By Rex Nielson
In 1990 in the cemetery of Dom Bosco in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, a mass grave was discovered containing the remains of 1,049 political prisoners, indigents, and victims of death squadrons operating during Brazil’s military dictatorship. Journalist Caco Barcelos, who had been conducting research in the Legal Medical Institute in São Paulo, made the discovery. In the institute’s archives, Barcelos came across documents regarding political prisoners who had been interred in the Dom Bosco Cemetery under false names. He followed this lead and found further information in the cemetery’s own archives suggesting the existence and location of a large unmarked grave. With this information he approached the city superintendent of funeral services, Ruy Barbosa de Alencar, who allowed the grave to be opened and documented. Sacks containing the remains were subsequently removed. The emergence of these anonymous ghosts from Brazil’s recent past reopened deep wounds within Brazilian culture and underscored the belatedness of the trauma of dictatorship.
In the late 1970s, the military government began to anticipate the re-democratization process. Legal scholar Terence Coonan observes, “This gradual process of transition was characterized by a consensus that there would be no prosecutions of the military for human rights violations.” And in fact, when General João Figueiredo assumed the presidency in 1979, one of his first acts in office was to pass an amnesty law. The Lei de Anistia [Amnesty Law], passed on August 28, 1979, offered the possibility of amnesty to all persons accused of political crimes. The law was initially hailed by civil rights groups because it allowed those political dissidents who had been imprisoned and tortured to appear before a judge, albeit in a court of military law, and defend themselves of the charges they had received, thus opening the possibility for their release. The law in this sense brought the atrocities and tortures that had been committed into an institutionally sanctioned sphere. Yet, significantly, while the law provided for the means by which civilians accused of the government could clear their names, the law prohibited the investigation or prosecution of acts committed by state officials between 1964 and 1979. The Lei de Anistia was thus, first and foremost, an attempt by the Brazilian military to legislate impunity. The law was essentially a form of self-amnesty for those involved in the repressive actions that took place during the dictatorship.
Yet government officials who were meant to have been protected by this law have been denied moral amnesty. In 1985, the month following the first civilian elections in twenty years, a remarkable book was published entitled Brasil: Nunca Mais, published in English as Torture in Brazil.The book contains verbatim transcripts of military trials that were never intended to be read by the public at large. It is a shocking report that documents the use of torture by the Brazilian military police in over six thousand cases. A group of lawyers defending political prisoners under the terms of the 1979 Amnesty Law secretly photocopied the files of prisoners they had access to. These photocopied files were secretly archived by the Catholic Diocese in São Paulo and then transferred to Europe, and the book was prepared from this archive.
The official original military archive currently remains sequestered and hidden within the military bureaucracy, and government officials refuse to investigate and acknowledge its contents. Yet Brasil: Nunca Mais, the unofficial parallel to this record, has been widely read. The lapse between the stories and information commonly held by the public and the refusal of the government to investigate and either renounce or corroborate what is commonly known continues to deny those officials who were protected by the amnesty law moral amnesty. It is this lapse between knowledge and acknowledgment that continues to haunt Brazil.
Following the discovery of the mass grave in the Dom Bosco Cemetery, the activities of human rights groups coupled with increasing public outrage finally brought forth a bill that was passed by the Brazilian democratic congress and signed into law by then President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in December 1995. Law 9.140, the Lei dos Desaparecidos (Law of the Disappeared), recognized the responsibility of the state for the deaths of 136 Disappeared and created A Comissão Especial de Reconhecimento dos Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos (Special Commission for the Recognition of the Dead and Disappeared) (see Appendix).
The military dictatorship in Brazil lasted from 1964 to 1985 and was marked by brutal repression, including political persecutions, arbitrary imprisonment, systematic
torture, murders, and forced disappearances. As in other South American countries,the justification for such actions was a doctrine of national security. Family members of those who had disappeared or been murdered organized themselves to denounce and protest the deaths, disappearances, torture and horrible conditions of political prisoners, and in the mid 1970s, at the height of the military dictatorship, the opposition began a vigorous fight for full, general, and nonrestrictive amnesty for all political prisoners.
In the late 1970s, the military government began to anticipate the re-democratization process. Legal scholar Terence Coonan observes, “This gradual process of transition was characterized by a consensus that there would be no prosecutions of the military for human rights violations.” And in fact, when General João Figueiredo assumed the presidency in 1979, one of his first acts in office was to pass an amnesty law. The Lei de Anistia [Amnesty Law], passed on August 28, 1979, offered the possibility of amnesty to all persons accused of political crimes. The law was initially hailed by civil rights groups because it allowed those political dissidents who had been imprisoned and tortured to appear before a judge, albeit in a court of military law, and defend themselves of the charges they had received, thus opening the possibility for their release. The law in this sense brought the atrocities and torture that had been committed into an institutionally sanctioned sphere. Yet, significantly, while the law provided for the means by which civilians accused of the government could clear their names, the law prohibited the investigation or prosecution of acts committed by state officials between 1964 and 1979. The Lei de Anistia was thus, first and foremost, an attempt by the Brazilian military to legislate impunity. The law was essentially a form of self-amnesty for those involved in the repressive actions that took place during the dictatorship.
