As Brazil commemorates the 54th anniversary of the 1964 military coup, Brazilians connect current deaths to violence of the past and demand justice.
On March 14, 2018, the black, feminist city councilperson, activist, and civic leader Marielle Franco was assassinated in Rio de Janeiro. On March 28, 1968, during the military dictatorship, the student Edson Luis de Lima Souto was murdered by the state, also in the city of Rio.
This coming Sunday, April 1, marks the 54th anniversary of the 1964 military coup in Brazil. This year, 2018, is also exactly 50 years after the Institutional Act Number Five (AI-5), the act that intensified and institutionalized dictatorship practices of censorship and state violence, was signed into law.
In sum: ghosts haunt this time of year.
However, 2018 became the first year for Brazil to officially recognize the United Nation’s International Day for the Right to Truth, commemorated on March 24.
In light of this international day for justice and this unpunished bloodshed, past and present, what has been going on in Brazil to commemorate, mourn, and protest?
At the beginning of March, before Marielle Franco’s assassination, the exhibition Vala Clandestina de Perus was displayed through the Ecos da Memória initiative at the Historical and Pedagogical Museum in São Paulo. The exhibition showed the story of a cemetery used to hide bodies during the civil-military dictatorship.
In the past weeks, Brazil’s work to remember the authoritarian period connected with current activism. In the media, articles like this essay in The Intercept have drawn parallels between the 1968 murder of student Edson Luis and police violence in 2018. Some protests in Rio de Janeiro draw that same parallel, and the online #DesarquivandoBR campaign demands the release of archives from the civil-military dictatorship, not only in the name of the right to truth about the dictatorship, but also in a movement against the current military intervention in Rio de Janeiro.
A university a course on entitled “The 2016 Coup and the Future of Democracy in Brazil,” organized by Professor Luis Felipe Miguel at the University of Brasília was cancelled earlier this year. However, universities around Brazil are starting to teach that exact course this semester. The State University of Londrina is one of the institutions that hosted a truncated version of the seminar, bringing together professors from six disciplines as well as local activists to open a space for discussion about ruptures in democratic systems on March 26, 27, and 28. The panel discussions are publicly available online here.
Looking ahead, there will be a colloquium about May 1968 in France and Brazil at the Federal University of Espírito Santo on May 23-25. For those in Brazil, this conference is certainly an opportunity to discuss these questions of continuities in state violence.
Do you know of any more events related to Marielle, Edson Luis, and the 54th anniversary of Brazil’s military dictatorship? If so, post in the comments below.