Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil 9780299297237

Table of contents :
Contents......Page 8
List of Illustrations......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 12
List of Abbreviations......Page 18
Introduction: The Turn to Memory in Brazilian Culture and Politics......Page 22
1. Testimonies and the Amnesty Law......Page 47
2. A Prime-Time Miniseries and Impeachment......Page 78
3. Literary and Official Truth-Telling......Page 101
4. From Torture Center to Stage and Site of Memory......Page 118
Conclusion: Memory's Turns and Returns......Page 141
Notes......Page 150
Bibliography......Page 170
Index......Page 182

Citation preview

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­M e mo r y ’s Tu r n

C r i t i­ ­c a l H u m a n ­R i g h t s Se­r ies Ed­i­t ors

S t e ve J. Stern T Scott ­S tra u s Books in the se­ries Crit­i­cal Human ­Rights em­pha­size re­search that opens new ways to think about and under­stand human ­rights. The se­ries val­ues in par­tic­u­lar em­pir­i­cally ­grounded and in­tel­lec­tu­ally open re­search that es­chews sim­plified ac­counts of human ­rights ­events and pro­cesses.

Human ­rights atroc­ities cat­a­lyze de­mands for jus­tice and rec­og­ni­tion. But schol­ar­ship often di­vides into sep­ar­ate ­streams. Tran­si­tional jus­tice stud­ies focus on in­sti­tu­tional re­sponses to mend harm, such as truth com­mis­sions, crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions, pen­sions, and me­mo­ri­als. Cul­tural stud­ies an­a­lyze ex­pres­sive work such as me­moirs, lit­er­at­ ure and the arts, and cin­ema to pro­mote a mem­ory of never again. Yet does ac­tiv­ity in one realm af­fect the other? ­Memory’s Turn pro­vides an in­ge­ni­ous twist by trac­ing multi­di­rec­tional lev­er­ag­ing ef­fects for the ex­treme case of Bra­zil, whose long mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ ship (1964–85) re­sorted to mas­sive tor­ture yet gave way to a de­moc­racy of ap­par­ent in­dif­fer­ence. The re­sult is un­com­mon theo­ret­i­cal in­sight on inter­ plays of cul­ture and in­sti­tu­tional pol­i­tics dur­ing and after state ter­ror, and an es­sen­tial back­story to the truth com­mis­sion work fi­nally un­fold­ing in ­twenty-first-century Bra­zil.

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­M emory’s Turn Reck­o n­ing with Dic­t at­o r­s hip in Bra­z il

Re­b ecca J. Aten­c io

The Uni­v er­s ity of W is­c o n ­s in Pre s s

The Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin Press 1930 Mon­roe ­Street, 3rd Floor Mad­i­son, Wis­con­sin 53711-2059 uw­press.wisc.edu 3 Hen­rietta ­Street Lon­don WC2E 8LU, En­gland eu­ros­pan­book­store.com Copy­right © 2014 The Board of Re­gents of the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin ­System All ­rights re­served. No part of this pub­li­ca­tion may be re­pro­duced, ­stored in a re­trieval ­system, or trans­mit­ted, in any for­mat or by any means, dig­i­tal, elec­tronic, me­chan­i­cal, photo­cop­y­ing, re­cord­ing, or oth­er­wise, or con­veyed via the Inter­net or a web­site with­out writ­ten per­mis­sion of the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin Press, ex­cept in the case of brief quo­ta­tions em­bed­ded in crit­i­cal ar­ti­cles and re­views. ­Printed in the ­United ­States of Amer­ica

Li­brary of Con­gress ­Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aten­cio, Re­becca J., au­thor. ­Memory’s turn: reck­on­ing with dic­tat­or­ship in Bra­zil / Re­becca J. Aten­cio. pages   cm — (Crit­ic­ al human ­rights) In­cludes bib­lio­graph­i­cal ref­er­ences and index. ISBN 978-0-299-29724-4 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-299-29723-7 (e-book) 1.  Dic­tat­or­ship—Bra­zil—His­tory—20th cen­tury. 2. Col­lec­tive mem­ory—Bra­zil.   3.  Col­lec­tive mem­ory and lit­er­a­ture—Bra­zil.   4.  Human ­rights—Bra­zil—His­tory—20th cen­tury. 5.  Bra­zil—His­tory—1964–1985.   6.  Bra­zil—His­tory—1985–2002.   7.  Bra­zil—His­tory— 2003–.   I.  Title.   II.  Se­ries: Crit­i­cal human ­rights. F2538.25.A84    2014 981.06—dc23 2013041210

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For Chris Nich­o­las Julia

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C o n t­ e n t s

List of Il­lus­tra­tions Ac­knowl­edg­ments List of Ab­bre­vi­a­tions Intro­duc­tion: The Turn to Mem­ory in Bra­zil­ian Cul­ture and Pol­i­tics

ix xi xvii

3

1

Tes­ti­mo­nies and the Am­nesty Law

28

2

A ­Prime-Time Min­is­er­ies and Im­peach­ment

59

3

Lit­er­ary and Of­fi­cial ­Truth-Telling

82

4

From Tor­ture Cen­ter to Stage and Site of Mem­ory

99

Con­clu­sion: ­Memory’s Turns and Re­turns

122

Notes Bib­liog­ra­phy Index

131 151 163

vii

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I l­lu s ­t r a ­t i o n s

Show­ing marks of tor­ture in Anos re­beldes João and Maria Lúcia in a 1968 ­protest march ­Heloísa’s death scene The DOPS build­ing in São Paulo The Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade The pro­logue of Lem­brar é re­sis­tir Pro­gram for Lem­brar é re­sis­tir Discussing political repression in Lem­brar é re­sis­tir The Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia

63 65 68 100 101 106 107 111 119

ix

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A c k­ n o wl­e d g m ­ ents

The first book I ever read from cover to cover in Por­tu­guese was Dias ­Gomes’s ­Campeões do mundo (World Cham­pions), a play that pre­miered in 1980 using ­Brazil’s World Cup vic­tory a ­decade ear­lier as the back­drop for dra­ma­tiz­ing the re­sis­tance to the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship that gov­erned the coun­try for ­twenty-one years. And with that intro­duc­tion to Bra­zil­ian lit­er­a­ture and his­tory in 1998 began a pat­tern that I ­couldn’t help but no­tice in my early tra­jec­tory as a Braz­i­li­a­nist: it ­seemed that the dic­tat­or­ship was every­where I ­turned, even ­though the ques­tion of mem­ory was ­hardly a ­high-ranking item on the pub­lic ­agenda in Bra­zil at the time. Each step of the way, the gen­e­ros­ity and good­will of oth­ers ­helped carry this pro­ject for­ward. I owe an enor­mous debt of grat­it­ ude to the many peo­ple who sup­ported my re­search in a multi­ tude of ways over the years. The jour­ney that cul­mi­nated in this book began in ear­nest in the ­spring of 2001, when I vis­ited the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin to ex­plore grad­u­ate ­school. While I was there, Sev­e­rino Al­bu­querque took me to a talk by one of the Ar­gen­tine Moth­ers of the Plaza de Mayo, and af­ter­ward he and I had a long dis­cus­sion about the strik­ingly dif­fer­ent path Bra­zil had cho­sen in reck­on­ing with its dic­ta­to­rial past. ­Largely be­cause of that mem­or­able ex­pe­ri­ence, I de­cided to study at Wis­con­sin. Dur­ing my first se­mes­ter there the fol­low­ing au­tumn, I took a semi­nar with Sev­e­rino ti­tled “Dic­tat­or­ship and Re­pres­sion in Bra­zil,” which was all the more poig­nant be­cause the first day of the ­course hap­pened to fall on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. It soon be­came clear that my path of study was set. The fol­low­ing sum­mer, I at­tended a re­search semi­nar ­called “Leg­a­cies of Au­thor­i­tar­ian­ism.” Al­though the set­ting of the semi­nar was neigh­bor­ing Ar­gen­tina, Bra­zil was never far from my mind, and I went on to write my dis­ser­ta­tion on the tes­ti­mo­nies of for­mer Bra­zil­ian guer­ril­las. Sev­e­rino

xi

was a ­trusted men­tor through­out this pro­cess, and I’m im­mensely grate­ful for his con­tin­ued friend­ship and sup­port. As a be­gin­ning as­sist­ant pro­fes­sor, I be­came inter­ested in the for­ma­tion of mem­ory in the post­dic­ta­to­rial pe­riod. A se­ries of for­tui­tous circum­stances, set in mo­tion once again by the gen­e­ros­ity of oth­ers, led me to iden­tify the case stud­ies for this book. The first oc­ca­sion took place on a visit to the Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade in the for­mer sta­tion house of the São Paulo po­lit­i­cal po­lice. A do­cent whose name I never dis­cov­ered men­tioned in pass­ing that a play about the dic­tat­or­ship had been ­staged in the build­ing. Cu­ri­ous, I began a ­search for in­for­ma­tion about the per­for­mance, which went no­where until I met Am­paro ­Araújo of Mov­i­mento Tor­tura Nunca Mais in Re­cife some time later. She put me in touch with ­Belisário dos San­tos Jr., who had spon­sored the play. ­Through him and oth­ers, I man­aged to con­tact many of the in­di­vid­u­als in­ volved in the pro­duc­tion, in­clud­ing ­Izaías Al­mada, Analy Ál­va­rez, An­nita Ma­lufe, Sil­nei Si­queira, and Ia San­tos. I am thank­ful to each for ­kindly mak­ing time to help me to under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of the play and for shar­ing per­sonal ­archives with me. The play might not have be­come a focus of this book, how­ever, had Kath­ryn San­chez not en­cour­aged me to ­present on it for a con­fer­ence she was or­ga­niz­ing ­called “Per­form­ing Bra­zil” (to men­tion but one of the many ways that she has sup­ported and in­spired me over the years). ­Around the same time, Leigh Payne sug­gested that I con­sider writ­ing about Anos re­beldes, which cul­mi­nated in my con­tri­bu­tion to the vol­ume she co­ed­ited with Kse­nija Bil­bija, Ac­count­ing for Vi­o­lence, and pro­vided me with the ma­te­rial cov­ered in chap­ter 2 of this book. My inter­ac­tions with Leigh, Kse­nija, and the other con­trib­u­tors to the vol­ume ­opened my mind to the var­i­ous and com­plex ways that cul­ture and human ­rights mem­ory inter­act. Fi­nally, I be­came inter­ested in the fic­tion of Fer­nando Bo­nassi after read­ing and ad­mir­ing the lit­er­ary crit­i­cism of Leila Leh­nen. It was ­through sub­se­quent con­ver­sa­tions with Leila that I be­came con­vinced that Bo­nassi was a per­fect fit for the book. She also gen­er­ously pro­vided feed­back on part of the man­u­script in draft form (it was she who in­spired the idea of ­real-time wit­ness­ing). Other ­friends and col­leagues like­wise ­shaped and en­riched this book in var­i­ous ways. My dear ­friend Nancy ­Gates-Madsen con­vinced me to co­ au­thor an entry on art and tran­si­tional jus­tice for ­Cambridge’s En­cy­clo­pe­dia of Tran­si­tional Jus­tice, ed­ited by La­vi­nia Stan and Nadya Ne­del­sky. I had been stu­di­ously avoid­ing tran­si­tional jus­tice up until that point, be­cause it ­seemed like the prov­ince of po­lit­ic­ al sci­en­tists and legal schol­ars. Yet our col­lab­o­ra­tion on the en­cy­clo­pe­dia entry con­vinced me that my work ­needed to di­alogue with this con­cept some­how, if only be­cause it was be­com­ing in­creas­ingly used in Bra­zil. I am grate­ful to Nancy for help­ing me re­al­ize this, and also for her

xii



Acknowledgments

gen­e­ros­ity in read­ing multi­ple ­drafts of some chap­ters at an early stage of the writ­ing when I was par­tic­u­larly stuck. As I was com­plet­ing the orig­i­nal man­u­script, I had the great for­tune to meet Nina Schnei­der. I had long re­spected her work and am now proud to count her as a close ­friend. Nina has ­taught me much about the Bra­zil­ian dic­tat­or­ ship and sub­se­quent ef­forts to ­reckon with it. Per­haps most im­por­tant, she has con­sis­tently chal­lenged me to think crit­i­cally about tran­si­tional jus­tice and its ap­pli­cabil­ity to Bra­zil. I am also im­mensely grate­ful to James N. Green, pro­fes­sor of his­tory at Brown Uni­ver­sity, whose work on ­Brazil’s mil­it­ ary dic­tat­or­ship has long in­spired me. As I was put­ting the fin­ish­ing ­touches on the man­u­script, Jim in­vited me to par­tic­i­pate in the Bra­zil­ian Am­nesty ­Commission’s his­toric visit to Brown in Oc­to­ber 2013, an ex­tremely mov­ing ex­pe­ri­ence that cer­tainly left its mark on this book. In ad­di­tion, I have the great for­tune of count­ing as de­part­men­tal col­leagues and ­friends two lead­ing ex­perts on ­Brazil’s dic­ta­to­rial pe­riod. I had ad­mired Idel­ber ­Avelar’s book on mourn­ing and post­dic­ta­to­rial Latin ­American fic­tion and Chris­to­pher ­Dunn’s book on ­Tropicália long be­fore join­ing the fa­culty at Tu­lane. Both Idel­ber and Chris con­trib­uted to this pro­ject in var­i­ous ways, cri­tiqu­ing ­drafts, pass­ing along po­ten­tial ­sources, and shar­ing their knowl­edge on a va­riety of sub­jects. I’m in­debted to both of them for their gen­er­ous sup­port over the past four years. Two other Tu­lane col­leagues, Mauro Porto and Tony Per­eira (now at ­King’s Col­lege), like­wise ­shared their work with me and pro­vided feed­back on parts of the ar­gu­ment in this book, for which I’d also like to ex­press my ­thanks. Many peo­ple in Bra­zil ­shared their time and knowl­edge with me. Among those not yet men­tioned, I am par­tic­u­larly grate­ful to his­to­rian and ac­ti­vist ­Janaína Teles, lit­er­ary ­critic Jaime Ginz­burg, Kátia Fel­i­pini and Car­o­line Me­nezes at the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia, Mar­celo ­Araújo at the Pin­a­cot­eca do Es­tado, Cris­tina Bruno at the Uni­ver­sity of São Paulo, Rose No­gueira of Tor­tura Nunca Mais in São Paulo, and ­Cecília Co­im­bra of Tor­tura Nunca Mais in Rio de Ja­neiro. I would also like to ex­tend my ­thanks to the var­i­ous peo­ple at the Uni­ver­ sity of Wis­con­sin Press who ­helped bring the final prod­uct to frui­tion, es­pe­ cially the co­ed­i­tors of the Crit­i­cal Human ­Rights se­ries, Steve J. Stern and Scott ­Straus. Steve was in­stru­men­tal in help­ing me the­or­ize the re­la­tion­ship ­between cul­tural and in­sti­tu­tional re­sponses to ­dictatorship-era human ­rights ­abuses. His schol­arly work on mem­ory in Latin Amer­ica, as well as our con­ ver­sa­tions over ­e-mail and the phone, ­proved in­val­u­able to me as I ­crafted my ar­gu­ment. I also owe a spe­cial debt of grat­i­tude to ac­qui­si­tions ed­i­tor Gwen

