In advance of the runoff of Brazil’s presidential election, Artememoria invites readers to reflect on how Brazil has constructed memory about its military dictatorship. The magazine asked a guest author, Vera Vital Brasil, to comment on the specific dynamics of the country’s reckoning with its historical past. Vital Brasil is a medical psychologist, former political prisoner, and an active voice in the struggle for memory in Rio de Janeiro. Her thorough essay identifies institutional continuities from the dictatorship, expresses what civil society and human rights groups have been able to achieve in transitional justice since 1985, and frames Brazil’s current moment in terms of this context of post-dictatorship memory. Ultimately, her words reveal how extremely necessary it is to reflect on narratives of the past in order to understand the present.
The following essay by Vera Vital Brasil was translated from the Portuguese by Artememoria editor Lara Norgaard.
Let us begin with the premise that the State, guided by a Constitution and international norms, should be responsible for safeguarding the rights and the physical and psychological well-being of its citizens. And, when the State is the entity that violates fundamental rights, political memories articulate the violence carried out in various historical contexts through the present day. These memories expose multiple social practices that come out of an incomplete settling of scores regarding this violent past, giving space to new social actors and institutions. But the process of building memory about past human rights violations is not singular. It is charged with different meanings that depend on the social and political context in which the narratives that compose memory are formulated. This is a dynamic of Memory itself, which, through its competing narratives, makes visible spaces of power and exposes the conflict and tension between different national and international actors.
Latin America has been the stage for transitions between authoritarian and democratic forms of government. Even with a constant struggle for democracy, the region has not freed itself from these moments of intensified state violence.
Brazil has experienced short and incomplete periods of democracy during which we can note/see the establishment of civic-minded public policy. In the alternating histories between forms of government, conservative forces – elites longing for dictatorship –systematically threaten the progress achieved in social and political rights. These forces instigate or take advantage of periods of institutional crisis to establish regimes that exclusively favor the elite.
There have been numerous attempted military coups in Latin America upported by the U.S. Department of State with the goal of continued domination of the continent. One that marks Brazilian history is the brutal April 1964 coup, supported by corporations and parliament. After imprisoning nearly 50 thousand people (Brasil, 2007), the Brazilian dictatorship functioned through a model of apparent legality for four years, until 1968. With its control of parliament, the military was able to pass laws in its own interest and, through the National Security Law, established the National Security Doctrine, which focuses on violently persecuting an “internal enemy” through torture and execution. That concept of the “internal enemy” reverberates through history and exists in Brazil to this day (Napolitano 2014).
In 1964 the majority of those affected by the dictatorship were leaders of student, union, rural, and urban associations. But in December 1968 after the military passed the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5), underground resistance groups opposing the regime were decimated. After consolidating the system of repression, the military imposed broad censorship in media, education, books, plays, and movies; they fired renowned scientists and professors, instituted police presence in classrooms and public institutions, and incentivized turning people into the authorities. Social relationships became charged with fear, uncertainty, and suspicion: state terrorism existed in its most visible form.
Crimes against humanity multiplied. Kidnappings, torture, assassinations, and disappearances became common practice carried out by state officials based on official military orders. Even if dictatorship coercion was explicit, as well as implicit, in its targeting of the regime’s political opposition, the physical, symbolic, and institutional violence of the dictatorship was extensive: it radiated racial, gender, and class discrimination and marred physical spaces, streets, and institutions. Resistance was also not limited to the most visible actors like members of underground political parties and opposition movements. Resistance circulated through art: people took refuge there from the threats of abusive power through music and theater and through private or semi-public popular convenings in support of black culture (Gomez, 2018).
In Brazil, the dictators’ principal weapon against its people was torture (Teles, 2013). With its power to spread fear, the tactic curbed criticisms of the regime. Public servants used torture often, making the practice banal, everyday, and broadly accepted. Torture is an internationally recognized crime against humanity, but in Brazil it continues to be used on a staggeringly broad and systematic scale against impoverished groups and street protesters (AI, 2018; Brasil, 2014; IPEA, 2017).
The marks of trauma from the long period of the Brazilian dictatorship became, in varying degrees, institutional norms. To this day, the state has retained certain violent practices. For example, police have – and frequently use – the “license to kill” those who resist arrest. [1]
A range of practices, actions, concepts, and actors emerged in the struggle for Memory, Truth, Justice, and Reparation have emerged in the years following the 1964-85 dictatorship.
