code-name, Sandália), José Roberto Spignier, Kleber Lemos, Lincoln Bicalho Roque, Lucimar Brandão Guimarães, Luiz Alfonso Mirando Rodrigues, and Marchos Nonato Fonseca. It is also important to mention the names of João Barcellos Martins and Lincoln Cordeiro Oest, both of whom studied at Pedro II much earlier, but who were also casualties of the dictatorship.

Between 2004 and 2010, Pedro II School underwent its last cycle of expansion with the creation of campuses in Realengo, Niterói and Duque de Caxias. This extension of the school, now split between eight campuses, did not negatively impact student coordination. There remains broad cooperation between student unions across campuses, and the students of Pedro II hold onto their historic reputation for engagement in the country’s important social issues. Resistance to the military dictatorship is a recurring theme in the institution’s memory.

In 2011, with pressure from faculty and students, the school’s removed Admiral Augusto Hamann Rademaker Grünewald’s name from the administration building in the São Cristóvão neighborhood due to his association with those who coordinated the coup in 1964.

In 2014, fifty years after the coup, the various student unions organized an event on April 2 called, “We will not forget: the truth is hard, but we confront the dictatorship!”, in the Mário Lago theater in the São Cristóvão neighborhood. Diverse activities sought to draw critical attention to the historic moment and memorialize the era’s student resistance from Pedro II. In an extraordinary event, on November 14, 2014, the school awarded the title “Distinguished Student In Memoriam” to the former students persecuted by the military regime.

ITAMARATY PALACE

PALÁCIO ITAMARATY

Address: Marechal Floriano Avenue 196, currently 1,426 Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Theme: Regime structure
Translated from the Portuguese by Benjamin Brooks

The Itamaraty Palace had a central role in the espionage and repression practiced during the Brazilian military regime (1964-1985), where the Foreign Information Center (CIEX) operated as a division of the Ministry for Foreign Relations (MRE) tied to the National Information Service (SNI). The principal function of this body was to produce information about foreign issues, and its employees were diplomats at various levels based in several countries. The National Intelligence System (SISNI) was launched in 1964 with the creation of the National Intelligence Service (SNI). Based on a project by Golbery do Couto de Silva, it grew in order to consolidate the new military regime. The SNI quickly gained powers and became a key agency in the regime. Its first leader was Golbery himself, who earned the title Minister of the State. In addition to having broad resources at his disposal, Golbery led an organization that could act without publishing reports on its actions, unlike other prominent public agencies. To summarize, the Service did not have any external checks.

In the following years, the SNI started to branch out, inserting itself into all areas of public administration. As part of this strategy, the CIEX was created in 1966 through a secret decree signed by the Secretary General of Itamaraty, Manoei Pio Corrêa. It was not part of the MRE’s official organizational chart, and even though it was associated with the ministry, it fell under the SNI’s supervision. Similarly, the former Department of Security for Civil Ministries changed its name to the Security and Intelligence Divisions (DSI) and would be installed across all thirteen existing ministries. The various divisions served under the titular directors of the ministries as well as under the SNI itself. The military ministries also contained intelligence agencies. Among them, the Army Information Center (CIE), the Aeronautical Information and Security Center (CISA) and the Naval Information Center (CENIMAR) all undertook security operations, unlike the other intelligence agencies mentioned. Together, these State agencies came to be known as the “intelligence community.”

After the 1964 coup, Pio Corrêa, took over the Brazilian embassy in Montevideo. He would directly participate with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations surveilling exiled Brazilians and receive support from the CIA base in Montevideo to infiltrate groups of exiles. In January of 1966, Pio Corrêa was named as the Secretary General of Itamaraty during the Juracy Magalhães administration, a position he remained in until March 1967. As secretary general, he managed matters related to international security. In his memoir, he recounts his various meetings with the National Security Advisor held during his tenure and stayed in close contact with General Golbery do Couto e Silva.

During the military dictatorship, the exchange of diplomatic information, through telegrams, ordinances, and memos, came to serve as one of the regime’s instruments in combating international communism. The Itamaraty started acting as an intelligence agency for the State. The CIEX monitored the actions of Brazilian exiles abroad, and reported back to the Brazilian authorities. At the same time, they collected strategic political, economic, and military information about nations that interested Brazil. It typically followed the foreign press and the publications written by Brazilians of their own exiles. Nevertheless, publications written by Brazilians abroad are noteworthy in their condemnation of the regime’s use of torture and other repressive practices. The main function of CIEX and of DSI-MRE was to produce information to feed into SISNI. These groups routinely produced reports about international organizations, monitored the regime’s opponents (Brazilian or foreign), controlled the issuing of passports and visas, spied on foreigners within Brazil, the regulation of land and air migration, incorporating its own functionary body, investigated international crimes – in sum, its purview included everything that could put national security at risk. Diplomats collaborated with the system, conducting routine activities like writing classified reports about the day-to-day of exiles abroad. Beyond this, in international forums, they defended the need for such repressive actions against the supposed “communist threat.”

In this way, the importance of CIEX’s observations about a given country were directly proportional to the presence of Brazilians in that place. This is seen, for example, in the increase of intelligence on European countries as a function of Brazilian migration to the continent, primarily after the Chilean coup on September 11, 1973, and then a decrease after migration lessened with the passing of the Amnesty Law, and exiles gradually returned to Brazil. The organization steadily developed a sophisticated system for the collection, analysis, and distribution of relevant political information, and of exiles’ intimate relationships. Foreigners that took action against the regime were also surveilled, and one of the forms of control used against them was the manipulation of visas by Itamaraty.

The confidential documents of the Brazilian intelligence agencies – the result of specially trained professionals – are mostly concise, analytical reports aimed to help government authorities make decisions, and were even used by the president of the republic. One of the primary functions of these agencies was to record the current statuses of opponents to the regime with the supposed goal of guaranteeing national security. Reading the documents reveals the methodical practices of the individuals who made this system work, a system designed not only to gather information but also to produce information that would justify the persecution of its adversaries.

The reports, in general, begin with a standard heading that states the document’s degree of confidentiality, the date, the subject, the agencies to which it would be distributed, and even an assessment of how credible the information was. The circulation of these papers amongst the agencies within the SISNI 一 and even among other repressive states agencies 一 captures the meaning of the expression “intelligence community,” a term that many agents closely identified with.

During the military dictatorship, there were two major waves of emigration by Brazilian exiles. The first took place in the wake of the coup and was composed mostly of leftist political figures, as well as journalists and intellectuals who shared certain proximity to leaders of the deposed government in the previous democratic government. These were, in general, older men with clearly defined professions, associated with political parties or unions, who identified with the agenda of broad-based reforms that the coup halted. Respected politicians and intellectuals were in this group, and they viewed their exile as the defeat of the plans they had for Brazil.

Although some of the exiles from this first phase went directly to France, they mostly concentrated in Montevideo, which became, initially, an exile-capital. Their decision to exile themselves was also tied to the possibility of continuing their activism and planning their return.

After the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) was established in 1968, resulting in the reorganization of the regime’s repressive apparatus, another group of Brazilians began to exile themselves. This group was composed mostly of young activists who started out in the student movement and who then left those groups to join the armed resistance. These individuals were very critical of traditional party practices, above all the positions that the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) [05] defended, and wanted to institute new forms of political participation closely linked to revolutionary operations. For them, the exile was a fundamental moment in their professional and personal formation.

Chilean socialism, under the Popular Unity (UP) government of President Allende beginning in 1970, made Santiago extremely attractive for Brazilian exiles. The military coup in Chile spawned the departure of a second wave of Brazilians to Europe, particularly to Paris, and to Lisbon after the Carnation Revolution. The expulsion to another continent represented a new phase of the exile. The idea of returning was less present than in the first wave of exile, and Brazilians abroad faced clear challenges regarding language and culture, making it difficult for them to engage with European society. With the beginning of the decolonization processes across Africa, new possibilities emerged for Brazilians. Essentially, it was uncommon for exiles to stay in just one country, in large part due to their challenges adapting socially and professionally.

When the slow process of political opening began in Brazil during the Ernesto Geisel government, the activities of CIEX remained largely unaffected, and continued functioning without interruption, reporting directly to other branches of the intelligence community. This was despite the fact that there was a gradual dismantling of the agencies within the regime’s repressive apparatus. CIEX operated with considerable independence within Itamaraty and, despite being staffed by officials of the MRE, it remained under SNI’s control.

A large part of the government saw the maintenance of a robust intelligence service as indispensable. One of the first measures taken by Geisel was to appoint the former director of the Military Cabinet under President Médici, João Figueiredo, as head of the SNI. Figueiredo understood the inner workings of the regime more than anyone, and although his job was to lead a secret organization out in public, he consistently acted to preserve and prioritize the intelligence community.

The documents that spies produced suggest their commitment to multiply the possible threats to security in Brazil. They worked to stimulate increased repression and to legitimize their own existence as an organization. Thus, the SNI kept its important role during the Figueiredo administration. However, the radical elements of the intelligence community had already been substantially discredited. Even so, it was only in 1985 that the CIEX stopped functioning, and five more years would pass before the SNI went defunct under the Fernando Collor de Melo administration.

The self-legitimizing espionage that the CIEX carried out even had repercussions within the intelligence organization itself. In 1969, the then first secretary Vinicius de Moraes was forced to retire from active service after alleging that he was a nightclub singer for more than a year and then, for another year and a half, showing up to the ministry only to collect his paycheck. Charged with “bohemian excess and lack of diplomacy,” and shortly after, as a “little vagrant poet,” he was definitively cut from the ranks of the Itamaraty. This was one of the first forced resignations after the issue of AI-5.

The Vinícius de Moraes Space opened in 2006, in the Itamaraty Palace, as part of a ceremony that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) held to bestow him with posthumous reintegration into the ranks of the Foreign Relations Ministry. This recognition came almost four decades after he had been cleared of the charges brought against him as part of the “witch hunt” that followed the passing of AI-5, in December 1968.

During the ceremony, the Alexandre de Gusmão Foundation (FUNAG) published the book Embaixador do Brasil (Brazil’s Ambassador), with testimony from diplomats about Moraes’ life and work. In the book’s introduction, Minister of Foreign Relations Celso Amorim (2003-2010) declared the principal aim of the reparation act was to:

Reverse the injustice perpetrated by the military regime that prematurely expelled the former first secretary as part of the “witch hunt” in public service. […] Even though he was a competent diplomat who diligently fulfilled his functions in Itamaraty, he was a victim of the intolerance that characterized the regime (Brazil’s Ambassador, 2010, p. 7-8).

ZUMBI DOS PALMARES MONUMENT

MONUMENTO A ZUMBI DOS PALMARES 

Address: Avenida Presidente Vargas, canteiro central, Praça Onze, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: State Racism and Black Resistance; Political-cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Benjamin Brooks

The Monument to Zumbi dos Palmares, located on President Vargas Avenue, is the center of an architectural complex that aims to honor the presence of Black culture within the history of the city of Rio de Janeiro.The monument to Zumbi dos Palmares is 23 feet tall; a pyramid of white marble supports the statue of his head, made of nearly two tons of bronze.

Zumbi was one of the last leaders of the Quilombo dos Palmares and stands as a symbol for the resistance to slavery. In addition to the Sambódromo and the Municipal School of Tia Ciata, the monument revives the memory of Plaza Eleven, known as “Little Africa” up until Pereira Passos became mayor of the city in the early 20^th century and enacted a series of urban reforms.

The three structures symbolize the history of political resistance, the struggle for freedom, and the fight against racist and arbitrary urban interventions. Similarly, the performance and gatherings around samba, played and danced to in public, along with capoeira, maculelê, and many other Black cultural references, represent important elements of the movement. Fruit of the Black Movement’s labors, the Zumbi Monument was originally envisioned to stand in Carioca Square, where the stone base was set in 1982. The project was transferred to the Flamengo Park in 1983 by State Representative José Miguel (PDT), but only in 1986 was the monument finally built in Plaza Eleven, during the Leonel Brizola and Darcy Ribeiro government. The latter, declared at the monument’s inauguration:

[…] Let’s make this face bigger (the original at the Museum of London is a foot high) instead of making a portrait of the hypothetical Zumbi (decapitated on November 20, 1695) because this hero embodies the dignity and beauty of the Black face. For this, we celebrate Black people’s participation in the construction of Brazil and the fight for freedom (Darcy Ribeiro apud Soares, 1999, p. 127).

The monument was inaugurated on November 9, 1986 with the aim to represent Black consciousness, but the place was also used for public acts that sought to memorialize the broad processes of Black expression, reflection and critique, as institutionalized racism continued on in Brazil. An emblematic example of this was the 1988 March against Fake Abolition. This was the second milestone at a national level for the present-day fight against racism following the 1987 protest on the steps of the São Paulo Municipal Theater, a foundational act of the Unified Black Movement.

Highlights from the Black movement during the military dictatorship.

Source: Januário Garcia. Used with permission.

Highlights from the Black movement during the military dictatorship.

Source: Januário Garcia. Used with permission.

On May 11, 1988, the “Black March against Fake Abolition,” in Rio de Janeiro united more than 5,000 people that intended to walk from Candelária to the Zumbi dos Palmares Monument. However, more than 600 heavily-armed soldiers manned barriers to impede the march. It was 1988 – the centennial of the formal abolition of slavery – and the military harshly repressed a public, anti-racist demonstration, one that critiqued the flaws of instituted abolition of slavery on May 13. On one hand, the Zumbi Monument and a march for equality and freedom; on the other, the Statue of Caxias – patron of the Army – and state repression that stalled the progress of the march.

In front of the IPCN (Institute for Research and Black Culture), around the time of the March, Januário Garcia gave his testimony to the Truth Commission in Rio:

[…] In ’88, we marched on May 13, the March of Fake Abolition, and it was so strong that the 4^th Army Batallion showed up in the streets with tanks to stop us because we had raised a very important question at the time, which was the war with Paraguay. We raised the question of Black platoons that went to war without weapons, barefoot, the ones Caxias sent to their deaths. And the Bishop Dom Hipólito, while in the city of Duque de Caxias, suggested changing the name of the municipality because it was named after a psychopath. Then, Brother David, who was the priest of the São João de Meriti Church, said that we were going to march from Candelária to the Zumbi monument, but that we would stop in front of the Pantheon of Caxias and make ourselves heard. That was it, man. It was the army that came out to the street. […] We were in Candelária, and if you were a guy who was marching, the farthest you could go was Uruguaiana; we couldn’t go any further. And the Army coralled people in the Central Station, all over the place, anyone with paper in hand, flag in hand, they’d just take them, hit them, took them away. Then the time came, the commander arrived […] I don’t know if he was a coronel, I don’t remember, and he said that we couldn’t head towards the Zumbi monument, he said that we had to go towards Cinelândia. And we said, no, that we were going to the monument. He said he’d stop us, whatever, whatever. And in that moment, I got into the argument, I was the president of the IPCN at the time and this meeting was planned entirely within the IPCN, the coordination was done within IPCN and I answered politically for the IPCN at the time. I said, coronel, it’s like this, we will march as far as Army’s racism allows us, but we are going in that direction. And we went, we went up until a certain point. When we got there, there was a police unit waiting that wouldn’t let up. They’d set up a barrier, had a police vehicle, everything, and we couldn’t get through (Januário Garcia. Testimony to the CEV-Rio on May 2, 2015). 

In the same vein, Jurema Batista, who also participated in the march, explains what took place in an interview with Ricardo Brasil on Cultne on TV:

It was the thing for the 100 years after the abolition of slavery, the government was commemorating the way slavery had ended, as if we were living well, while we in the Black community organized on the streets to assert that true abolition never happened. While Blacks are disproportionately imprisoned, killed by stray bullets, and out of schools, we do not live in a comprehensive democracy. Especially in that moment, a lot of things have changed since back then and a lot still needs to be changed, but that year, 100 years later, 1988, was even worse than it is today. And we went to the streets, it was a peaceful protest, to protest the condition of the Black Brazilian 100 years after abolition. And to our surprise, we didn’t expect it, but the Army was in the in the streets blocking our way. We did it; in the video you can see people yelling, “No,” “We fight against oppression,” and we didn’t want to stop and we fought. The next day, it was on the front page of all the papers, and we left there stronger than before. […] Our fight, like it was during slavery, is against a society that sees us as a threat even when we come in peace. I didn’t have an AR-15, I came in peace. The women had flowers in their hair (Jurema Batista. Interview with Ricardo Brasil con Cultne on December 9, 2015).

Highlights from the Black movement during the military dictatorship.

Source: Januário Garcia. Used with permission.

Highlights from the Black movement during the military dictatorship.

Source: Januário Garcia. Used with permission.

The Army’s overreaction stood in stark contrast to the measures taken a hundred years earlier: “A hundred years ago, the Army refused to stop a march of slaves that sought liberty. Do not stop the descendants of slaves searching for freedom today, those who continue to seek the full benefits of that freedom from the country that still denies them” (Amauri Mendes. Interview with Ricardo Brasil with Cultne on December 9, 2015.). The monument, built in the period of political opening, intended to represent the memory of Black consciousness. Yet, it represented, in 1988, the presence of racism and the excessive response by the armed forces in a march for freedom and equality.

GUANABARA STATE FEDERATION OF FAVELA ASSOCIATIONS

FDEREAÇÃO DAS ASSOCIAÇÕES DE FAVELAS DO ESTADO DA GUANABARA (FAFEG/FAFERJ)

Address: Praça da República, 24, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Favela Displacements
Translated from the Portuguese by Benjamin Brooks

The Federation of Favela Associations of the State of Guanabara (FAFEG) was founded in 1963, in the context of policy change in relation to favelas in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The governor at the time, Carlos Lacerda, opted to displace the overwhelming part of Rio’s favelas, to the detriment of these areas of the city, which underwent intense urbanization during the military coup of 1964.

To suppress outcry from the favela residents, FAFEG and other informal resistance initiatives were harshly repressed. Thus, various leaders of the Federation were imprisoned and the removals of the period of the dictatorship were marked by the presence of agents by the Department of Social and Political Order (DOPS/GB) and of other groups in the regime’s repressive apparatus.

Favela community organizing did not begin with FAFEG. Some sources indicate that the first attempts to organize favela residents date back to the 1920s and others confirm that the first commissions and associations of favela residents grew in the mid-1940s. However, in 1954 the Union of Favela Workers (UTF) was founded as the first organization to promote cooperation between residents of the city’s different favelas.

The FAFEG gained civil status in August 1963, and was composed of 28 affiliated organizations, mostly from favelas in the North Zones and the city center. The organization’s statute was not radical or revolutionary in nature, as evidenced by one of the decisions stated in the statute’s second article: “to rigorously observe the law and the moral principles of understanding that guide civic duty.” Members of the provisional FAFEG leadership were involved in the “Moral Rearmament” movement, an anti-communist group that acted in concert with the Social Studies Research Institute/Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IPES/IBAD) within favelas. In October 1964, the organization held its first conference. At the time, Brazil was already under dictatorial rule, but FAFEG was not yet affected by its repression.

The removal of the Skeleton Favela, where the Rio de Janeiro State University is currently located, is emblematic of the change in FAFEG’s actions, which began after the first conference. Intensified dictatorship repression against the organization accompanied the shift. Then president, Etevaldo Justino de Oliveira, was arrested by the DOPS/GB when he promoted a plebiscite to resist the displacement of the favela. In 1965, board elections took place for the next two-year term, during which the organization would represent 54 neighborhood associations. João José Marcolino led the winning ticket, leading the opposition against sitting president Etevaldo. The change in leadership marked the board’s move away from leaders tied to the “Moral Rearmament.” But the period in which this board led the organization was a relatively calm phase of displacement policies. Vicente Mariano Ferreira won the following election in 1967. On the ticket were militants from the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), the Young Catholic Workers (JOC) and Popular Action (AP). The election of the new board signified the start of a new markedly combative position for the FAFEG, further removed from the original identity of the organization, one that sought to distance itself from the broader political struggle.

At that time, the FAFEG took up the fight against favela displacements, which had begun with renewed force in 1967. The fight intensified in the following year with the creation of the Metropolitan Area Housing for Social Interest Administration (CHISAM) by the federal government. Linked to the National Housing Bank (BNH), the entity’s objective was to establish specific policies for favelas, bringing the issue to the federal level.

The FAFEG was not inactive in the face of these new changes and organized its second conference for November of 1968. The organization was now composed of more than one hundred affiliated resident associations. Preparations for the conference took place during the entire month of November, with meetings in various sectors of the city set up to present propositions to the residents of each area. Union Park, Borel, Catacumba, and the Central region hosted the sessions. On November 30, the plenary session occurred at the Independent Drivers’ Union. On December 7, in the same location, they held the closing ceremony of the FAFEG’s second conference. The sentence that defined the gathering, that would become the battle cry for the group from that point on, was: “No to displacements, yes to urban reform.” Beyond that, the conference concluded with demands to end State control over the associations and regulations of favela residents’ land ownership. The closing ceremony happened days before the enactment of Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5).

The displacements that occurred from then on were carried out with an increasing degree of violence. In the process of eradicating favelas around the Rodrigo de Freitas Lake, several of the organization’s leaders were arrested. The repression of the FAFEG, the violence used in the displacements, and the state’s control over the associations forced the movement to quiet their efforts and take increasingly fewer radical positions.

In January of 1971, only one candidate competed in the elections for the board of the Federation. The Secretary for Social Services accompanied the electoral process, and the Secretary of Security evaluated the proposed candidates beforehand. The platform of the sole candidate was one of collaboration with the state government. Nevertheless, the group organized its third conference. Though FAFEG defended fighting displacements, the topic was presented as though it were unrelated to broader political concerns.

At the end of the 1970s, political groups tied to the PCB and to the Revolutionary Movement of October 8 banded together and met in the Church of Our Lady Salette, in Catumbi, to demand new elections. At the time, neighborhood movements represented the desire for democratization on the part of Brazilian society, and the organization, whose name later became FAFERJ when the state of Rio de Janeiro replaced the state of Guanabara, was frequently monitored by dictatorship intelligence agencies.