Acknowledgments



xiii

­ alker for her flex­ibil­ity and sage guid­ance as well as to her as­sist­ant Mat­thew W Cosby. I truly be­lieve this book could not have been in bet­ter hands. In ad­di­ tion, I am in­debted to the anon­y­mous re­view­ers of the man­u­script, whose thought­ful feed­back was cru­cial in shap­ing the final book. All of the peo­ple men­tioned above were in­stru­men­tal in lead­ing me to my topic and se­lec­tion of works or to the ul­ti­mate fram­ing of my ar­gu­ment. And yet there are many oth­ers who have as­sisted me in var­i­ous ways. I am grate­ful to Katie Hay­wood for proof­read­ing the final ver­sion, and to Cathy Redd for her sup­port and en­cour­age­ment. At Tu­lane, my writ­ing group ­helped me set re­alis­tic goals and work to­ward com­plet­ing the pro­ject. They also ­helped me face set­backs and the oc­ca­sional ­missed goal with a sense of humor. Edie Wolfe read an early draft of the intro­duc­tion and ­deftly re­di­rected me along a more pro­duc­tive path. Al­li­son ­Truitt gave val­u­able ad­vice and ­helped me focus on the light at the end of the tun­nel. Jen­ni­fer Ash­ley ­helped me brain­storm on our ­weekly walks ­through Au­du­bon Park. So­phia Beal (now at the Uni­ver­sity of Min­ne­sota) pro­vided val­u­able feed­back on the last chap­ter. The ­ever-efficient Clau­dia de Brito and Terry ­Spriggs in ­Tulane’s De­part­ment of Span­ish and Por­tu­guese made sure I had cop­ies of all the ma­te­ri­als I ­needed dur­ing the re­search phase of the pro­ject, and Clau­dia also ­brought me some ma­te­ri­als from Bra­zil. The staff at the Latin ­American Li­brary and Inter­li­brary Loan at Tu­lane sup­plied me with every book I ­needed, and I am es­pe­cially grate­ful to Emma Mars­chall for ex­pe­dit­ing sev­eral re­quests. Tu­lane grad­u­ate stu­dents Ca­mila Pav­a­nelli, Lu­ciana Mon­teiro, David McCoy, and Will Faulk­ner pro­vided re­search as­sis­tance (as did Fran­cesca ­Ferrono at the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin–Mad­i­son), and under­grad­u­ate En­gram Wil­kin­son proof­read an early draft. At the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­o­lina at Char­lotte, sev­eral col­leagues sup­ported the pro­ject in its early ­stages, cri­tiqu­ing ­drafts, shar­ing ­sources, and pro­vid­ing en­cour­age­ment: many ­thanks to Jerry ­Dávila (now at the Uni­ver­sity of Il­li­nois), An­a­bel Bu­che­nau, and ­Jürgen Bu­che­nau in par­tic­u­lar. In Bra­zil, Aurea Tor­i­gami ­shared her mem­or­ ies of the dic­tat­or­ship and ­helped me con­duct nu­mer­ous re­search tasks in São Paulo and be­yond. She also wel­comed me into her home and be­came a be­loved sec­ond ­mother to me. My dear ­friend and co­madre Vânia Tor­i­gami sent in­for­ma­tion my way, ­helped me pro­cure books and other ma­te­ri­als, and ­shared with me her ­lawyer’s view­ point on var­io­ us is­sues. Some of my fond­est mem­o­ries in Bra­zil are of long con­ver­sa­tions with Vânia and her hus­band, Eder. Vera Tor­i­gami also ­passed along ma­te­ri­als, ­joined me in an­i­mated dis­cus­sions of the dic­tat­or­ship and its leg­a­cies, and at one point even lent me her cam­era when I for­got the bat­tery for my own.

xiv



Acknowledgments

This is a book that com­bines two of my great­est inter­ests, cul­ture and human ­rights. I might never have writ­ten it had my ­mother, Erla Kyl­lo­nen, not in­spired and nur­tured those inter­ests in me from an early age. She ­taught me to ap­proach the arts as a means ­through which to see the world dif­fer­ently. She was a con­stant ­source of en­cour­age­ment through­out the pro­ject, par­tic­u­ larly dur­ing the final ­stretch of re­vis­ing. Her un­wa­ver­ing be­lief in the book ­helped me move for­ward when­ever the going got tough. Of the count­less peo­ple who sup­ported this pro­ject, my ­biggest debt of grat­i­tude is to my hus­band, Chris Aten­cio, who lived with this book and ­helped nur­ture it in count­less ways over a pe­riod of more than ten years. Read­ing ­drafts of chap­ters, lis­ten­ing to mock pres­en­ta­tions, serv­ing as as­sist­ant photog­ ra­pher on oc­ca­sion, pre­par­ing im­ages for pro­duc­tion, res­cu­ing files from my lap­top when it died, and lend­ing me his own com­puter—these are only a few of the many ways that he con­trib­uted to this pro­ject and ­helped me reach the fin­ish line. I will al­ways be grate­ful for his quiet gen­e­ros­ity and sup­port. There are many other peo­ple who sup­ported this pro­ject in count­less ways that were small, in­di­rect, but no less im­por­tant. While they are too nu­mer­ous to name in­di­vid­u­ally, I wish to ex­press my grat­i­tude to all of them col­lec­tively. The re­search for this pro­ject re­ceived gen­er­ous fi­nan­cial sup­port from a num­ber of in­sti­tu­tions. I am grate­ful to the Stone Cen­ter for Latin ­American Stud­ies, the New­comb Col­lege In­sti­tute, the ­School of Lib­eral Arts, and the ­Provost’s Of­fice, all at Tu­lane Uni­ver­sity, as well as to the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­o­lina at Char­lotte, for fund­ing sev­eral trips to Bra­zil and to nu­mer­ous con­fer­ences over the years. I wish to ex­press spe­cial grat­i­tude to the ­School of Lib­eral Arts at Tu­lane for award­ing me a Glick Fel­low­ship dur­ing my jun­ior re­search leave and for con­trib­ut­ing sup­port to­ward the pub­li­ca­tion of this book. The cover dipicts the Monumento Tortura Nunca Mais designed by artist Demétrio Albuquerque and located in Recife. Many thanks to graphic designer Surangana Vinitchaikul for transforming my original photograph into a com­ pelling image.

A

por­tion of chap­ter 2 ap­peared in the vol­ume Ac­count­ing for Vi­ol­ence: Mar­ket­ing Mem­ory in Latin Amer­ica, ed­ited by Kse­nija Bil­bija and Leigh A. Payne, under the title “A Prime Time to Re­mem­ber: Mem­ory Mer­chan­dis­ing in ­Globo’s Anos Re­beldes,” pages 41–68 (copy­right 2011, Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, all ­rights re­served). Part of chap­ter 4 ap­peared as an ar­ti­cle in Latin ­American Thea­tre Re­view 46, no. 2 (2013). Each is re­printed here with per­mis­sion of its re­spec­tive pub­lisher.

Acknowledgments



xv

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Abb ­ r e ­v i ­a ­t i o n s

AI-5 Ato In­sti­tu­cional ­Número Cinco (Fifth In­sti­tu­tional Act) ARENA ­Aliança Re­n ov­a ­d ora Na­c ional (Al­l i­a nce for Na­t ional Ren­o­va­tion) CBA Co­mitê Bras­i­leiro pela An­is­tia (Bra­zil­ian Am­nesty Com­mit­tee) CEMDP Comissão Es­pe­cial sobre Mor­tos e De­sa­par­e­ci­dos ­Políticos (Spe­cial Com­mis­sion on Po­lit­i­cal ­Deaths and Dis­ap­pear­ances) CEN­I­MAR Cen­tro de ­Informações da Ma­rinha (Navy In­for­ma­tion Cen­ter) CIE Cen­tro de ­Informações do Ex­ér­cito (Army In­for­ma­tion Cen­ter) CISA Cen­tro de ­Informações e ­Segurança da ­Aeronáutica (Air Force In­for­ma­tion and Se­cur­ity Cen­ter) CNV Comissão Na­cional da Ver­dade (Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion) DEOPS De­par­ta­mento Es­tad­ual de Ordem ­Política e So­cial (State De­part­ment of Po­lit­i­cal and So­cial Order) ­DOI-CODI De­s tac­a ­m ento de ­O perações de ­I nformações-Centro de ­Operações de De­fesa ­Interna (De­part­ment of In­for­ma­tion ­Operations-Center for Inter­nal De­fense Op­er­a­tions) (orig­i­nally OBAN) DOPS De­par­ta­mento de Ordem ­Política e So­cial (De­part­ment of Po­lit­i­cal and So­cial Order) GTNM/RJ Grupo Tor­tura Nunca Mais/Rio de Ja­neiro (Tor­ture Never Again Group/Rio de Ja­neiro) MDB Mov­i­mento ­Democrático Bras­i­leiro (Bra­zil­ian Dem­o­cratic Move­ment) MFPA Mov­i ­m ento Fem­i ­n ino pela An­i s­t ia (Women’s Am­n esty Move­ment) OBAN ­Operação Ban­d ei­r ante (Ban­d ei­r ante Op­e r­a ­t ion) (later ­DOI-CODI)

xvii

PCB PCdoB

xviii



Par­tido Co­mu­nista Bras­i­leiro (Bra­zil­ian Com­mu­nist Party) Par­tido Co­mu­nista do Bra­sil (Com­mu­nist Party of Bra­zil)

Abbreviations

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­M e mo r y ’s Tu r n

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In t r o ­d u c­t io n T h e Tu r n t o M e m ­o r y i n B r a ­z i l­ia n C u l­t ur e and P o l­i­t i c s

I

n late 2011, ­Brasília—the mod­ern­ist cap­i­tal of Bra­zil, sym­bol ­iz­ing the ­country’s as­pi­ra­tions for a ­bright fu­ture—­turned its ­sights on the ­nation’s dark past of mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship. On No­vem­ber 18, Pres­i­dent Dilma Rous­seff ­signed a law creat­ing the Na­tional Truth Com­mis­ sion (Comissão Na­cional da Ver­dade, CNV) in a his­toric cer­e­mony at the Pla­nalto Pal­ace. The piece of leg­is­la­tion, sanc­tioned along­side the new Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Law, rep­re­sented the pos­sibil­ity of en­ter­ing a new era for mem­ory and human ­rights in the coun­try. The CNV came with a man­date to in­ves­ti­gate human ­rights ­crimes—­namely tor­ture, mur­der, and po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance—by state se­cur­ity ­forces dur­ing the mil­i­tary re­gime that gov­erned the coun­try ­between 1964 and 1985.1 After ­decades of being ig­nored or only par­tially ac­knowl­edged by the state, the human ­rights ­crimes would fi­nally be the focus of an of­fi­cial in­quiry and, ­through a re­port to be com­pleted in 2014, be­come a more fully rec­og­nized part of Bra­zil­ian his­tory. Two ear­lier fed­eral rep­ar­a­tions com­mis­sions—one to ad­dress the dead and dis­ap­peared and the other, vic­tims whose live­li­hoods and rep­u­ta­tions had suf­fered as a re­sult of po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion—had only begun the im­por­tant work of delv­ing into the vi­o­lence of the dic­tat­or­ship and its leg­a­cies. The CNV rep­re­sented an even ­greater com­mit­ment by the Bra­zil­ian state to plumb the ­depths of its au­thor­i­ tar­ian pe­riod.

3

Less than two ­months ear­lier, the Bra­zil­ian cap­i­tal had been the site of an­other mo­men­tous event re­lated to the mem­ory of the dic­tat­or­ship, this one a cul­tural “hap­pen­ing.” On Sep­tem­ber 29, movie the­at­ ers through­out the city ­screened Hoje (Today), a new fea­ture film by re­nowned Bra­zil­ian film­maker Tata Am­aral, as part of the ­Brasília Film Fes­ti­val.2 Hoje tells the story of a woman named Vera who re­ceives a check from the Bra­zil­ian govern­ment in of­fi­cial rec­og­ni­tion of the po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance and pre­sumed mur­der of her hus­band, Luiz, only to re­en­counter the “de­ceased” on the day she moves into the new apart­ment that she has ­bought with the rep­ar­a­tions money. The film ­opened at a time when the fate of the CNV was hang­ing in the bal­ance: as mo­vie­goers ­flocked to see the film in this ­one-night-only event, the Bra­zil­ian sen­ate was pre­par­ing to vote on the bill that Rous­seff would even­tu­ally sign into law.3 The co­in­ci­dence in tim­ing ­brought in­creased vis­ibil­ity to the ­film’s pre­miere. The spot­light in­ten­sified when the jury an­nounced its picks at the ­festival’s close, with Hoje re­ceiv­ing a total of six ­awards, in­clud­ing those for best film and ­critics’ ­choice. The tim­ing could ­hardly have been more per­fect. The media did not hes­i­tate to pick up on the con­nec­tion ­between film and truth com­mis­sion, em­pha­siz­ing it in ar­ti­cles about the ­Brasília pre­miere and the film fes­ti­val ­awards.4 Nor did the as­so­ci­a­tion ­between the two ­events go un­no­ticed by the CNV, the ­film’s crea­tors, or grass­roots ac­ti­vists. Each par­layed the con­nec­tion a year later, when the newly con­sti­tuted CNV made its first of­fi­cial visit to the south­east­ern me­trop­o­lis of São Paulo in Sep­tem­ber 2012. The pri­mary pur­pose of the trip was to es­tab­lish work­ing re­la­tions with the pro­vin­cial truth com­ mis­sion. Local mem­ory ad­vo­cacy ­groups took ad­van­tage of the visit, in­vit­ing two of the com­mis­sion­ers to par­tic­i­pate, along with an Hoje screen­writer, in a pub­lic de­bate about ­Amaral’s film. The link ­between the CNV and the film ­proved fruit­ful for all in­volved. For the two com­mis­sion­ers who par­tic­i­pated, the de­bate about Hoje pro­vided an op­por­tu­nity to re­in­force cer­tain pos­it­ ive im­pres­sions of the CNV that they and the govern­ment were work­ing hard to cul­ti­vate. By show­ing it was at­tuned to cul­tural nov­el­ties, the CNV came off as hip and “in the loop” (an image it re­in­forced by pro­mot­ing the de­bate on its Face­book page). The event also ­served to make the CNV’s work rel­e­vant to young Bra­zil­ians with lit­tle per­sonal con­nec­tion to vic­tims of the ­dictatorship’s vi­o­lence. By dis­cuss­ing the film in a pub­lic forum, the com­mis­sion­ers fur­ther dem­on­strated that one of the CNV’s goals, be­yond ­fact-finding, was to sen­si­tize the Bra­zil­ian pop­u­la­tion to the idea that the dic­tat­or­ship is a mat­ter to be ad­dressed col­lec­tively as a so­ci­ety.5 Yet their pres­ence at the event could also be inter­preted as a savvy pub­lic

4



Introduction

re­la­tions move, since from the mo­ment of its in­cep­tion the CNV had found it­self de­flect­ing ac­cu­sa­tions that it ­lacked trans­pa­rency.6 Hoje, for its part, ben­e­fited from the pres­tige of be­com­ing known as the film ­watched—and ­praised—by mem­bers of the CNV. Its height­ened as­so­ci­a­ tion with the truth com­mis­sion also added a new layer of mean­ing to Hoje as a film about not only the fed­eral rep­ar­a­tions pro­gram of the mid-1990s but also the ­truth-seeking pro­cess un­fold­ing in 2012, an inter­pre­ta­tion Am­aral her­self has em­pha­sized: “The film is not . . . set in the past, it’s a story that takes place today, about how this past re­lates to our ­present.”7 And fi­nally, the grass­roots ­groups that or­ga­nized the event ­achieved one of their fore­most goals: pro­mot­ing mem­ory of the dic­tat­or­ship. The CNV and Hoje rep­re­sent two ­vastly dif­fer­ent re­sponses to the Bra­zil­ian mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship: one in­sti­tu­tional and ex­pected to have mon­u­men­tal his­toric im­por­tance, the other cul­tural and of seem­ingly more fleet­ing sig­nif­i­ cance. While the re­la­tion­ship ­between the two might ap­pear for­tui­tous and ul­ti­mately triv­ial, the way that the var­i­ous ­players were able to cap­it­ al­ize on the co­in­ci­dence and make it mean­ing­ful sug­gests the pos­sibil­ity of more com­ plex and sig­nif­i­cant inter­plays ­between in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms and cul­tural works. Under­stand­ing how this sub­tle dy­namic plays out in Bra­zil­ian mem­ory pol­i­tics is the cen­tral con­cern of this book.