During the most violent period of the military regime, the only advocates that demanded an explanation for the circumstances of deaths and disappearances were groups of the families of the dead and disappeared political prisoners (Brasil, 2007). As the dictatorship progressed, and specifically in 1975, after leftist organizations had been dismantled, a large mobilization effort for “Broad, Unrestricted Amnesty” began. The Amnesty Law was signed in 1979. [2]
The idea of human rights was at the time expressed as a struggle for civil liberties and slowly expanded to include demands for memory, truth, justice, and reparations. When a constitutional system of government was reestablished, the struggle for human rights expanded, new actors entered the scene, and society began to win political, social, economic, gendered, racial, ethnic, and environmental rights.
The Brazilian State began to slowly provide reparations to those affected by state violence. At first, those who had been politically persecuted were allowed to return to work. Ten years after the transition back to democracy passed before a Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances was established; its intent was to clarify the circumstances of those killed and disappeared by the regime. [3]
It was only in the first decade of the 21stcentury that a productive wave of state efforts for memory and truth came about. [4] In the 13 years of democratic governance led by presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, the Ministry of Justice’s Amnesty Commission [5] was in charge of reparations, and not just economic compensation. The Commission developed initiatives that constituted invaluable contributions to political memory, such as national and international seminars, the Marcas da Memória(Marks of Memory) Project, and support for documentary films, theatrical plays, and publications. It developed the innovative “Amnesty Caravan” project, which travelled across Brazil, spreading public awareness of amnesty petitions and encouraging witnesses to participate. The Projeto Clínico do Testemunho (Witness Clinic Project) was also established as a pilot initiative for public policy related to psychological reparations (Vital Brasil, 2014). The Amnesty Memorial in the city of Belo Horizonte was interrupted in its final phase when, in 2016, a new parliamentary-judiciary-media coup removed Dilma Rousseff from the presidency and suspended all programs and projects tied to the Amnesty Commission. Ever since this daunting and unprecedented setback, the country has watched as rights have been taken away and a break from democracy threatened.
A lack of awareness about the history of dictatorship amongst some social groups, the negation of that past on the part of the Armed Forces, and the trivializing of violence all come together now, just a few days before the 2018 presidential election. This grave political situation involves extreme polarization between two political parties, each held by a presidential candidate with specific positions: one supports “civilization,” the other, “barbarism.” The latter is a far-right congressman with a military background who openly defends the dictatorship and celebrates torturers. He has threatened to rape a fellow member of congress with opposing political views. He despises and uses hate speech against black Brazilians, women, and LGBT groups. He has threatened indigenous people and their right to land and intends to legalize guns in his administration for the purpose of public security. He has public support and a real chance of winning the election. And, at the same time, members of the military have been appointed to major positions in relevant state agencies.
Part of Brazilian society is surprised and indignant at the fact that this candidate is seen as acceptable: they ask what could have caused the country to regress at this scale, risking a return to authoritarian dictatorship through the popular vote. The factors are, without a doubt, many and complex. They include electoral crimes that deserve careful investigation. But, from the point of view of building memory, truth, and justice, we can infer the following:
- One narrative constructed about the 1964 coup claims the overthrow of the presidency was a “revolution,” a “redemptive” escape that “fended off the communist threat and saved democracy.” In the current election, the candidate in favor of dictatorship promotes this theory of events, a version that had already been prevalent in military barracks and amongst some social groups. The current president of the Brazilian Supreme Court recently referred to the 1964 coup as a “military movement,” hiding the authoritarian features of the military regime that lasted for 21 years. Rather than establish new monuments celebrating figures committed to democracy, public spaces in Brazilian cities still honor leaders from the dictatorship.
- The National Truth Commission (CNV) Final Report reconstructed the official narrative of the dictatorship. It gave due weight to the human rights violations committed during the authoritarian regime, named of those who carried out and ordered the crimes, and identified the circumstances of violence and the structures responsible for these abuses. 434 dead and disappeared political prisoners were identified – crimes committed by 343 public officials. However, that list does not include social groups not tied to political opposition, such as indigenous people, black Brazilians, farmers, LGBTQ groups, and impoverished urban groups, all of whom were also victims of brutal state violence during the dictatorship (CNV, 2014; Gomez, 2018).