CÂNDIDO DE OLIVEIRA ACADEMIC CENTER

CENTRO ACADÊMICO CÂNDIDO DE OLIVEIRA (CACO)

Address: Rua Moncorvo Filho, 8, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Universities and the Student Movement
Translated from the Portuguese by Benjamin Brooks

The Cândido de Oliveira Academic Center (CACO) of the National Law School (FND) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) is an important entity for student representation in Brazil. Located in the Conde dos Arcos Palace, which houses the FND and once housed the Brazilian Senate (during imperial period and part of the republican era), at Rua Moncorvo Filho, 8, Caco’s origin was born from the need for law students to organize in 1916. In 2015, Caco represents more the more than three thousand students enrolled in the UFRJ law school. During the military dictatorship, it garnered attention in its fights for political change in Brazil.

The FND formed from the integration of two private law schools: the Free Law School and the Free School for Juridical and Social Sciences of Rio de Janeiro. In the former, students gathered and created a literary legal union in 1916. In 1920, the FND was incorporated into the University of Rio de Janeiro (later to become the University of Brazil, then the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). Thus, the literary legal union became the Cândido de Oliveira Academic Center, named in honor of a professor.

In the political climate of the Vargas Era in the 1930s, there was wide ideological polarization among FND students (largely split between fascist “integralism” and fundamentalism). After a communist rebellion in 1935, three professors were dismissed: Edgard de Castro Rebelo, Leônidas de Rezende and Hermes Lima, all accused, with assistance from fundamentalist students, of favoring communism.

Conversely, the academic center steadily grew in prominence within the student movement, until 1943, when, under the Estado Novo dictatorship, the academic directory of the FND fused with CACO, becoming the official representational body for those students. In this same period, the FND relocated to Rua Moncorvo Filho, in the center of the city.

CACO continued as an important character in the political and social history of Brazil, positioning itself in favor of the country’s involvement in World War II. In the 1950s, it was important in its defence of state monopolization of petroleum and expressed support for the Juscelino Kubitschek administration, which did not want to meet certain demands imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), when faced with expansionist policies.

The intense politicization within CACO redefined itself in the 1960s. New leftist political forces allied themselves with the academic center, including Workers’ Politic (POLOP), Popular Action (AP), and The Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). The flags that CACO defended in this period were in defense of mass education and university reform.

On April 1, 1964, supporters of the coup attacked the FND building. There were accounts of advances by the Command for Hunting Communists (CCC) and the civil police in the area in front of the university known as “CACO Square.” Ari de Oliveira Mendes Cunha, a bystander, was shot and killed during the encounter. Other attacks in the area by supporters of the coup claimed a second victim: Labibe Elias Abduch, who, like Ari Cunha, had no relation whatsoever to the student movement of leftist groups. Students from various programs locked themselves in the FND building to protect themselves against a possible invasion. They did not suffer major consequences because of the actions of Captain Ivan Cavalcante Proença who, along with his subordinates and a tank, dispersed the attackers. As a result, he was jailed by the regime.

In the days that followed, police raided and destroyed the CACO offices. The students connected to the academic center were detained and held in internal disciplinary processes.

In November of 1964, the Suplicy de Lacerda Law sought to eliminate any student political action at a national level, instituting the operation of Academic Directories (DAs) as restrictions on each program and excluding their participation in politics. In 1965, FND students opposed to the dictatorship refused to participate in the official elections, organizing “Free CACO” in opposition to the “Official CACO,” which submitted to the government. The “Official CACO,” organized by students identified as the conservative Academic Liberator Alliance (ALA), lost representative space within the FND to “Free CACO.”

In 1966, “Free CACO” raised a flag against annuity payments in public universities. The group’s prominence can be understood in the importance that its president, Wladimir Palmeira, had in the Brazilian student movement. In 1968, the academic center mobilized to particpate in the March of the One Hundred Thousand.
With the intensification of the military dictatorship, former leftist student militants of the FND went into hiding, fled the country, or ended up captured and tortured by the regime. In the case of the kidnapping of ambassador Charles Elbrick in 1969, Maria Augusta Carneiro Ribeiro (former vice president of CACO) and Vladimir Palmeira (former president of CACO) were activists who were imprisoned and then exiled. Former FND student, Antônio Sérgio de Mattos, regional leader of the National Liberation Action (ALN), met a different fate: in 1971, he killed in São Paulo in an ambush organized by the Information Operations Detail – Internal Defense Operations Center (DOI-CODI) of the II Army.

Beginning in the 1970s and the period of political opening, public universities experienced a moment of crisis due to purges of professors and students. The quality of education at the FND suffered because it did not have sufficient teaching staff. When CACO reclaimed its legal status in 1978, it tried to reconcile its activist tradition with demands for improving the teaching quality. One of the consequential actions that sought to resolve FND’s internal problems was the students’ invasion of the university council in 1986. The students accused the director, Atamir Quadro Mercês, of administrative failure and demanded improvements in the Conde do Arcos Palace facilities, and in teaching methodology.

After Brazil’s return to democracy, the Cândido de Oliveira Academic Center stayed active. In 1992, it supported the impeachment demonstrations of former president Fernando Collor de Meio, who was later removed from the position on active corruption charges.

In June 2013, CACO participated in demonstrations and the FND faced a siege by the Rio de Janeiro Military Police (PM). This recent police intervention suggests that CACO remains an important space for the expression of student activism in Rio de Janeiro.

In the 2000s, the space’s presence as a site for student resistance is notable in CACO’s efforts to preserve the memory of the students who confronted the military dictatorship. On September 1, 2010, he UFRJ held a ceremony to pay respects to former student Antônio Sérgio de Mattos, honoring him with a plaque in the FND building.

SUPERIOR MILITARY TRIBUNAL

SUPERIOR TRIBUNAL MILITAR (STM)

Address: Praça da República, 123, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Repressive Structures
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

The Superior Military Tribunal (STM) was established through article no. 106 of the 1946 Constitution, consolidating the military’s ability to judge crimes perceived to be a threat to national security in addition to defining how the court would function and be structured. The STM heard appeals in the Military Courts, a system that already included the Council for Military Justice and the Military Courts. Even though they were legally designated only for trials of members of the armed forces, the military courts also came to judge civilians because of institutional acts passed under the dictatorship. Consequently, the courts became a branch of the repressive structure targeting political opposition. The shift required building a legislative and institutional framework for the persecution of dissidents, one that masked cases of human rights violations with the illusion of legality. The STM building was located in the center of Rio de Janeiro through 1973, when it was transferred to the new capital, Brasília. It should be noted that the experience of this period in Brazil differed from that of other countries in the Southern Cone such as Argentina and Chile in how Brazil’s dictatorship did not create an entirely new judicial system, but maintained its former structure while broadening the scope of the military courts.

Military courts had been present in Brazil since 1808, which is when the Superior Military Council, an entity that can be seen as the precursor to the current STM, was formed. With the emergence of the Brazilian Republic, the Council became the Superior Military Tribunal, but it was only with the 1946 Constitution that the court was integrated into the Judiciary Branch, with ten official judges and five members of the armed forces on its bench. Other military courts were also located in Rio de Janeiro, each made up of one official judge and four members of the armed forces, which acted as the first step before appeals in the justice system. Each Brazilian state had a military court except for Rio de Janeiro – which had seven courts, two from the navy, three from the army, and two from the air force – and São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, which both had three courts. Under the dictatorship, decisions from the military court were grounded in the 1938 Code of Military Justice, the 1944 Penal Military Code, the 1946 Constitution, and the 1953 National Security Law, which altered the jurisdiction of the court as new decrees and laws passed. One could say that the “set of 17 institutional acts reveals the strengthening of the executive branch, which […] began overriding the other branches of government, especially the judicial branch” (Brasil, 2014, p. 936).

Legal texts produced between 1967-1968 lengthened sentences and broadened the set of actions considered to be threats to national security, showing how “In authoritarian systems, national security laws […] are laws meant to deal with specific situations” (D’Araújo, 2010, p. 225). It is not random that crimes such as bank robbery, which up until the dictatorship had been tried in civil court, came to be a crime against national security with the goal of giving harsh sentences to activists in leftist political organizations. Ultimately, this resulted in military trials against civilians who were not necessarily connected to political or ideological movements (D’Araújo, 2010, p. 228-229).

Immediately following the 1964 coup and the creation of the First Institutional Act, very little changed in the judicial branch. In other words, trials against supposed crimes against the state defined in the 8^th article of the same institutional act still fell under the jurisdiction of state courts. However, it was impossible to control the outcomes of those trials, in part because the state courts were decentralized and judges relatively independent. This led the military leaders to change the structure of the judicial branch, principally through subsequent institutional acts. Those changes were mostly the creation and/or transfer of court jurisdiction for trying and sentencing people (people who opposed the regime, in particular) as well as swift removal of those holding public office, judges, auditors, and even members of the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

The STF always filed Ordinary Criminal Appeals and habeas corpus requests in the case of those accused of political crimes. Under the First Institutional Act, the STF regularly granted habeas corpus to civilians, which created political tensions between that court and the STM, as seen in the case of governor of Pernambuco, Migues Arraes.

An emblematic case from the days following the coup is that of the “nine Chinese.” Nine Chinese people in Brazil through an official commercial project with the Chinese government were arrested and tortured in the Department of Political and Social Order of the State of Guanabara (DOPS/GB) on April 3, 1964. No interpreter was present during the interrogation carried out by deputy Gustavo Borges. The nine Chinese citizens faced trial in the military courts on the charges of corrupting Brazil’s political and social order and of secret espionage in national territory. In 1964, the 2^nd Army Court sentenced them to ten years in prison, a decision that reflects the military court’s position on the coup d’état and shows how the court system used legal mechanisms to defend the military regime’s legitimacy. The military regime deported the nine Chinese citizens in 1965, but it was only in 2014 that the Brazilian State revoked the writ of expulsion without officially apologizing or mentioning reparations.

One of the recurrent ways in which the STF justified granting political opposition habeas corpus was the STM’s incompetency, even if cases fell under the National Security Law. This led the military government to establish the Second Institutional Act (AI-2) on October 27, 1965, expanding the jurisdiction of military courts to crimes threatening national security, “according to Law no. 1,802/1953 and Decree-Law no. 313/1967” (Brasil 2014, p. 947). The bench of the STM and STF also grew in size.

The AI-2 can be seen as the ‘beginning of the state’s intervention into the supreme court’ […] The military court’s jurisdiction expanded to civilians for crimes against national security, that is, domestic security and not just crimes related to foreign security, Additionally, the STM imposed required prior evaluation for habeas corpus in cases of threats to national security before the case went to the STF, suppressed specific laws (e.g. media law) when applied to national security, and even removed privilege l (“foro privilegiado”) for crimes outlined in the National Security Law (Acervo CEV-Rio, 2015, p. 73).

In 1965, before the AI-2, only state courts with standard jurisdictions could try civilian cases. But after the AI-2, military courts could investigate and try civilians suspected or accused of violating the National Security Law as well as refer political crimes committed against national interests to be tried in first instance by the recently created Federal Court.

Members of the three branches of the armed forces – the army, navy, and air force – also acquired investigative powers. They had the authorization to arrest people and open Military Police Investigations (IPM), which were later sent to the military court of the appropriate branch of the armed forces. It could be either the Army Intelligence Center (CIE), the Navy Intelligence Center (CENIMAR), or by the Air Force Intelligence and Security Center (CISA) located in the Air Force Ministry that would ultimately carry out the investigation. ¹

Investigations would also land in the hands of the State Civil Police or the DOPS/GB. Cases from the Civil Police would be handed to state and federal courts, while Military Police Investigations (IPMs) were sent to military court. It is important to note that IPMs did not hesitate to use torture in order to draw out information. Despite being used as evidence during trials, the investigations were not made available to the victims’ lawyers, which indicates their legal fragility. The military courts were responsible for receiving and investigating allegations and were even able to demand preventative imprisonment or expedite the release of prisoners. In practice, the courts acted as interrogation centers that formed a robust network of repression in conjunction with the National Intelligence Service (SNI), a sophisticated system of information control. The SNI encompassed “intelligence services for the three branches of the armed forces, the state police forces, the Federal Police, and all agencies designed to oversee national security” (D’Araújo, 2010, p. 229).

The dictatorship established a new national constitution in 1967 that “catalogued fundamental rights and protections, but in only in the most superficial way given restrictions on the application of those rights and the ways in which they could be suspended” (Brasil, 2014, p. 936). Just one year later, on December 13, the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) was established, expanding and intensifying the authoritarian system – starting by shutting down the National Congress and removing habeas corpus as a recourse for those accused of political crimes. After the AI-5, the STM began to act as an extra-judicial court that would hear appeals in trials against those accused of threatening national security.

The Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) would only be repealed in 1978 under General Ernesto Geisel, once laws that created the state of exception went under review and the amnesty law was passed.

The project Brazil: Never Again investigated decisions carried out by the military courts. Coordinated by Paulo Evaristo Arns, Rabbi Henry Sobel, and Presbyterian pastor Jaime Wright, the project collected and analyzed information from 707 STM trials from 1961-1979, revealing the courts’ grave human rights violations. The initiative was central to pointing out the systematic use of torture, even though the number of cases examined does not represent the total number of imprisoned people tortured by the authoritarian state. The documents show judges’ knowledge of the use of torture against political activists: it was common to prohibit defendants from mentioning torture, to suppress the information, or to understate what took place through statements like, “the victim alleges having suffered the use of physical and psychological force” (Arquidiocese de São Paulo, 1985, p. 15). Inês Etienne Romeu, one survivor from the “Casa de Morte” – House of Death – states that during her trial in front of the 3^rd Army Court, she tried to report the violence that she had suffered while detained but the judge “prevented her from doing so – on the grounds that everything relevant to the case was already on the table” (Acervo CNV. 00092.000660/2013-31.). Moreover, in 1972, Amnesty International published a report analyzing the case of Lúcio Flávio Uchôa Regueira who had been imprisoned in the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODI). While on trial, a judge in the military courts prevented him from mentioning the torture he had already suffered:

The judge, Jacob Goldenberg, did everything possible to prevent Regueira from saying what he wanted to say in addition to distorting his statements about the abuse he had suffered at the hands of torturers, whom he indicated by name. The victim alleged that he was tortured again with electric shocks as punishment for testifying, and that his torturers wanted to know how he had discovered their names (Anistia Internacional, 1972, p. 26).

One of the most emblematic STM cases took place in 1981, during the political opening. It had to do with the attack in Riocentro in which a bomb exploded, accidentally killing Sergeant Guilherme Pereira do Rosário and wounding a former captain, Wilson Dias Machado. In 1982, the investigation into the attack closed due to a lack of evidence in regard to the perpetrator. However, in 1985, a request to reopen the case was filed, and there was a trial in March 1988. According to the STM:

Despite there being enough evidence related to the events and its perpetrator in relation to the soldiers wounded in the attack, there will be no conviction, since “the reprehensible actions that took place are covered under amnesty […] and silence should cloak them totally, as is the State’s will” […]. For the first time, a court, through its corollary, applied the Amnesty Law broadly to soldiers, using amnesty for events that took place after the law was passed in 1979 (Brasil, 2014, p. 949 – 950).

The final revision of the National Security Law took place in 1983 – consequently, it is the same law that is in force in Brazil to this day. That means that civilians can still be tried by the military in the case of threats to national security, which is anachronistic in a democratic political system. Additionally, the very existence of the STM implies that soldiers and civilians to this day are subject to trial by military court, a situation grounded in the Military Penal Code and the Military Penal Trial Code, both from 1969, and by the National Security Law (Law no. 7,170/83). With the expanded actions of the Armed Forces in public security, most notably military operations carried out in favelas in Rio de Janeiro, military courts have held civilians in cases against military police of police brutality in contempt. These trials are problematic, not only because they are grounded in an obsolete framework for national security, but also because they harm civilians who are not even involved in criminal activity. In August 2013, the Attorney General of the Republic used a legal precedent – The Arrangement of Default of Basic Precept (ADPF) 289 to petition the Federal Supreme Court to recognize the military court’s inability to try civilians in times of peace and that standard courts should hear their trials. The Supreme Court has yet to address the petition.

CENTRAL STATION

CENTRAL DO BRASIL

Address: Praça Cristiano Otoni, s/n, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: 1964 Coup D’état
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard.

Located in front of the Plaza of the Republic and next to the Duque de Caxias Palace, which also holds the Ministry of War, is Rio de Janeiro’s Central Train Station, the site of a key event in the political crisis that led to the coup d’état that removed João Goulart from the presidency. That event was the rally that the president held on March 13, 1964. With his wife, Maria Teresa, and politicians such as Leonel Brizola and Miguel Arraes, governor of Pernambuco, standing by his side, João Goulart (nicknamed “Jango”) gave a speech to 200 thousand people. He announced his proposals for broad-based reforms and his intention to pressure congress into approving those measures.

After the previous president, Jânio Quadros, resigned in 1961, the commanders of the Armed Forces declared that they did not want his vice president, João Goulart, to take charge as the Constitution required. An agreement to change the political structure to a parliamentary system was necessary for Jango to become president. In practice, that meant Goulart could become president, but he did not have executive powers. Over the next few years, the administration was the target of destabilizing campaigns supported by conservative groups, particularly private corporations with a vested interest in weakening Jango’s base.

The need for structural reforms in the Brazilian model of capitalism was a key issue in public debate at the time. On one side, the National Student Union (UNE), workers’ unions, the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), and other organizations backed nationalist reforms. On the other, conservative groups connected with the Social Studies and Research Institute (IPES/IBAD) had diametrically opposed views.

In January 1963, a plebiscite was carried out to determine if Brazil would return to a presidential system. The vote approved the shift, and Jango regained executive powers and began instigating what are known as broad-based reforms (land, banking, administrative, university, and electoral reform). Announcing these changes provoked conservative resistance. So, Jango planned a series of rallies throughout Brazil (he would pass through the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Recife, Belo Horizonte, and São Paulo). The rally at Central Station was the first, and it would also be the last.

The rally on March 13 began at 3 P.M., and more than ten people spoke before the president. Jango took the stage at 8 P.M. and spoke for over an hour about his firm support for broad-based reforms. Over the course of the speech, the president announced that he had signed one executive order to appropriate land at the edges of federal train stations and another that affected private petroleum refineries. He openly pressured congress to adopt reforms, as the following section of the speech indicates:

I would be remiss if, in the name of the Brazilian people, in the name of these 150 or 200 thousand people who are here today, I did not passionately appeal to Congress to feel the Nation’s concerns in patriotic spirit and meet the popular demands that aim to forge a democratic and peaceful path to better days (Discurso de João Goulart, 13 mar. 1964).

He also denounced the forces that opposed broad-based reforms and that mobilized to destabilize his administration:

Democracy for these democrats is not a government of freedom of assembly for the common person: what they want is a mute democracy with fears gagged and demands suffocated. The democracy that they want to impose upon us is a democracy against the people, against unions, against reforms. In other words, a democracy that serves the interests of the groups that they serve and represent. The democracy that they want is a democracy that will dissolve Petrobrás; it is the democracy of private monopolies, both national and international, the democracy against a government of the people, and the democracy that led Getúlio Vargas to sacrifice himself (Discurso de João Goulart, 13 mar. 1964).

Military presence at Central Station during the 1964 rally.

Source: Arquivo Nacional, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

Military presence at Central Station during the 1964 rally.

Source: Arquivo Nacional, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

An account released by the Public Security Secretary about the events helps to clarify how different groups occupied the center of Rio de Janeiro that day. The document, filed in the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS/GB), available in the Rio de Janeiro State Truth Commission archive, lists eight meeting points from which groups marched to the Central Station:

1. Bankers, insurance brokers, businessmen, and Petrobrás employees met at the corner of Uruguaiana Street and Presidente Vargas Avenue.
2. Loide and Costeira employees, naval workers, and delegations from the state of Rio de Janeiro led by governor Badger Silva used the XV de November Plaza as their meeting point.
3. Dock workers, sailors, road workers, mill workers, and electricians came together on the corner of Camerino Street and Senador Pompeu Street.
4. Textile workers, metal workers, and others used the Bandeira Plaza as their meeting point.
5. Rail workers, members of the Macaé, Barra Mansa, Magé unions, and delegations from other cities in the Rio de Janeiro region met at the Barão de Mauá station.
6. Bakers, shoemakers, hotel works, and service workers from the Brazil Central Railroad came together in the XI de Junho Plaza.
7. Public servants and independents met on Visconde de Inhaúma Street, in front of the Naval Ministry/Ministry of the Navy.
8. Students from the National Faculty of Philosophy, Medicine, Engineering, and Law met at Largo do Caco. (Acervo CEV-Rio, Comunicação 65 do Dops sobre Comício da Central, mar. 1964).

The same document contains what was written on different banners during the rally. Notable signs include: “Land reform, in the law or up your ass” – which would become the catchphrase for peasant leagues – and “Jango, give us reform and we’ll cover you.”

The reaction to Jango’s speech at the Central Station rally was immediate. General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, who would be the first dictator after the coup, circulated two confidential messages to his subordinates in which he attacked Jango, the rally, and its supporters. The most emphatic response was the March of the Family with God for Liberty carried out by conservative social groups, including part of the Church and certain women’s organizations (Women’s Campaign for Democracy (CAMDE) and the Feminine Civic Union). Bringing together portions of the middle class, the rally openly called to depose Goulart from the presidency. The political and military crisis that led to the coup compounded after the rally.

RIO DE JANEIRO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

MUSEU DE ARTE MODERNA DO RIO DE JANEIRO (MAM)

Address: Avenida Infante Dom Henrique, 85, Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Political-cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Alexa Fedynsky

Considered one of the most important cultural institutions of Brazil, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ) was the stage for significant events led by the artistic vanguard of the 1960s. During the military dictatorship, the museum housed exhibitions and events marked by experimentalism and transgressions of aesthetic, behavioral, and current moral norms.

The MAM/RJ was founded as a civil entity in 1948, and in 1952 was temporarily located at the Culture Palace (currently the Gustavo Capanema Palace), the headquarters of the Ministries of Education and Health at the time. In December of the same year, the City Council approved a donation of 40 thousand square meters to house the headquarters of the institution. In 1954, Affonso Eduardo Reidy, the architect of Rio de Janeiro’s city hall, introduced the project to construct the museum building. Through an innovative concept of “modern space,” the project intended to establish a new dynamic in the function of the museological institution. To this end, the architectural project encompassed a school, theater, cinema, and other spaces beyond the exhibition galleries, aiming to promote existences, experiences, and interactions between visitors and place, artistic production and the museological space. Thus, the goal of the MAM/RJ was structured around the idea of a “living museum,” with a conception of didactic performance, just like the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, founded in 1948. The landscaper Roberte Burle Marx subsequently developed the Museum gardens and the Flamengo Park. In July 1955, The Cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Art was founded, with sessions taking place in the Brazilian Press Association (ABI). In 1958, the School Bloc of the MAM/RJ was finished and began to operate as the headquarters of the museum.