Yet government officials who were meant to have been protected by this law have been denied moral amnesty. In 1985, the month following the first civilian elections in twenty years, a remarkable book was published entitled Brasil: Nunca Mais, published in English as Torture in Brazil.The book contains verbatim transcripts of military trials that were never intended to be read by the public at large. It is a shocking report that documents the use of torture by the Brazilian military police in over six thousand cases. A group of lawyers defending political prisoners under the terms of the 1979 Amnesty Law secretly photocopied the files of prisoners they had access to. These photocopied files were secretly archived by the Catholic Diocese in São Paulo and then transferred to Europe, and the book was prepared from this archive.
The official original military archive currently remains sequestered and hidden within the military bureaucracy, and government officials refuse to investigate and acknowledge its contents. Yet Brasil: Nunca Mais, the unofficial parallel to this record has been widely read. The lapse between the stories and information commonly held by the public and the refusal of the government to investigate and either renounce or corroborate what is commonly known continues to deny those officials who were protected by the amnesty law moral amnesty. It is this lapse between knowledge and acknowledgment thatcontinues to haunt Brazil.
Following the discovery of the mass grave in the Dom Bosco Cemetery, the activities of human rights groups coupled with increasing public outrage finally brought forth a bill that was passed by the Brazilian democratic congress and signed into law by then President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in December 1995. Law 9.140, the Lei dos Desaparecidos (Law of the Disappeared), recognized the responsibility of the state for the deaths of 136 Disappeared and created A Comissão Especial de Reconhecimento dos Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos (Special Commission for the Recognition of the Dead and Disappeared) (see Appendix 1).
The law was the first acknowledgement by the government of the practice of torture, kidnapping, and death. Moreover, the law provided for material reparations of approximately one hundred thousand dollars to the families of those detained, tortured, and killed by the government.
While the law represents a significant development in terms of the recognition of international human rights, the law has also been much criticized. The law provides for a Special Commission for the Recognition of the Dead and Disappeared through which individual claims may be levied against the government, yet the law does not oblige the state to investigate any of the facts, to ascertain the truth, to search for the physical remains of missing persons, to identify those responsible for the crimes committed, or to punish the guilty. The onus of proof has been the sole and exclusive responsibility of relatives, which is made difficult by the fact that the archives of the armed forces have been sealed and in fact Law 9.140 stipulates a term of thirty years during which the records must remain sealed.
The opening of the political archives of the dictatorship, which are known to contain detailed information regarding tortures, kidnappings, political detainees, and assassinations, has been a constant banner of human rights groups within Brazil. The history is known, yet it is not institutionally acknowledged. Consequently, while the law establishes initial stipulations for the payment of reparations, the law simultaneously reinscribes the legal amnesty afforded by the 1979 Lei de Anistia. Impunity allows the torturers and other agents of the military government to maintain positions of trust, even acting in various State functions.
The continued endorsement of the 1979 amnesty law represents an official silence and lies at the heart of any attempt at reparations on the part of the Brazilian government. According to legal scholar Robert Westley, “Monetary compensation without symbolic reparation and revelation of the truth of what happened during the military dictatorship is seen as an attempt to buy silence.” Another critic, Naomi Roht-Arriaza, has recently argued that “Reparations are the embodiment of a society’s recognition, remorse and atonement for harms inflicted,” and while material reparations in the form of monetary payments are necessary, “moral reparations are as important—often more important—than material ones” (157).
As progressive as the 1995 Lei dos Desaparecidos is in terms of providing material reparations to victims, as long as Brazil’s amnesty law remains in force, the human rights abuses committed during the military dictatorship will continue to haunt Brazilian culture. Books like Brasil: Nunca Mais will continue to be published, just as hidden cemeteries may continue to emerge, denying moral amnesty to the agents of torture and violence and calling for redress, reparation, and above all acknowledgment. Moral reparations must assume the form of institutional truth-telling before these ghosts can be laid to rest.
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[Note: Originally Published in Dialogos Magazine. Providence: CLACS, Brown University. 2009.]
Rex P. Nielson is a graduate student in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University and is currently working on a dissertation, entitled, “Fading Fathers: Writing Beyond Patriarchy in Contemporary Brazilian Literature.”