Cy­c les of Cul­t ural Mem­o ry in Bra­z il I first began to sense the pres­ence of sub­tle, re­cip­ro­cal inter­ plays ­between in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms and cul­tural pro­duc­tion in Bra­zil while read­ing the tes­ti­mo­nial lit­er­a­ture of for­mer guer­ril­las when I was a grad­u­ate stu­dent in Bra­zil­ian lit­er­ary and cul­tural stud­ies. I was per­plexed by what ­seemed to be a par­a­dox: most of the works I was read­ing had been pub­ lished in the im­me­di­ate wake of the Bra­zil­ian Am­nesty Law of 1979, while the mil­i­tary still held power. These texts and the Am­nesty Law had come to be ­closely as­so­ciated in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion. Yet the sup­posed “re­cip­ro­cal” am­nesty—so ­called be­cause it ben­e­fited mil­it­ ary and po­lice tor­tur­ers as well as many op­po­nents of the re­gime (though not all of them)—­served as a form of in­sti­tu­tional am­ne­sia, while the mil­i­tant tes­ti­mo­nies were for the most part re­garded as works of mem­ory. It would make sense if the tes­ti­mo­nies were a re­ac­tion ­against—or a de­nun­ci­a­tion of—the Am­nesty Law, but this did not ap­pear to be the case. While they cer­tainly do de­nounce tor­ture and other human ­rights ­crimes, these texts con­tain sur­pris­ingly few ref­er­ences to the

Introduction



5

am­nesty, and the ones I did man­age to find were in­var­i­ably pos­i­tive, as­so­ciat­ing the law with ­much-longed-for free­dom and re­turn from exile. The con­nec­tion ­between the Am­nesty Law and the tes­ti­mo­nies of for­mer guer­ril­las there­fore ­struck me as counter­in­tui­tive, and I ­wanted to under­stand the re­la­tion­ship bet­ter. As I con­tin­ued my re­search after fin­ish­ing grad­u­ate ­school, I be­came in­creas­ingly inter­ested in sim­i­lar dy­nam­ics at play ­between the in­sti­tu­tional and cul­tural ­spheres in the post­tran­si­tional pe­riod. Dig­ging ­deeper, I began to dis­cern a pat­tern, which I call the cycle of cul­tural mem­ory in Bra­zil, with the ad­jec­tive cul­tural under­stood here in the con­crete sense as re­fer­ring to any of a va­riety of spe­cific works of lit­er­a­ture, tele­vi­sion, film, the­a­ter, phys­ic­ al me­mo­ri­als or mon­um ­ ents, and so on (as op­posed to a more ab­stract under­ stand­ing, such as when we speak of a “cul­ture of mem­ory,” for ex­am­ple). The cycle of cul­tural mem­ory in Bra­zil con­sists of four ­phases. It be­gins with (near) si­mul­ta­ne­ous emer­gence: ­whether by co­in­ci­dence or de­sign, a given cul­tural work (or clus­ter of works) and an in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nism are ­launched at ­around the same time. Ei­ther way, the de­ci­sive fac­tor is tim­ing ­rather than cau­sal­ity, which need not be a fac­tor at all. The ­launch of the CNV did not in­spire or bring about the mak­ing of Hoje, which had been in the works long be­fore a com­mis­sion of in­quiry was even im­ag­in­able,8 any more than the film in­spired or ­brought about the CNV. What mat­ters is that they “hap­pened” at ­roughly the same time. Si­mul­tan­eity leads to the sec­ond phase, the crea­tion of an imag­i­nary link­ age ­between the cul­tural work (or works) and an in­sti­tu­tional mech­an ­ ism. The gen­eral pub­lic comes to as­so­ciate the two ­events, and to think of them as a pair­ing. Of ­course, not all cul­tural works that ­emerge con­cur­rently with an in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nism come to be ­linked with that mech­a­nism, imag­i­na­ tively or oth­er­wise. Most do not. It is vir­tu­ally im­pos­sible to pre­dict which works will “take” in this way and which will not. Each case is ­unique, with count­less var­i­ables in­volved; how­ever, most suc­cess­fully “linked” works share two key ­traits: a flair for mak­ing an epi­sode from the past newly rel­e­vant and an abil­ity to cap­ture and in­ten­sify the Zeit­geist—that is, the pre­ex­ist­ing na­tional sen­sibil­ity or mood.9 By fea­tur­ing a widow who has re­ceived a rep­ar­a­tions check, Hoje in­voked an ear­lier in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nism that had been ­largely for­got­ten but now ­seemed newly rel­e­vant in light of the plans for the ­bolder step of a truth com­mis­sion. The film also ­caught and mag­nified pub­lic cu­ri­os­ity about ­Brazil’s dic­ta­to­rial past. As the per­cep­tion of an imag­i­nary link­age takes hold, it en­cour­ages a pro­cess of lev­er­ag­ing, bring­ing us to the third phase. Cer­tain peo­ple and ­groups ac­tively take ad­van­tage of the imag­i­nary link­age to pro­mote a cho­sen ­agenda. They ap­pre­ciate the con­nec­tion, and they work to make it mean­ing­ful. As

6



Introduction

the re­sult of these lev­er­ag­ing ef­forts, both in­sti­tu­tional mech­an ­ ism and cul­ tural work ac­quire new ­layers of mean­ing, multi­ply­ing the op­por­tu­nities for au­di­ences to en­gage with them and to see the past—and the ­present—with new eyes. The peo­ple doing the lev­er­ag­ing might be the archi­tects or ex­ec­u­tors of the in­sti­tu­tional in­itia­tive, the crea­tors of the cul­tural work, ­third-party so­cial ac­tors, or—as is most often the case—a com­bi­na­tion of the three (as in the case of Hoje and the CNV). Be­cause the dif­fer­ent par­ties come to the imag­i­nary link­age from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and some­times with com­pet­ing agen­das, the lev­er­ag­ing pro­cess is not with­out ten­sion and even, in some cases, con­flict. Yet the re­sult­ing fric­tion is often pro­duc­tive, spur­ring crea­tiv­ity and di­alogue as well as gen­er­at­ing or re­ac­ti­vat­ing other mem­o­ries. The case of Hoje and the CNV, for ex­am­ple, il­lus­trates how such ten­sions may be quite sub­tle. The prem­ise of a “dis­ap­peared” per­son who re­turns to haunt his be­loved in the wake of her re­ceiv­ing a rep­ar­a­tions check im­plies a cri­tique of the logic of ­Brazil’s first in­sti­tu­tional step, fi­nan­cial rep­ar­a­tions (which are gen­er­ally under­stood as an at­tempt to set­tle ac­counts with the past, not un­set­tle them), a cri­tique that could be under­stood as ex­tend­ing to of­fi­cial mech­an ­ isms of tran­si­tional jus­tice more gen­er­ally, in­clud­ing the CNV. Each of the cases I study pro­ceeds to a ­fourth phase, prop­a­ga­tion, in which the orig­i­nal cul­tural work helps fos­ter new in­itia­tives for con­tin­ued cul­tural mem­ory work, ­whether by serv­ing as a model for oth­ers to fol­low, break­ing a taboo, in­spir­ing ad­ap­ta­tion to an­other me­dium, or oth­er­wise open­ing up a space—dis­cur­sive, phys­i­cal, or both. The orig­i­nal work may it­self be the prod­uct of prop­a­ga­tion, as in the case of Hoje, which took as in­spi­ra­tion an­other cul­tural work, Fer­nando ­Bonassi’s 2003 novel Prova ­contrária (Proof to the ­Contrary). With each new prop­a­gated work, the po­ten­tial ­arises for a new turn in the cycle of cul­tural mem­ory. To ­preempt pos­sible mis­under­stand­ings, let me be clear about what I’m not ar­guing. I am not at­tempt­ing to make the case that there is a cau­sal re­la­tion­ship ­between ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms. Cul­tural works do not “beget” in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms (even ­though they often do beget new cul­tural works, as the prop­a­ga­tion phase il­lus­trates). And while in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms do some­times beget ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion, that is not the pri­mary focus of this study.10 As the first two ­phases of my cycle of cul­tural mem­ory model em­pha­size, the de­ter­min­ing fac­tor is si­mul­tan­eity (tim­ing), in­de­pen­dent of cau­sal­ity, and the link­age ­between the cul­tural work and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nism is pri­mar­ily im­a­gined. Nor am I ar­guing that cul­ture can sub­sti­tute for in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms. Of ­course, in cases where there is an in­sti­tu­tional void, cul­tural works might

Introduction



7

rise to help fill the gap, but pri­mar­ily to exert pres­sure—or sim­ply hold out hope—for fu­ture in­sti­tu­tional re­sponses in the form of ­trials, truth com­mis­ sions, and the like. Such of­fi­cial steps are im­por­tant and nec­es­sary, and it is not my in­tent to argue oth­er­wise. In­stead, I con­tend that ­through the lev­er­ag­ing pro­cess a sub­tle but sig­nif­i­cant dy­namic can ­emerge ­between in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms and ex­cep­tional cul­tural works, re­sult­ing in re­cip­ro­cal inter­plays that mag­nify and pro­long the im­pact of both and ­thereby lay the foun­da­tion for fur­ther in­sti­tu­tional steps that build on what came be­fore. Fo­cus­ing at­ten­ tion on ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion and how it inter­acts with in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms re­veals that the pro­cess of con­struct­ing mem­o­ries is ­deeper and more cu­mu­la­tive than it first ap­pears. Fi­nally, I am not ar­guing that all cul­tural works about the dic­tat­or­ship in Bra­zil move ­through this cycle. As men­tioned ear­lier, si­mul­ta­ne­ous emer­gence does not guar­an­tee imag­i­nary link­age, with­out which the cycle ­stalls. In the fol­low­ing pages, I de­scribe a pat­tern that I have ob­served in a hand­ful of ex­cep­ tional Bra­zil­ian cul­tural works that con­tem­plate the dic­ta­to­rial past. Count­less other works—many of them im­por­tant in their own right—do not fit the pat­tern out­lined here. In fact, there is often much to be ­learned from works that fail to link: if one pre­dic­tor of link­age is the abil­ity to cap­ture a pre­vail­ing na­tional mood, then works that never end up mov­ing all the way ­through the cycle may re­veal which mem­o­ries gar­ner lit­tle sym­pa­thy and why. In any case, the cul­tural texts that do fit make this cycle worth stud­y­ing be­cause they il­lu­ mi­nate our under­stand­ing of the inter­ac­tion ­between the cul­tural and in­sti­tu­ tional ­spheres. Thus this book is not meant as an ex­haus­tive study of Bra­zil­ian cul­tural texts en­gag­ing with mem­o­ries of dic­tat­or­ship. In­stead, my hope is that it will help shed light on other “kin­dred” works in Bra­zil and be­yond— in­clud­ing those yet to be ­created.

­B razil’s Turn to Mem­o ry Bra­zil is cer­tainly not the only coun­try to ex­pe­ri­ence inter­plays b­ etween cul­tural pro­duc­tion and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms. Sim­i­lar phe­nom­ena have un­folded in Ar­gen­tina and Chile, for in­stance, as a vo­lu­mi­nous body of schol­ar­ship at­tests.11 But Bra­zil is ­unique in that its path to reck­on­ing with its dic­ta­to­rial past has been far more grad­ual and round­about than most, prompt­ing one ob­server to des­ig­nate it “an inter­est­ing out­lier.”12 After the tran­si­tion to ci­vil­ian rule in 1985, ten years would pass be­fore the state ­adopted its first in­sti­tu­tional step, a rep­ar­a­tions pro­gram. It would take an­other seven­ teen years be­fore the coun­try in­au­gu­rated a truth com­mis­sion. Cul­tural

8



Introduction

pro­duc­tion, on the other hand, has been rel­a­tively con­stant. Under the circum­stances, cul­ture has ar­gu­ably ­played an even more vital role in keep­ing ques­tions of mem­ory alive in Bra­zil than it has in such coun­tries as Ar­gen­tina or Chile. Bra­zil is one in a wave of Latin ­American coun­tries that ex­pe­ri­enced dic­ta­ to­rial re­gimes in the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. On April 1, 1964, Bra­zil­ians awoke to dis­cover that the mil­i­tary had taken over the coun­try, de­pos­ing Pres­i­dent João ( Jango) Gou­lart in a blood­less coup. With back­ing from key sec­tors of civil so­ci­ety, a group of mil­i­tary lead­ers moved to con­sol­i­ date their rule by ar­rest­ing or purg­ing thou­sands of peo­ple ­deemed a ­threat to the new order—in­clud­ing mem­bers of the armed ­forces—and by is­su­ing a se­ries of in­sti­tu­tional acts (atos in­stit­u­cio­nais) and other de­crees.13 The archi­tects of the new re­gime took pains to main­tain an out­ward ap­pear­ance of de­moc­racy, re­tain­ing cer­tain ele­ments of the pre­ex­ist­ing order: a much weak­ened Con­gress, some elec­tions (mainly in­di­rect), and a suc­ces­sion of gen­er­als in the role of pres­i­dent, be­gin­ning with Hum­berto Cas­telo ­Branco (1964–67) and Artur da Costa e Silva (1967–69). The ex­is­tence of an au­thor­ized op­po­si­tion party—the Bra­zil­ian Dem­o­cratic Move­ment (Mov­i­mento ­Democrático Bras­i­leiro, MDB)—in ad­di­tion to the pro­govern­ment Al­li­ance for Na­tional Ren­o­va­tion (Aliança Re­nov­a­dora Na­cional, ARENA) party com­pleted the dem­o­cratic guise. In the be­gin­ning, lib­eral op­po­si­tion was tol­er­ated ­within lim­its—the stu­dent move­ment and labor un­ions, for ex­am­ple, re­mained vi­brant for most of the 1960s—and ­left-wing cul­ture re­mained heg­em ­ onic.14 The year 1968 would prove to be a wa­tershed in Bra­zil as in the rest of the world. A major dem­on­stra­tion, known as the March of the Hun­dred Thou­sand (Pas­seata dos Cem Mil), in June of that year made plain that anti­govern­ment sen­ti­ment had ­reached mass pro­por­tions. The re­gime re­sponded by tak­ing a re­pres­sive and ul­ti­mately vi­o­lent turn: on De­cem­ber 13, it an­nounced the dra­co­nian Fifth In­sti­tu­tional Act (Ato In­sti­tu­cional ­Número Cinco, AI-5), which dras­ti­cally ex­panded pres­i­den­tial pow­ers and en­tailed the tem­po­rary clos­ing of Con­gress, the sus­pen­sion of ha­beas cor­pus, and fur­ther ­purges. With the pos­sibil­ity of mean­ing­ful peace­ful op­po­si­tion ­largely fore­closed, some ac­ti­vists—many of them uni­ver­sity stu­dents—de­cided to join one of the sev­eral ­groups that had ­broken off from the Bra­zil­ian Com­mu­nist Party (Par­tido Co­mu­nista Bras­i­leiro, PCB) and ­preached rev­o­lu­tion­ary armed strug­gle. Most of these ­groups were based in urban cen­ters, such as Rio de Ja­neiro and São Paulo, and con­cen­trated on stra­te­gic ac­tions such as rob­bing banks and kid­nap­ping dip­lo­mats, but a few en­vi­sioned tak­ing the strug­gle into the inter­ior by set­ting up rural guer­rilla train­ing camps. One of these, the Com­mu­nist Party of Bra­zil (Par­tido Co­mu­nista do Bra­sil, PCdoB), ­braved

Introduction



9

the wild­er­ness of the Ara­guaia river basin in the Am­a­zon, where the north­ern s­ tates of Pará, ­Maranhão, and Goiás (now To­can­tins) meet. Under the third mil­i­tary pres­i­dent, ­Emílio Gar­ras­tazu Méd­ici, who as­ sumed power in 1969, the ­government’s strat­egy of tor­tur­ing, kill­ing, and in cer­tain cases “dis­ap­pear­ing” its en­e­mies be­came more system­atic.15 ­Within five years, the se­cur­ity ­forces had not only bru­tally sub­dued the urban armed ­groups but they had also mas­sa­cred or dis­ap­peared al­most all of the Ara­guaia guer­ril­las in a top se­cret mil­it­ ary op­er­a­tion (1972–74). This vi­o­lent pe­riod be­came known as the anos de ­chumbo, or years of lead,16 and co­in­cided with a ­so-called eco­nomic mir­a­cle (a ­growth rate of ­around 11 per­cent ­fueled ­partly by mas­sive ­foreign loans and mega pub­lic works pro­jects) that bol­stered ­Médici’s pop­u­lar­ity in the early 1970s—at least until the bub­ble burst with the world pe­tro­leum cri­sis in 1973. The ma­jor­ity of po­lit­i­cally mo­ti­vated fa­tal­ities oc­curred dur­ing these years. Of­fi­cial es­ti­mates place the total num­ber of ­deaths and dis­ap­pear­ances dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship at more than 400, in­clud­ing 147 dis­ap­peared, 62 of whom were Ara­guaia guer­ril­las.17 Al­though Bra­zil would not for­mally in­itiate its tran­si­tion to de­moc­racy for an­other ­decade, the con­di­tions that would shape that pro­cess began to ­emerge in 1974, with the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the next gen­eral in the ­regime’s pres­i­den­ tial ro­ta­tion, Er­nesto Gei­sel. A lib­eral tech­no­crat, Gei­sel de­clared the state vic­to­ri­ous in its war ­against sub­ver­sion and an­nounced a new era of what the govern­ment liked to call “slow, grad­ual, and se­cure” lib­er­al­iza­tion, or ­distensão.18 Dur­ing his pres­i­dency, press cen­sor­ship eased, human ­rights ­abuses ta­pered off, and the hated AI-5 ex­pired. Since the be­gin­ning of the dic­tat­or­ship, one of the most per­sis­tent op­po­ si­tion de­mands had been for the govern­ment to grant am­nesty to cit­i­zens suf­fer­ing the var­i­ous ill ef­fects of po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion, rang­ing from the loss of po­lit­i­cal ­rights, ­elected of­fice, or other em­ploy­ment to im­pris­on­ment and even ban­ish­ment from the na­tional ter­ri­tory. The ear­li­est calls for am­nesty dated back to 1964, and pol­i­ti­cians from the au­thor­ized op­po­si­tion party, the MDB, had spo­rad­i­cally pro­posed am­nesty bills in Con­gress over the years, ­mostly as a sym­bolic ges­ture since such pro­po­sals were al­ways point­edly ig­nored. But under the new, less re­pres­sive at­mos­phere of the ­distensão, MDB pol­i­ti­cians re­newed their pres­sure for a meas­ure that would bring the per­se­cuted back into the na­tional fold. They ­joined in a com­mon cause with grass­roots ac­ti­vists such as There­zinha Zer­bine, ­founder of the ­Women’s Am­nesty Move­ment (Mov­i­mento Fem­i­nino pela An­is­tia, MFPA). The back­ers of the in­cip­i­ent am­nesty cam­paign ­pressed a de­mand that spoke di­rectly to the ques­tion of human ­rights, es­pe­cially for the es­ti­mated ­fifty-five po­ten­tial ben­e­fi­ci­ar­ies in po­lit­i­cal pris­ons through­out the coun­try.