The façade of the Museum of Modern Art in 2015

Source: Coletivo Fotoexpandida/Henrique Fornazin. Used with permission.

Inner courtyard of the Museum of Modern Art.

Source: Coletivo Fotoexpandida/Henrique Fornazin. Used with permission.

In the 1960s, the MAM assumed an important function within the carioca artistic scene, becoming a space of “experimental practice.” Art, nature, and urban spaces combined as an instrument for social construction through dialogue between practicing artists and the public. The Exposition Bloc, today’s main building of the museum, was inaugurated in 1963.

The military coup of 1964 and repressive policy targeting arts and culture by successive military governments did not stop the MAM/RJ from establishing itself as a central pillar in the Brazilian artistic vanguard. This was achieved through shows such as “Opinion 65,” which aimed to bring the Brazilian public closer to recent research in visual arts. It created a dialogue between urban everyday life and the social and political problems of the era through innovative juxtaposition and contraposition of images. Organized by art dealer Ceres France and gallery manager Jean Boghici, “Opinion 65” brought together the commemorations of the Rio de Janeiro IV Centennial, which united 29 artists including 13 Europeans and 16 Brazilians. The name of the show was supposedly a gesture of solidarity with the show “Opinion,” which had begun only a few months before at the Arena Theater in Copacabana. Considered a success by the public and critics, the show was written by Armando Costa, Oduvaldo Viana Filho, and Paulo Pontes and directed by Augusto Boal and Nara Leão. The organizers’ idea of Opinion 65 was to provide a space where it would be possible to establish a counterpoint between national and foreign production in order to assess the current state of Brazilian art. The exposition housed various styles and tendencies. There, Hélio Oiticica presented “Os Parangolés” for the first time, a work integrating art, the body, colors, and movement. Oiticica found the name “parangolé” on a sign outside an improvised shelter made by street beggar, which read “Here is a parangolé.” Oiticica’s “Parangolés” consisted of colored capes worn by ballet dancers from the Mangueira hill. Their movements incorporated visual arts and dance in one work of art which could be experienced deeply by both the artist and the public watching. During the showing, the group of ballet dancers dressed as the colorful “Parangolés” exited the museum to the music of the First Mangueira Station Samba School and took to the gardens of the MAM/RJ, inviting the spectators to see and try breaking the boundaries imposed between art and body, work of art and space, artist and spectator. At the time, the art critics Mário Pedrosa, of the paper Correio da Manhã (RJ), Frederico Morais of Jornal do Commercio (MG) and Ferreira Gullart of Civilização Brasileira’s magazine considered the exposition a form of protest against the military coup of 1964 and the instituted dictatorial regime.

The impact of Opinion 65 led to the unfolding of other important events that also took place at the MAM/RJ, such as Opinion 66 the following year and the exhibition “New Brazilian Objectivity” in 1967. Here Hélio Oiticica exhibited the labyrinth “Tropicália,” which brought the architecture of favelas into the MAM/RJ. The work was made up of two penetrable spaces, the “PN2—Purity is a Myth,” which referred to the defense of a mixed-race culture and to the impossibility of art maintaining itself as pure, detached from ethical-political-social questions. The “PN3—Imagético”—denounced mass media outlets and their power to alienate. In the exhibit catalogue, Hélio Oiticica published the article “General Layout of New Objectivity,” which affirms the role of visual arts as a language of protest: “Currently in Brazil there is the need to take a position in relation to political, social, and ethical problems. This necessity becomes clearer every day and calls for an urgent stance, which will be the critical point of the focus of problems in the creative field: visual arts, literature…In Brazil…today, to have an active cultural position that matters, you have to oppose viscerally, oppose everything, which would be, in sum cultural, political, ethical, social conformity.” The article concludes with “FROM ADVERSITY WE LIVE!”

In 1968, the year in which the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) was decreed, the museum exhibited the show “Art in the Landfill,” organized by Frederico Morais. The exhibition included paintings and sculptures and during the weekends, experimental classes in the form of walks and strolls through the museum gardens. During this same year, the “Community” collective, precursor to street theater in Brazil, rehearsed at the MAM/RJ and presented the play “Construction,” about mythic beliefs held in the Northeast. The scenic use of space was considered totally innovative; the direct relation established between the cast and the audience brought into question the separation of spectator and scenic events. At first, the play was prohibited by the Censorship of Public Entertainment, but later was uncensored. The director, Amir Haddad, remembers that at the time the following was said:

that it was an experimental play, that it was new wave, that no one would want to see it…The left said this about us. It was not a play about militancy, like the others from the era. I always stayed on the margins of this militancy…And then the play was uncensored. And it was frightening, that it had been an enormous success. The play was very political (Ruiz, 2013, p. 13).

Also in 1968, the event Apocalipopótese, coordinated by Hélio Oiticica, created a series of artistic interventions every Sunday in July, with artist Antonio Manuel’s intervention-artwork “Hot Urns” as a highlight. This work consisted of sealed wooden boxes that the public needed to break, whether by using the hammer provided or employing any other necessarily violent means. The use of violence was stimulated by the samba players from Mangueira hill, who danced and played their music, suggesting that there could be money inside the boxes. Inside the boxes, the public found newspaper clippings, photos, and poems from the era about political repression. Therefore, the violence awakened within the public reflected the severe actions of the military regime and the naturalized violence of everyday life in Brazil.

In response, the government increased repressive actions on different sectors of society at the end of the 1960s, and the field of visual arts suffered more intense and repressive interference through censorship. At the IV Brasilia Salon in 1967, works by Cláudio Tozzi and José Aguilar were censured, and the following year at the III Ouro Preto Salon, the jury was not able to see some of the prints entered, as State agents had previously removed them. In 1968, the II National Bahia Biennial of Visual Arts was closed, ten works considered “subversive” and “erotic” were cleared away, and the organizers were arrested by State security agents. In 1969, the MAM/RJ experienced direct violence from the State when repressive agents stopped the Museum from debuting the Paris Pre-Biennial. This event would reunite artists representing Brazil at the VI Young Artists Paris Biennial.

Antonio Manuel, the visual artist whose works were apprehended during the II Bahia Biennial (a four-meter panel with diverse images of newspapers printed on a silk screen over a red background, dealing with street violence between police officers and students), was invited to participate at the Paris Pre-Biennial, which was never successfully inaugurated. In an interview with Globo in 2014 on the 50^th anniversary of the military coup in 1964, he remembered this fact with sadness:

Unfortunately, the exposition was not even inaugurated. When it was being set up, Gen. Montana went to the MAM with various armed soldiers. My works were black cloth which covered red panels with images of street violence. The spectator pulled a rope, the   panel lifted, and the images of violence were revealed. Five panels like this were selected, but unfortunately none of them could be shown, since the show was brutally invaded and shut down by the Army. The journalist Niomar Moniz Sodré, whom I did not know personally, called me to ask if I would meet her at the Correio da Manhã [03]. She said that upon hearing of the incident, she asked the workers at the MAM to hide the works. I was sitting on the sofa when she told me ‘Look, your works are behind you.’ The work was being searched for and Niomar had hid it in her office. Then, the art critic Mario Pedroso, a juror on the pre-selection committee, organized a large boycott of the São Paulo Biennial, to showcase that the country was in a state of exception…It was as if they had mutilated me. A work of art is a part of the soul and spirit of the artist, an extension of his or her thoughts, and it was as if they had brutally torn this away from me. There are no words to describe this violence (Antonio Manuel, 23 Mar. 2014).

At the time, the Itamaraty Department of Cultural Promotion had delegated the responsibility of selecting the artists who would represent Brazil at the biennial in printing, painting, sculpture, photography, and architecture to the MAM/RJ. Among the selected works was “Repression Once Again: Here’s the Outcome,” in which Antonio Manuel used newspaper articles and photos of stand offs between students and armed forces which resulted in the death of student Edson Luis in 1968. The photograph “Motorcyclist of the Brazilian Air Force (FAB)” by Evandro Teixeira was also selected as a Brazilian piece. It depicted the moment that a police officer fell off his motorcycle.

On May 30, major newspapers not only published the works that had been chosen by the judging commission from the MAM/RJ, but also announced the opening of the exposition with the works that had been competing to represent Brazil in Paris. However, the following day, the headline of the Correio da Manhã “Itamarati cancels exhibition” informed readers that the exhibition had been closed and taken down moments before its opening on the orders of the head of the Cultural Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ambassador Donatello Grieco. A few days later, the Jornal do Brasil published a message from the Minister of Foreign Affairs Magalhães Pinto guaranteeing that Brazil would not be absent from the VI Paris Biennial, but that “it would simply not participate in all of the exhibition’s artistic categories.” As for the works that had been selected by the commission organized by the MAM/RJ, Magalhães Pinto affirmed in the newspaper that “there was an abuse of trust, that upon receiving the task of choosing the works of art, the MAM was instructed to stray away from ideological and political aspects of the competing works.” In addition, the minister added that the MAM/RJ had promised to consult the Itamaraty before releasing the result of the competition and that, upon having been “advised” by the censor regarding the subversive nature of the selected works, the minister “felt obligated to adopt the measure he adopted.”

A manifesto entitled “Culture and Liberty” was published in the July 13 edition of the Correio da Manhã and, referring to the sanctions that had been imposed on visual arts throughout 1969, posed the following question to readers:

Justifying his act of canceling the above exposition, Mr. Magalhães Pinto declared to the press that he had done this because “he had been advised by the censor.” What censure? In Brazil, the only censor that legally exists is for performances. As the exposition is not a performance, we have the Minister of Foreign Affairs himself recognizing the existence of another kind of censorship, even more egregious because it is secret. Neither under the existing judicial ordinance AI-5, nor after the Government adopted the act instituting censorship to the arts. What is taking place, therefore, is fraudulent (Cultura e Liberdade, 13 jul. 1969).

With respect to the repressive action of the government, the artists organized a boycott of the São Paulo Biennial that year. Eighty percent of the Brazilian artists invited, including Carlos Vergara, Rubens Gerchman, Roberto Burle Marx, Sérgio Camargo, and Hélio Oiticica did not attend and counted on the adherence of international artists from the United States, Mexico, Netherlands, Sweden, Argentina, and France—allowed to participate in the event—profiting from the occasion to internationally denounce the arbitrary violence committed by soldiers in Brazil.

The works that have been taken down as a result of censorship during the Pre-Biennial were exhibited at the Bússola Salon, an event that took place at the MAM/RJ at the end of the year, from November 5-December 5, 1969. Some critics considered the event a milestone for Brazilian experimental production. Beyond the presence of polemic works and their experimental and transgressive nature, the repercussions and importance of the Salon Bússola included parallel events produced by the Museum, such as debate series. On November 27, 1969, during one of the debates promoted by the Salon, a bomb exploded on the third floor of the Museum but left no one injured. Those who carried out the attack were never discovered.

In 1970, at the XIX National Salon of Modern Art, an unusual performance made its mark on the museum space. Antonio Manuel, 23 years old at the time, participated in the selection process with his work entitled “Body is Art,” which consisted of the artist’s nude body exposed to the public and having the author listed as the artist’s own father. However, the work was rejected and was not presented at the National Salon. The artist was invited as a spectator to attend the opening of the exposition. After being recognized by the public as the artist who had presented his own body as a work of art, and upon seeing the attention among the spectators, Antonio Manuel went to the third floor of the Museum and took off his clothes. Vera Lúcia, a model who worked at the School of Fine Arts, joined the artist. He climbed onto the parapet completely nude, moving his arms as if he were waving a flag.

His transgression became a symbol of resistance to the current order and of the lack of criteria in the censorship of visual arts. But it also was a criticism of the institutionalization of art salons and expositions. After the incident, the police closed the museum and ended the exhibition , and Antonio Manuel was prohibited to enter the premises of the MAM/RJ. Mário Pedroso, an important Brazilian art critic, defined Antonio Manuel’s attitude as “an experimental exercise of liberty.” Commenting on the event, Antonio Manuel said:

In those days the body was on the frontlines. It was subjected to the violence of street protests and to torture mechanisms used by the military regime against political prisoners. Little by little I began to perceive the body as a central theme for my work. After all, it was my body that was on the streets, exposed to shootings, gunshots, and stone throws during student confrontations with the police. There, I imagined my body as a work of art (Antonio Manuel, 23 mar. 2014).

Still, in 1969, Cildo Meireles, Guilherme Vaz, Luiz Alphonsus, and Frederico Morais created the “Experimental Unit,” with the goal of validating experiences of all levels of culture, including scientists, considering touch, smell, taste, hearing, and vision as forms of language, thought, and communication. The artists’ process of playing active roles within the Museum, a space of experimentation, became concretely known as “Creation Sundays.” Organized by Frederico Morais, they took place between January and July 1971 in the outdoor area of the MAM/RJ. Every Sunday, a different material was provided to the public.

Throughout the 1970s, the MAM/RJ became one of the principal museums of Rio de Janeiro, and was a significant cultural space, highlighted by the activities of the Cinematheque. It became a reference for the Brazilian cinema industry when it displayed a film archive composed of independent films of diverse and various origins given to the museum by various consulates, including those of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Argentina, and others. The museum also organized an updated library with subscriptions to international magazines and a permanent collection of books. In addition, it invested in the production of its own small publications, such as “Guide to Art History and Criticism,” sold at a low price with the goal of providing didactic support to museum employees and visitors.

In 1978, a fire in the Body/Sound Gallery swept across almost the entire building and destroyed 90% of the collection. Around 200 works displayed in the retrospective exhibit of Uruguayan artist Torres García and from the joint exhibition “Sensitive Geometry” were burned. From the almost 1,000-piece collection acquired by the museum over the past twenty years, including works by important names in the history of 20^th century art such as Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Giorgio Morandi, Jackson Pollack, Lucio Fontana, and Jean Dubuffet, some 50 survived. One week after the fire, a public demonstration in defense of reconstructing the MAM gathered 3,000 people in the empty area of the museum. This tragedy implicated not only the loss of important material works, but also the decline of activities promoting visual arts in Brazil.

After a long period of time, the Exposition Bloc was reopened in 1982. But little by little the museum left its position as vanguard in the visual arts scene, even though it still received important exhibitions, theatrical plays, and dances.

CALABOUÇO RESTAURANT

RESTAURANTE CALABOUÇO

Address: Between Av. General Justo and Av. Marechal Câmara, s/n, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Universities and the Student movement
Translated from the Portuguese by Katy Blake Burch-Hudson

The Student Center Restaurant, known as the Calabouço (“Dungeon”), was active from 1951 to 1968. Known for its budget prices, students from different schools in the state of Guanabara were its main clientele. Originally built on the so-called “Calabouço Point,” on Beira-Mar Avenue, it was transferred to a nearby location between General Justo and Marechal Câmara Avenues, close to the current “Student Intersection.” The Calabouço was an important space for socializing and student organization, was the site for large protests against the government during the period of military dictatorship, most importantly in 1968. The position of the restaurant as a space of resistance against the dictatorship which caused the government to interfere by closing down the restaurant.

The story of the Calabouço Restaurant began in 1949 when the Dutra administration shut down the National Student Union (UNE) Restaurant, with little justification (the reasons cited were a lack of hygiene and the building’s inability to accommodate an ever growing demand). As a mitigating measure, student meals were to be distributed in the Labor Ministry and Education Ministry (MEC) buildings.

The Metropolitan Student Union (UME) requested the construction of a student restaurant in the underground garage located in the Castelo Promenade, a space that the city council was not using and thus would not require federal funds. However, the recently elected governor, Getúlio Vargas, announced the construction of the restaurant on Beira-Mar avenue on April 19, 1951. Inaugurated on November 5 of that year, the restaurant had the capacity to serve three thousand meals daily, with six hundred seating spaces. Meals in the restaurant cost two cruzeiros. The Student Restaurant was established, then, in the region referred to as Calabouço Point, in reference to the old Calabouço Fort (where slaves were corralled for physical punishment starting in the 18^th century). As a result, the reference became the nickname for the student restaurant.

The Nutrition Services of Social Welfare (SAPS) of the Vargas government established The Calabouço, and in the 1950s received various criticism of its operation. In 1953, after multiple student demands, the space underwent a renovation so as to be able to adequately attend those who used the restaurant, who had suffered from a low quality of meals and unsanitary conditions due to the accumulation of garbage near the establishment.

Regardless, the restaurant had a large appeal because of its low prices. Prior registration was necessary to frequent the location. Through their respective courses, students respected a registration card, provided by the UME. Still, in the 1950s, the Restaurant’s crisis grew larger with the increasing number of students to be served. The space would close temporarily and the Ministry of Education had to intervene in order for the restaurant to continue functioning.

It should be stressed that, even during the democratic government before the 1964 coup, there were violent clashes between students and the Military Police (PM) and agents from the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS/GB). In December of 1959, there was a bloody confrontation triggered when the DOPS/GB prohibited a student rally (in protest of the price increase from two to 25 cruzeiros for a meal at the Calabouço). As a result, one police officer and five students were injured.

After the 1964 coup, the Calabouço became even more closely associated with the UME, which made the restaurant a space of resistance to the dictatorship. In retaliation, on September 16, 1965, the Minister of Education, Suplicy da Lacerda, revoked the Student Clinic and the Calabouço from the direction of the UME, closing the establishments and sending MEC officials and DOPS/GB agents to occupy the locations.

Working students were the major demographic that frequented the Calabouço. Many of them came from other states of Brazil (mostly from the North and Northeast), seeking a better quality of life in what was at that time, the state of Guanabara. The Restaurant’s reach was large, with more than three thousand people attended to daily. Besides being a location where students could find a low-cost meal, the restaurant was also an important site for student movements.

Since 1963, urban reforms had already planned the demolition of the Calabouço building in order to construct a road interchange (currently the Student Intersection) and the UME sought another headquarters for the restaurant. In 1967, that location was confirmed and the restaurant was demolished. Without a place to eat, the students began the well known “operation hang up” on August 4, 1967. Groups of five would eat lunch in boarding homes and restaurants in the city center and then one of the participants would stand on a chair and announce that they did not have the conditions to pay because they were poor students and that the bill should be sent to the Ministry of Education.

After a series of protests that were violently repressed by the police, the UME, the Candido de Oliveira Academic Center (CACO UFRJ) and other student unions were able to reopen the restaurant within the year, but in a new location. Elinor Brito, President of the United Student Front of Calabouço (FUEC), in her testimony for the Truth Commission of Rio (CEV-Rio), considered this to be the first victory of the student movement during the military dictatorship:

I ate at the Calabouço Restaurant that we inherited the Vargas’ populist politics. He was another dictator who tortured many people during the Estado Novo. And the Calabouço was shut down […] I came out of that: the so-named group of the Northeasterners of Calabouço. Our fundamental goal: the reopening of our restaurant, of our clinic, of our remedial education course, of our library, of our small shopping center – the barbershop, the watch store, etc. – closed by the dictatorship. Therefore, the Calabouço, was similar to all the other social achievements, and so its closing was the first shock for us. Our fight, to reopen the Calabouço and have student participation in its management. We accomplished this, it was the first victory: we reopened the Calabouço, our participation in the fight and everything… (Elinor Brito, Depoimento á CEV-Rio, 2014).

The restaurant reopened before the renovations were complete, and the old problem worsened: the building had terrible hygiene conditions. This precarious situation caused rallies and protests. The Calabouço Student Management (AEC), formed with significant influence from the UME and made available a remedial education course (similar to the current Youth and Adult Teaching Program) through the Teaching Cooperative Institute (ICE). Its director, Adolfo Rodrigues, was being monitored by state intelligence. Due to the importance of the Calabouço for the student movement and as a space of resistance to the military dictatorship, the military intelligence organizations infiltrated the establishment with agents (the sailor Gilberto de Oliveiro Melo, who took over Época magazine in the 2000s, was a secret agent for the Information Center of the Navy – CENIMAR – in the restaurant).

In 1968, in one of the protests, a military police officer invaded the establishment and shot at student Edson Luís de lima Souto, who died immediately. The incident generated a national movement amongst students and the general population, in opposition to the dictatorship. At the same time, public opinion was affected by this explicit show of state violence towards students.

Edson Luís was an 18-year-old high school student. From a poor background in the state of Pará, the student worked as a shoeshiner and janitor as he prepared to take the college entrance exam and tried to make it in Rio de Janeiro. He studied at the Teaching Cooperative Institute, in the annex of the Calabouço, and it was there that he ate his meals. His death caused a national commotion. Academic directors from various universities went on strike. Between the student’s assassination and the seventh day mass in his honor, countless protests occurred all over the country.

The seventh day mass for Edson Luís took place on April 4 and was organized by intellectuals and members of the church who were aware of the tragedy. It happened at the Church of Candelaria, in the center of the city, and was conducted by Bishop José de Castro Pinto. On the day, DOPS/GB agents spied on the mass from rooftops, tanks were parked on President Vargas Avenue, military planes flew in the vicinity and military police patrolled the neighborhood around the church on horseback.

The result was another show of arbitrary violence. The military police cavalry attacked 600 people at the site as they were leaving the church. The military police stood in a group outside the entrance of the Church of Candelaria, stoking a climate of terror with constant trotting of horse hooves. The general impression was that there would be an invasion at any moment. The church clergy provided a solution with a courageous act. They left the church holding hands and made a line, clearing a path from the church to Rio Branco Avenue in order to assure that everyone was able to leave without major issues.

In the context of negative public opinion, the military regime chose to minimize both the event of the student’s death and the subsequent protests. The Calabouço Restaurant would not open its doors until March 28, 1968. So as not to further erode the government’s image with this measure of closing the restaurant, they conceded to provide meal scholarships for students they considered low-income. Of the three thousand students attended to by the Calabouço, there were fewer than two thousand requests for the scholarship, and only 1,650 were granted. On January 20, 1969, the Calabouço Restaurant building was demolished.

