Today, an 11-day, nation-wide trucker strike winds down in Brazil. But what began as a strike to lower the price of diesel fuel took on an unexpected political dimension as some protestors called for “military intervention” – a demand for the return of military dictatorship. Clearly, dictatorship has reentered public discourse in Brazil, but not in a way that looks with historical rigor at the authoritarian regime and its actions, which included the suppression of the same workers’ rights that allowed truckers to demand their rights in 2018.
In this context, it is essential to highlight and disseminate new projects that try to explore the last civil-military dictatorship with nuance. A variety of initiatives try to capture the complexities and realities of Brazil between 1964-1985 through historical documents, art, or the participation and testimony of witnesses. Read on for five recently established organizations that take on the difficult project of remembering past state violence.
Lampejos: Arte, Memória, Verdade, Justiça is a publication that discusses the new wave of art, activism, and collective projects that have explored dictatorship memory in recent years. With a focus on the struggle for memory, truth, and justice, Lampejos disseminates remarkable artistic initiatives of a range of media, ranging from cartoons to plays to interventions in the urban environment. Click here for more information.
Destempos is a film that the creators label as a “documentary-manifesto”. The video follows an evening in which witnesses from the Brazilian civil-military and their relatives use art to represent their own experiences. For more information, take a look at the press release about the launch of the film.
Clínicas do Testemunho is a civil society organization focused on psychiatric support and symbolic reparation for those who suffered directly or indirectly from state violence in Brazil between 1946-1988. The organization, founded in 2013 through the Amnesty Commission and Ministry of Justice, recently launched a new website to make the important stories of political prisoners from the dictatorship period and their relatives publicly available. The site, with content in Portuguese, can be found here.
Militantes em Cena is a theater collective of actors and activists based out of Rio de Janeiro. The group intervenes unconventionally in everyday spaces, using theater to inspire political and social debate. Their play Puta Que Pariu, Brasil, written and directed by Jitman Vibranovski, represents plays about current political divisions in Rio de Janeiro in the domestic sphere. Though not explicitly about the Brazilian military dictatorship, this play – and the theater organization more generally – can be used to understand and discuss continuities in political and social issues from dictatorship to the present day. Interested in reading more about this theater group? Check out their Facebook page.
Opening the Archives is an open-access archive of US State Department documents related to Brazil during the period of 1963-1973. Established through a partnership between Brown University and the State University of Maringá in Paraná, the project aims to host 100,000 indexed documents on their website.
Interested in looking at a longer list of organizations and publications representing dictatorship? Take a look at our Related Reading page. And please Contact Us if you know of a memory initiative not yet listed.