10



Introduction

What began as a grass­roots cam­paign ­gained mo­men­tum, es­pe­cially over the ­course of 1978. In Feb­ru­ary of that year, law­yers, along with the rel­a­tives and ­friends of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers and ex­iles, ­founded the Bra­zil­ian Am­nesty Com­mit­tee (Co­mitê Bras­i­leiro pela An­is­tia, CBA) in Rio de Ja­neiro with the goal of co­or­di­nat­ing the na­tion­wide so­cial move­ment that was rap­idly co­a­lesc­ing ­around the am­nesty issue.19 Other CBA ­groups ­quickly ­emerged in other ­states. The fol­low­ing July, CBA lead­ers ­drafted a list of de­mands, in­clud­ing one that spec­ified that the ben­e­fits of any am­nesty not ex­tend to tor­ tur­ers and an­other that ­called for clar­ifi­ca­tion of the fates of the dis­ap­peared.20 By the dawn of 1979, the AI-5 had ex­pired, and the am­nesty cam­paign had truly be­come a mass move­ment that en­com­passed stu­dents, labor un­ions, pro­fes­sional ­groups, and neigh­bor­hood as­so­ci­a­tions. ­Pro-amnesty ban­ners, ­bumper stick­ers, and leaf­lets be­came ubiq­ui­tous in ­streets, soc­cer sta­diums, and other pub­lic ­places. The pres­sure on the govern­ment to enact an am­nesty law be­came im­pos­sible to ig­nore, and in June of that year ­Geisel’s suc­ces­sor, João Ba­tista Fig­uei­redo, fi­nally re­sponded by send­ing an am­nesty bill to Con­gress. The ­government’s pro­po­sal was a far cry from what the ­pro-amnesty cam­paign had en­vi­sioned: in­stead of the kind of “broad, gen­eral, and un­ con­di­tional” am­nesty de­manded in pop­u­lar slo­gans, Fig­uei­redo pro­posed a meas­ure that not only ex­cluded ­ex-guerrillas ac­cused of vi­o­lent ­crimes but also in­cluded ­agents of the state im­pli­cated in tor­ture, mur­der, and po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­ pear­ance.21 After lim­ited de­bate, Con­gress voted to ap­prove the bill with its pro­po­sal for a ­so-called re­cip­ro­cal am­nesty, and Fig­uei­redo ­signed it into law on Au­gust 28, 1979. The mil­i­tary ­government’s de­ci­sion to in­clude state se­cur­ity ­agents as ben­e­fi­ci­ar­ies of the Am­nesty Law ­betrayed its con­cern over the pos­sibil­ity that mem­bers of the mil­it­ ary and po­lice could some­day be held ac­count­able for the po­lit­i­cal tor­ture, mur­ders, and dis­ap­pear­ances that had taken place over the years. To fur­ther pro­tect it­self, the govern­ment took yet an­other step the fol­low­ing De­cem­ber, when its re­cently re­ac­ti­vated Coun­cil for the De­fense of the Human Being (Con­selho de De­fesa dos Di­rei­tos da Pes­soa Hu­mana) fore­ closed the pos­sibil­ity of re­open­ing cases of po­lit­i­cal mur­der and dis­ap­pear­ance from the anos de ­chumbo pe­riod by re­vis­ing its man­date to cover only ­present human ­rights vi­o­la­tions. With this move, as am­nesty ex­pert ­Glenda Mez­a­robba ex­plains, “the govern­ment hoped to avoid any risk of pun­ish­ment for the vi­o­la­tors ­within the mil­i­tary and the po­lice.”22 In or­ches­trat­ing its slow with­drawal from power, the mil­i­tary re­gime did what it could to close the book on its his­tory of human ­rights ­crimes—and to a large ex­tent, it suc­ceeded. Op­po­si­tion lead­ers ­largely ­agreed to put past

Introduction



11

po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence on the back ­burner, mo­ti­vated by a de­sire to avoid po­ten­tial an­tag­o­nisms that could jeop­ard­ize the pro­cess of po­lit­ic­ al open­ing. More­over, no mass move­ment ever ma­te­ri­al­ized to de­mand the re­peal of the Am­nesty Law, much less ­trials or a truth com­mis­sion.23 The ab­sence of such a move­ ment is all the more strik­ing when we con­sider the ver­i­ta­ble awak­en­ing tak­ing place ­within the Bra­zil­ian left at the time.24 New and re­vived civil so­ci­ety ­groups—in­clud­ing those as­so­ciated with the ­workers’, ­women’s, black pride, gay ­rights, and other move­ments—­pressed a range of po­lit­i­cal agen­das, but re­peal­ing the Am­nesty Law was sim­ply not one of them, ­partly be­cause these ­groups had few ties to the vic­tims of the dic­ta­to­rial vi­o­lence. In­stead, civil so­ci­ety ac­tors and ­groups took up other, more ­future-oriented ­causes, such as de­mand­ing di­rect pres­i­den­tial elec­tions and a new con­sti­tu­tion, le­gal­iz­ing clan­des­tine po­lit­i­cal par­ties, and re­stor­ing full po­lit­i­cal ­rights. In 1983 and 1984, mil­lions of Bra­zil­ians mo­bi­lized ­around the de­mand for di­rect pres­i­den­tial elec­tions as a means of ac­cel­er­at­ing the re­turn to dem­o­ cratic rule. One might have ex­pected the move­ment, known as the Di­re­tas Já (Di­rect Elec­tions Now) cam­paign, to have fore­grounded calls to re­peal the Am­nesty Law and in­ves­ti­gate past human ­rights ­crimes, but that too ­failed to hap­pen. At the time, in­fluen­tial ­voices—not only from ­within the re­gime but also from the op­po­si­tion and the media—coun­seled mod­er­a­tion and ­raised the spec­ter of “Ar­gen­tin­iza­tion”—the idea that, were the coun­try to fol­low ­Argentina’s ex­am­ple in mov­ing to­ward ­truth-seeking and ac­count­abil­ity, Bra­zil­ians would share their ­neighbor’s fate of “po­la­riza­tion and height­ened so­cial con­flict.”25 My col­league Idel­ber Av­e­lar, who as a youth be­came ac­tive in po­lit­i­cal mil­it­ ancy in the early 1980s, re­calls, “It never even oc­curred to me that [truth com­mis­sions and ­trials were] a ban­ner we could raise. It just ­wasn’t on the ho­ri­zon.”26 ­Avelar’s words re­flect a wider his­tor­i­cal con­text: at the time that Bra­zil was pre­par­ing to ­undergo tran­si­tion, the glo­bal norm of hold­ing truth com­mis­sions and human ­rights ­trials had yet to take hold. Neigh­bor­ing Ar­gen­ tina had begun to stake out its path to­ward be­com­ing the pi­o­neer in this re­gard, but a ­failed coup at­tempt in 1987 ­helped fos­ter the out­side per­cep­tion of the Ar­gen­tine case as a neg­a­tive ex­am­ple.27 Under such circum­stances, it makes sense that an of­fi­cial reck­on­ing with past state vi­o­lence would ap­pear be­yond the realm of the fath­om­able to most Bra­zil­ians, even the most pro­gres­sive. The ­broader con­text of Bra­zil­ian pol­i­tics in the early 1980s and of glo­bal norms helps ex­plain why Bra­zil ended up choos­ing the path of least re­sis­tance—the path of com­pro­mise—by adopt­ing a state pol­icy, ­founded on the 1979 Am­nesty Law, that es­sen­tially pro­moted what I call rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting. Dur­ing the years of aber­tura, or pe­riod of po­lit­ic­ al

12



Introduction

open­ing, this pol­icy would be chal­lenged—not so much by di­rect con­fron­ta­ tion in the po­lit­ic­ al arena but ­rather by in­di­rect con­tes­ta­tion in the cul­tural ­sphere, par­tic­u­larly in the tes­ti­mo­nial writ­ing of for­mer guer­ril­las. As de­scribed in chap­ter 1, some of the more prom­i­nent mil­i­tant mem­oir­ists ad­vo­cated a some­what dif­fer­ent ap­proach to the dic­ta­to­rial past, pre­sent­ing them­selves as the bear­ers of the mem­ory of the anos de ­chumbo even as they ­seemed to ac­cept the Am­nesty Law and the im­pu­nity en­joyed by tor­tur­ers. I refer to this al­ter­ na­tive ap­proach as rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory in order to ­stress its under­ly­ing sim­i­lar­ities with the mil­i­tary ­regime’s pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ ized for­get­ting: for if cer­tain mem­oir­ists in­sist on the need to share their rec­ol­ lec­tions of the armed strug­gle with the pub­lic, the kind of mem­ory work that they under­take is not en­tirely in­con­sis­tent with in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting and in fact un­crit­i­cally pro­motes a sim­i­lar vi­sion of rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion. In March 1985, after ­twenty-one years of mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship, Bra­zil began its for­mal tran­si­tion to ci­vil­ian rule. Al­though suc­cess­fully thwart­ing the Di­re­tas Já cam­paign for di­rect pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, the mil­i­tary govern­ment did per­mit an electo­ral col­lege to ap­point ­Brazil’s first ci­vil­ian pres­i­dent in over two ­decades. The man cho­sen for the job was Tan­credo Neves, a sep­tu­age­nar­ian from Minas Ge­rais who had been a prom­i­nent and re­spected fig­ure in the au­thor­ized po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion. As such, he was a le­git­im ­ ate con­sen­sus can­di­ date who em­bod­ied not only a clean break from the old re­gime but also the mod­er­a­tion and con­cil­i­a­tion many be­lieved nec­es­sary to guide the na­tion ­through the po­ten­tially per­i­lous pro­cess of dem­o­cratic tran­si­tion. Yet a ­Nevesled tran­si­tional govern­ment was not to be: the man in whom the coun­try had ­placed all its hopes un­ex­pect­edly fell ill and died be­fore he could take of­fice. The pres­i­den­tial sash went in­stead to the vice pres­i­den­tial ap­pointee, José Sar­ney, who, al­though he had by that time be­come a ­leader of the re­form­ist fac­tion of ARENA for prag­matic rea­sons, was nev­er­the­less a long­time col­lab­o­ra­ tor and ar­dent sup­porter of the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship.28 In­stead of a clean break, then, Sar­ney rep­re­sented more of a con­tin­ua­ ­tion of the out­go­ing re­gime, set­ting Bra­zil apart from Ar­gen­tina and Chile, for ex­am­ple, where ­strong re­gime crit­ics pre­sided over the tran­si­tions to dem­o­ cratic rule.29 For the most part, Sar­ney fol­lowed in his mil­i­tary ­predecessors’ foot­steps when it came to ad­dress­ing human ­rights vi­o­la­tions com­mit­ted by state ­agents dur­ing the anos de ­chumbo. ­Brazil’s first ci­vil­ian pres­i­dent in more than ­twenty years took no mean­ing­ful steps to­ward reck­on­ing with such ­crimes dur­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion; to the ­contrary, he made a prac­tice of point­edly ig­nor­ing the ques­tion, no mat­ter how un­ten­able his pos­ture be­came. ­Sarney’s re­ac­tion to the 1985 pub­li­ca­tion of an un­of­fic­ ial truth re­port on the wide­spread use of tor­ture dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship is a case in point. The

Introduction



13

book Bra­sil: Nunca mais (Bra­zil: Never Again, pub­lished in En­glish as Tor­ture in Bra­zil ) was the re­sult of a pro­ject se­cretly car­ried out by law­yers in col­lab­o­ ra­tion with the Arch­di­oc­ ese of São Paulo. Over a pe­riod of three years fol­low­ing the sign­ing of the Am­nesty Law, a group of law­yers had le­gally ac­cessed and fur­tively photo­cop­ied the con­tents of the en­tire ­archives of the ­nation’s Su­preme Mil­i­tary Court per­tain­ing to the au­thor­i­tar­ian pe­riod. The re­sult­ing doc­u­ men­ta­tion pro­vided in­dis­put­able proof that tor­ture had been system­at­i­cally em­ployed as a state pol­icy under the dic­tat­or­ship and that it was not ­merely an oc­ca­sional “ex­cess,” as re­gime apol­o­gists ­tended to claim. Bra­sil: Nunca mais be­came an in­stant best ­seller, going ­through multi­ple edi­tions and sell­ing more cop­ies than any other book in the ­country’s his­tory. Yet ­Sarney’s govern­ment re­fused to ac­knowl­edge the ­book’s ex­is­tence, much less ad­dress its shock­ing rev­e­la­tions.30 When the au­thors of Bra­sil: Nunca mais later re­leased a list of 444 ac­cused tor­tur­ers, Sar­ney de­cided, in the face of po­lit­i­cal pres­sure, to trans­fer one of the men ­listed to an­other post, but he ­failed to en­sure that the order was ac­tu­ally en­forced.31 Par­a­dox­ic­ ally, the same ad­min­is­tra­tion also pre­sided over the mak­ing of for­mal com­mit­ments to human ­rights in the 1988 Con­sti­tu­tion and in inter­na­tional trea­ties.32 De­spite the lack of what would come to be ­called tran­si­tional jus­tice in­itia­tives dur­ing the New Re­pub­lic (1985–89) pe­riod, ­Brazil’s po­lit­i­cal elite ap­peared to em­ brace the new glo­bal human ­rights norm—if only in the­ory.33 The re­turn to ci­vil­ian rule ­brought a new con­sti­tu­tion, the first dem­o­cratic pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in over ­thirty years, and the in­au­gu­ra­tion in 1990 of the vic­tor of the 1989 elec­tion, Fer­nando Col­lor de Mello.34 With the Col­lor pres­i­dency came the first ­cracks in the wall of si­lence and for­get­ting ­erected with the Am­nesty Law. In ad­di­tion to align­ing Bra­zil­ian ­foreign pol­icy more ­closely with the ­country’s for­mal com­mit­ments to human ­rights, Col­lor ­granted the re­quest by human ­rights ­groups to trans­fer the ­dictatorship-era ­archives of the De­part­ment of Po­lit­i­cal and So­cial Order (De­par­ta­mento de Ordem ­Política e So­cial, DOPS) to their ­states of or­i­gin, where they were ­opened, pro­vid­ing new in­for­ma­tion about the po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion. The trans­fer of the DOPS ­archives took place at ­around the same time as an­other de­vel­op­ ment: the 1990 dis­cov­ery, in a ce­me­tery on the out­skirts of São Paulo, of a clan­des­tine mass grave that be­came known as the Vala dos Perus (Turkeys’ Ditch). São Paulo mayor Luiza Erun­dina or­dered the ex­hu­ma­tion of the re­mains, which ­yielded the iden­tifi­ca­tion of three po­lit­i­cal ac­ti­vists.35 To­gether, the ­archives and the re­mains pro­vided hard ev­i­dence that se­cur­ity ­forces had ­killed and se­cretly bur­ied po­lit­i­cal dis­si­dents. Such im­por­tant gains in the strug­gle for an of­fi­cial reck­on­ing with the dic­ta­to­rial past co­in­cided, how­ever, with a po­lit­i­cal cri­sis: in June 1992 Col­lor,

14



Introduction

who had run his suc­cess­ful pres­i­den­tial cam­paign on an anti­cor­rup­tion plat­ form, be­came the focus of a con­gres­sional in­ves­ti­ga­tion into his own in­volve­ ment in a major cor­rup­tion scan­dal. As the cri­sis un­folded, ­scores of Bra­zil­ians, in­clud­ing young peo­ple who be­came known as the ­caras-pintadas (painted faces), took to the ­streets to de­mand ­Collor’s ­ouster, adopt­ing slo­gans and im­ages that drew un­flat­ter­ing com­par­i­sons ­between the dem­o­crat­ic­ ally ­elected pres­i­dent and the mil­i­tary re­gime. As I ex­plore in chap­ter 2, the move­ment as well as the con­gres­sional in­ves­ti­ga­tion came to be imag­i­na­tively ­linked with the tele­vi­sion min­is­er­ies Anos re­beldes (Rebel Years), which was being broad­ cast at the time. Fac­ing im­mi­nent re­moval from of­fice, Col­lor re­signed in dis­grace. It was a spec­tac­u­lar fall, at least at the time: four­teen years later the char­is­matic pol­it­ i­cian would rise again by win­ning a seat in the Bra­zil­ian sen­ate, the same body that had voted to im­peach him. While Col­lor­gate di­verted pub­lic at­ten­tion, a sig­nif­i­cant in­itia­tive was under way in Con­gress to help try to bring some res­o­lu­tion to the fam­i­lies of the dis­ap­peared. In Au­gust 1992 leg­is­la­tor ­Nilmário Mi­randa spon­sored the crea­tion of the Com­mis­sion of Ex­ter­nal Rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the ­Search of the Dis­ap­peared (Comissão de ­Representação Ex­terna de Busca dos De­sa­par­e­ci­dos) in ­Brazil’s Cham­ber of Dep­u­ties. Until 1994, the com­mis­sion ­helped fam­i­lies seek in­for­ma­tion about mur­dered or dis­ap­peared loved ones and ­served the vital func­tion of re­viv­ing the issue of the ­dictatorship’s ­crimes in Con­gress.36 A for­mer po­lit­ic­ al pris­oner him­self, Mi­randa ­worked ­closely with some of the human ­rights ­groups that con­tin­ued to pres­sure the govern­ment for truth and jus­tice. Many such ­groups had ­formed soon after the mil­i­tary left power. Grass­roots ac­ti­vists in Rio, for ex­am­ple, ­founded the Tor­ture Never Again Group (Grupo Tor­tura Nunca Mais, GTNM/RJ) in 1985 to con­test the Am­nesty Law and the of­fi­cial pol­icy of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting that it im­posed. Be­fore long, local ­branches were ­formed in other ­states.37 These ­groups began lob­by­ing for the re­moval of ac­cused tor­tur­ers from po­si­tions in govern­ment and law en­force­ment, press­ing for sanc­tions ­against med­i­cal per­son­nel who had as­sisted in tor­ture ses­sions, and spon­sor­ing the crea­tion of mem­ory sites in honor of the vic­tims of human ­rights ­crimes, such as the Tor­ture Never Again Mon­um ­ ent in Re­cife.38 The early 1990s ­marked the be­gin­ning of a pro­duc­tive new dy­namic ­between key state ac­tors like Mi­randa and human ­rights ­groups such as GTNM/RJ. After the Com­mis­sion of Ex­ter­nal Rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the ­Search of the Dis­ap­peared con­cluded its man­date, Mi­randa and col­leagues con­tin­ued to work ­closely with grass­roots ac­ti­vists to press the ex­ec­u­tive to take the in­itia­ tive in in­ves­ti­gat­ing po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ances. This pres­sure fi­nally ­yielded re­sults in 1995 when Fer­nando Hen­rique Car­doso, the first pres­i­dent who