The death of Edson Luís remains in the memory of the military dictatorship as an example of the state’s arbitrary use of violence. In honor of the student, a statue of Edson Luís was inaugurated on March 28, 2008, the 40^th anniversary of his death. The monument, by the artist Cristina Pozzobon, can be found in the Ana Amelia Square in the Center of the city and close to where the Calabouço restaurant was located. The state is a representation of a torn flag with shards of glass, all rendered in steel. It was made is to represent the student deaths during the military dictatorship.

PANAIR BRAZIL

PANAIR DO BRASIL

Address: Praça Marechal Ancora, s/n, Castelo, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Civilian and Corporate Participation
Translated from the Portuguese by Katy Blake Burch-Hudson

Panair Brazil was an aerial transport business that, in the mid-20^th century, became the most relevant Brazilian aviation company. In 1965, the company was in the middle of a bankruptcy process that began with a presidential decree of the then President Humberto Castelo Branco in a move of political persecution against the majority partners of the company.

The company, created in 1930, became emblematic in the history of Brazilian aviation, contributing to the development in the Amazon region through the transport of medicines and professionals. Against the backdrop of the battle against yellow fever, the company dedicated itself to the expansion of the air fleet and radio communication, establishing of coastal airports and installing of broadcasting stations. Beyond this, Panair was the only company in Brazil operating flights to the Middle East, Africa and Europe. It was also the owner of Celma turbine maintenance – Electro-Mechanic Company, the most important company in its sector in Latin America, offering services for foreign airlines. In 1961, Panair became entirely national, handing over control to the Simonsen-Miranda group, owned by Celso da Rocha Miranda and Mario Wallace Simonsen, who had ties to João Goulart and Juscelino Kubitschek.

When the military regime began persecuting opposition, these businessmen suffered unjustifiable economic sanctions because they did not conform to the new established order and they had political ties with former presidents. In February of 1965, as a result of a military presidential decree, Panair lost permission to fly with the revocation of all of its airlines. In fact, regardless of Panair’s prestige and a financial situation similar to that of other airline companies, the Ministry of Aeronautics claimed that the measure had been taken because of the company’s insolvency, and the Ministry intended to ensure the continuation of service and flights. As a result of this action, around five thousand families found themselves in desperate circumstances after losing their jobs.

Other measures were taken were taken by the regime, setting up an undeniable persecution with clear bias against the Miranda-Simonsen group. At the same time that the process of Panair’s financial failure was occurring, the military occupied Celma maintenance, which also belonged to the airline company, and the Center of Aeronautics Information (CISA) began an investigation into Celso da Rocha Miranda. Other companies belonging to the businessmen’s’ estates became targets of this persecution, resulting in the closing of Excelsior TV, the confiscation of warehouses of the largest coffee exporters Wasim and Comal and the canceling of all of the insurance of public branches arranged by Ajax Insurance – the largest insurance company in Latin America.

In the aftermath of the investigations conducted by the military regime, different judiciary maneuvers were carried out with the goal of impeding the recuperation of the companies, demonstrating how the regime favored companies politically aligned with the new government. Beyond this, a long judicial battle proved that the military regime falsified documents to constrict activities of the group, which could have offered resistance to the coup. Regarding these inconsistent demands by the military regime, author Daniel Leb Sasaki speaks to what former director of Panair, Paulo Sampaio, thought of the events:

In addition to this devastation, even before there were any important results from the restructuring of the company’s assets, the financial demands of the military were paid using communal funds. These funds included the worker compensation funds for all the employees who were the largest group affected and most defenseless victims of the catastrophe. The provision of the Consolidation of Labor Laws (article 486) clearly and irrefutably attributed this role to the Federal Union. On its own from a financial standpoint, this refutes allegations that Brasil Panair was a business that need to be bailed out. This shows, on the contrary, its economic stability, an infrastructure company unequalled in Brazilian commercial aviation. So powerful and thriving that, even though it suffered crushing actions that aimed to destroy the business it could boast, a surplus of 121.2 million cruzieros, with all its legitimate creditors paid (Daniel Leb Sasaki. Depoimento a CNV, 23 March 2013). 

After 50 years, the former Panair employees and their descendants, labelled the “Panair Family,” get together periodically to relive the golden ages of the company as a symbol of Brazilian aviation. In 2014, the National Truth Commission (CNV) recognized that the political persecution suffered by the businessmen Mario Wallace Simonsen and Celso Rocha Miranda was the principal cause for the dismantling of Panair Brasil. The building that functioned as the Panair headquarters and as a passenger plane and seaplane terminal for the company since 1937 now houses the III Regional Air Command, the Santos Dumont Airport, in the Castelo neighborhood in the center of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

BRAZILIAN BAR ASSOCIATION

ORDEM DOS ADVOGADOS DO BRASIL (OAB)

Address: Rua Marechal Câmara, 240, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Civil and Corporate Participation; Political-cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

The Brazilian Lawyers Institute was founded in the 19^th century and was the origin of what would later become the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB). Made official by Decree no. 19,408 on November 18, 1930 – which was established after the 1930 coup that put Getúlio Vargas into power – the OAB only attained efficient standardization and selection mechanisms in 1963, through Law no. 4,215. That is when it became the entity best able to represent and regulate Brazilian lawyers. Practicing law anywhere in Brazil requires registering with the association. Today, the OAB contains more than 900 thousand registered professionals.

OAB’s position during the dictatorship after 1964 started with full support for the coup and soon transformed into a critical stance. By the second half of the 1970s, the organization directly participated in the struggle for human rights.

In the days following the 1964 coup, the new government gave lawyers in the OAB high hopes. They believed that military rule would lead to a much-desired “cleansing” of the political system, ending corruption and subversive action. In the minutes from a regular meeting that the Federal Board of the OAB called on April 7, 1964, one notes the euphoria shared by the participants, deemed “brave crusaders for judicial order and the Constitution” by OAB president Carlos Povina Cavalcanti. Cavalcanti himself said he felt “at peace with his conscience.” The army’s removal of João Goulart from the presidency was seen as the surest protection for democratic institutions against “subversive forces,” responsible for the government’s “state of lawlessness.” Still on April 7, the president of the OAB stated his views:

[…]anticipating the collapse of subversive forces that openly planned through governmental channels to destroy the principles of democracy and establish a totalitarian regime, one that would end all human freedoms, we had the clear-mindedness and patriotism to warn the constituent powers of the Republic to defend our deeply threatened judicial order and Constitution during the memorable meeting on March 20. With God’s mercy, today we can proclaim that Brazil, without leaving its constitutional orbit, has survived and remains under the aegis of the Rule of Law now that the combined evils of communism and socialism have been eradicated. […] God willing, a nonpartisan government that does not lower itself to the level of demagogues will allow us serve this class and Brazil (Ata da Reunião Ordinária do Conselho Federal da OAB, 7 abr. 1964, p. 3, apud Rollemberg, 2008, p. 58-59).

The first critiques of the military government on record took place in 1965, according to the Federal Board’s meeting notes. Arguments made by the OAB vice president, Alberto Barreto de Melo, reveal even more extreme right-wing views as he called for increasingly radical political persecution of members of the previous government:

[…] The nation watches, appalled, as the 1964 movement falls apart, like Tantalus being punished for his hubris, as it tries to consolidate itself electorally without having dismantled a political machine made up of corrupt and subversive individuals. Political leaders who campaigned for and led alongside the president who was removed last year remain politically strong in the revolutionary government; its officials hold the highest positions throughout the Republic. Revolution without reformulation of institutions and the substitution of the men that make them up is all show and, even, in poor taste (Discurso de Alberto Barreto de Melo, Ata da Reunião Ordinária do Conselho Federal da OAB, 27 abr. 1965 apud Rolemberg, 2008, p. 65-66).

Though a few isolated stances stood out from those of fellow counselors, the OAB as an institution would only break away from the dictatorship in 1972. The institutional sign of that break can be seen in the Curitiba Declaration, which is based on the opening speech of OAB president Cavalcanti Neves. The document solidified the OAB as part of the struggle for re-democratization. It defends the reinstatement of judicial protections and of habeas corpus in full, the revival of “balance between State security and individual rights, in accordance to the highest tenets of justice,” restoration of the “freedom to exercise the professional activities of law” and respect for human beings. In terms of political repression, the document states:

Repression is criminal. Even when carried out against political enemies, it should occur only under the rule of law and with respect to the physical and moral integrity of prisoners and in accordance with the right to defense – most notably, that of communication from prison to the appropriate judicial authority (Declaração de Curitiba, Ata da Reunião Ordinária do Conselho Federal da OAB, 26 jun. 1972 apud Rolemberg, 2008, p. 87).

The Curitiba Declaration also criticized the Médici administration’s “economic and social progress,” stating: “if it is true that peace and security are indispensable to development, then it is equally true that peace and security do not exist without freedom and justice.”

The OAB had begun to position itself more critically towards the regime in 1970 when it came out against prior censorship for books and newspapers. In the years that followed, it began to act in defense of political prisoners and denounce practices of torture and arbitrary imprisonment. In 1976, when journalist Vladimir Herzog was found murdered, the OAB sparked the campaign for the return to democratic law.

Because of its critical actions towards the dictatorship in the 1970s, the former OAB building in Rio de Janeiro – which now holds the Rio de Janeiro Law Assistance Center (CAARJ) and the Rio de Janeiro State Truth Commission (CEV-Rio) – became the target of an attack on August 27, 1980. A letter bomb addressed to the president of the Federal Board of the OAB, Eduardo Seabra Fagundes, killed his secretary, Luda Monteiro da Silva. The next day, the OAB published the following official statement:

In light of the tragic attack on the Brazilian Bar Association, a true assault on our institution that took the life of a model employee and considering the fact that, unfortunately, this is just one more example of escalating violence in Brazil, the moment has come for lawyers, in the name of civil society, to begin to react to the state of things in this country, which are in total opposition to the democratic and peaceful Brazilian people. The Brazilian Bar Association resolves: 1) to declare August 28, 1980 the National Day of Struggle and Protest of Brazilian Lawyers against acts of terror; 2) consequently, to urge all lawyers not to carry out professional activities on that day, except to prevent the loss of rights or to demand the freedom of illegally detained persons; 3) to invite the everyday people, lawyers, judges, members of the Public Ministry, and law students to attend the funeral for the sorely missed Lyda Monteiro da Silva (OAB Decreta Dia Nacional de Luto, 28 ago. 1980, p. 20).

The attack on the OAB building was not an isolated event. Others included the violence against Riocentro, the Brazilian Press Association (ABI), and the newspaper O Pasquim. On the same day as the attack against the OAB, another three letter bombs were sent to different addresses in the city of Rio de Janeiro. One arrived at the office of Antônio Carlos de Carvalho, a city councilperson for the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), gravely wounding an employee, José Ribamar Sampaio de Freitas. Another was sent to a branch of the newspaper Tribuna da Luta Operária. The final letter bomb, which did not go off, was addressed to the National Supply Agency (SUNAB).

To deal with repercussions from the attacks, the communication strategy of Figueiredo’s military government was to blame the attacks on leftist extremists. The Federal Police (PF) was assigned to investigate the events. An inquiry found the perpetrator to be Ronald Watters, former official at the Navy Intelligence Agency (CENIMAR). Seven months later, however, all charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.

The room of the Rio Truth Commission.

Source: Coletivo Fotoexpandida/Felipe Nin. Used with permission.

The room of the Rio Truth Commission.

Source: Coletivo Fotoexpandida/Felipe Nin. Used with permission.

Nearly forty years later, the National Truth Commission (CNV) and the Rio de Janeiro State Truth Commission (CEV-Rio) reopened the case of the attack at the OAB. CEV-Rio released the results of its research in September 2015 in the form of a collective interview: Colonel Fred Perdigão Pereira from the Army Intelligence Center (CIE) organized the attack, Sergeant Guilherme Pereira do Rosário manufactured the device, and sergeant Magno Cantarino Mota personally delivered the letter bomb to the secretary of the OAB.

In addition to two plaques dedicated to Lyda Monteiro at the CEV-Rio building, the president of the Commission symbolically honors the victim of the attack by using as his office the room where the secretary worked. The table where Lyda sat when the letter bomb exploded can be found in the OAB Federal Board Museum in Brasília.

NATIONAL FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY

FACULDADE NACIONAL DE FILOSOFIA

Address: Rua Antônio Carlos, 40, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Universities and the Student Movement
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

Located in the center of Rio de Janeiro, the National Faculty of Philosophy (FNFi) building was the site of political actions for various political groups and organizations at the heart of the Student Movement, which fought against the military dictatorship in the first years following the 1964 coup d’état. The various political parties and organizations – the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), People’s Action (AP), the Communist Party of Brazil (PC do B), Workers’ Political Organization (POLOP), and the National Student Union (UNE) – used the space to print pamphlets and hold meetings and rallies. They discussed the main political issues of the period, such as imperialism and the need for land and university reform. The space also held student strikes, which participants organized as a form of political pressure to make their demands heard.

The founding of FNFi dates back to the Estado Novo period (1937-1945) and is linked to the growth of the University of Brazil, which was part of a project aiming to build a university model to be consolidated across the country. Instituted by a decree in 1939 (law no. 1.190), FINFi housed the courses from the University of the Federal District (UDF), established in 1935 by the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Pedro Ernesto, who held office between 1935-1936, and by the then-director of the Department of Education, Anísio Teixeira. Getúlio Vargas shut down UDF in 1939 on the grounds that it was not within the mayor’s jurisdiction to create a university. With the main goal of preparing pre-service secondary and normal teachers, FINFi was designed to cover four basic areas: philosophy, science, letters, and pedagogy.

FNFi was first located in the José de Alencar Municipal School in Largo do Machado, part of the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro. It was moved to the Casa d’Italia in 1942 and then, in 1944, all FNFi courses moved to their final address: Rua Antônio Carlos 40 in the Centro neighborhood of the city. In 1945, with the end of the Estado Novo and the redemocratization process underway, FNFi underwent some institutional changes and its structure became more defined, both in terms of its approach to instruction and research and in terms of its administrative system.

The international political climate at the end of the 1950s was marked by the radicalization of social movements and also mass mobilization against the expansion of communism (particularly after the successful Cuban Revolution). This context served to sharply polarize the left and right, a division that deepened further in the early 1960s. Within Brazil, ideological differences can be summed up as differing views on the landmark political decisions in the Goulart administration (1961-64), such as the Land Reform program and independent foreign policy. Specific events also divided the country, such as the Sergeants’ Revolt and the rally at the Central do Brasil train station. All of the debates surrounding these questions greatly affected FNFi, especially in terms of the role of the university in society and the use of teaching and research as tools for social change and development in Brazil.

Students from the Faculty joined campaigns for broad based reforms and especially championed the cause for university reform, which caused a “huge step forward in the student movement.” Essentially, the student movement saw university reform as part of broad based reforms – that is, as part of a larger political project. At the same time, Eremildo Viana, a professor of ancient history and director of FNFi since 1958, positioned himself against these groups more and more as the student movement grew increasingly radical. Supported by most of his colleagues, Eremildo Viana was reelected in 1960 and would continue as the director of the Faculty until 1963 when new elections took place. In 1960, many students did want Viana to continue as director, and it appeared that he worked to remain in the directorship position. That behavior came to a head in 1963 when a Parliamentary Inquiry Committee (CPI) was established in the House of Representatives to investigate accusations that communists had invaded the National Student Union (UNE) and misused public funds to stir up political unrest. The CPI examined the UNE and called witnesses to testify about the communism invasion and to incriminate students for causing political unrest.

Considered one of the main centers of student mobilization, FNFi was subject to the CPI’s investigations and, its director, Eremildo Viana, was asked to take the stand. His statements reveal his close relationship to conservative forces that opposed Goulart’s administration and its broad-based reforms. The newspaper Correio da Manhã reported on the testimony on September 29, 1963:

Prof. Eremildo Viana’s testimony to the CPI in the House, and the notable detail with which he recounted facts determined the steps that would be taken in further testimonies […] The director of the National Faculty of Philosophy cited events and individuals that compromise students and student organizations. Among the objectionable cases, he pointed to meetings of students of both genders in suspicious apartments, citing addresses (Correio da Manhã, 29 set. 1963).

The political environment in early 1964 was one of increasingly radical confrontations between opposing groups, which only grew worse after the rally at the Central do Brasil train station on March 13 of that year, when president João Goulart explicitly stated his commitment to carrying out broad-based reforms. Students and professors from FNFi actively participated in what would be the final rally of Goulart’s administration.

Right after the 1964 military coup, intense repression was unleashed against groups opposing the regime. FNFi was an important target for state repression. By April 2, Eremildo Viana, with help from military troops, raided the Radio of the Ministry of Education (Rádio MEC), which at that time was directed by Maria Yedda Linhares, professor of modern and contemporary history at FNFi. The occupation was based on an accusation that the radio was a site for student unrest and subversive activity.

Police presence in the National Faculty of Philosophy.

Source: Arquivo Nacional, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

Police presence in the National Faculty of Philosophy.

Source: Arquivo Nacional, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

The issue of Correio da Manhã published on April 3, 1964, states that the dean of the University of Brazil had called for a break in the academic calendar until the 6^th. In the months that followed, various Military Police Investigations (IPMs) were opened to determine the nature of communist infiltration at FNFi. The Department of Social and Political Order (DOPS/GB) archive contains files on FNFi students and professors. Produced by security agencies, these files build a record of leftist activity in the Faculty and contain documents that precede the military coup. Files dating back from the 1950s were gathered to show evidence that FNFi functioned as a communist cell and that its professors and students were extremely dangerous extremists.

On April 23, 1964, nineteen students were expelled from the Faculty after being accused of involvement in political activities considered to be “subversive.” Eremildo Viana named ten of those students. Individuals on the list included the journalist Elio Gaspar, who later created a character named “Eremildo, the idiot” in one of his narratives.

Due to suspicions that there was a communist cell functioning in FNFi, an Investigative Commission of the University of Brazil was established in May 1964 in Rio de Janeiro. The goal of the commission was to gather evidence about communist infiltration in FNFi. The historian Eulália Lobo, the first woman to defend her doctoral thesis in history in Brazil and professor of American history at the Faculty, described what took place:

[…] right after ’64, the university was very targeted, and Eremildo denounced a series of people. When they finally opened an investigation, the general in charge ended up against Eremildo, viewing him as a conniver, someone with a rash character, at the very least. He testified to the existence of communist cells, saying that there was –think about how ridiculous this is – an Anchieta Cell in FNFi. Eremildo turned in Manoel Maurício de Albuquerque, José Américo Pessanha, Maria Yedda Linhares, Evaristo de Morais Filho, Mariana Szão Paulo de Vasconcellos, and myself, amongst others, as communist conspirators (Relato de Eulália Lobo, retirado de Ferreira, Marieta de Moraes, 2014, p. 34).

Despite the suspicions of a communist cell, the commission did not find evidence that proved the existence of these so-called “FNFi communists.” As for Eremildo Viana, after reporting 44 professors, countless students, and also members of the Investigative Commission as “implicated in subversive activities,” the newspaper Correio de Manhã would publish the following story under the headline “Federal Court to accuse the ex-director of FNFi” on May 17, 1967:

A case in which the director of the Radio of the Ministry of Education and Culture and ex-director of the National Faculty of Philosophy, Mr. Eremildo Viana, is accused of embezzlement and the falsification of documents by the Investigatory Commission of the University of Brazil was sent to the Federal Court. Judge Buarque de Amorim determined that it was not within the jurisdiction of the Criminal Division to judge this case. Mr. Eremildo Viana was the only member of FNFi accused by the Commission, which was presided over by General Arcy da Rocha Nóbrega (Correio da Manhã, 17 maio 1967).

In addition to suffering repression, the University of Brazil was the target for changes developed by the Ministry of Education directly following the 1964 coup as part of a larger vision of broad university reforms. As part of this process of transformation in higher education, a federal law in 1965 determined that the University of Brazil would come to be known as the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and that its units would be reorganized into institutes and schools, a decision that resulted in the dissolution of FNFi.

Made defunct in 1968, FNFi was divided into UFRJ’s ten units: the School of Communication, Faculty of Education, Faculty of Letters, Biology Institute, Physics Institute, Geosciences Institute, Institute for Philosophy and Social Sciences, Mathematics Institute, Psychology Institute, and Chemistry Institute. What was left of the old FNFi was only the façade of the building where it had operated before being shut down, at Avenida Presidente Antônio Carlos, 40, which is now the building for the Italian General Consulate of Rio de Janeiro.

In January 1987, a group of researchers from the UFRJ Faculty of Education developed a research initiative that aimed to reconstruct the history of FNFi. The project aimed to study its origins, the paths it took, and the lived experiences inside it, from its creation through the beginning of its dissolution in 1967 to 1968, when it was fully shut down. One of the most serious problems that the initiative faced – which was later confirmed through the testimonies of former professors, students, and staffs – was that important FNFi documents had been destroyed or disappeared after the 1964 coup when soldiers came on frequent “visits” to the Faculty.

BRAZILIAN PRESS ASSOCIATION (ABI)

ASSOCIAÇÃO BRASILEIRA DE IMPRENSA

Address: Rua Araújo Porto Alegre, 71, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Civil and Corporate Participation; Political-cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Dylan Blau Edelstein

The Brazilian Press Association (ABI) is an institution that sought to defend freedom of expression throughout the military dictatorship, and aided in the transition out of the regime. Notwithstanding its moderate and appeasing positions, the ABI had moments of both alignment with and distance from the government. It stood in defense of the freedom of the press, positioning itself against censorship and the imprisonment of journalists. As such, the ABI, as a civil society organization, was an important actor and articulator in the institutional fights for democracy and individual liberties during the dictatorial regime.

Founded in 1908 by the journalist Gustavo Lacerda, the ABI functioned as a union of sorts for professionals dedicated exclusively to journalism. It advocated for better work conditions and freedom of expression.

Before the construction of its permanent headquarters in Rio de Janeiro’s city center in the 1930s, the association worked out of rented buildings. Construction was initiated by ABI president Herbert Moses — who would remain president for three decades and even see the new building named in his honor. Brazilian presidents Getúlio Vargas and Eurico Gaspar Dutra contributed financially to the construction, despite systematic repression of the press under their governments.