- Actions taken to build memorials and Sites of Memory were insufficient, especially considering the pressure from social movements and efforts by some public servants to establish those spaces.
- The Brazilian State made no progress in holding responsible those who carried out and ordered crimes against humanity, maintaining to this day the amnesty laws that those responsible for these crimes established. This marks an abysmal difference between Brazil and other Latin American nations. It is one feature of the Brazilian reality that has not kept pace with the international community; the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has pressed the Brazilian state to take penal action against the perpetrators of the crimes in the Gomes Lund and Herzog cases. This fact, one that damages Brazil’s commitment to international norms, indicates the need for a detailed analysis of institutions and political forces that have impeded holding public officials responsible for their crimes. But we can already infer some factors that have allowed for the longevity of the dictatorship, including the way its ideology has penetrated administrative and institutional structures of government, the way the state relates to its citizens, and continued military authority in Brazil.
- The lack of institutional reforms – including of the Armed Forces – has impeded the creation of a critical narrative about the historical period and, to a certain degree, has guaranteed the military a place of power in subsequent democratic administrations. The Armed Forces has never publically apologized for its past actions, making a new commitment to democracy. Nor has it responded to requests from the National Truth Commission to access documents under its purview, which could bring to light cases of forced disappearances. In this way, the Armed Forces have obstructed investigations mandated by a state agency. Military commanders make inadequate statements about their actions and receive no criticism or sanction from the executive or judicial branches of government.
When a State assumes responsibility for its crimes, creating policy for memory and reparation, it without a doubt provides a symbolic contribution to those who have suffered persecution, imprisonment, and torture, establishes the basis for citizenship and human rights, and takes an unambiguous step forward in building a democracy.
However, we now face a question about the immediate future, one in which a return to neoliberal policy is at play. If the past two years of suspended public policy for memory continue, if the narrative of those who deny responsibility and state violence prevail, we risk the repetition of the terror that dominated during the dictatorship period. But, if we are to realize the potential of the memories put into official record when the State welcomed demands for human rights, we will need to build new trenches in our fight to resist.
As Reyes Mate claims: “There is no justice without memory of injustice.” And to movements for memory, this maxim is a permanent symbol of struggle in any historical circumstance.
[1] Recent data from the Institute of Public Security show that between January and July 2018, one out of every five violent deaths in Rio de Janeiro was committed by security forces, and registered as homicides resulting from police operations. That is the highest rate of registered deaths at the hands of the police in Brazil since 1998.
[2] Given domestic and foreign pressure (Green, 2009), the Amnesty Law was enacted in August 1979, freeing the majority of political prisoners and allowing the return of individuals in exile. However, this law, like others passed contemporaneously in Latin America, also allowed those responsible for crimes against humanity to guarantee their own amnesty.
[3] However, documents remained classified and the burden of proof fell on family members who had roamed military barracks ever since their disappearance, in search of signs that could prove where their loved ones had been imprisoned.
[4] In 2012, Dilma Roussef’s administration established the National Truth Commission, prompting the creation of State, Municipal, and Trade-specific Commissions as well as civil society committees and collectives that accompanied the Commissions’ investigations.
[5] Established by Law 10,559/2002.
Vera Vital Brasil was born in the city of Niterói in the state of Rio de Janeiro. A political prisoner during Brazil’s military dictatorship, she had to go into exile in Chile. Upon her return to the country, she studied psychology. Now a practicing medical psychologist, she is a member of the Rio de Janeiro’s Equipe Clínico Políticaand worked as a public servant for the Instituto de Assistência aos Servidores do estado do Rio de Janeiro (IASERJ) before retiring in 2010. Vital Brasil is also involved in human rights groups related to dictatorship memory: she acted as a member of the Equipe Clínico Grupalfor the organization Torture Never Again from 1991-2010 and coordinated the Ministry of Justice’s Rio de Janeiro Witness Clinics Project from 2013-2015. She is a current member of the Rio de Janeiro Memory Truth Justice Collective and has authored a range of books and articles, published both in Brazil and abroad.