Introduction



15

could claim to have been a bona fide op­po­nent of the mil­it­ ary re­gime, sent the Bra­zil­ian Con­gress a bill pro­pos­ing the crea­tion of a fed­eral rep­ar­a­tions pro­gram. The fam­i­lies of the dis­ap­peared had been de­mand­ing some sort of com­mis­sion of in­quiry; the pres­i­dent re­sponded with a pro­po­sal for in­dem­nifi­ ca­tion. In­deed, ­Cardoso’s in­tent to avoid the crea­tion of any­thing re­motely like a truth com­mis­sion be­came ap­par­ent when his min­is­ter of jus­tice, Nel­son Jobim, made it clear that the pres­i­dent would veto any such pro­po­sal.39 The re­sult­ing Law of the Dis­ap­peared, ­signed in De­cem­ber 1995, was ­closer to ­Cardoso’s orig­in ­ al vi­sion than the ­families’. It auto­mat­i­cally rec­og­nized both the ­state’s re­spon­sibil­ity for 136 po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ances as well as the ­relatives’ right to ob­tain death cer­tif­i­cates and re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion. The law also pro­vided for the iden­tifi­ca­tion of any fur­ther vic­tims not in­cluded in the orig­i­nal list of 136 by per­mit­ting ad­di­tional ­claims to be sub­mit­ted for eval­u­a­ tion (but not in­ves­ti­ga­tion) to a com­mis­sion ­created for that pur­pose, the Spe­cial Com­mis­sion on Po­lit­i­cal ­Deaths and Dis­ap­pear­ances (Comissão Es­pe­cial sobre Mor­tos e De­spar­e­ci­dos ­Políticos, CEMDP). 40 In all, the CEMDP would end up ex­am­in­ing the cases of 475 peo­ple, find­ing rel­a­tives of more than 300 of them el­i­gible for rep­ar­a­tions.41 The Law of the Dis­ap­peared was the fruit of a com­plex dy­namic ­between key state ac­tors and grass­roots ac­ti­vists, one ­hardly ­unique to Bra­zil. Such phe­nom­ena are com­mon in other post­dic­tat­or­ship Latin ­American so­ci­eties as well. Writ­ing about mem­ory pol­i­tics in Chile, Steve J. Stern coins the term fric­tional syn­er­gies to de­scribe this dy­namic, which is char­ac­ter­ized by “col­lab­o­ra­ tive ac­tion in­spired by mu­tual de­pen­dence and sym­pa­thy, in which the par­ties know they need one an­other to ­achieve a ­larger good and so­cial ef­fect than they can ac­com­plish alone, even if their col­lab­o­ra­tion does not ex­clude ten­sion over goals, strat­e­gies, or tac­tics.”42 Ac­cord­ing to Stern, a given in­sti­tu­tional mech­an ­ ism has the po­ten­tial to be­come ei­ther what he calls a “for­mula for clo­sure”—a means of lay­ing the mem­ory ques­tion to rest—or a “wedge”—a means of driv­ing fur­ther mem­ory work. The ten­sion ­between these two pos­ sibil­ities gen­er­ates the fric­tional syn­er­gies that an­i­mate mem­ory pol­i­tics, a phe­nom­e­non de­tect­able in Bra­zil as early as 1979 with pas­sage of the Am­nesty Law and as re­cently as 2011 with crea­tion of the CNV.43 In the case of ­Brazil’s Law of the Dis­ap­peared, both Mi­randa and the fam­i­lies, on one side, and Car­doso and his ad­min­is­tra­tion, on the other, ­agreed on the need for some of­fi­cial mech­an ­ ism to ac­knowl­edge the re­al­ity of po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance; how­ever, fric­tions ­emerged not only over the na­ture of the mech­a­nism to be ­adopted (a com­mis­sion of in­quiry or a rep­ar­at­ ions pro­gram) but also over the end goal, ­namely ­whether to ­achieve a for­mula for clo­sure or a wedge to pur­sue fur­ther gains. The Car­doso ad­min­is­tra­tion opted for an

16



Introduction

in­itia­tive that had all the mak­ings of a for­mu­laic clo­sure: the state would pay its “debts” and close its books with­out under­tak­ing an of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion.44 In­deed, the CEMDP did lit­tle to pub­li­cize its work or its find­ings dur­ing the Car­doso years, al­though a for­mal re­port was pub­lished in 2007 under the Lula ad­min­is­tra­tion. Human ­rights ­groups, for their part, in­tuited that the Law of the Dis­ap­peared could serve as a wedge to push for fur­ther gains. Grass­roots ac­ti­vists ­pushed suc­cess­fully for the crea­tion of aux­il­iary rep­ar­a­tions com­mis­ sions in var­io­ us ­states, for ex­am­ple, and some re­cip­ients of rep­ar­a­tions used their ­checks to under­write fur­ther mem­ory work. Ul­ti­mately the Law of the Dis­ap­peared did help pave the way for fur­ther of­fi­cial in­itia­tives the fol­low­ing ­decade. In 2001, for ex­am­ple, a sec­ond rep­ar­a­ tions pro­gram, known as the Am­nesty Com­mis­sion, was ­created to ad­dress vic­tims whose ca­reers and rep­u­ta­tions suf­fered as a re­sult of po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­ tion. In ad­di­tion, a se­ries of new pro­grams was in­sti­tuted by Paulo Van­nu­chi, ap­pointed min­is­ter of human ­rights in 2005 by then pres­i­dent Luiz ­Inácio (Lula) da Silva. A for­mer po­lit­i­cal pris­oner and tor­ture vic­tim him­self, Van­nu­chi took on the task of ed­u­cat­ing the Bra­zil­ian pub­lic about the dic­tat­or­ship and its human ­rights ­crimes, mak­ing it a new na­tional pri­or­ity. The min­is­ter of human ­rights ­served as the main au­thor of the final re­port on the ­CEMDP’s find­ings, Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade (The Right to Mem­ory and Truth, 2007), and over­saw the in­au­gu­ra­tion of na­tional me­mo­ri­als and mon­um ­ ents, as well as travel­ing ex­hib­its and a web­site, de­voted to the mem­ory of the dic­tat­or­ ship. At ­around the same time, new lead­er­ship of the Am­nesty Com­mis­sion and the Min­is­try of Jus­tice ­brought fur­ther ­changes: in 2007 Paulo Abrão took over as pres­i­dent of the for­mer, while Tarso Genro be­came min­is­ter of jus­tice. To­gether the two men began to adopt the lan­guage of tran­si­tional jus­tice and to re­frame the work of the Am­nesty Com­mis­sion ac­cord­ingly.45 In the pro­cess, the Bra­zil­ian state began mak­ing the turn to mem­ory, ­slowly aban­don­ing its pre­vi­ous dis­course of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­ get­ting in favor of a new one based on rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized mem­ory—a re­prise of the ap­proach rep­re­sented by the tes­ti­mo­ni­als pub­lished by for­mer guer­ril­las in the late 1970s and early 1980s.46 This shift cul­mi­nated in the crea­tion of the CNV, which Pres­i­dent Dilma Rous­seff—her­self a tor­ture sur­vi­vor—­signed into law in 2011 and in­ au­gu­rated in May of the fol­low­ing year. Be­gin­ning in July 2012, the seven com­mis­sion­ers—in­clud­ing prom­in ­ ent law­yers, ­judges, and schol­ars—set to work, travel­ing ­around the coun­try col­lect­ing tes­ti­mo­nies and other ev­i­dence, as­sisted by local and ­state-level sub­com­mis­sions.47 The Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Law, sanc­tioned at the same time as the leg­is­la­tion that ­created the CNV, pro­vides a frame­work for the com­mis­sion­ers to ac­cess the ­archives of the

Introduction



17

armed ­forces and po­ten­tially un­cover new in­for­ma­tion about the re­pres­sion. While the truth com­mis­sion rep­re­sents a major step for­ward in ­Brazil’s pro­cess of reck­on­ing with its dic­ta­to­rial past, the re­ac­tion of human ­rights ac­ti­vists and ­groups has so far been mixed. Some have av­idly sup­ported the move: be­fore the com­mis­sion was even in­au­gu­rated, young ac­ti­vists began stag­ing es­cu­la­chos, or per­for­mance pro­tests, to ex­press their en­thu­siasm for the in­itia­tive as well as to “out” (to name and shame) ac­cused tor­tur­ers. Other ­groups, how­ever, have ex­pressed skep­ti­cism about the com­mis­sion. The ­Rio-based GTNM/RJ, for ex­am­ple, has ­sharply crit­i­cized the CNV for keep­ing some tes­ti­mo­nies con­fi­den­tial.48 The ques­tion of jus­tice—in the sense of true ac­count­abil­ity for in­di­vid­ual per­pe­tra­tors—re­mains ­largely un­re­solved. The state has rec­og­nized its own civil li­abil­ity for po­lit­i­cal tor­ture, mur­ders, and dis­ap­pear­ances dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship years while ­largely avoid­ing the ­thornier ques­tion of the in­di­ vid­ual crim­i­nal li­abil­ity of the per­pe­tra­tors.49 In 2010 the Bra­zil­ian Su­preme Court up­held the Am­nesty Law in a 7–2 vote, con­firm­ing ac­cused ­torturers’ im­mu­nity from pros­e­cu­tion. The Am­nesty Law re­mains in force de­spite pres­sure from do­mes­tic and trans­na­tional human ­rights or­gan­iza­tions as well as on­go­ing legal chal­lenges, in­clud­ing one from the inter­na­tional jus­tice ­system. GTNM/RJ and the Com­ mis­sion of Rel­a­tives of the Mur­dered and Po­lit­i­cally Dis­ap­peared Per­sons (Comissão de Fa­mil­ia­ res de Mor­tos e De­sa­par­e­ci­dos ­Políticos), to­gether with the Cen­ter for Jus­tice and Inter­na­tional Law, lit­i­gated the Gomes Lund v. Bra­zil case (also known as the “Guer­rilha do Ara­guaia” case, per­tain­ing to the dis­ap­pear­ance of the ­sixty-two mil­i­tants in the Ara­guaia re­gion) in the ­InterAmerican Court of Human ­Rights.50 In De­cem­ber 2010 the court con­demned Bra­zil, both for the dis­ap­pear­ances them­selves and the im­pu­nity that en­sued, and or­dered the state to in­ves­ti­gate the vi­o­la­tions and pros­e­cute those re­spon­ sible.51 In the wake of that rul­ing, many fam­i­lies took their cases to the Of­fice of the Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tor, which es­tab­lished a work­ing group to ad­dress the mat­ter. In March 2012 the first crim­in ­ al ­charges were ­pressed ­against an in­di­ vid­ual mem­ber of the ­dictatorship’s se­cur­ity ­forces when fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors filed a com­plaint ­against ­Sebastião Curió Ro­drigues de Moura, one of the mil­i­tary of­fi­cers ac­cused of in­volve­ment in the dis­ap­pear­ance of five Ara­guaia mil­i­tants. The com­plaint ­argues that the vi­ol­a­tions in ques­tion are on­go­ing until the bod­ies are lo­cated and thus con­sti­tute con­tin­uo­ us ­crimes, ren­der­ing the retroac­tive 1979 Am­nesty Law in­ap­pli­cable.52 As of this writ­ing the case is still pend­ing. The ques­tion of ­whether to pros­e­cute tor­tur­ers re­mains con­tro­ver­ sial in Bra­zil; even some prom­i­nent sur­vi­vors of po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion and mem­ory

18



Introduction

ac­ti­vists op­pose crim­i­nal ­trials out of the be­lief that a moral con­dem­na­tion of dic­tat­or­ship per­pe­tra­tors is ­enough. Such a per­spec­tive be­lies the as­sump­tion that re­sis­tance to human ­rights pros­e­cu­tions nec­es­sar­ily ­equates with a de­sire to for­get, as his­to­rian Nina Schnei­der has ­pointed out.53 Many schol­ars have ob­served that the Bra­zil­ian pop­u­la­tion as a whole has his­tor­i­cally been in­dif­fer­ent when it comes to the dic­tat­or­ship and its human ­rights vi­o­la­tions, and in their as­sess­ments they often ­equate in­dif­fer­ence with a lack of mem­ory.54 In try­ing to under­stand the rea­sons be­hind ­Brazil’s slow, cir­cui­tous path to­ward reck­on­ing with the past, it is tempt­ing to look to so­ci­etal ap­a­thy as one of the root ­causes and as­sume that there were few mech­a­nisms of of­fi­cial reck­on­ing in Bra­zil for so many years in part be­cause so­ci­ety was ap­a­thetic. Yet such a per­spec­tive fails to con­sider an­other pos­sibil­ity: to the ex­tent that so­ci­ety has been ap­a­thetic, it has been so pre­cisely be­cause there were so few of­fi­cial in­itia­tives to en­cour­age and or­ga­nize a na­tional cul­ture of mem­ory and human ­rights for the first ­twenty years fol­low­ing the ­country’s re­turn to ci­vil­ian rule. This sit­u­a­tion only began to ­change sig­nif­i­cantly after 2005, par­tic­ul­arly with the pub­li­ca­tion in 2007 of the ­government’s first re­port on the dead and dis­ap­peared as well as the in­au­gu­ra­tion that year of the first major na­tional me­mo­rial to vic­tims of state vi­o­lence. Just as im­por­tantly, so­ci­etal ap­a­thy has shown sig­nif­i­cant de­grees of vari­a­ tion over time and de­pend­ing on con­text. Rea­sons for in­dif­fer­ence—ac­tual or ap­par­ent—have ­evolved over time. In the mid-1970s, there was a real risk in pro­test­ing the ­deaths and dis­ap­pear­ances, for by ex­press­ing dis­sent one might be taken as a sym­pa­thizer of the armed strug­gle. By the early 1980s, the ­everpresent pos­sibil­ity of a set­back or a re­ver­sal in the tran­si­tion pro­cess ­served to dis­cou­rage pres­sure for truth and jus­tice. After the mil­i­tary left power in 1985, new prob­lems—a weak econ­omy, ris­ing crime—de­manded at­ten­tion and may have ­seemed more ur­gent than reck­on­ing with a pain­ful past that many pre­ferred to be­lieve had al­ready been over­come. These evolv­ing rea­sons not­with­stand­ing, ­spikes in cu­ri­os­ity about the past have oc­curred, often in re­ac­tion to cul­tural works, in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two. Bra­zil­ian so­ci­ety was not in­dif­fer­ent in the late 1970s and 1980s, when a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion ea­gerly read the tes­ti­mo­nies of for­mer guer­ril­las (not to men­tion Bra­sil: Nunca mais). Nor was it ap­a­thetic in July and Au­gust 1992, when mil­lions of view­ers tuned in to watch the lat­est in­stall­ment of the first tele­vi­sion drama ever to de­pict the armed strug­gle—some even took to the ­streets to de­mand the im­peach­ment of Pres­i­dent Col­lor. Nor was it in­dif­fer­ent in 1999–2000, when pub­lic inter­est in a ­site-specific play ­staged at a re­cov­ered for­mer site of re­pres­sion ­turned the

Introduction



19

show into an un­ex­pected hit. In­deed, in each of these cases, pub­lic en­thu­siasm was so in­tense that it ­helped ­launch a cycle of cul­tural mem­ory, as the fol­low­ing chap­ters il­lus­trate.