During Moses’s presidency, and particularly after the building’s construction, the ABI hosted and supported diverse events and gatherings to discuss issues regarding freedom of expression. They received cultural groups for conferences, debates, and seminars, independent of their political, religious, and philosophical beliefs.

One of the most notable initiatives that the institution supported was the mobilization of artists and intellectuals around the 1955 release of the film Rio, 40 Graus, by Cinema Novo activist Nelson Pereira dos Santos. However, when the association scheduled a private screening to be held at their headquarters, the event was censored and the film banned. Other ideologically diverse events held at the ABI included the launch of the National Democratic Union (UDN) in 1945, and the 5^th Congress of the Brazilian Communist Party [05] in 1960. The association also hosted a wide range of prominent figures, such as Luís Carlos Prestes, Robert Kennedy, Che Guevara, Henry Truman, and Fidel Castro.

Before the 1964 coup, the ABI played an important mobilizing role in guaranteeing João Goulart’s assumption of the presidency. However, following the coup, the ABI preferred to remain neutral.

Despite widespread press and media approval of Goulart’s removal from power — and although a significant number of ABI associates belonged to these and other institutions that participated actively in the coup, such as the Institute of Research and Social Studies (IPES) — the ABI itself sought to maintain its “neutrality.” Even before March 1964, newspapers like O Estado de S. Paulo, Folha de S. Paulo, Jornal do Brasil, O Globo, and Correio da Manhã criticized and sought to demoralize the president, forming a united bloc against the Goulart government.

In spite of the censorship that followed the coup, mass media companies continued to support the military regime for nearly a decade. In this context, the ABI positioned itself as critical of the censorship and imprisonment of journalists, defending the physical integrity of jailed reporters and working to free them by utilizing personal contacts within the military government. The association’s appeasing stance is evident in the numerous letters and telegrams exchanged between the ABI president and General Castelo Branco, requesting the liberation of journalists.

From 1966 to 1972, Danton Jobim served as ABI president. Jobim established a closer relationship with the military government under the mandate of army marshal Arthur da Costa e Silva. At the same time that Jobim critiqued violence against the press in his newspaper column Última Hora, he sought out friendly dialogue with the government, even inviting Costa e Silva to lunch at the association’s headquarters. The press called the event “a banquet for the dictator.”

The banquet took place on April 7, 1968, in commemoration of the association’s 60-year anniversary. Among those present at the event were government officials, including President Costa e Silva and Francisco Negrão de Lima, Governor of the State of Guanabara, as well as the owners of the newspapers O Globo, Correio da Manhã, and Jornal do Brasil.

On April 1, one week before the event and nearly three days before the death of the student Edson Luís in Calabouço Restaurant, the Marines invaded the ABI headquarters to prevent it from sheltering activists, journalists, and students during widespread protests in the city center. In response, Danton Jobim wrote a letter to Costa e Silva in which he requested that the Marines immediately vacate the headquarters, simultaneously ending the military occupation and also confirming his presence at the lunch on the 7^th.

The presence of the dictator at the ABI headquarters imbued the event with contradiction. Following Danton Jobim’s opening remarks, President Costa e Silva gave a speech on the importance of free expression and freedom of the press. He defended democracy, promised to punish those responsible for violence against students, and affirmed that “he hadn’t considered, didn’t consider, and would never consider issuing new institutional acts,” even citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A few months later, the government would put forward the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5), often called a coup within a coup; its fifth article suspended all political rights. Journalists protested the lunch, demonstrating outside the ABI. They were led by journalists Antônio Callado, Otto Maria Carpeaux, and José Machado, president of the Journalists’ Union. Following the event, Callado disassociated himself from the ABI in a letter to Danton Jobim, stating: “We can’t eat lunch with someone who wants to eat us for lunch.” Hélio Fernandes, another journalist, wrote an article in Tribuna da Imprensa condemning the episode and lambasting Jobim for burying the ABI alive by fraternizing with Governor Negrão de Lima and the dictator Costa e Silva, both violators of the free press.

The ABI reacted by prohibiting the Journalists’ Union from holding meetings at the association, accusing the union of holding politically motivated gatherings and of demonstrating “ingratitude” towards the ABI, which had always welcomed them.

Despite this, the association provided space for diverse members of opposition movements: from gatherings of families of political prisoners, to the 1978 founding assembly of the Brazilian Committee for Amnesty (CBA), to meetings of the Socialist Convergence, and clandestine sessions of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), run by ABI members who were also activists in the party.

The direction of the association shifted with the election of President Prudente de Moraes Neto, especially following the death of journalist Vladimir Herzog on October 25, 1975. Following this, the ABI collaborated with other institutions to petition the government for greater investigation into what happened. They also provided the names of other incarcerated journalists without access to means of communication or legal assistance. The ABI and the São Paulo Journalists’ Union also organized funeral masses to occur simultaneously in the two major cities. Archbishop Eugênio Salles prohibited the mass from taking place in any church in the city of Rio de Janeiro, pushing for the ceremony to take place at the ABI headquarters.

From 1979 to 1981, a range of bombings occurred across the country, targeting opposition leaders, civil society organizations, newspaper headquarters, and dozens of newsstands that sold anti-government publications. In August 1976, the seventh floor of the ABI was bombed, destroying a bathroom and causing serious damage to the building’s hydraulic system. Luckily, no one was injured. Pamphlets distributed concurrently attributed the act of terrorism to the Anticommunist Brazilian Association and accused the ABI of being controlled by communists. The attack, they indicated, was a first warning. Yet this was not the first time that something like this had happened. In 1952, there had been an attack on the second floor, where the Federal Trade Commission (COFAP) was located, nearly killing former ABI president Moses.

On August 27, 1980, a bomb went off at the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) [12] and, on the same day, a third bomb was found on the eighth floor of the ABI building, in the National Trade Superintendence (SUNAB). However, this bomb did not go off, since the secretary to general Glauco de Carvalho, the letter’s intended recipient, did not open the envelope.

Despite this attack, President Geisel asked the ABI to participate in dialogue around political détente, a process which drew in a diverse range of groups and personalities, including: archbishops Eugênio Sales of Rio de Janeiro and Vicente Sherer of Porto Alegre; the president of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), Aluísio Lorscheider; the president of the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), Domício Veloso; the workers’ leader Luís Inácio da Silva; jurists José Edusrdo do Prado Kelly, Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, and Miguel Reale; and the president of the OAB [12], Raimundo Faoro. This dialogue was part of the “Portela Mission,” which sought to involve a more moderate branch of civil society in conversations around how to determine an end to the dictatorship and transition to democracy.

In 1983, in response to the apprehension of newspapers and arresting of journalists who had protested the end of the National Security Law, the ABI president Barbosa Lima Sobrinho spoke publicly against violence and imprisonment. That same year, the ABI and other institutions began a movement for the formation of a national constituent assembly and for direct presidential elections.

In the 1980s, the ABI building was selected by the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (Iphan) for its architectural and historical value, particularly for its link to the fight for free expression and democratic political movements. The ABI continues to defend political reform in the country, creating a commission to coordinate the development of a campaign to call together a national constituent assembly.

In 2012, with the creation of the National Truth Commission (CNV), the ABI hosted diverse events that brought together persecuted politicians, journalists, historians, and activists.

CINELÂNDIA

CINELÂNDIA

Address: Praça Floriano, Centro, Rio de Janeiro
Themes: The 1964 Coup D’état; Repressive Structures; Civil and Corporate Participation; Universities and the Student Movement; Homosexuality and Dictatorship; Political-Cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

Cinelândia, located in the heart of Rio de Janeiro’s Central Zone, is made up of the Marechal Floriano Peixoto plaza and surrounding streets. During the dictatorship, this area was the site of countless protests and political-cultural movements against the military regime. The plaza, which easily holds large groups of people, is also located near a significant concentration of political, cultural, and educational institutions functioning on a city, state, and federal level, making the space a choice site for politically engaged action. Indeed, diverse social and political struggles took place in the plaza historically. Cinelândia can be understood as a singular public space that displays the constant tension between the exercise of state authority and popular movements.

Cinelândia came out of Rio de Janeiro’s urban reforms that took place in the first decade of the 20^th century. From 1903-07 – during Brazilian President Rodrigues Alves’s administration, and under the watch of Mayor Pereira Passos – major changes to the urban landscape took place. With the goal of modernizing the then-national capital, reforms included the creation of a huge avenue, called Central Avenue (now Rio Branco Avenue), which connects the new port (Mauá Plaza) to Beira-mar Avenue and facilitated the city’s growth in the South Zone. At the far end of the Central Avenue was Ferreira Viana Plaza, known as the Floriano Plaza after 1910 in homage to the second president of the Brazilian republic. Some of Rio de Janeiro’s most emblematic buildings were built around the plaza, including the National Library, the National School for Fine Arts, the Supreme Court, the Monroe Palace and, dominating the landscape, the Municipal Theater. Most buildings were built in Renaissance Revival and eclectic architectural styles.

These buildings were part of a large urban project guided by modernist and cosmopolitan ideals that the ruling elites and dominant Brazilian classes held. Their goal was to imitate some of the changes, such as the construction of parks, boulevards, mansions, and palaces, that Paris had undergone during Napoleon III’s Second Empire (1852-70). The Passos administration created a heavy-handed policy of forcibly displacing the low-income groups that lived in informal housing and tenements in the city center in order to build the Central Avenue and make room for commercial space and government buildings. The overarching goal was to polish the expansionist and modernist image of the nation’s capital. Passos’s discourse about cultural revival, centered specifically on the plaza in Cinelândia, received heavy criticism, given the elite nature of the urban reforms. The mayor claimed the changes would benefit everyone, but in reality they created spaces for a privileged minority. Though they could not fully take advantage of the space, a portion of the popular classes did frequent the plaza, especially after 1925, when a large number of movie theaters were built in the area. This high concentration of cinema is what led the area to be known as Cinelândia. The movies were extremely popular, as the theaters’ clientele was less distinguished and prices were far more accessible than at the nearby Municipal Theater.

Cinelândia was a space of intense political action since its construction because of its proximity to the Federal Supreme Court (STF) and to the Monroe Palace, which at different points in time held the Ministries of Transportation and Agriculture, the 1914 House of Representatives, and the 1925 Federal Senate. The Pedro Ernesto Palace, inaugurated in 1923, is also in the plaza; this building was home to the City Council. It became the Legislative Assembly of the State of Guanabara after 1966 and then, after 1977, the Rio de Janeiro City Council. In this context, it makes sense that Cinelândia emerged as a compelling option for those who wanted to show their political point of view.

During the Getúlio Vargas government in the 1930s, Cinelândia would be the site for an event very much tied to the persecution of leftists in Brazil. The National Liberation Alliance (ALN) was established in 1935 as a political organization dedicated to stopping the spread of fascist ideas in Brazil. The organization especially opposed the National Integralist Action (AIN), led by Plínio Salgado, but also the Vargas government and the possibility of war in Europe. The ALN’s leader was communist Luís Carlos Prestes; the positions the group defended included land reform, a halt on foreign debt payments, the nationalization of businesses operating abroad, and extensive democratic rights. With rapid growth and thousands of members, the ALN organized one of its main rallies in Cinelândia. In November 1935, a few months after the organization began, a series of rebellions took place in what would come to be known as the Communist Uprising – or, pejoratively, the Communist Conspiracy. In this movement, members of the ANL took the cities of Natal, Maranhão, Recife, and, lastly, Rio de Janeiro. However, Prestes’ plan lacked coordination and organization. After it failed, the ALN was made illegal, Vargas declared a state of emergency, and repression increased not only towards communists, but also towards anyone critical to the government. The escalating oppression would culminate in the establishment of the Estado Novo dictatorship in 1937.

In 1954, Cinelândia would see yet another historic popular movement – and this time, it was one in support of Getúlio Vargas. The rally took place because of Vargas’s suicide on August 24, during his second term as the democratically elected president. His death inspired popular distress, and a crowd headed to Cinelândia, where a bust of Vargas stood. The legacy of this president would be important in Brazil’s history, especially during the equally dramatic presidency of João Goulart, a leader who represented workers and who was the last democratically elected president to hold office before the beginning of the military dictatorship.

On September 2, 1961, Vice President João Goulart assumed Brazil’s presidency while the country was led by an unprecedented parliamentary system that limited executive powers. The gradual implementation of this kind of governance was the compromise that leaders had come to in order to resolve the political crisis of the time: Jânio Quadros had unexpectedly resigned from the presidency, military ministers and representatives then rejected Goulart’s assumption of the role, and Leonel Brizola, Governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul at the time, rejected the military’s position and stood with Goulart’s presidency through the Legality Campaign. In this context of increased political polarization and the clearly offensive stance of the nation’s conservative forces, the Command for Hunting Communists (CCC) invaded and plundered the National Student Union (UNE), the main agency of Brazil’s student movement. A huge protest took place in Cinelândia in condemnation of the CCC’s actions.

August 24, 1962, the first anniversary of Vargas’s suicide in Goulart’s presidency, would mark yet another rally in Cinelândia. The moment was tense, framed by a confrontation between the president and the then-governor of the state of Guanabara Carlos Lacerda, a prominent right-wing leader. Ever since Jango (as Goulart was referred to) took office, moves to destabilize the presidency intensified. The Institute of Research and Social Studies (IPES) and the Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD) drove actions against the president through a substantial anticommunist campaign that opposed the nationalistic reforms Jango proposed. Financed by Brazilian and foreign businesses and the US government, IPES and IBAD reached the Brazilian public through newspapers, radio stations, and films.¹

Given the failure of the parliamentary system and pressure from a general workers’ strike organized by the General Workers’ Command (CGT), congress had no option but to bring forward the plebiscite that would determine Brazil’s system of governance – presidential or parliamentary – and rescheduled the vote for January 6, 1963. It was a stunning victory for the presidential system: presidentialism received 9 million 500 thousand votes out of 11 million. Clearly, the campaign to destabilize the presidency had not affected Jango’s popularity. Consequently, military groups, businesses, politicians, and mainstream media – with the active participation of the United States – began to openly conspire against João Goulart’s govnerment administration, plotting to depose the president. All the while, Brazil suffered an intense economic crisis.²

Political polarization and radicalization deepened over the course of 1963. August 24 was once again commemorated with a rally in Cinelândia; in this case, João Goulart participated. During the event, the public insisted that Jango clearly articulate his stand on issues, since he had gone back and forth between “positions conciliatory to the elite and nods to leftist reforms” (Fico, 2015, p. 47). In his speech, he affirmed that he would fight not just for land reform, but also for banking reform. But it was the massive rally at the Central do Brasil Station on March 13, 1964 that would serve as trigger for those pushing for a coup d’état. The rally was the first of a series planned to take place across Brazil, and there Goulart publicly expressed his close ties to the left. He reaffirmed broad-based reforms as part of his administration’s plan, indicating that, in addition to the appropriation of land, he also intended to take over private oil refineries and develop a new Constitution. Brizola, congressional representative with the Brazilian Labor Party, gave the most inflammatory speech of the rally. In addition to provoking the governor of Guanabara, Carlos Lacerda, he criticized congress for rejecting broad-based reforms. In a political climate heavy with the possibility of a coup, with members of the armed forces scattered in civil and political circles, Brizola stated: “we will not accept any kind of coup from any source. We intend to be peaceful but are prepared to meet violence with violence” (UNIVESP TV, 2014). However, the countdown to the coup had already begun. A series of events led by various actors built up to the final outcome: in March 19, 1964 was the first large-scale “March of the Family with God for Liberty” in São Paulo; the next day, classified documents from general Castelo Branco, Chief of the Brazilian Army, circulated amongst subordinates. The documents criticized the rally at Central do Brasil Station and evaluated the gravity of the political situation, stated to be severe enough to justify a coup d’état. March 25 was the Navy Revolt in the Rio de Janeiro Metalworkers’ Union, seen by leaders of the Armed Forces as yet another example of the lack of discipline amongst subordinate soldiers, caused by the government. March 30 would be Jango’s last speech as president, transmitted over radio and television. It was the commemoration of the Association of the Non-commissioned Officers and Sergeants of the Military Police at the Automotive Club of Brazil. The president reaffirmed that, “reactionary forces will (not) be capable of destroying this administration, which represents the Brazilian people.” The next day, March 31, marked the first movement of troops from Minas Gerais towards Rio de Janeiro under the command of general Mourão Filho, a long-time conspirator against the democratic government.

On April 1, the military coup solidified, and the police and the three branches of the armed forces took over all of the Center Zone of Rio de Janeiro. The flux of people trying to get information Cinelândia was intense, and there some of the first people fell victim to the violence of the new regime. Political activists and students opposing the coup congregated in the area. Among them was the communist leader Carlos Marighella who, standing on a crate in the middle of the plaza, shouted out against the coup against Brazil’s democratic leader in what became an impromptu rally. In just over three hours, a group of soldiers left the Military Club for the plaza and distributed leaflets against Jango’s “nefarious government.” The activists that had occupied the space reacted by throwing rocks at the Military Club. In retaliation, the army shot into the crowd with firearms. Marighella encouraged the crowd to rush the building, but machine gun rounds prevented anyone from getting close. Dozens of people were shot. One bullet fatally wounded Labibe Elias Abduch, a nearly 60-year-old woman who had walked to Cinelândia to get information about the political situation in Rio Grande do Sul, where one of her children lived. Ari de Oliveira Mendes Cunha was another person who died that day.

Soldiers flooded the path from the Municipal Theater to the Monroe Palace with the intention of quelling groups of protestors. They used tear gas as well as their rifle butts and closed bayonets to beat protestors back; the crowd threw rocks at tanks, cheered for Jango, and sang the national anthem until the military expelled them from the plaza.

So we drove the VW Beetle to Cinelândia. We saw pro-coup officials from the Military Club firing into the crowd, and also the “legalist” Army troops repressing the people protesting the coup. We didn’t know about Aragão’s arms. Upset, we went back to República do Peru Street, where people were celebrating the coup. That’s when I started getting political (Eduardo Benevides. Depoimento em Ferrer, 2011, p. 99).

The vast majority of mainstream media supported the military coup. The country’s major newspapers, especially those from Rio de Janeiro, published articles from April 1-3 demonstrating the conviction that the rule of law being taken into military hands was the best thing that could have happened to Brazil:

Saved from the rapid spread of communism, Brazilians should thank the brave soldiers who protected them from their enemies (O Globo, 2 abr. 1964).

The residents of Copacabana went out onto the streets like it was carnaval, welcoming army troops. Confetti rained from buildings as the people flowed into the streets in celebration (O Dia, 2 abr. 1964).

Cast out, quiet, and cowardly, Mr. João Belchior Marques Goulart, infamous leader of the communist-insider-unionizer, was ousted from power by the legitimate will of the Brazilian people. Mr. João Goulart will go down in history as one of the most notorious crooks in Brazilian politics and, now, as one of the country’s biggest cowards (Tribuna da Imprensa, 2 abr. 1964).

Yesterday, the real rule of law was established in Brazil […] Rule of law that the previous leader did not want to preserve, violating it in its most fundamental principle: military hierarchy. The rule of law is with us and not with the communist leader (Jornal do Brasil, 1 abr. 1964, Editorial).

Violence targeting those in support of Jango’s government started on the first day of the coup and continued throughout the country for a long period of time. That violence involved arbitrary arrests, torture, and death. The Supreme Command of the Revolution, made up of commanders from the three branches of the armed forces and led by self-appointed commander of the National Army, general Costa e Silva, released a decree on April 9. The Institutional Act declared the legitimacy and constituent power of the new dictatorship, which called itself a revolution. It allowed the Constitution and Congress to remain with severe limitations and restrictions, maintaining the façade of democratic normalcy. The Act also passed discretionary power to general Castelo Branco, commander and soon-to-be president, elected two days later by a congress already purged of 40 representatives. Those powers gave Castelo Branco the ability to repeal congressional powers, suspend political rights, and transfer soldiers against the coup to the reserves.

The Act also set a June 15 deadline for carrying out “revolutionary punishments” – these punishments, according to the Command’s decision, had to be grounded in expeditious investigations coordinated by superior officials, especially coronels. Those members of the armed forces were so-called “hard-liners,” members of the most radical groups that would come to be known as the “intelligence committee” during the most intense and brutal phase of political violence (1969-74). In any case, constant pressure from increased sanctions and the rise of these groups in the institutional structure of the military regime caused the mandate of the first president-general, Castelo Branco, to be extended, (frustrating politicians who had participated in the coup with the expectation that the presidential elections scheduled for 1965 would take place, as Castelo Branco himself had promised). Moreover, the influence of these groups also led to the decree of two Institution Acts that would serve as the rigid framework for the dictatorship’s most violent repressive practices: the Second Institutional Act (AI-2), passed on October 27, 1965, and, above all, the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) on September 13, 1968.

The AI-2 was the consequence of an electoral victory by opposition candidates in gubernatorial elections in Guanabara and Minas Gerais and the reaction of radical groups against what they saw as impunity for the “enemies of the regime.” The Act reopened the practice of “revolutionary punishments” and established indirect elections for the presidency. It also removed existing political parties, establishing a controlled bipartisanship system made up of the governing National Reform Alliance (ARENA) and the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), the permitted opposition group. The regime also used the AI-2 to increase the number of justices in the Federal Supreme Court, ensuring that it would have a solid majority. Additionally, the AI-2 lent the president discretionary power to announce, a state of emergency for 180 days via the National Security Council, to suspend Congress, intervene in states and cities, and to purge civil servants and members of the armed forces suspected of opposing the regime. This act would be in effect until March 15, 1967, when the regime would establish a new constitution and a new National Security Law.