Cul­t ure and Tran­s i­t ional Jus­t ice in Bra­z il This book con­tem­plates in­sti­tu­tional mech­an ­ isms in post­ dic­ta­to­rial Bra­zil, but it does so by fo­cus­ing on their re­cip­ro­cal inter­plays with cul­tural works, a di­men­sion fre­quently over­looked in schol­ar­ship as­so­ciated with the field com­monly re­ferred to as tran­si­tional jus­tice.55 It is ­hardly sur­ pris­ing that legal schol­ars, po­lit­ic­ al sci­en­tists, and prac­ti­tion­ers who study how new de­moc­ra­cies ­reckon with pre­vi­ous au­thor­i­tar­ian re­gimes tend to focus their at­ten­tion on in­sti­tu­tional steps like ­trials and truth com­mis­sions, yet in many in­stances the under­stand­ing of their sub­ject mat­ter could be deep­ened and en­hanced by con­sid­er­ing inter­plays with ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion. A case in point is Kath­ryn ­Sikkink’s in­fluen­tial study The Jus­tice Cas­cade, in which the au­thor ­traces the emer­gence of human ­rights ­trials as a glo­bal norm, par­tic­u­larly since the 1970s. Be­cause Ar­gen­tina was the first ­adopter of do­mes­tic human ­rights ­trials to gar­ner sus­tained inter­na­tional at­ten­tion, she de­vel­ops that case in some de­tail. In par­tic­u­lar, Sik­kink is inter­ested in how the Ar­gen­tine ex­pe­ri­ence ­spread ­across the globe. In tell­ing the story of ­Argentina’s pi­o­neer­ing ex­pe­ri­ence with human ­rights pros­e­cu­tions, Sik­kink under­stand­ably fo­cuses on the in­sti­tu­tional realm, es­pe­ cially the 1985 land­mark trial of the nine gen­er­als who pre­sided over the jun­tas. One of her ar­gu­ments is that be­yond pun­ish­ing the ­guilty, the trial re­af­firmed human ­rights norms and fos­tered a new “na­tional under­stand­ing of the past.”56 Sik­kink makes an im­por­tant point, yet it is un­clear how such norms and under­stand­ing were trans­mit­ted from the court­room to the wider pub­lic, ­whether ­through the news media (es­pe­cially tele­vi­sion) or by some other means. In this re­gard, a look at cul­ture—and the inter­ac­tion b­ etween the trial and spe­cific cul­tural works—would prove il­lu­mi­nat­ing. One po­ten­tially rich av­e­nue for in­quiry re­lates to the tes­ti­mony of Pablo Díaz, a star wit­ness for the pros­e­cu­tion. One of two sur­vi­vors of a group of high ­school stu­dents ­rounded up and tor­tured for hav­ing de­manded dis­counted bus fares, Díaz pro­vided a wrench­ing eye­wit­ness ac­count of the epi­sode that be­came one of the most pow­er­ful and dra­matic mo­ments of the trial. His tes­ti­mony in­spired a book as well as a film, both ti­tled La noche de los ­lápices (or Night of the Pen­cils, as the mas­sa­cre came to be known) and ­launched the fol­low­ing year. The two works be­came re­quired read­ing and view­ing for young Ar­gen­tines, as Fe­der­ico

20



Introduction

Guil­lermo Lo­renz notes, il­lus­trat­ing how cul­tural works can help dis­semi­nate and me­di­ate the in­for­ma­tion pro­duced by of­fi­cial mech­a­nisms.57 Sik­kink men­tions the book and film in pass­ing, with­out ac­knowl­edg­ing how the two works com­ple­mented the trial by keep­ing the spot­light fo­cused on ­Díaz’s tes­ti­mony. A sim­i­lar cri­tique can be made of ­Sikkink’s oth­er­wise in­sight­ful dis­cus­sion of the after­math of the trial of the gen­er­als. ­Argentina’s tran­si­tional pres­id ­ ent Raúl ­Alfonsín even­tu­ally put a halt to fur­ther pros­e­cu­tions with the Due Obe­di­ence and Full Stop laws, and his suc­ces­sor, Car­los Menem, par­doned those al­ready con­victed. Sik­kink ­traces how law­yers suc­cess­fully in­voked inter­ na­tional law to chal­lenge the im­pu­nity ­through pri­vate pros­e­cu­tion in a legal bat­tle that cul­mi­nated in 2005, when the Ar­gen­tine Su­preme Court found the am­nesty laws to be un­con­sti­tu­tional in light of ju­ris­pru­dence by the ­InterAmerican Court of Human ­Rights. She cred­its the 1994 Ar­gen­tine Con­sti­tu­tion and legal prec­e­dent with pav­ing the way for the use of inter­na­tional law in do­mes­tic ­courts. There is no doubt that these two fac­tors were fun­da­men­tal in creat­ing what she calls a “pro­pi­tious en­vi­ron­ment” for over­turn­ing the am­nes­ties, yet they were cer­tainly not the only fac­tors.58 ­Judges don’t issue rul­ings in a vac­uum. The pro­pi­tious en­vi­ron­ment Sik­kink de­scribes was also con­di­tioned by the tire­less ac­ti­vism of human ­rights ­groups, often in col­lab­o­ra­ tion with art­ists and cul­tural pro­duc­ers. To give one ex­am­ple, the col­lec­tive Grupo de Arte Cal­le­jero (Street Art Group) pro­duced ar­tis­tic inter­ven­tions in con­junc­tion with the per­for­mance pro­tests spon­sored by H.I.J.O.S., the or­ga­ n­iza­tion of the chil­dren of the dis­ap­peared.59 These pro­tests en­acted the slo­gan “If there is no jus­tice, there are es­cra­ches (pro­tests that pub­licly shame per­pe­ tra­tors)” by tak­ing place in front of the homes or work­places of ac­cused human ­rights vi­o­la­tors. A con­ven­tional ap­proach to under­stand­ing the Ar­gen­tine ex­pe­ri­ence that em­pha­sizes in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms risks miss­ing how such cul­tural inter­ven­tions kept de­mands for jus­tice alive after the am­nes­ties and con­trib­uted to the en­vi­ron­ment that Sik­kink de­scribes. ­Sikkink’s pri­mary con­cern in The Jus­tice Cas­cade, how­ever, is to ex­plain the dif­fu­sion of human ­rights pros­e­cu­tions as a glo­bal norm, from Ar­gen­tina to other parts of the world. In doing so, she right­fully cred­its the val­iant ef­forts of ac­ti­vists, law­yers, and ­judges who, upon com­plet­ing their work on the trial of the gen­er­als in 1985, moved on to other posts ­around the world and dis­ semi­nated the new norm in dif­fer­ent con­texts. Here too a cul­tural ap­proach could po­ten­tially yield a more ­rounded pic­ture. Sik­kink is cer­tainly cor­rect to em­pha­size the ef­forts of these “norm en­tre­pren­eurs” as the key fac­tor in under­ stand­ing this phe­nom­e­non; how­ever, one is left to won­der ­whether other ­forces, par­tic­u­larly cul­tural ones, might also have ­played some role in bring­ing

Introduction



21

­ rgentina’s ex­pe­ri­ence to the ­world’s at­ten­tion. For in­stance, while not about A the trial of the gen­er­als per se, the film La his­toria ofi­cial (The Of­fi­cial Story), which por­trays the ­plight of a woman who sus­pects her ­adopted child was taken from a dis­ap­peared, in 1986 be­came the first Latin ­American film ever to win an Oscar for best ­foreign film and cer­tainly ­helped in­ten­sify inter­na­tional inter­est in ­Argentina’s tran­si­tional pro­cess more gen­er­ally. How might the inter­na­tional cir­cu­la­tion of this film and other cul­tural works have sup­ported the mis­sion of the ­country’s norm en­tre­pren­eurs? Sik­kink ­doesn’t say. Fo­cus­ing ­solely on the in­sti­tu­tional realm pro­vides an in­com­plete pic­ture of how na­tions grap­ple with past vi­o­lence. To under­stand the ­larger dy­namic at work in tran­si­tional so­ci­eties, we need a more ­rounded view that in­cludes the cul­tural arena. This is not to pro­pose a ­purely cul­tural ap­proach, how­ever. ­Rather, rec­og­niz­ing the par­tial­ity of ei­ther a ­strictly in­sti­tu­tional or ­strictly cul­tural ap­proach height­ens our aware­ness of the lim­i­ta­tions of both the in­sti­ tu­tional and cul­tural ­spheres in reck­on­ing with a pain­ful past. As Sho­shana Fel­man finds in her study of the Eich­mann trial in The Ju­rid­i­cal Un­con­scious, nei­ther ­trials nor art, taken in­de­pen­dently, is suf­fic­ ient to trans­mit trau­matic ex­pe­ri­ence, lead­ing her to con­clude that “only the en­coun­ter ­between law and art can ad­e­quately tes­tify to the abys­sal mean­ing of the ­trauma.”60 Al­though schol­ars as­so­ciated with the field of tran­si­tional jus­tice have ­tended to priv­i­lege in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms, often to the ex­clu­sion of cul­tural works, so­cial sci­en­tists and his­to­rians work­ing ­within the field of mem­ory stud­ies have in­creas­ingly come to join cul­tural stud­ies schol­ars in an­a­lyz­ing how re­mem­brance finds ex­pres­sion in nov­els, plays, films, tele­vi­sion shows, and other imag­i­na­tive works. So­ci­ol­o­gist Eliz­a­beth Jelin, for ex­am­ple, ed­ited the Mem­or­ias de la ­represión (Mem­o­ries of Re­pres­sion) book se­ries on post­dic­tat­or­ ship Latin Amer­ica, many of whose con­trib­u­tors focus on cul­tural works rang­ing from books and films to photog­ra­phy and music.61 An ed­ited vol­ume by Kse­nija Bil­bija and oth­ers ti­tled The Art of ­Truth-Telling about Au­thor­i­tar­ian Rule in­sists that cul­tural works com­ple­ment of­fi­cial pro­cesses, serv­ing as “par­allel fora for dis­cus­sions about the au­thor­i­tar­ian past and its mean­ings in every­day life.”62 The vol­ume fea­tures es­says by writ­ers rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous dis­ci­plines and re­gions, all of whom share the con­vic­tion that mak­ing sense of a pain­ful and dis­puted past “is more an art than a pro­cess, more about the crea­tiv­ity of in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­nities than about of­fi­cial hear­ings, tes­ti­ mo­nies, and re­ports gen­er­ated by state in­sti­tu­tions.”63 These are but two ex­am­ples of the abun­dant schol­ar­ship on cul­tural forms of re­mem­ber­ing ­within mem­ory stud­ies.64 Yet as po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Alex­an­dra Bar­a­hona de Brito has ­pointed out, there has tra­di­tion­ally been lit­tle di­alogue ­between this work and re­search in the field of tran­si­tional jus­tice.65 This is true even ­though

22



Introduction

both tran­si­tional jus­tice and mem­ory stud­ies share an inter­est in how de­moc­ra­ tiz­ing so­ci­eties ­reckon with dic­ta­to­rial pasts. The dy­nam­ics ­between in­sti­tu­tional pol­i­cies and cul­tural works are sub­tle and com­plex; to tease them out re­quires a model of schol­ar­ship that in­te­grates tran­si­tional jus­tice and mem­ory stud­ies ap­proaches. Steve J. Stern takes this kind of in­te­grated ap­proach in Reck­on­ing with Pi­no­chet, the third vol­ume in his tril­ogy on mem­ory strug­gles in Chile. In re­trac­ing the al­ter­na­tion ­between im­passe and ad­vance that has char­ac­ter­ized the Chi­lean path to­ward truth and jus­tice, Stern re­peat­edly draws con­nec­tions ­between of­fi­cial re­sponses—the Ret­tig and Va­lech truth com­mis­sions, rep­ar­a­tions, court cases—and cul­tural ones. In­deed, the book re­veals a se­ries of links ­between cul­tural works and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms, such as the pop­u­lar the­a­ter show La negra Ester and the pleb­i­scite that ­forced Pi­no­chet from power, and An­drés ­Wood’s film Ma­chuca and the Va­lech com­mis­sion on tor­ture, to name just two of the pair­ings fea­tured. For Stern, such cultural works are more than just back­ground de­tail to the his­tor­i­cal anal­y­sis; they are an in­te­gral part of ­Chile’s pro­cess of reck­on­ing. The kind of ap­proach ­adopted by Stern pro­vides a model for con­ cep­tu­al­iz­ing the role of both in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms and cul­tural works ­within a cu­mu­la­tive pro­cess of human ­rights strug­gle over time, as op­posed to view­ing them as dis­crete ­events. In sum, the work of Jelin, Bil­bija, Stern, and oth­ers all ­points to the con­clu­sion that with­out a cul­tural di­men­sion, the kind of in­sti­tu­tional or legal focus typ­i­cal of tran­si­tional jus­tice schol­ar­ship is too flat. It is pre­cisely this more ­rounded ap­proach that I pro­pose to bring to bear on the Bra­zil­ian case. When I first ­started work­ing on the topic in 2001, there ­seemed to be rel­at­ ively lit­tle inter­est in the Bra­zil­ian mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship and mem­ory pol­i­tics; hap­pily, this has since ­changed—rad­i­cally, even. In the ­course of con­duct­ing re­search for this book, I ­relied heav­ily on a bur­geon­ing body of schol­ar­ship on the sub­ject, in­clud­ing the­ses and dis­ser­ta­tions by a new gen­er­a­tion of Bra­zil­ian schol­ars whose work has ­helped pro­pel the new mem­ory “boom” in the coun­try. None­the­less, while this boom has ­yielded an ­ever-increasing num­ber of im­por­tant stud­ies on cul­tural mem­o­ries as well as on tran­si­tional jus­tice, none to my knowl­edge at­tempts to the­or­ize the inter­plays ­between the two areas in Bra­zil. This the­or­iza­tion, then, is the con­tri­bu­tion that I seek to make to­ward a ­deeper under­stand­ing of how Bra­zil­ians make sense of a dic­ta­to­rial past ­marked by tor­ture, mur­der, and po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance. The inter­ac­tion ­between ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion and tran­si­tional jus­tice is com­plex, contra­dic­tory, and not al­ways easy to dis­cern or meas­ure. To de­velop an ap­proach to stud­y­ing it, I found that I first ­needed to iso­late in­sti­tu­tional meas­ures and iden­tify the cul­tural works that ­linked up with

Introduction



23

them. On the first score, be­cause of the few tran­si­tional jus­tice steps taken to date in Bra­zil, I broad­ened the scope of my study to con­sider other in­sti­tu­ tional mech­a­nisms that have im­pacted tran­si­tion and de­moc­rat­iza­tion, such as the Am­nesty Law and the con­gres­sional in­ves­ti­ga­tion and im­peach­ment pro­cess ­launched ­against Pres­i­dent Fer­nando Col­lor de Mello. On the sec­ond, my focus on the phe­nom­en ­ on of the cycle of cul­tural mem­ory dic­tated the se­lec­tion of a few ex­cep­tional works, since I have found that it makes more sense to an­a­lyze a few par­tic­u­larly ex­em­plary cases in depth ­rather than to sur­vey a large num­ber of works. This micro ap­proach has al­lowed me to eval­u­ate in depth and tease out the nu­ances of each cycle of cul­tural mem­ory that I an­a­lyze. I have ac­com­plished this by track­ing the re­cep­tion of works in main­stream media and in schol­arly crit­i­cism as well as by con­sult­ing pub­lished inter­views of cul­tural pro­duc­ers (fic­tion and tes­ti­mony writ­ers; net­work tele­vi­sion writ­ers, stars, and ex­ec­u­tives; and play­wrights and ac­tors) as well as state and civil so­ci­ety ac­tors. Be­cause the dic­tat­or­ship is rel­a­tively re­cent, many of the peo­ple dis­cussed or men­tioned in the pages that fol­low are still alive. And in­deed, over the ­course of my re­search I have had the good for­tune to meet and speak with many of them, which may raise the ques­tion as to why I have not in­cluded per­sonal inter­views as part of my re­search meth­o­dol­ogy. Given my focus on the lev­er­ag­ing pro­cess, my inter­est lies in how these ­players have ­framed their in­itia­tives and agen­das in pub­lic de­bate. For this rea­son, I draw ex­ten­sively from pub­lished ­rather than pri­vate inter­views. Nev­er­the­less, the doz­ens of Bra­zil­ians who took the time to share their ex­pe­ri­ences with me over the past ten years have in­del­ibly ­shaped my read­ings of the cul­tural texts as well as my under­stand­ing of the var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tional steps taken by the Bra­zil­ian state. In fact, at var­i­ous ­points over the ­course of my re­search I found my­self im­pli­cated as a wit­ness of sorts, as at­tested in the final chap­ter of this book. This book is there­fore not only an at­tempt to tell an im­por­tant part of the story of ­Brazil’s pro­cess of reck­on­ing with a dic­ta­to­rial past; it is also a re­flec­tion of my own schol­arly jour­ney. The fol­low­ing chap­ters trace four cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory that have taken place in Bra­zil over the past four ­decades. Chap­ter 1 ex­am­ines how ­Brazil’s Am­nesty Law be­came ­linked with cer­tain tes­ti­mo­nies pub­lished by for­mer armed mil­i­tants soon after the meas­ure was ­signed into law in Au­gust 1979. Fer­nando Ga­beira pi­o­neered the cul­tural ap­proach of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory in his ­best-selling ac­count, O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? (What’s Going On Here, Com­rade?), and Al­fredo Sir­kis cel­eb­ rated and con­sol­i­dated it in his pop­u­lar me­moir, Os ­carbonários (The Car­bo­nari). Yet these two works were pre­ceded by an ear­lier (pre–Am­nesty Law) tes­ti­mo­nial nar­ra­tive that did not link:

24



Introduction

Re­nato ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta (In Slow Mo­tion). ­Tapajós’s book in­sists on re­viv­ing mem­ory, but it does so in a con­fron­ta­tional ­rather than con­cil­i­a­tory way. A com­par­a­tive anal­y­sis of these three works and their re­cep­tion (and how that re­cep­tion was lev­er­aged or not) re­veals that cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory do not nec­es­sar­ily pro­mote fur­ther mem­ory work, much less the norm of human ­rights ­trials, and may in fact have the op­po­site ef­fect, at least in the short run. One new work that re­sulted from the prop­a­ga­tion phase of the first cycle of cul­tural mem­ory was Anos re­beldes, a tele­vi­sion min­is­er­ies par­tially based on ­Sirkis’s me­moir, Os ­carbonários. Chap­ter 2 in­ves­ti­gates how this hit show— the first ever to dra­ma­tize on Bra­zil­ian tele­vi­sion the harsh re­al­ities of life under the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship—co­in­cided and be­came imag­i­na­tively ­linked with the im­peach­ment pro­cess in­itiated ­against Fer­nando Col­lor de Mello, ­Brazil’s first dem­o­crat­i­cally ­elected pres­i­dent after the re­turn to ci­vil­ian rule. The re­sult was a new cycle of cul­tural mem­ory. Anos re­beldes was broad­cast on Globo, ­Brazil’s most pow­er­ful net­work with a his­tory of com­plic­ity with the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship. Globo lev­er­aged the im­a­gined con­nec­tion ­between the min­is­er­ies and the po­lit­i­cal cri­sis, par­tic­ul­arly the stu­dent pro­test­ers known as ­caras-pintadas, who came to rep­re­sent the ­pro-impeachment move­ment. It did so ­through pub­lic­ity spots and ­spin-off prod­ucts in order to re­cast it­self as a model cor­po­rate cit­iz­ en. The ­caras-pintadas, for their part, ap­pro­pri­ated key sym­bols from the min­is­er­ies, which they used to ­present them­selves as heirs to the strug­gle ­against the dic­tat­or­ship and its leg­a­cies. Chap­ter 3 in­ves­ti­gates the novel that in­spired the film Hoje, which com­ bined with the CNV to ­launch an­other cycle of cul­tural mem­ory. It ana­lyzes Fer­nando ­Bonassi’s novel Prova ­contrária along­side ­Brazil’s first of­fi­cial truth re­port, Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade, which sum­marizes the find­ings of the com­mis­sion ­formed to award rep­ar­a­tions to the fam­i­lies of the dis­ap­peared. While the re­port cel­e­brates mem­ory as a path to na­tional rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and ­mostly ig­nores the ques­tion of in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal ac­count­abil­ity, ­Bonassi’s novel makes vis­ible the re­per­cus­sions of jus­tice de­nied. Chap­ter 4 ex­am­ines how the of­fi­cial trans­fer of a no­to­ri­ous site of re­pres­ sion to the pub­lic do­main as ­Brazil’s first of­fi­cial site of mem­ory be­came ­linked with a ­site-specific play ti­tled Lem­brar é re­sis­tir (To Re­mem­ber Is to Re­sist). The play—a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort ­between govern­ment of­fi­cials, the­a­ter prac­ti­tion­ers, and for­mer po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers—in­vited au­di­ence mem­bers to sym­bol­i­cally oc­cupy the for­mer sta­tion house of the São Paulo po­lit­i­cal po­lice and be­came an in­stant hit, draw­ing more than ­twenty thou­sand spec­ta­tors over ap­prox­i­ mately fif­teen ­months. By pro­vid­ing a means of entry into this ­long-forbidden space, the play in­volved thou­sands of Bra­zil­ians in tak­ing over the build­ing, an act that was it­self a form of tran­si­tional jus­tice. Yet ten­sions ­emerged ­between

Introduction



25

some govern­ment of­fi­cials, who ­wanted to lev­er­age the play as part of a ­larger plan to re­model the build­ing as a cul­tural cen­ter, and oth­ers in­volved in the ­play’s pro­duc­tion who hoped their inter­ven­tion would re­sult in the crea­tion of a per­ma­nent me­mo­rial at the site. State govern­ment of­fi­cials sum­mar­ily shut down the play be­fore its run had ended, cit­ing the need to com­plete ren­o­ va­tions to the build­ing. The ­multimillion-dollar ren­o­va­tion pro­ject—which was ap­proved with­out any pub­lic de­bate—sig­nif­i­cantly al­tered the struc­ture and ap­pear­ance of the ­prison wing, which was even­tu­ally trans­formed into the bland and un­in­for­ma­tive Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade (Free­dom Me­mo­rial). By cel­e­brat­ing the take­over of the build­ing as a rad­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tory act, Lem­brar had the ef­fect—at least in the short term—of leg­i­ti­miz­ing the state ­government’s ­top-down ­decision-making pro­cess. Over the long term, how­ever, Lem­brar ended up pav­ing the way for a sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tional jus­tice in­itia­tive. In 2006 ­Brazil’s Min­is­try of Human ­Rights ­launched a new fed­eral cul­tural in­itia­tive, which aimed to re­store dig­nity to the vic­tims ­killed or dis­ap­peared by the mil­i­ tary dic­tat­or­ship. One of the cen­ter­pieces of this pro­ject was the in­au­gu­ra­tion— in the same space where Lem­brar was orig­i­nally ­staged—of the new Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia (Re­sis­tance Me­mo­rial), which res­ur­rects key ideas from the play. The con­clu­sion pro­vides an op­por­tu­nity to step back and as­sess the ­larger pic­ture. ­Whereas each chap­ter fo­cuses on an in­di­vid­ual cycle of cul­tural mem­ory at a spe­cific point in time, the con­clu­sion takes the long view of the ­nearly four ­decades cov­ered in the book, from the mid-1970s to the early 2010s, in order to draw out three over­arch­ing les­sons about how cul­tural works and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms have inter­acted in Bra­zil and about what this inter­ac­tion might mean for mem­ory and tran­si­tional justice stud­ies in a more glo­bal con­text. The ­phrase I have used as the main title of this book, ­memory’s turn, is meant to evoke sev­eral mean­ings, all ex­press­ing ideas I ex­am­ine in the fol­low­ing chap­ters. It re­fers to the turn to mem­ory that has taken place in Bra­zil over the past forty years, first in the cul­tural ­sphere and sub­se­quently in the in­sti­tu­ tional one. At the same time, ­memory’s turn is an al­lu­sion to the turn­ing of the cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory that are the focus of this study. The many def­i­ni­ tions of the word turn, as verb and noun, sug­gest other mean­ings as well. The verb can mean to bring bur­ied or hid­den ­layers to the sur­face (as oc­curs when turn­ing soil), a par­tic­ul­arly apt meta­phor for mem­ory work. And as a noun the term can even imply a right, long de­nied, to re­mem­ber the ­wrongs one suf­fered and to have that mem­ory rec­og­nized by the state and so­ci­ety. For those who en­dured first the vi­o­lence and then the sup­pres­sion of their ex­pe­ri­ence, it

26



Introduction

is fi­nally their turn. Ex­tend­ing the word­play even fur­ther, to turn again and again is to re­turn, which is what the un­re­solved past is wont to do. Cy­cles of mem­ory, more­over, pro­duce re­turns in the form of new cy­cles but also of ­yields or “prof­its”—that is, prog­ress in the mem­ory strug­gle.66 To­gether, these are the many turns and re­turns ex­plored in this book.

Introduction



27

1 

Te s ­t i­m o n ­ ie s a nd t h e Am ­n e s t y L a w

­B

razil’s first cycle of cul­tural mem­ory took place in con ­junc­tion with the 1979 Am­nesty Law. At the time, for­mer guer­ril­las began pub­lish­ing their tes­ti­mo­nies in the form of books, some of which be­came best sell­ers and won pre­stig­ious ­prizes. Be­cause many au­thors were ben­e­fi­ci­ar­ies of the law who pub­lished their ac­counts after re­turn­ing from exile or being re­leased from ­prison, their works came to be seen as the “cul­tural fruit of the 1979 am­nesty,” as one ob­server has put it, or as hav­ing “emerged under the sign of the am­nesty,” in the words of an­other.1 Thus the two phe­nom­ena, one in­sti­tu­tional and the other cul­tural, be­came in­ex­tri­cably ­linked in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion. No sin­gle work is more ­closely iden­tified with the am­nesty than Fer­nando ­Gabeira’s me­moir, O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? (What’s Going On Here, Com­rade?, here­after also re­ferred to as Com­pan­heiro), pub­lished a few weeks after the piece of leg­is­la­tion went into ef­fect.2 His­to­rians, so­ci­ol­o­gists, and lit­er­ary schol­ars have stud­ied it more ex­haus­tively than any other tes­ti­mo­nial work from the pe­riod, tak­ing a va­riety of ap­proaches. Among the most val­u­able for the study of mem­ory pol­i­tics are those that use ­Gabeira’s book as a ba­rom­e­ter of the po­lit­ic­ al and cul­tural cli­mate dur­ing the pe­riod of po­lit­i­cal open­ing, or aber­tura, of the early 1980s or that con­sider its place ­within a wider body of tes­ti­mo­nial works, in­clud­ing those by re­gime in­sid­ers.3 Yet no study that I am aware of pro­poses to an­a­lyze the re­cip­ro­cal inter­plays ­between guer­rilla tes­ti­mo­ni­als and the Am­nesty Law in a system­atic way. Such an anal­ys­ is is the ob­jec­tive of this chap­ter. The first guer­rilla ac­count to be pub­lished after the law was en­acted, O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? rep­re­sents one ­survivor’s mem­ory of the armed strug­gle

28

and as such ­defies the mil­i­tary ­regime’s at­tempt to im­pose a kind of in­sti­tu­tion­al­ ized for­get­ting by grant­ing am­nesty to state se­cur­ity ­agents. Yet Ga­beira re­counts his ex­pe­ri­ences, in­clud­ing tor­ture, with­out ever ques­tion­ing the im­pu­nity ­granted to those who tor­mented him and his com­rades. He there­fore mod­els what I have ­called rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory. Com­pan­heiro be­came an in­stant hit and ­helped turn its au­thor into the “super­star of the am­nesty.”4 Book and am­nesty be­came ­linked. Var­i­ous in­di­ vid­u­als and ­groups, in­clud­ing Ga­beira him­self, lev­er­aged the con­nec­tion ac­ cord­ing to their var­i­ous agen­das and ­through their ef­forts ­helped pro­mote book and au­thor, help­ing con­sol­i­date the mean­ing of the am­nesty as rec­on­cil­i­a­ tion and a vic­tory for so­ci­ety ­rather than as im­pu­nity and par­tial de­feat. Two other books pub­lished ­around the same time by sur­vi­vors of the armed strug­gle fur­ther il­lus­trate the re­la­tion­ship ­between guer­rilla tes­ti­mo­nies and the Am­nesty Law. Al­fredo ­Sirkis’s Os ­carbonários (The Car­bo­nari), which also ­evokes the mem­ory of the armed strug­gle with­out ob­ject­ing to the im­mu­ nity con­ferred upon tor­tur­ers, ­joined Com­pan­heiro in mov­ing ­through a cycle of cul­tural mem­ory, ­whereas Re­nato ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta (In Slow Mo­tion), pub­lished be­fore pas­sage of the Am­nesty Law, never be­came ­linked with the law and did not move ­through a cycle. ­Tapajós, un­like Ga­beira and Sir­kis, ­raises the ­prickly ques­tion of ac­count­abil­ity for human ­rights ­crimes. Al­though Em ­câmara lenta en­joyed a brief spurt of pop­u­lar­ity while the am­nesty move­ment was gain­ing steam, it faded into ob­scur­ity with the ad­vent of the Am­nesty Law and the tes­ti­mo­nial boom that fol­lowed. A com­par­i­son of ­Tapajós’s nar­ra­tive with those of Ga­beira and Sir­kis il­lu­mi­nates the con­di­tions nec­es­sary for the link­age of cul­tural works with in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms, with­out which the cycle of mem­ory can­not be set in mo­tion.

The Multi­p le Mean­ings of Am­n esty in Bra­z il By the sec­ond half of the 1970s, a mass move­ment had co­a­lesced ­within civil so­ci­ety to de­mand that the mil­it­ ary re­gime grant an un­con­di­tional am­nesty to all those ac­cused of po­lit­i­cal ­crimes ­against the dic­tat­or­ship. In Au­gust 1979 the Fig­uei­redo govern­ment re­sponded with a meas­ure that ben­e­ fited most—but not all—of its po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents and that also ex­tended to state se­cur­ity ­agents, in ef­fect preempt­ing human ­rights ­trials. The tran­si­tional govern­ment of José Sar­ney up­held the Am­nesty Law and like­wise em­braced the pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting. Am­nesty came to have multi­ple mean­ings in Bra­zil dur­ing the 1970s. Early under­stand­ings of am­nesty as the path to rec­on­cil­ing the Bra­zil­ian fam­ily came

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to com­pete with more rad­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tions of am­nesty as a form of re­sis­t­ ance and the in­itial step to­ward de­moc­rat­iza­tion and the pun­ish­ment of human ­rights vi­o­la­tors. These two mean­ings have co­ex­isted ever since, with rec­on­cil­i­a­ tion pre­dom­i­nat­ing at cer­tain times and re­sis­tance at oth­ers. The chro­nol­ogy of the am­nesty strug­gle laid out by Carla Si­mone Rod­e­ghero, Ga­briel Dienst­ mann, and Ta­tiana Trin­dade is use­ful in trac­ing how the mean­ing of am­nesty ­evolved over time. They di­vide the ­bottom-up strug­gle for am­nesty into four ­phases: the early pi­o­neer­ing years of 1975 to 1977; the con­sol­i­da­tion phase of 1978 and the first half of 1979; the con­fron­ta­tion phase of June to Au­gust 1979, as ­Figueiredo’s bill was de­bated in Con­gress; and fi­nally, the on­go­ing strug­gle from the sign­ing of the Am­nesty Law on Au­gust 28, 1979, to the ­present. The first, pi­o­neer­ing phase began in 1975 when There­zinha Zer­bine, the wife of a ­purged gen­eral, ­founded the ­Women’s Am­nesty Move­ment (Mov­i­ mento Fem­i­nino pela An­is­tia, MFPA) in São Paulo. Other MFPA ­groups ­emerged in cit­ies through­out Bra­zil and used grass­roots or­ga­niz­ing to curry sup­port from pol­i­ti­cians al­lied with the Bra­zil­ian Dem­o­cratic Move­ment (Mov­i­mento ­Democrático Bras­i­leiro, MDB) and en­tities such as the ­church and the Bra­zil­ian Bar As­so­ci­a­tion. The dis­course of the am­nesty move­ment dur­ing these early years was ­fairly mod­er­ate, em­pha­siz­ing the ideas “of rec­on­ cil­i­a­tion and peace­mak­ing more than of a rad­i­cal break with the dic­tat­or­ship and of the pun­ish­ment of tor­tur­ers.”5 Al­though it was a time when fem­i­nism was gain­ing steam and fem­i­nists were ques­tion­ing gen­der roles and the rel­e­ gat­ing of women to the do­mes­tic ­sphere, the MFPA went ­against this cur­rent and drew heav­ily on the tra­di­tional image of the fam­ily in a cal­cu­lated move to in­ject pop­u­lar ap­peal into its cause, por­tray­ing Bra­zil as a “fam­ily torn apart, di­vided ­between those con­sid­ered vic­tors and those van­quished.”6 Early 1978 ­marked the be­gin­ning of the con­sol­i­da­tion phase of the am­nesty strug­gle. In Feb­ru­ary of that year the Bra­zil­ian Am­nesty Com­mit­tee (Co­mitê Bras­i­leiro pela An­is­tia, CBA) was ­founded in Rio de Ja­neiro, and soon local ­branches ­formed ­around the coun­try. The fol­low­ing No­vem­ber the Na­tional Am­nesty Con­gress ­brought to­gether in São Paulo the var­io­ us MFPA and CBA ­groups as well as other ­like-minded en­tities to co­or­di­nate the ac­tiv­i­ties of the dif­fer­ent or­gan­iza­tions and ­present a ­united na­tional front. To that end, the Na­tional Ex­ec­ut­ ive Com­mis­sion (Comissão Ex­e­cu­tiva Na­cional) was ­created. The dis­course of rec­on­cil­ing the Bra­zil­ian fam­ily, de­ployed by the MFPA dur­ing the early years of the cam­paign as a strat­egy for at­tract­ing pop­u­lar sup­port, gave way to the more rad­i­cal de­mands sum­mar­ized in the slo­gan “broad, gen­eral, and un­con­di­tional am­nesty,” which the na­tional move­ment had made its trade­mark by the time of the No­vem­ber meet­ing.7 To call for am­nesty in these terms meant to de­mand dem­o­cratic free­doms, the