It is important to note that, in addition to the broad persecution of opposition groups (unions, politicians, students, and soldiers), repression and censorship also affected certain groups of indigenous people, the black rights movement, residents of Afro-Brazilian quilombos, favela residents, queer people, farmers, urban workers, and others, all for a variety of motives. For that reason, Cinelândia was the site for frequent repression against behavior and customs considered to be immoral by the military regime. Homosexuality is one example, especially because Cinelândia had been a queer socializing space since the 1930s. There was even a newspaper called Snob that continued to circulate amongst the LGBT community in Cinelândia and Copacaba until 1969.³

The establishment of the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) on December 13, 1968 marked the pinnacle of the intensifying institutional political and social violence inherent to the military dictatorship. That year saw increasing resistance and opposition to the regime in diverse forms: the civil-political movement called Frente Ampla (Broad Front) brought together former adversaries to the regime, incuding Carlos Lacerda, Juscelino Kubitschek, and João Goulart, at the end of 1967; protests carried about by the national student movement gained support from the Catholic church and sectors of the middle class that had initially supported the civil-military coup and the new regime in 1964; metalworkers in Osasco and Contagem carried out strikes to condemn restrictions of social rights and the regime’s economic policies, which cut salaries; leftist organizations began, still through very small-scale actions, to opt for armed resistance to the dictatorship. The call to deeply restructure the repressive apparatus of the military regime certainly did precede this mass mobilization. However, members of the Armed Forces, from the “hard-liners” to the “moderates”, perceived the countless opposition protests that involved, above all, the student leadership under the leadership of the National Student Union (UNE) and the Metropolitan Student Union (UME) as a confirmation of the urgent need to establish a centralized coercive system. Grounded in a more comprehensive and interconnected network of surveillance, that system would guarantee more selective and efficient repression, both within the State and society at large. Until that system was established, the repression already at play intensified: the regime prohibited activities carried out by the Broad Front, police violently repressed student protests throughout the country, and the military invaded or shut down federal universities. The regime imprisoned hundreds of students during the 30^th annual UNE Conference in Ibiúna and began to require a “political affiliation certificate” for elected workers’ union leaders. Meanwhile, intimidation techniques escalated towards theaters, publishers, and newspapers, in addition to the kidnapping of artists.

Edson Luís’s casket.

Source: Arquivo Nacional, fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

Protest in front of the Pedro Ernesto Palace.

Source: National Archive, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

Protest in front of the Pedro Ernesto Palace.

Source: National Archive, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

In the turbulence of 1968, Cinelândia set the stage for many important political movements in Rio de Janeiro. The event responsible for broadening opposition to the military dictatorship was the regime’s murder of student Edson Luís Lima Souto, originally from the northern state of Pará. Together with his peers, the young boy protested in order to call attention to the precarious conditions of the university mess hall, also known as the Calabouço. On March 28, the Calabouço student movement marched to the Legislative Assembly at the Pedro Ernesto Palace. Aware that the press would cover a protest in front of the Legislative Assembly, the students called for improvements in the mess hall and the completion of never-ending renovations. The police quickly arrived at the scene and began to violently impede the protest. In response to the attacks they suffered, students retaliated by throwing rocks:

It was after 6 P.M., after dinner, on that fateful Thursday, March 28, 1968, that we, the students, had scheduled a protest. We met at the clearing where we would begin to march against the high price of meals in the mess hall in addition to terribly unhygienic conditions and the slow speed of renovations on the building. Then the military police began to attack, first with nightsticks. They came from the LBA building and from Avenida Marechal Câmara and surrounded the clearing and brutally beat us, ordering everyone to disperse and leave the area.

We didn’t want to leave the area, so we ran inside the Calabouço and, from there, fought back using stones from the construction site. The police tried to intimidate us by sending rounds from rifles and machine guns into the air.

The police then shot at us, and we responded by throwing more rocks. The result was that many students were wounded and Edson Luís Lima Souto tragically died. He was murdered by a shot in the chest from a 45-caliber pistol. Later, it was discovered that the pistol belonged to Lieutenant Alcindo Costa, who commanded the Military Police’s Motorized Battalion in the area (Airton Queiroz, Depoimento em Ferrer, 2011, p. 162).

March of One Hundred Thousand.

Source: Acervo José Inácio Parente. Used with permission.

Priests in the March of One Hundred Thousand.

Source: Acervo José Inácio Parente. Used with permission.

Shot, Edson Luís was carried by students, first to the Santa Casa Hospital, where he died. Then, the students carried him to the Pedro Ernesto Palace and mourned his death throughout the night and through the afternoon of March 29. A mass of nearly 100,000 people came together in Cinelândia in homage to the victims of dictatorship violence. On April 4, the Candelária Church held two 7^th day masses in honor of the victims, which were accompanied by more protests, and were also met by police brutality.

Other events in 1968 mark Cinelândia as a site of resistance. A series of flash demonstrations took place on May 7, bringing together hundreds of people in the Cinelândia area to discuss the changes that the military regime had brought to Brazil. The government’s response was to send the Military Police and agents in the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS/GB) to the plaza and repress such movements. On June 26, the “March of One Hundred Thousand” took place to protest the violence that had taken place just days before during a protest in front of the U.S. embassy near Cinelândia. The day would come to be known as “bloody Friday” because of the 28 people murdered, hundreds wounded, and nearly one thousand taken prisoner during the protest. Joined by nearly 100,000 people, the protest in response to that violence included students, politicians, religious leaders, artists, and intellectuals, and became an icon of resistance to the dictatorship.

Everyone was there: students, artists, and intellectuals like Otto Maria Carpeaux, Professor Maria Yedda Linhares, lawyer Ciro Kurtz, Marcelo, Alencar, who defended political prisoners at the time, union workers from countless lines of work, professors, the Order of Attorneys of Brazil (OAB), the Brazilian Press Association (ABI). And everything was so joyful as we formed lines. It was utopic, our dream playing out to the sound of Vandré’s music. It was so crowded when we got to Cinelândia, the final gathering point. Even though the march had been permitted, we were still observed. And a lot of people were paranoid, thinking there might be a bomb on every corner. But the march was as impeccable as Woodstock. Everyone came together in a beautiful, peaceful protest that showed the world that it was not the people of Brazil who wanted war. We just wanted the return of our legal system and our democratic freedoms that the military government had usurped after the 1964 coup (Dalva Bonet. Depoimento em Ferrer, 2011, p. 181).

From 1969 onwards, the military regime toughened, intensifying repression and increasing surveillance through the AI-5, Complementary Acts and a constitutional amendment. The most brutal period of the military dictatorship (which coincided with and mutually reinforced the phase known as the Brazilian “economic miracle”) led to the drastic weakening of public political and social opposition movements. Those who chose to continue struggling against the dictatorship dedicated themselves, in many cases, to armed resistance; others, running against the saying “Brazil: love it or leave it” went into exile and while abroad organized international campaigns to denounce the atrocities and barbarities of the dictatorship. As Medici’s administration came to a close and Geisel became the military leader of Brazil, the dictatorship had completely crushed leftist revolutionary movements, which included the Araguaia guerrilla movement (in this case, the vast majority of the fighters died or disappeared as part of a deliberate annihilation strategy on the part of the dictatorship). In 1974, Geisel stepped into the presidency and began the period of so-called “slow, gradual, and secure” political distention, which would later come to be known as a political opening.

The project of political opening was meant to carry out a strategy of gradual decompression of political repression. Without abandoning existing security measures and select repressive practices (including, above all, torture, murder, and forced disappearance), this period guaranteed the institutionalization of the regime, complete with political safeguards and repressive strategies built into the very constitutional structure. As this phase began and strengthened, an economic crisis – the end of the “miracle,” with rising inflation and increased foreign debt –, increased political differences in the core of the armed forces, political action within emerging social movements and civil society groups, and the unexpected growth of the permitted opposition party, the MDB, all weighed on the parliamentary elections that were to take place that year. Though the military confronted serious economic, political, and social challenges that made a transition to democracy irreversible during the 11-year period of political opening, they did not at any point in time lose their strategic steering or control over the process. They also established safeguards, like the National Intelligence Service (SNI) and the new National Security Law, as well as other institutional legacies. And it was from this position of power that the dictatorship was able to carry out crucial, interrelated tasks: on the one hand, the dismantling of the central mechanisms of the state of exception (the AI-5, prior censorship, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODIs)), drawing violent responses from the most recalcitrant sectors of the “intelligence community,” and, on the other hand, the implementation of key measures that structured the shift away from the military regime (these measures included the Amnesty Law, a multi-party system, direct elections for governors, and indirect elections for the presidency). The first civil government inaugurated the “top-down,” negotiated transition to democracy, which occurred under the tutelage and veto power of the armed forces.

Army Police in Cinelândia.

Source: Arquivo Nacional, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

Police occupy Cinelândia and impede a protest against the imprisonment of student leader Wladimir Palmeira on August 6, 1968.

Source: AMORJ/UFRJ, Fundo: Partido Comunista Brasileiro. Used with permission.

One would imagine that Cinelândia might have revived its role as a site for major protests with political opening underway in the second half of the 1970s. But the plaza had become a huge construction site for a new metro station. As the construction took place, there was also an architectural-urbanist shift of enormous relevance: the Monroe Palace, one of the most emblematic buildings in Rio, was knocked down. At the time, studies on the building’s foundations had been carried out to design a detour in the metro line, which would allow the palace to remain standing. However, despite the many ways through which the Monroe Palace resisted, President Geisel authorized its demolition, which was swiftly carried out in 1976 in conjunction with a dedicated publicity campaign from the newspaper O Globo. For quite some time it was impossible to use Cinelândia as a space for public demonstrations. The events tied to the construction of the Cinelândia metro aimed to empty the center of Rio de Janeiro of political action, a process that also involved the displacement of various universities to more distant areas of Rio de Janeiro.

By the 1980s, various factors allowed Cinlândia to return to its identity as a space for political action. The construction work on the metro was complete, the Amnesty Law had caused the major state institutions of repression to shut down, the political system opened to more than two parties, and direct elections for governors were taking place. With these changes, new political parties began and social movements multiplied, strengthened, and rearticulated themselves — “new unionism,” the feminist movement, the black movement, the sanitation movement, block associations, etc. And so Cinelândia became once more the stage for important political protests by these social actors, and, most notoriously, for the Direitas Já – Direct Elections Now – movement. The regime’s loosening combined with the democratizing changes appearing “from below,” in the heart of civil society, allowed for political parties, unions, social movements, collectives, and people to mobilize and have a voice for their varied demands. The demand that quickly galvanized a desire for change and the political participation of vast swaths of the Brazilian population was that the president be chosen by the direct popular vote in the 1984 election. The movement began in 1983 and reached its peak in 1984, when countless rallies took place in major Brazilian cities. There were three in Rio de Janeiro, with the first two taking place on February 16 and March 21 in Cinelândia and the third, which brought together nearly 1 million people, in Candelária. In the Cinelândia region, more than 250 Brazilians came together to call for the approval of the Dante de Oliveira amendment, which would ensure the direct election. But the amendment was rejected in congress, and Tancredo Neves, the first civil president after 21 years of military rule, was elected through an indirect election imposed by the dictatorship in January 1985.⁴

After the dictatorship, Cinelândia remained an important space for a variety of social and political protests. Stand-out causes include the Painted Faces movement of 1992, which brought thousands of students into the streets across Brazil, their faces painted in green and yellow, to protest against president Fernando Collor de Melo. Collor de Melo’s economic plan had failed and there were accusations of a corruption scheme within the administration that directly involved the president. Then, the president himself called for the people to go to the streets in his support, dressed in Brazil’s national colors, which motivated a counter-protest on a Sunday in September. The movement was led by the Movement for Ethics in Politics and was marked by the massive presence of “painted faces” and black clothing. Impeachment proceedings were launched against Collor, and he was removed from his position. In other words, the first democratically elected president after the military dictatorship was judged and condemned by a Senate majority and consequently lost his presidential mandate and his right to run in elections for a period of eight years.

In the Military Club, a building also located in the Cinelândia region, commemorations of the military coup and related events were frequent. In 2012, the National Truth Commission (CNV) was established and then-president Dilma Rousseff banned official celebrations of the armed forces in military barracks. As a response, soldiers in the reserves planned to celebrate the coup d’état early, on March 29. With this military provocation, leftist social movements and political parties organized a specific type of protest called an escrache, performing symbolic burials of the disappeared and shouting orders at the reserves who arrived in uniform. The military police Batalhão de Choque – Shock Battalion – along with the metro security and the Municipal Guard worked together to ensure that the soldiers left the building. The military police reacted to the leftist protests with pepper spray, flash bombs, and stun guns. Some people were arrested and others were wounded.

Cinelândia was the site for intense protests once again in the 2013 Jornadas de Junho protests, which were triggered by an increase in bus fare across the country and calls for free transportation by the Free Pass Movement (MPL). The protests grew in strength through social media and had no links to political parties, unions, or established mass movements, bringing together hundreds of thousands of youth and people of various political and ideological views from cities across the Brazil. The State’s response was repeatedly one of police violence in the vast majority of these protests.

The stalemate about transportation in major Brazilian cities brought other topics about urban life into the public’s demands. There were calls for the demilitarization of the police and protests against the military’s repression and occupation, as well as appeals for free, universally accessible, and quality health care and public education (“We want schools and hospitals at FIFA-level quality”). These protests challenged the government and traditional forms of political representation (sometimes with anti-political and non-partisan discourse of an openly conservative slant, with purely moral condemnations of corruption). At the same time, the movement affirmed new forms of self-representation and self-governance, and autonomous groups occupied public space and city buildings. The protests called into questions the absurd spending on World Cup and Olympic infrastructure projects as a way to critique one element of a dominant model of business-oriented urbanism in the country’s major cities and the policy of forced displacement, privatization, and the denial of rights. In this way, in its heterogeneity, this true earthquake in Brazil’s political life “made not one, but infinite unresolved, contradictory, and paradoxical agendas emerge” (Rolnik, 2015, p. 357), all of which met in struggles for the right to the city and for the taking back of public space.

September and October 2013 were also marked by protests carried out by state and municipal teachers in Rio de Janeiro. The State barred the movements and reacted with extreme repression. Notable protests include that of October 1, when there was a vote on the Jobs and Salaries Plan/Career and Salaries Plan for the teachers, and that of October 15, teacher’s day, when a huge protest stopped traffic on Rio Branco Avenue. The march ended in Cinedlândia with police brutality and the mass arrests of protestors and others passing through the area.

April 1, 2014 marked 50 years after the 1964 coup. On that day, a monument to the cause of “Never Again” was inaugurated in Cinelândia in honor of Brazilian resistance and the struggle for amnesty for political prisoners. Sponsored by the Justice Ministry’s Amnesty Commission in partnership with the Rio de Janeiro State Truth Commission (CEV-Rio) and numerous other entities, the demonstration was part of the most significant moment of debates, academic seminars, cultural activities, and public forums about the military dictatorship that had occurred since National Truth Commission (CNV) and hundreds of other public and private-sector truth commissions had begun working across the country. The sculpture in Cinelândia represents Brazil’s flag, broken, with stars strewn across the ground. As a memorial landmark for those who do not want to forget the injustice of a violent past, a plaque reads: “This memorial is dedicated to the soldiers who were hunted down and persecuted for defending democracy and constitutional rights. For truth, memory, reparations, and justice so that no one forgets and so that this never repeats.”

More recently, the so-called “Women’s Spring” took place in Cinelândia in November 2015. This series of protests was organized by the feminist movement against the Speaker of the House, Eudardo Cunha, and the implementation of a conservative agenda that withdrew reproductive rights and affected the lives of women.

Just as in distant history and the recent past, Cinelândia continues, in the present, to be a quintessentially public space where the political life of the city of Rio de Janeiro pulses/thrives.

OUR LADY OF LA SALETTE CHURCH

IGREJA NOSSA SENHORA DA SALETTE

Address: Rua do Catumbi, 78, Catumbi, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Actions by the Catholic Church
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

Our Lady of La Salette Church, built in the Catumbi neighborhood in 1914, played a central role in Catholic worker movements. It was one of two sites that supported resistance to the regime’s will. The La Salette Priests defended social causes and supported popular organizations targeted during the period of the dictatorship. As consequence, these leaders also suffered imprisonment and torture.

The history of the Salette Sanctuary’s construction in Catumbi relates to the arrival of Father Clemente Henrique Moussier to São Paulo in 1902. With the goal of establishing a Salette site of worship in Rio de Janeiro, which was Brazil’s capital at the time, Father Moussier joined with a group of missionaries to establish the Our Lady of Sorrows La Salette parish on April 14, 1914. In 1918, the construction in Catumbi, one of the two oldest neighborhoods in Rio, was situated between the Central Zone and the North Zone of the city. The central branch of Our Lady of La Salette Church, as it came to be known, would be built over many years. Its construction ran parallel to an industrial boom in Brazil and the subsequent expansion of the working class. With the goal of converting this sector, the church integrated with workers’ groups. In 1962, former members of the Young Catholic Workers (JOC) founded Catholic Workers Action (ACO). The church in Catumbi was the organization’s regional headquarters. JOC members carried out pastoral work in the parish in the 1960s. Their headquarters was also in the region, located in the nearby São José Operário community, near the former Frei Caneca Complex.

After the civil-military coup in 1964, the state persecuted union leaders and – even though they did not align themselves with communist movements – saw members of the JOC and ACO as suspect of subversive activities as well. Unable to organize in any labor-related setting, the groups’ meetings happened more and more frequently in low-income communities. In that context, the main hall of La Salette became the site for a few JOC and ACO meetings. The acting leaders of the church were Father Manuel de Jesus Soares and Father Agostinho Pretto, the national assistant to the JOC who in 1966 become the Latin American assistant to the international JOC. The regional assistant to the ACO was Father Mário Prigol, also part of the Salette Parish. In 1968, the number of arrests and murders grew as repression intensified, and victims included members of the Catholic Church.

A group of plain-clothes Army officials invaded the Our Lady of La Salette Church and the parish house on September 28, 1970. They were looking for Father Manuel de Jesus Soares, considered subversive. He was not on the premises. They searched the entire parish for arms and communist material. Weeks later, on October 7 of the same year, security officers carried out another invasion at the JOC meeting in the Brazilian Institute of Social Development (IBRADES). Students and professors who had been in classes at the Institute were detained for hours and the members of the JOC at the meeting were arrested and taken to the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODI). Those members included Father Mario Prigol and Father Agonstinho Pretto, as well as the Salette seminarian Divanir Canali. Imprisoned incommunicado, they were tortured during interrogations. After 54 days of detention, the three parish members were released on probation and had to present themselves at the Army Ministry every fifteen days. Later, a Military Tribunal dismissed the case for lack of evidence. Even after suffering arrest and torture, Father Mário Prigol continued at the Salette Church, deeply involved in pastoral work and local social movements. Father Agostinho Pretto spent years in exile. He joined the Nova Iguaçu diocese when he returned to Brazil 1974, developing close partnerships between the diocese’s Bishop Adriano Hypólito and Catholic worker causes.

During the entire military dictatorship, La Salette missionaries stood against violence and torture perpetrated by the regime. Their positions also aligned with the interests of the most low-income communities in Catumbi. The neighborhood changed during the 1960s and 70s. In an attempt for urban development, the government proposed new plans for the neighborhood that resulted in countless displacements of residents. The church fathers would stand by the affected communities, speaking out against the urban reform plans that violated the housing rights and quality of life of local residents.

In 2014, the Rio World Heritage Institute (IRPH) organized the project Circuito da Liberdade – Freedom Path – establishing plaques in spaces that played important roles in the fight for democracy. The Our Lady of La Salette Church is part of the memorial tour.

FREI CANECA PENITENTIARY COMPLEX

COMPLEXO PENITENCÁRIO FREI CANECA

Address: Rua Frei Caneca, 463, Estácio, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Repressive Structures
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

The Frei Caneca Penitentiary Complex was used as a site for the detention of accused political prisoners that spoke out against the military dictatorship from its start. At the end of the 1970s, it became central stage for resistance and demands. There, political prisoners initiated the July 1979 National Hunger Strike for universal and unqualified amnesty.

The buildings that made up the then-Brazilian Correctional Facility were built in the middle of the nineteenth century under dom Pedro II. They were built in the modern prison model, which saw labor as key in the correction of “deviants” and had as its inspiration Jeremy Benthan’s panopticon, a structure that aimed to make prisoners feel under constant observation and control. The complex – one of the first penitentiaries in Latin America – was built with by slaves and freed men considered to be vagrants and beggars in the Catumbi region, close to the Barro Vermelho community, which would later come to be known as São Carlos. In the mid-1860s, the compound was made up of five penal institutions: the Correctional Facility (used for prison labor), the Detention Facility (used for incarcerated people awaiting trial), the Calabouço prison (used for enslaved people), a holding area for freed Africans, as well as the Institute for Artisan Minors (used for minors detained for vagrancy or bad behavior). The incarcerated people were largely black, low-income, and/or immigrants, mostly of Portuguese heritage.

During the Estado Novo dictatorship (1937-1945), the site underwent reforms and came to be called the Central Penitentiary for the Federal District. After 1951, two new units were built – the Professor Lemos Brito and Milton Dias Moreira penitentiaries – and in 1960 the Hélio Gomes building was erected as an annex to the Detention Facility, which was also known as a provisional or passage building, as those in prison awaiting trial were held there. All together, the Frei Caneca Penitentiary Complex took up over 700,000 square feet. It gained notoriety as the building that held well known figured in Brazilian society, including Luis Carlos Prestes, Olga Benário, Nise da Silveira, Apolônio de Carvalho, Mario Lago, and Graciliano Ramos. All were detained during Gertúlio Vargas’s regime and accused of the same crime: attempting to establish communism in Brazil.

After 1964, the Frei Caneca Complex, and particularly the Professor Lemos Brito penitentiary, held members of social movements, union members, and insubordinate members of the armed forces, accused of opposing the coup d’état and then the military dictatorship, once established. At that time, members of the navy who had participated in the 1964 Navy Revolt could be found there, as well as those involved in the 1963 Brasília Air Force Base uprising (also known as the Sergeants’ Revolt). Three years later, more than 30 men would join them from the Caparaó Guerilla group (1966-1967), an armed movement in opposition to the military regime, made up of former members of the military. The guerilla movement acted in the Caparaó mountains between the states of Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais.

In 1969, the Armed Revolutionary Movement (MAR) was born inside the building, a result of integrating insurgent members of the military and people incarcerated for other crimes. Six political prisoners (Avelino Capitani, Marcos Antônio da Silva Lima, Antônio José Duarte, Antônio Prestes Paula, Benedito Alves de Campos, and José Adeildo Ramos) and three common detainees (André Borges, Roberto Cietto, and José Michel Godói) were leaders in a spectacular escape from the building on May 26, 1969. Once free, the group sought to implement the second phase of the plan, which involved the creation of a guerilla group in the Mar mountain range near Angra dos Reis. They were unable to achieve their goal. Some militants died and others were imprisoned once more. Roberto Cietto was held prisoner, tortured, and killed in September 1969 in the PIC building in the 1^st Army Policy Battalion, which would later function as the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODI). In another case, Marcos Antônio da Silva Lima was killed in January 1970 in an operation organized by the Army Police of the 1^st Military Region and the Department of Social and Political Order (DOPS/GB).

Also during the military dictatorship, the Hélio Gomes building in the Frei Caneca Complex served as a space for the guards of the political prisoners packed into the Cândido Mendes Penal Institute on Ilha Grande who would be sent to Rio de Janeiro to stand before the Military Court. Alex Polari, a former political prisoner, recounts his experience in the space in a poem published in the book Inventário de cicatrizes (1978), or Scar Inventory:

NIGHTS IN PP (H. Gomes Penitentiary)

Here I am, everyone, in the C-8, our cell, this
     passage-point in the notorious
Hélio Gomes Penitentiary ex-PP,
Police Prison
surrounded by shivs,
vermin, goons,
guards and janitors.
On the top bunk of my rock-hard bed I read
     weekly paper Opinião,
Latin American authors,
and now and again I catch a glimpse of TV.
I only wear Zobra briefs
and smoke infinite Hollywood
cigarettes
I drink endless cups
of Pelé coffee
and instead of handcuffs
I wear real Havaiana flip-flops.
I discuss the Party
the ills of monogamy
I retell shoot-outs and hook-ups
and soon, after check,
with wounds still open from the last visit to the
                                                               chapel
I will dream of angels
hung head down by wrists in celestial torture.
(Alverga, 1978, p.24)

After 1975, during the phase of the regime that was a so-called political opening, the Frei Caneca Complex would hold a significant number of political activists accused of having violated the National Security Law (1969). It was through this law that Brazil legalized life imprisonment and the death penalty. Those condemned for committing crimes outlined in the law, be they political or not, would undergo the same trial in the Military Courts and carry out the same sentence in prison and common cells. Prisoners from the Cândido Mendes Penal Institute on Ilha Grande, who had demanded to be transferred for some time, were also sent to Frei Caneca. The transfer took place in 1976 after prisoners organized a series of protests and hunger strikes. This gave the Frei Caneca Complex the reputation of a prison for political prisoners – an important step in the wider recognition of the existence of political prisoners in Brazil, something consistently negated by the military regime.

The nearly 60 political prisoners were kept in a defunct cafeteria in the Milton Dias Moreira building of the complex. The space had undergone reforms for this specific purpose, and the prisoners ironically referred to the area as the “Íris Cinema.” The space had thirty cells, each with a bathroom. Each housed two prisoners and remained open during the day. There was also a common area with a kitchen. There, the incarcerated people had regular access to newspapers and magazines. Frei Caneca’s proximity to the city center facilitated visits from family and lawyers, which allowed contact with the outside world. However, it took years of resistance from prison and many prior struggles to create awareness about the situation political prisoners were in. In the words of Gilney Viana and Perly Cipriano:

Political-ideological survival, essential to political prisoners, became dramatic. The simple and, for us, non-negotiable recognition of our status as political prisoners required years and years of resistance, effort, and a thousand daily struggles in front of each guard, policeman, soldier, military tribunal, commander, and prisoner director. We often had to put up a fight on three fronts: our physical survival (attacked through insufficient food and precarious access to medical services), respect for basic human rights (which were clearly violated through torture and, for the common incarcerated person, maltreatment), and respect for our rights as citizens, which was especially relevant to our condition as political prisoners (Cipriano e Viana, 2009, p.40).

More and more accusations of torture, murders, and forced disappearances were lodged against the military government in the 1970s. In 1978, the regime repealed the AI-5, which reinstated habeas corpus. Freedom and amnesty for political prisoners then became the major demands against dictatorship. The Women’s Movement for Amnesty and the Brazilian Committees for Amnesty joined with other actors, including international NGOs, to call for the return for exiled activists and for the freedom of political prisoners across Brazil.

It was in Frei Caneca that the amnesty movement gained most visibility. The first action related to the issue occurred in 1977 when political prisoners from the Milton Dias Moreira building joined a hunger strike in solidarity with the Talavera Bruce Women’s Prison in the Bangu region of Rio. The female prisoners denounced the maltreatment they constantly suffered and demanded their transfer to a special wing in Frei Caneca. Though there was support for the strike, it did not result in any changes, and the women were not moved.

The same strategy would be used again, but with greater consequence. In 1979, political prisoners were still held in the Frei Caneca Complex (amongst them: Paulo Roberto Jabur, Gilney Viana, Carlos Alberto Sales, Jesus Parede Soto, Jorge Santo Odria, Jorge Raimundo Junior, Antônio Preira Mattos, Perly Cipriano, Paulo Henrique Oliveira da Rocha Lins, Alex Polari, Nelson Rodrigues, Manoel Henrique Pereira, José Roberto Rezende, Helio da Silva, and José André Borges). On June 22, they began a hunger strike for widespread, general, and unrestricted amnesty. The strike lasted 32 days and took place with participation from prisoners in other states, as well as the support of entities including the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) [12], the National Congress of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), and artists and intellectuals such as Gilberto Gil, Luís Melodia, Jorge Mautner, Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, Oscar Niemeyer, Darcy Ribeiro, Ziraldo, and Antônio Houaiss. As such, the strike had broad coverage in national and international media. The goal was to pressure Brazil’s Congress to pass widespread general, and unrestricted amnesty rather than partial amnesty, which the government had proposed. As Gilney Viana and Perly Cirpriano outline, amnesty was a key issue for people imprisoned in the Frei Caneca Complex and the time. It involved:

[…] all of the arbitrary arrests, torture, unjust trials and convictions, political deadlock for our release on the part of the Military Court, the long years incarcerated in often degradating conditions that violated our rights as humans and citizens, and, especially in the case of political prisoners, our comrades murdered in torture chambers and, above all, the regime’s responsibility for those deaths. We wanted to make it clear that Amnesty was not a simple vote on a law, but that it was a comprehensive political process in which society questioned the military regime and showed that it wanted a democratic government (Cipriano e Viana, 2009, p. 66).

The hunger strike ended on August 22, 1979, which the Amnesty Law was approved by Congress. General João Batista Figueiredo then signed it into law on August 28 of the same year. But the struggle was far from over. The law excluded amnesty for political prisoners allegedly responsible for attempted murder and acts of terrorism. Anticipating the possibility of “related crimes,” the regime interpreted the law as amnesty for agents of the state who had perpetrated gross human rights violations. In this context, many activists could not return to Brazil from exile and prisoners involved in so-called “bloody crimes” were not immediately released. Some had to carry out their full sentences. Other sentences were revisited in light of changes to the National Security Law in 1978, which involved steps for the regime to allow conditional freedom, a status that for many lasted years. For some, it continued until the approval of the Federal Constitution in 1988.

After the release of political prisoners, the annex to the Milton Dias Moreira penitentiary in the Frei Caneca Complex came to hold common prisoners convicted under the National Security Law. William da Silva Lima was detained there and describes what the prison was like in 1983 in his book Quatrocentos contra um (Four-hundred Against One):

We’re in an annex in the Milton Dias Moreira prisoner in the complex on Frei Caneca St., built just a few years ago to hold political prisoners waiting for amnesty. They left, leaving open the spots we now hold. The new prison keeps us isolated. There are 34 of us and just one thing is certain: we’re not getting out any time soon, at least not legally speaking. Most of us have circled Rio de Janeiro prisons for more than 10 years now. Escape again so as not to rot – that’s all we have left (Lima, 1991, p.18).

Brazil’s government decided to close the Frei Caneca Complex in 2003 because of its state of disrepair and security issues in the area, such as regular rebellions and prison breaks, as well as constant shoot-outs in the São Carlos favela. What remained of the complex was knocked down on March 13, 2010, leaving just the portico – which the city government named as historical patrimony in 2006. Visual artist Carlos Vergara launched the book Liberdade – Freedom – at the Memorial of Resistance in São Paulo in 2012. The book is a collection of photographs of the demolition of the Frei Caneca Complex. That land was then used for a public housing project.

AUTOMOTIVE CLUB OF BRAZIL

AUTOMÓVEL CLUBE DO BRASIL

Address: Rua do Passeio, 90, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: 1964 Coup D’état
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

Located between Lapa and Cinelândia, the Automotive Club of Brazil was the stage for João Goulart’s last speech before the 1964 military coup. On March 30^th of that year, the president made an appearance at the commemoration of the 40^th anniversary of the Association of Military Police Subofficers and Sergeants, in which there were non-commissioned members from all three sectors of the armed forces. Goulart’s presence in the Automotive Club that day was the trigger for the coup that would depose him from the presidency.

João Goulart – often referred to as Jango – would speak at the eve of the coup d’état in a building designed by one of Brazil’s most important architects, Araújo Porto Alegre. Built in 1860, the building originally held the Fluminense Casino before becoming the site for the Clube dos Diários social club. In 1924, it came to hold the Automotive Club of Brazil. It had already served as the stage for some of the most important moments in Brazilian history, such as the 1890 Constitutive Assembly, which used the space for some of its preliminary sessions.

Just a few weeks before his speech in the Automotive Club, Jango had proposed a mass rally at the Central do Brasil train station in which he announced his readiness to carry out broad-based reforms. The event intensified the political crisis. Opposition accused João Goulart of trying to implement the reforms without congress. Plans to overthrow his presidency intensified after the rally.

On March 25, the Navy and Marines Association planned to celebrate its two-year anniversary. However, the Navy Ministry prohibited the event, since the association was not officially recognized. Yet members of the navy, led by “cabo” Anselmo, turned up at the event’s proposed location and started a political rally. Sílvio Mota, Minister of the Navy, sent marines to arrest the leaders. But with encouragement from their commander, Rear Admiral Cândido Aragão, some of those marines joined the revolt upon arriving at the Rio de Janeiro Metalworkers’ Union building (Sindimental), which was where the others had gathered. What followed was a crisis that resulted in Sílvio Mota’s dismissal from his post. The navy sailors were held in army barracks before being released, and then marched through the center of Rio carrying Aragão on their shoulders.

Officers in the Navy and Army expressed their indignation about what had happened on the 25^th, as they believed that Jango had supported a violation of discipline. The political crisis coupled with an unprecedented military crisis made for an extremely delicate situation. On March 30, ministers and advisors warned against the president attending the event at the Automotive Club. However, Goulart opted to make an appearance. Tancredo Neves, who was then the Speaker of the House, would tell Jango: “I hope to god that I’m wrong, but I think this choice will be the final straw, the final motive for an inevitable armed revolt.”

João Goulart went to the event accompanied by seven ministers, three of whom were from the military. He was generously applauded upon entering the building with the group. At around 10 P.M., the president began his speech. Jango attacked the far-right March of the Family with God for Liberty, reaffirmed his intention to establish broad-based reforms, and cited the Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD) as one of the sources of funding for campaigns aimed at destabilizing his administration. Commenting on the military crisis aggravated by the recent sergeants’ revolt, Jango defended his choices, stating:

No one wants glory for our Navy more than I. No one wants our Navy to permanently exist in a state of understanding, respect, and discipline more than I. But discipline is not built on hate and denigration. Discipline is built on mutual respect between those under command (Jornal do Brasil, 31 mar. 1964, p. 5).

Aware of the gravity of the crisis and of the imminent possibility of a coup, the president said:

My term in office, granted to me by the people and then reaffirmed a second time by popular vote, will be carried out in full, in the name of the people, and in the defense of popular interests. Anyone who imagines that reactionary forces would be capable of terminating a term in office upheld by the people is sorely mistaken (Jornal do Brasil, 31 mar. 1964, p.5).

The speech ended with Jango defending a law limiting profits from moving overseas and his resolution that opened petroleum refineries, signed on the day of the mass rally in Central do Brasil. Before midnight, Goulart was back in the Laranjeiras Palace, the official presidential residence. Just a few hours later, General Olympio Mourão Filho began to mobilize troops in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, with the goal of deposing the president through force. On March 31, a photo of João Goulart with a closed fist splashed across the cover of Jornal do Brasil, a publication that supported military intervention. Underneath the photo read the line: “Partisan discipline will not take root in Brazil, which already unites in protest in Minas Gerais. It will not take root even under the insincere and treacherous guise of reform.”

BRAZILIAN COMMUNIST PARTY

PARTIDO COMUNISTA BRASILEIRA (PCB)

Address: Rua da Lapa, 180, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Unions and Workers
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

Founded in 1922 and heavily influenced by the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) is the oldest existing political party in Brazil, though it was illegal through long stretches of Brazil’s history. Persecuted by Getúlio Vargas under the Estado Novo (1937-1945), the PCB sought to reorganize under the leadership of Luís Carlos Prestes. Prestes’s comrade Olga Benário had been murdered in a concentration camp after Vargas deported her to Nazi Germany.

The PCB regained its legal status from 1945-1947, after the Estado Novo regime ended. President Eurico Gaspar Dutra (1946-1951) made the party illegal once again. Fearing the rise of a party of the masses, he decided to cancel the organization’s registration and cancel the terms of the communist congressmen. The PCB’s return to illegality marked the beginning of growing anti-communist sentiment inspired by the Cold War. In Brazil, anti-communism found its roots in the 1935 Communist Insurrection. Still, the PCB continued to act in politics while in hiding and through the 1964 coup. They created class alliances between different democratic social sectors with common interests and demands in the struggle against imperialism and mega-agricultural estates.

In the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, the PCB played a major role in urban unions. The trajectory of the Rio de Janeiro Metalworkers’ Union is a representative example of the close relationship between unions and the party. Communists participated and acted in popular and workers’ movements through the General Worker’s Command (CGT) and in the student movement through the National Student Union (UNE), together with other popular forces on the left. The party was central to creating UNE Popular Culture Centers (CPC). It dialogued with the nationalist movement, had militant members in the armed forces, and participated in elections indirectly and behind the scenes.

After 1952, the communists, in alliance with the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB), organized strikes, picketing, rallies, and campaigns – the most well known being “petroleum is ours” in 1953. In broad strokes, the PCB defended a nationalistic, democratic “phase” in the Brazilian revolution. It characterized US imperialism and big agriculture as “feudal” and the major impediments to a “democratic and sovereign” development in Brazil.

In March 1958, the PCB presented an important political document known as the “Declaration of March 1958,” which deepened understanding about capitalism’s development in Brazil and the concept of peaceful paths to national and democratic revolution in the country. It emphasized the need for a “democratic, nationalistic government” created from “peaceful pressure from the popular masses,” strengthened by nationalistic sectors of bourgeois classes and separate from powers “submissive” to foreign interests. To this end, the victory of the “nationalistic and democratic front in elections would be needed, as well as the “resistance of popular masses” to use “democratic legality” against any attempt to establish a dictatorship “serving the North American monopoly.”

This defense of democratic and legal action did not help the PCB escape the repression that the entirety of the left suffered after the 1964 coup. The party suffered persecution, imprisonment, torture, deaths, and disappearances. In the context of ideological polarizations of the 1960s, the PCB came to represent the “evil” that conservative and military forces behind the 1964 coup against João Goulart would fight. Workers died and disappeared in the months immediately following the coup in Rio de Janeiro: the graphic designer and union member Newton Eduardo de Oliveira (PE), was killed in his own home; the graphic designer Israel Tavares Roque (BA), disappeared from the Central do Brasil train station; the sailor Divo Fernandes D’oliveira, disappeared from the Professor Lemos Brito penitentiary; along with many other union members.

We can evaluate the persecution of the PCB in the military police investigation (IPM) called for by the 1964 Military Tribunal. Fernandinho de Carvalho, the coronel who reported on the investigation, exuberantly expresses the need to persecute communists. He then asserts: “One can rest assured that in the present moment the PCB fully operates throughout the country, with the ability to measurably influence national politics.” He concludes:

The restrictive actions of the Revolution did not manage to affect the Party’s base, which remained intact and ready to return to their activities at the earliest opportunity. The major leaders in the PC are in the country, though they have not been located, and continue to act in hiding. […] In organized labor, communists are gaining new traction with union members, winning on almost every ticket (Brasil Nunca Mais Digital, IPM número 279, folha 4221).

Together with democratic forces, the party was unable to mobilize immediate resistance to the dictatorship in April 1964. When the military regime entered, activists in the Great Party –Partidão, as the PCB referred to itself –carried out a situation analysis and identified the military dictatorship as the result of an “alliance of private capital,” both national and international, that aimed to obstruct direct political participation of the masses in order to achieve “conservative modernization” in Brazil. As seen in resolutions from the party’s VI Conference in 1967, Brazilian communists characterized the dictatorship as “long-term” with “fascist elements.”

In opposition to the dictatorial regime, the PCB defended establishing broad-based movement in defense of democratic liberties. The move to combat the regime through democratic means brought about internal divisions, and the option of armed resistance arose in other groups. The Communist Party of Brazil (PC do B) – led by João Amazonas, Maurício Grabois, Pedro Pomar, and Diógenes Arruda – was created in 1962 along the lines of Maoist China and Albanian socialism.

Carlos Marighella and Joaquim Câmara Ferreira, past leaders of the PCB, created the São Paulo Communist Group in 1968, which would later give rise to the National Liberation Action (ALN) guerilla movement. Other organizations formed around the same time: the Communist Labor Party (POC) in Rio Grande do Sul, the Brazilian Revolutionary Communist Party (Pcbr), led by Apolônio de Carvalho, Jacob Gorender, and Mário Alves, and the 8^th October Revolutionary Movement (MR-8).

In 1974, the PCB intensified its participation in congressional elections by joining the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) in order to weaken the dictatorship institutionally. The MDB carried the 1974 elections, winning 16 of 22 Senate seats. The MDB went from having 87 to 165 representatives in the House, marking one of the first “consolidated” demonstrations of force by the opposition to the military regime. The PCB carried out this action with broad-based mobilizing in worker, student, and popular movements.

From 1973-76, with the defeat of armed resistance groups, the repressive apparatus of the military regime intensified its actions against the Great Party. It unleashed intense repression against PCB communities through “Operation Radar,” organized under the command of the Army Intelligence Center (CIE) with collaboration from the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODI), which identified 42 members of the Central Committee (CC). The operation caused imprisonment and persecution throughout Brazil, as it was systematic and carried out with institutional backing, as demonstrated by a confidential document from March 1975 entitled “Neutralizing the PCB” in the 2^nd Section of the II Army:

The DOI-CODI of the II Army, in analyzing the PCB’s structure and operation, organized a list of members from the Central Committee based on their actions and position within the party. The imprisonment of these individuals would cause irreparable damage to the leftist organization in the short and medium-term. […] The following characteristics were used to organize the list: political repercussions and “moral” consequence for other communists; intellectual and ideological qualities, aside from past militancy, that might facilitate ascension to higher political positions or the reorganization of the party; interest from Intelligence Agencies, based on their intel. These factors informed the following list of individuals, in no particular order: Giocondo Gerbasi Alves Dias […]. Hércules Correia dos Reis[…]. Orlando da Silva Rosa Bonfim Junior […]. Jaime Amorim de Miranda […]. Aristeu Nogueira Campos […]. Hiram de Lima Pereira […]. (Informações no 485/75 e 487/75, de 13/3/1975, da 2^o Seção do II Exército. Arquivo Nacional, SNI: BR_DFANBSB_V8_AC_ACE_81057_75, pp. 8-1.)

 As this was a clandestine operation against a group opposed to armed resistance, the repressive agents could not forge justifications for the deaths, as they did for killing members of armed resistance groups. Those involved in Operation Radar came up with a solution: to disappear the bodies after torture sessions and summary executions. Between March 1974 and January 1976, the following people were killed: David Capistrano da Costa, José Rosman, Walter de Souza Ribeiro, João Massena Melo, Luís Ignácio Maranhão Filho, Elson Costa, Hiran de Lima Pereira, Jayme Amorim de Miranda, Nestor Vera, Itair José Veloso, Alberto Aleixo, José Ferreira de Almeida, José Maximino de Andrade Neto, Pedro Jerônimo de Souza, José Montenegro de Lima (o Magrão); Orlando da Silva Rosa Júnior, Vladimir Herzog, Neide Alves dos Santos; and Manoel Fiel Filho. Of these victims, 11 are still disappeared and their remains have not been returned to their families to this day. Dozens of other leaders and activists in the CC and PCB were also tortured and imprisoned but not killed.

The unmitigated repression against the PCB did not just destroy the party’s leadership but also severed the party’s connections to Brazilian society, particularly in the media. In addition to the murders of Central Committee members, the military regime’s actions against the PCB identified public figures, distinguished members of the party, and the party’s printing apparatus. In 1973, the Volkswagen PCB cell was dismantled, and leaders in São Paulo were imprisoned and tortured. Imprisoning sectors of the party allowed the regime to locate the party’s printing department, which was in the Campo Grande neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. There, the newspaper Voz Operário, pamphlets, leaflets, and books were printed in a basement. The destruction of the printing department was a huge blow to the PCB, already weak from state repression.

Imprisonment and assassinations of Party leaders foreshadowed the severing of connections between the PCB and social movements as well as leadership in unions and popular movements. The dictatorship considered PCB an adversary that needed to be destroyed before opening up the country politically. The death of full sectors of the party, along with the dismantling of the party’s press infrastructure would isolate the actions of Brazilian communists, weakening one of the principal opposition forces to the military regime. In total, 39 activists were assassinated in different ways from the start of the coup to the so-called “détente” of the military regime.

The party began a process of reorganization in 1979, a period also marked by an intense internal crisis. The crisis was inspired both by dissent from Luís Carlos Prestes in April 1980 and by criticism from former activists like Gregório Bezerra. The majority of members in the Central Committee directed the restructuring effort, particularly during the VII PCB Conference in 1982 (during which a police operation resulted in the arrest of some members). In May 1985, the party became legal, having acted through the MDB and PMDB parties up until that point. Another mark of the restructuring process was the 1987 Conference, with the party already divided, and then the Conferences in 1991 and 1992, when internal divisions solidified, putting the party’s existence at risk In that context, a movement to rebuild the party both institutionally and in terms of \activism began, and would form the basis of the party’s current structure.

LAMPIÃO DA ESQUINA NEWSPAPER

JORNAL LAMPIÃO DA ESQUINA

Address: Rua Joaquim Silva, 11, sala 707, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Homosexuality and Dictatorship; Political-Cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated to the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

Launched in April 1978, Lampião da Esquina was one of the most important Brazilian newspapers for the LGBT movement. It began in the context of the promised “roll back” of the military dictatorship, a period marked by the revocation of the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) and by the release of a limited amnesty program. Winston Leyland, editor of US publication Gay Sunshine Press, visited Brazil during the period to select short stories for a forthcoming anthology of gay Latin American literature. Inspired by Leyland’s experiences and visit, eleven intellectuals came together and created Lampião.

The paper’s masthead was made up of: journalist and painter Adão Costa, writer and journalist Aguinaldo Silva, journalist and film critic Clóvis Marques, writer and visual artist Darcy Penteado, art critic and journalist Francisco Bittencourt, writer, journalist and organizer of the first anthologies of LGBT literature Gasparino Damata, journalist and film critic Jean-Claude Bernadet, journalist and lawyer João Antonio Mascarenhas, writer and filmmaker João Silvério Trevisan, and professor and researcher Peter Fry. Beyond this core group, the paper collaborated with Leila Míccolis, Alexandre Ribondi, and others.

Lampião, however, was not the first paper to represent queer identities. Before the paper’s founding, there had been at least 32 small publications on the topic, concentrated in the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Bahia. Additionally, the Brazilian Gay Press Association, founded by Anuar Farah and Agildo Guimarães, functioned from 1962-1964. The organization’s main goals were to circulate these smaller publications and promote queer media. However, Lampião was different from these other papers in its technical production, printing methods, and national distribution. While the other publications were almost always involved with artisanal production and small-scale circulation within LGBT communities, Lampião, despite major distribution challenges, produced and printed an average of 20 thousand copies, monthly.

Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, the city of Rio de Janeiro contained queer enclaves like the Clube Sírio-Libanês in the Mauá Plaza and in the São Cristóvão neighborhood. In the 1960s, these spaces multiplied in a movement that coincided with the increased political polarization in Brazil and the coup in 1964. The many LGBT social spaces that had been formed became spaces for repression under the ensuing dictatorship. Included in these spaces are Rua do Passeio, Avenida Nossa Senhora in Copacabana, the Avenida Central building, Flamengo beach, and Copacabana beach. Indeed, Lampião’s founding coincides with the organization of the first LGBT activist groups as well. One of the paper’s roles was to communicate the addresses of these groups to readers, as well as to spread the word and support the establishment, ideas, actions, and meetings of the organizations. The newspaper also published pieces written by Latin American, European, and North American activist groups, magazines, and newspapers that discussed nonconforming gender and sexuality identity in these other cultural contexts. In this sense, Lampião took on a catalyzing role, inspiring the formation of politicized groups that began to gradually articulate a demand to the end of discrimination against LGBT people in Brazil.

From 1978-1983, the newspaper published 38 issues, along with three special editions, two of which included the best interviews, and the other the best essays. According to the publication’s editors, Lampião was a newspaper for minorities that discussed issues rarely mentioned in the mainstream press and that upheld pleasure as a fundamental right.

The paper mainly focused on institutional and police violence against the LGBT community, activism by gender-nonconforming groups, transexualism and drag, male and female prostitution, and economic and macro-political issues. But the paper also discussed issues related to black Brazilians, women, and indigenous peoples. Even though it faced some resistance from these other groups, Lampião published important articles about the black and feminist movements.

The paper suffered dictatorship persecution throughout its short and important existence. It was the target of a yearlong state investigation, accused of attacking good morals based on the 1967 Press Law (lei n^o 5.250 de 9 de fevereiro de 1967). It was not, however, the government’s first attack on public conversations about sexuality, though there did not previously exist any law against discussing homosexuality. The magazines IstoÉ and Interview and the journalist Celso Curi suffered state persecution similar to that of Lampião.

Lampião extensively discussed Celso Curi’s case, starting in its first issue. According to the case file, Curi broke article 117 of the Press Law – that is to say, he went against good morals in his column, published daily in the newspaper Última Hora in São Paulo. The charges also stated that the journalist promoted the meeting of “abnormal” people. The column began in 1976 and was denounced in March 1977. The case had a statute of two years before it would be archived. Right before reaching that deadline, the judge Regis de Castilho Barbosa absolved Celso Curi of all charges.

Similarly, nine journalists responsible for publishing the December 1977 article entitled “Gay Power” in the magazine IstoÉ were formally accused of encouraging homosexuality. The magazine Interview went through a related trial. Both, however, were absolved.

As for Lampião, the editors of the newspaper had been denounced since the publication of the fifth edition. The case was widely discussed in the publication itself, which allowed for the creation of a defense commission, organized by the Somos group in São Paulo. The case also inspired innumerable letters of support from readers, artists, and intellectuals. In addition to launching the investigation, the Federal Police often intimidated the editors with surprise visits to the paper’s newsroom and calls to appear at the Department of Social and Political Order.

Lampião da Esquina’s 11th edition, published in April 1979. On the upper left side of the markup reads the phrase: “Celso Cury Absolved.”

Source: Arquivo Nacional, Fundo: Correio da Manhã. Used with permission.

Repression against the queer community did not begin under the dictatorship. It had existed since 1945 and involved the censorship of various groups, targeting theatre and film producers, musicians, and visual artists. During the dictatorship established in 1964, repression enacted on moral grounds against non-heteronormative and cisgender movements often functioned alongside political repression. While the latter would root out anything viewed as “subversive,” the former afforded a certain didactic backing along the lines of Christian morality and the traditional conception of the family, considered the “heart of resistance against the advancement of spurious ideologies.” The following is a confidential report within the Ministry of Justice in which the idea of the traditional family linked Lampião’s content, as well as actions of the LGBT community, to “communist interests”:

[…] in addition to the propaganda that the newspaper publishes, the support given to homosexual activities is noted. That support is based almost entirely on support from leftist-controlled media. This, along with the homosexuals’ goal to build movements and “occupy their deserved place” – in politics – could be considered highly communist when proselytizing on the topic (Arquivo Nacional, SNI: BR_AN_RIO_TT_O_MCP_PRO_1135).

Fortunately, due to the opinion of state attorney Sérgio Ribeiro da Costa, the charges of case 24/78 were dropped 12 months after the case began. The charges lodged against journalists and newspapers, however, prove that the military dictatorship did persecute homosexuality, even if that persecution did not amount to crime in the penal code. The dictatorship largely used morality to attack the press in the same way that it used vagrancy laws to incriminate, extort, criminalize, and penalize LGBT individuals.

But persecution against Lampião did not end there. Antônio Chrysóstomo, one of the newspaper founders, was arrested in July 1981, right when the newspaper would release its final edition. Chrysóstomo was charged with raping his adopted daughter, Cláudia Pinheiro Santiago. With no material evidence, Chrysóstomo was judged based on his political activism and on being openly and proudly gay. The trial against Lampião was used to incriminate him.

One year later, after spending nine months and fourteen days in jail, Chrysóstomo was absolved of the crimes. He died only a few months later due to mistreatment while incarcerated. Before he passed away, he wrote a play, Olho no olho, na qual, in which he tells his side of the story. Because of financial difficulties and Chrysóstomo’s sentence, Lampião abruptly closed down.

CORREIO DA MANHÃ NEWSPAPER

JORNAL CORREIO DA MANHÃ

Address: Avenida Gomes Freire, 471, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: The 1964 Coup D’état; Political-cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

Correio da Manhã was a Rio de Janeiro newspaper known throughout its history as one of the most important political publications in Brazil. Generally regarded as an opinion paper, it consistently assumed strong political positions. The editorials “Basta!” (“Enough!”) and “Fora!” (“Get Out!”) published on March 31^st and April 1^st 1965 are considered two of the most forceful examples of mainstream media’s support for the coup that removed João Goulart from the presidency and put a military dictatorship in his place. However, the newspaper was also one of the first publications to take a public stand against the atrocities that the regime committed in the days following the coup. Because of that critical stance, repressive agencies gradually launched a series of attacks against the newspaper, slowly building to the publication’s demise in 1974.

Founded by the young lawyer-turned-journalist from Rio Grande do Sul Edmundo Bittencourt, Correio da Manhã made its intentions clear in its first issue, published on June 15, 1901. The 6-page edition included an editorial stating that the publication would be an opinion paper in defense of the people, without any ties to political parties. The newsroom was originally located on Rua Moreira César, 117 (now Rua do Ouvidor) and then in the Largo da Carioca, before settling on fixed location: Avendia Gomes Freire, 471, Centro do Rio de Janeiro.

As a self-proclaimed independent paper, Correio da Manhã published both in support and opposition to nearly every Brazilian government. It sought to represent the urban, middle class reader in a legalistic and liberal tradition. Its criticism was grounded on respect for the law, a value held above any actions taken by the state. Over the course of the paper’s history, this editorial line would inspire notorious articles. During the Estado Novo dictatorship, the paper was run by the founder’s son, Paulo Bittencourt, and consistently critiqued rigid and interventionist policy even though it support the regime from the beginning.

During the political crisis that began in the early 1960s when Jânio Quadros stepped down from the presidency, the paper was faithful to its legalistic tradition and supported Quadros’ vice president João Goulart’s assumption of the role. It even initially supported reforms that Goulart – referred to as “Jango” in Brazil – proposed. Together with the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, it encouraged Brazil’s congress in the Definição das Reformas de Base – the articulation of broad based socioeconomic reforms. However, the paper was against political “radicalism” that might corrupt the nation’s trajectory. Like almost all of Brazil’s mainstream media, Correio da Manhã feared that the left’s more radical positions would curb the liberal ideals that the press defended at the time. João Goulart’s resignation would, in this case, solve an imminent crisis. The paper would emphatically demand Jango’s ousting in its editorials. Published practically during the coup itself, “Basta!” and “Fora!” are considered symbols of the paper’s political position at the time. They are also some of the clearest examples of how a significant portion of the Brazilian public came to see the coup.

Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt was in charge of the paper at the time, having taken over the business after her husband, Paulo Bittencourt, died in November 1963. In a rapid reversal of the newspaper’s values, she began to be identified as one of the fiercest critics of the dictatorial regime. The paper began shifting its strict liberal perspective to speak out more directly and forecefully denounce the regime. That resulted in a shift in audience: while the readership was theoretically made up of the more conservative middle class, the paper’s shift spoke to students, intellectuals, and politicians in opposition to the regime. Carlos Heitor Cony published direct critiques of the dictatorship in his column “A arte de falar mal” (“The Art of Speaking Ill”) starting on April 2, 1964, which led him to be imprisoned six times.

After the First Institutional Act (AI-1) on April 9, 1964, Correio da Manhã began to systematically expose the regime’s arbitrary actions. The paper’s consolidation of its critical attitude was directly proportional to the embargos that the publication endured. From that point onwards, the newspaper suffered a drastic reduction in advertising revenue, which was essential for any media organization to function at the time. Major agencies even cut off their contracts with the newspaper at the request of the military itself, and the newspaper gradually grew economically weaker.

The situation intensified on December 7, 1968 when a bomb was planted in one of the paper’s classified agencies located on the Avenue Rio Branco in the Centro neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. No one was hurt, but the explosion caused significant damage, shattering windows, blasting marble, and gauging out a nearly 3-foot crater in the newsroom floor. According to the paper’s report on the following day, the attack resulted in roughly 300 thousand cruzeiros novos in damage. Throughout the official advertising boycott, the publication had managed to stay above water because of classifieds. In other words, this attack was clearly the regime’s attempt to intimidate and undermine the publication.

One week later, mere hours before the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) was decreed on December 13, 1968, agents from the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS/GB), which was located just blocks away from the Correio da Manhã building, invaded the newsroom on Rua Gomes Freire. Guns in hand, officers entered the building, shot the ceiling in the lobby, and kidnapped Osvaldo Peralva, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief. Following the incident, 11 censors were placed in the paper’s office until January 6 of the following wear when the publication was informed that there would no longer be previous censorship for the paper’s content.

Once the direct censorship lifted, the newspaper prepared would come to be considered the paper’s most historic issue – though the edition would never reach the streets, as it was apprehended as it was being printed. The headline “Press Censorship Lifted” was stamped on the front cover, titling a denunciation of everything that had been removed from publication while the paper suffered direct censorship. It exposed a series of violations, arbitrary acts, imprisonments, and torture that the dictatorship had committed. The next editorial – “Uncensored” – was a full critique of the ways in which newspaper content had been curtailed.

Because of this issue, DOPS/GB agents invaded the Correio da Manhã newsroom yet again. The president of the paper, Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt, was arrested and taken to the São Judas Tadeu women’s prison. That same day, she was transferred to the Felinto Muller Hospital. She managed to survive an attempted poisoning, which occurred when a supposed staff member created a gas leak in the annexed bathroom, taking advantage of the fact that all of the exits to Bittencourt’s room were closed. She was then transferred to the Corpo de Bombeiros Hospital. Bittencourt also spent a few days under house arrest, where she was observed 24/7 by detectives in front of her building. In total, Bittcourt spent two months under some form of imprisonment.

Direct censorship returned to the newspaper while its president was under arrest. On February 26, 1969, the 1^st Navy Audit suspended the paper’s circulation for five days. Additionally, the DOPS/GB shut down the newsroom completely because of a decision in the National Security Law. Niomar Bittencourt returned to her position on March 13, 1969. Two days earlier, the paper had entered into a composition agreement with creditors, as it had fallen into an extreme financial crisis. Nearly half of its reporters had been laid off.

With no viable alternative, Bettencourt made a deal with a group of businessmen from the Metropolitana Company in September 1969. The leaders of the company, Maurício Nunes de Alencar and Federico Gomes da Silva, promised to revitalize the business and return it to Bettencourt free of debt. The Metropolitana group received the right to run the paper over the course of four years and five months, though the official ownership of Correio da Manhã S/A remained in Bettencourt’s hands. Bettencourt would be allowed to supervise the paper, but she would have no power to act. On September 11, the newspaper published an editorial entitled “Withdrawn,” explaining these circumstances to the public.

Nearly 4 million cruzeiros in debt, the newspaper temporarily belonged to a business group with ties to the future transportation minister Mario Andrezza, who intended to expand his political clout. The Metropolitana group managed its businesses with dubious administrative practices and served only to worsen the newspaper’s economic decline. Bettencourt asserted that the company acted under the military’s orders. At the beginning of 1973, the newspaper cut its daily page count from 16 to 12 pages, and then to 10, and finally 8 pages in its last issues. With time, the company accumulated more debt – totally nearly 15 million cruzeiros in 1974.

Bettencourt objected to the business’s handling of the lease in court, claiming breach of contract. She sought to denounce the Metropolinana group’s deliberate attempt to shut the paper down in the House of Representatives. Bettencourt had her colleagues spread the news of the legal fight, which the regime was trying to halt. They sent word to the papers O Globo and Jornal do Brasil. The idea was that these media organizations would duly publish the irregularities that the Metropolitana group had committed, articulated in a statement by representative Thales Ramalho (MDB).

None of these appeals ended in concrete results. The business, with nearly uncontrollable debt, was already politically and editorially weak. Despite this, Bettencourt persisted in her fight to regain control of the newspaper up until its final issue. Correio da Manhã’s last edition went to newsstands on July 8, 1974. The newspaper would be remembered as an important voice of political opinion in the press, but it died with a meager 8-page issue. A mere 3 thousand copies went to newsstands that day, an insignificant number for a paper that used to publish an average of 200 thousand copies during its peak.

INSTITUTE FOR THE RESEARCH OF BLACK CULTURE

INSTITUTO DE PESQUISA DA CULTURA NEGRA (IPCN)

Address: Avenida Mem de Sá, 208, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: State Racism and Black Resistance
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

In the early 1970s, the military regime grew increasingly concerned about the political-cultural articulation of black Brazilians, which culminated in the foundation of the Unified Black Movement in 1978. The State of Rio de Janeiro was the birthplace of many of these initiatives, some of which the political police monitored. On October 20, 1976, the Rio de Janeiro Aeronautical Center for Intelligence and Security (CISA-RJ) filed a document under the topic “Black Racism in Brazil.” It described the proliferation of Cultural Associations, groups that named the spread of black culture in Brazil as their objective, in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo:

Cultural associations primarily work to recruit members of the black race. They often organize lecture series about supporting black culture in Brazil. The lecturers take care not to speak directly about politics, but they condition listeners to accept the existence of veiled white racism in Brazil (Arquivo Nacional, Cisa: AMA_ACE_109622/76_CNF I/4).

The Cultural Associations referenced in this report that acted in Rio de Janeiro were: the Institute for the Research of Black Culture (IPCN), seen as responsible for coordinating all work related to the support for black culture in the State; Black Culture of Brazil, the activities of which were carried out by Lélia Gonzalez; the Apache Group, Center for Brazil-Africa Studies (CEBA/São Gonçalo); the Olokum Baba Mim Group; Calçadão de Caxias; and Adega Pérola in Copacabana, all of which were identified as meeting places for “radicals.” Because of the central role that the military regime itself gave to IPCN, we reference the repression against all of the black cultural associations in the State of Rio de Janeiro in this Institute.

Januário Garcia, a member of the IPCN’s board of directors, recounts:

We fought against the military dictatorship, but on one condition. We wouldn’t follow the left because they didn’t understand us. […] The left always thought the following: No, you have to be part of the overall struggle so that after the dictatorship falls, you can fight for your specific issues. Or, we’re going to have the proletariat revolution, and with the proletariat revolution […] But we weren’t even categorized as human, black people weren’t even in that category […] so how could we be part of the proletariat revolution? […] The left never understood our struggle. And the left was never our ally, never. […] The left always thought we were out of touch with their struggle against dictatorship. We didn’t believe in democracy without racial equality. So, we came up against the left and against the right. We were isolated, but we knew what we wanted. We knew what we wanted to achieve (Januário Garcia, depoimento concedido à CEV-Rio em 2 de maio de 2015).

The dictatorship monitored the IPCN many times. On these occasions, the reports and investigations categorized the organization not only as the group coordinating black resistance in the State of Rio de Janeiro, but also as an entity working towards “organizing the masses” in favelas by forming capoeira groups and preparing to send a delegation to the Reunião Internacional de Negros (which was to take place in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1977). A document from April 25, 1977 (Arquivo Nacional, Cisa AMA: ACE_109622/76_CNF_I/4, p. 32), shows that the IPCN received $85,000 dollars in monetary support from an unknown foreign entity.

A report from May 18, 1977 is document that characterizes the IPCN in the greatest detail (Arquivo Nacional, Cisa AMA: ACE_109622/76_CNF_I/4, p. 32). The document indicates that it was not possible to confirm that the institute had received the referenced $85 million; it highlights the legal nature of IPCN, naming its board members and founders, describes the activities that this cultural association carried out, and indicates some of the entities that collaborated with IPCN (for example, the Brasil África Chamber of Commerce, the Rio de Janeiro Art and Folklore Museum, the Center for Afro Asian Studies, the Quilombo Recreation Club for Black Art and Samba, and the Afoxé Filhos de Gandhi dance group). The agency’s discomfort with IPCN’s actions is explicit in the following statement:

The logic of the IPCN is a rupture from so-called black history in Brazil. They try to demystify significant historical events for the understanding of Black Culture (May 13, for example) in terms of how those events are discussed. This is now creating the idea that the abolition of slavery was an obligation, and not an act of charity on the part of the system (APERJ: DGIE_296, p.264).

Capoeira circle in front of the IPCN building.

Source: Coletivo Fotoexpandida/Henrique Fornazin. Used with permission.

IPCN in a protest against racism.

Source: Januário Garcia. Used with permission.

A report (0594/19/AC/78) from July 25, 1978 outlines the process of monitoring cultural associations:

In 1976, Intelligence Agencies were alerted to the proliferation of Cultural Associations, groups aimed at spreading black culture in Brazil, in the States of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (Arquivo Nacional, AMA: ACE_2671/82_CNF I/I, fl. 01).

In another passage, it becomes explicit that one motivation of this control lay in the possibility that the left would appropriate this black cultural engagement. The report signals that: “instigating racial antagonism is a useful means for subversive-terrorist organizations to achieve their goals” (Arquivo Nacional, Cisa.AMA: ACE_109622/76, CNF, I/). This refers to the Brazilian urban guerrilla group MR-8’s use of race in their slogans, which included: “against racist education,” “against racial discrimination,” and “for a real racial democracy.”

The regime encouraged other actions against IPCN beyond surveillance. Feliciano Preira, a Black Movement activist, described how the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS/GB) ransacked the IPCN building. Similarly, Carlos Alberto Medeiros testified to the Rio Truth Commission that the IPCN was invaded at various points in time and documents were stolen. “It was another way to say we’re here. It was a kind of warning.”

The Central Agency of the National Information Service (SNI) produced and compiled a set of documents, which it then sent to the heads of the SNI (CH/SNI). The nearly 400 compiled pages prove the regime’s control over what they called Cultural Associations for the spread of black culture in Brazil as well as over the Black Soul Movement, referenced in the Renaissance Club memo (Arquivo Nacional, Cisa.AMA: ACE_109622/76_CNF, I/4). They emphasize the alleged connections between cultural associations and the Senegalese ambassador through the diplomat Edmond Roques King. There are allusions to the appropriation of racial topics by organizations such as the MR-8. ¹ The individuals with subversive histories named as infiltrators into the black movement include Ricardo de Carvalho Duarte, Carlos Alberto Vieira, Olímpio Marques dos Santos, and Carlos Alberto Medeiros. Also set apart are those responsible for spreading ideas that challenged the existence of racial harmony in Brazil, including Maria Beatriz do Nascimento and Abdias Nascimento. ²

The military repression targeted cultural associations’ channels for denouncing racism, as these were seen as possible threats to internal security, as they might supposedly cause negative psychological warfare. The regime saw a connection between the fight against racism and the destabilization of order – beyond the possibility the cause might be appropriated by communist propaganda and ultimately fortify leftist militancy, as seen in MR-8’s use of anti-racist slogans. Another concern was that these movements might be the result of foreign influence or meddling that, beyond perturbing internal order and manipulating the “naïve” masses, could create an “anti-Brazilian” movement abroad.

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ORDER

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.