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dis­man­tling of the na­tional se­cur­ity state, and the pur­suit of truth and jus­tice (under­stood as the pun­ish­ment of state tor­tur­ers). Not all pro­po­nents of am­nesty ­agreed with these terms, how­ever. A prom­i­nent ex­am­ple is Gen­eral Peri Bev­i­lac­qua, a mod­er­ate mil­i­tary man who had been call­ing for am­nesty since 1966, had ­served as a jus­tice on the Mil­i­tary High Court (Super­ior Tri­bu­nal Mil­i­tar) until being ­purged, and had sub­se­ quently ­joined the MDB. Bev­i­lac­qua be­came a lead­ing ad­vo­cate for what he ­called a “re­cip­ro­cal” am­nesty (cov­er­ing both the op­po­si­tion and state se­cur­ity ­agents), be­liev­ing that only by adopt­ing such a ­stance would am­nesty be pos­sible. Those who ­agreed with him po­si­tioned them­selves ­against pun­ish­ing state per­pe­tra­tors of human ­rights ­crimes, ­whether for prag­matic or other rea­sons. For them, the am­nesty still meant rec­on­cil­ing the Bra­zil­ian fam­ily, even if the na­tional lead­er­ship of the am­nesty move­ment had ­largely aban­doned such rhet­o­ric. Most lead­ers of the na­tional am­nesty move­ment did not share ­Bevilacqua’s view and ex­pli­citly re­jected the pro­po­sal of re­cip­ro­cal am­nesty. They ­viewed rec­i­proc­ity as a for­mula for clo­sure, to re­turn to Steve J. ­Stern’s con­cepts of for­mula and wedge pre­sented in the intro­duc­tion of this book, and in­stead came to pro­mote the idea of am­nesty as a wedge for forc­ing fur­ther de­moc­ rat­iza­tion as well as human ­rights ­trials. In their sur­vey of the a­ rchives of the na­tional am­nesty move­ment, Carla Si­mone Rod­e­ghero and her col­leagues found that these lead­ers had a broad under­stand­ing of am­nesty as en­com­pass­ing an en­tire list of de­mands re­lated to de­moc­rat­iza­tion and the pun­ish­ment of tor­tur­ers. “The am­nesty was not an end to it­self,” they write, but ­rather was “under­stood as a ­broader strug­gle for the con­quest of dem­o­cratic free­doms.”8 The rad­ic­ al­iza­tion of the na­tional am­nesty move­ment makes sense when ­placed in his­tor­i­cal con­text: by the time the cam­paign was con­sol­i­dat­ing, the suc­cess­ful mo­bil­iza­tions of stu­dents in 1977 and work­ers in 1978 had set a prec­e­dent that em­bold­ened other ac­ti­vists to pres­sure the govern­ment for con­ces­sions.9 In the case of the ­broad-based am­nesty cam­paign, the govern­ment made a con­ces­sion, but only a par­tial one: in June 1979 Fig­uei­redo intro­duced a bill for a re­stricted and ­so-called re­cip­ro­cal am­nesty.10 The grass­roots cam­paign was not alone in evolv­ing over the years. The govern­ment had ­changed as well. At first, the mil­i­tary rul­ers ig­nored de­mands for am­nesty. Then they of­fered token meas­ures, such as the re­view of in­di­vid­ual cases.11 Fi­nally, when the Fig­uei­redo govern­ment could no ­longer ig­nore the am­nesty move­ment, it put forth its pro­po­sal for a re­stricted and re­cip­ro­cal am­nesty. Al­though the ­government’s po­si­tion on am­nesty ­changed over the years, its de­sire to im­pose a for­mula for clo­sure re­mained con­stant.

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The third phase of the am­nesty strug­gle, con­fron­ta­tion, began with the intro­duc­tion of ­Figueiredo’s bill and ­lasted until the law was ­signed on Au­gust 28, 1979. It was the most in­tense pe­riod of pop­u­lar strug­gle, al­though de­bate in Con­gress was lim­ited. Pol­it­ i­cians be­long­ing to the Al­li­ance for Na­tional Ren­o­va­tion (Aliança Re­nov­a­dora Na­cional, ARENA) de­fended the ­government’s pro­po­sal, jus­tify­ing the ex­clu­sion of for­mer guer­ril­las and down­play­ing ­crimes by state se­cur­ity ­agents (by ra­tion­al­iz­ing the vi­o­lence as nec­es­sary for com­bat­ting sub­ver­sion, ques­tion­ing ­whether it had ac­tu­ally oc­curred, or, most com­monly, keep­ing si­lent on the sub­ject). Their MDB col­leagues chal­lenged the char­ac­ter­iza­tion of guer­ril­las as ter­ror­ists, por­tray­ing those who had ­joined the rev­o­lu­tion­ary armed strug­gle in­stead as de­fend­ers ­against state ter­ror­ism and even, some­what mis­lead­ingly, of dem­o­cratic ­ideals.12 ­Figueiredo’s sign­ing of the Am­nesty Law ­marked the be­gin­ning of the ­fourth phase of the am­nesty strug­gle: the on­go­ing ef­forts still ev­i­dent today. For the fam­ily mem­bers of the dead and dis­ap­peared and their sup­port­ers, the Am­nesty Law rep­re­sented a de­feat.13 Still, much of Bra­zil­ian so­ci­ety pre­ferred to view the law less crit­i­cally, as Rod­e­ghero and her col­leges note: “The re­cip­ ro­cal and re­stricted am­nesty . . . was re­ceived by part of the move­ment as a vic­tory, the re­sult of many years of strug­gle, and fur­ther­more as a first step to­ward the con­quest of a broad, gen­eral, and un­con­di­tional am­nesty.”14 Those who ­adopted this view fo­cused more on the Am­nesty Law as a wedge or an in­itial step to­ward the re­turn to dem­o­cratic govern­ance, and less on how it ­served as a for­mula for clo­sure as far as the ques­tion of pun­ish­ing human ­rights vi­o­la­tors was con­cerned. Al­though the fam­i­lies of the dead and dis­ap­peared con­tin­ued to pres­sure the govern­ment for truth and jus­tice, mass sup­port for their strug­gle evap­o­rated as new de­vel­op­ments de­manded the p ­ ublic’s at­ten­ tion. Par­tic­u­larly sig­nif­i­cant were the in­crease in ­strikes and the pas­sage of the Party Re­form Law, which had the ad­di­tional ef­fect of frag­ment­ing the op­po­si­ tion by dis­solv­ing the MDB and al­low­ing for the crea­tion of new par­ties.15 Mass pop­u­lar sup­port dis­si­pated for rad­i­cal am­nesty that in­cluded pun­ ish­ment. The cause never man­aged to ­elicit such sup­port again. Dur­ing the draft­ing of a new con­sti­tu­tion in 1987, some pro­posed amend­ments ­raised the pos­sibil­ity of creat­ing fi­nan­cial rep­ar­a­tions for vic­tims of the dic­tat­or­ship, but they were ­roundly re­jected by the Lib­eral Front Party (Par­tido da ­Frente Lib­eral), So­cial Dem­o­cratic Party (Par­tido So­cial ­Democrático), and Bra­zil­ian Labor Party (Par­tido Tra­bal­hista Bras­i­leiro), which “system­at­i­cally op­posed any al­ter­a­tion to the 1979 Am­nesty Law.”16 The first meas­ures to­ward reck­on­ing with the vi­o­lence, the 1995 Law of the Dis­ap­peared and the 2001 law that ­created the Am­nesty Com­mis­sion, were both con­ceived as ex­tend­ing the ben­e­fits of am­nesty to new ben­e­fi­ci­ar­ies. These laws thus rep­re­sented a con­tin­u­at­ ion of—­rather than a clean break with—the 1979 Am­nesty Law.17 32



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With the sign­ing of the Am­nesty Law, the same word that had an­i­mated op­po­si­tion to the dic­ta­to­rial govern­ment—am­nesty—con­tin­ued to stand for re­sis­tance, yet it also came to stand once again for the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of the Bra­zil­ian fam­ily, as if by na­tional con­sen­sus. It came to sig­nify free­dom and na­tional unity with the re­turn of the po­lit­i­cal ex­iles and the re­lease of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers, pos­i­tive mean­ings that dis­tracted at­ten­tion away from the un­pleas­ant re­al­ity of jus­tice de­nied. The two mean­ings of am­nesty as re­sis­tance and rec­on­ cil­i­a­tion have con­tin­ued to co­ex­ist ever since, ­largely over­shad­ow­ing a third mean­ing—im­pu­nity—for, as Ales­san­dra Car­valho and Lud­mila da Silva Ca­tela ex­plain, “The mem­ory that pre­dom­i­nates and that is ac­ti­vated [in Bra­zil] with re­spect to the am­nesty is re­lated to the im­ages of the re­turn of po­lit­i­cal ex­iles and the re­lease of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers, ­whereas there is a pro­found si­lence with re­spect to the par­don that this law au­thor­ized to mil­i­tary of­fi­cers and ­agents of the se­cur­ity ­forces.”18 The lead­ers of ­Brazil’s ­pro-amnesty cam­paign en­vi­sioned am­nesty (that is, the re­in­te­gra­tion of the po­lit­i­cally per­se­cuted into the na­tional fold) as a wedge, a small step to­ward the ­larger goal of a re­turn to ci­vil­ian, dem­o­cratic rule. The mil­it­ ary govern­ment im­posed a dif­fer­ent kind of am­nesty (one that en­sured im­pu­nity for state se­cur­ity ­agents) that ­served as a for­mula for clo­sure, de­signed to set­tle the mat­ter of past human ­rights vi­o­la­tions once and for all. Yet it is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that the idea of am­nesty as rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion of the Bra­zil­ian fam­ily was not the in­ven­tion of the mil­i­tary govern­ment but had been part of the civil so­ci­ety cam­paign since 1975, even ­though the more rad­i­cal under­stand­ing of am­nesty as a wedge or first step to­ward de­moc­rat­iza­tion and reck­on­ing with human ­rights ­crimes over­took it in 1978 and 1979. Still, the inter­pre­ta­tion of am­nesty as rec­on­cil­i­a­tion re­gained le­git­im ­ acy after the law was ­passed, even among some of those who had most vo­cally de­manded the pun­ish­ment of tor­tur­ers, in­clud­ing Ga­beira him­self, as we shall see.

Fer­n ando Ga­b eira, Re­s is­t ance, and Rec­o n­c il­i­a ­t ion In O que é isso, com­pan­heiro?, Fer­nando Ga­beira, who had been a ­twenty-something jour­nal­ist in the late 1960s, tells how he went from steal­ing away from the of­fice to join stu­dent ­protest ­marches to be­com­ing a mem­ber of an armed or­gan­iza­tion that would even­tu­ally be­come known as the Oc­to­ber 8 Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Move­ment (Mov­i­mento ­Revolucionário 8 de Out­ubro). In Sep­tem­ber 1969 the group com­bined ­forces with an­other or­gan­iza­tion, the Na­tional Lib­er­a­tion Al­li­ance (Aliança Li­ber­ta­dora Na­cional), to kid­nap ­United ­States am­bas­sa­dor ­Charles El­brick in an at­tack that ­stunned ­Brazil’s Te s t i m o n i e s a n d t h e A m n e s t y L a w



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mil­i­tary lead­ers. The op­er­a­tion ­forced the govern­ment to ca­pit­u­late to the ­kidnappers’ de­mands for the re­lease of fif­teen po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers and the dis­semi­na­tion in the heav­ily cen­sored media of an anti­govern­ment man­i­festo. The me­moir also tells of ­Gabeira’s im­pris­on­ment over sev­eral ­months and ends with his sub­se­quent ban­ish­ment to Al­ge­ria in 1970 (his re­lease hav­ing been nego­tiated on the oc­ca­sion of a sim­i­lar kid­nap­ping op­er­at­ ion in­volv­ing the Ger­man am­bas­sa­dor). Hence the Am­nesty Law is ­barely men­tioned in the book. Com­pan­heiro was pub­lished at a time when the mean­ing of am­nesty was con­tin­u­ing to shift and ­evolve: ­whereas the idea of rec­on­cil­ing the Bra­zil­ian fam­ily, pop­u­lar in the early years of grass­roots strug­gle, had been ­largely sup­planted by that of re­sis­tance and the con­quest of dem­oc­ ratic free­doms in the na­tional am­nesty ­movement’s dis­course by 1978, it now re­sur­faced in force as many Bra­zil­ians pre­ferred to view ­Figueiredo’s con­ces­sion of a par­tial and re­cip­ro­cal am­nesty as a vic­tory ­rather than a de­feat. Ga­beira makes the co­ex­is­ tence of rec­on­cil­ia­ ­tion and re­sis­tance seem nat­u­ral in Com­pan­heiro. One of the de­fin­ing fea­tures of his me­moir is how it trans­forms the armed strug­gle and his ex­pe­ri­ences in par­tic­u­lar into pre­cur­sors of the dem­o­cratic re­sis­tance co­a­lesc­ing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, an inter­pre­ta­tion at odds with the his­tor­i­cal ­record. As schol­ars of the pe­riod have been quick to point out, the armed or­gan­iza­tions that flour­ished after 1968 were of­fense ­rather than de­fense ­oriented, and their ban­ner was rev­o­lu­tion, not de­moc­racy.19 Yet Ga­beira finds var­i­ous ways to down­play that re­al­ity. Among the most in­ge­ni­ous is his de­ci­sion to open his nar­ra­tive with a de­scrip­tion of the chaos he wit­nessed dur­ing the after­math of the mil­i­tary coup in Chile. By choos­ing to begin his ac­count with the fall of dem­o­crat­i­cally ­elected Chi­lean pres­i­dent Sal­va­dor Al­lende in Sep­tem­ber 1973, Ga­beira ­places his own story of armed strug­gle in Bra­zil ­within the con­text of ­Chile’s fal­len so­cial­ist de­moc­racy and a de­fen­sive re­treat—that is, ­within a con­text of dem­o­cratic re­sis­tance. The ­reader is intro­ duced not to a rev­o­lu­tion­ary in arms but ­rather to “a man run­ning from the po­lice” (the title of his first chap­ter). Along sim­i­lar lines, Ga­beira ­presents him­self in his me­moir as an ac­ci­den­tal rev­o­lu­tion­ary, the antith­e­sis of what one would ex­pect of a brave guer­rilla: “I wore ­glasses and for­got the most basic tasks,” he ­writes of him­self at one point.20 As he tells it, his entry into the armed strug­gle had more to do with the con­sump­tion of cer­tain ro­man­tic im­ages of rev­o­lu­tion­ary he­roes cir­cu­lat­ing at the time than with firm ideo­log­i­cal con­vic­tion, a por­trayal that he un­justly gen­er­alizes to his fel­low mil­i­tants: “None of us had read Das Kap­i­tal, none of us knew much about the rev­o­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence of other coun­tries.”21 At the same time, Ga­beira and his com­rades come off as in­ef­fec­tual. As he re­marks

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in re­gard to one un­suc­cess­ful op­er­at­ ion, “As al­ways, the only ones we ended up hurt­ing were our­selves.”22 Later in the nar­ra­tive, when re­flect­ing on how he and his com­rades ­avoided open dis­cus­sion about any sub­ject that might under­mine their es­prit de corps, he con­cludes, “We were our own worst en­e­mies.”23 While there is some truth to ­Gabeira’s re­marks, they often serve to make light of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence ­rather than to cri­tique it in a mean­ing­ful way. In the final pages of the book, he de­scribes lis­ten­ing to a com­rade drone on about an armed op­er­a­tion and think­ing, “My God . . . when will this rev­o­lu­tion be over so I can rest a bit?”24 ­Gabeira’s at­tempt to down­play his ­comrades’ and his own rev­o­lu­tion­ary vo­ca­tion is not gra­tui­tous. It is part of a l­arger pro­ject of re­cast­ing the armed strug­gle as a pre­cur­sor to the dem­o­cratic re­sis­tance un­fold­ing in Bra­zil at the time of the ­book’s pub­li­ca­tion.25 It makes sense that the El­brick ab­duc­tion in 1969 would seem newly rel­e­vant in light of the awak­en­ing of civil so­ci­ety and its re­bel­lion ­against the mil­i­tary govern­ment ten years later. Ga­beira con­nects the dots for the ­reader, dis­play­ing a knack for writ­ing, as ­critic Mário Au­gusto Me­dei­ros da Silva puts it, with “one foot in the past . . . and the other in the ­present.”26 Still, Ga­beira does ac­knowl­edge dif­fer­ences ­between his own gen­er­at­ ion and the one com­ing of age in the wake of the Am­nesty Law. “Of ­course, ­you’re laugh­ing,” he ­writes of the ­reader. “It’s al­most 1980 and nei­ther ­nerves of steel nor ­blondes in the crime pages of the news­paper are pop­ul­ar any­more. But fan­ta­sies lead us down paths be­yond our con­trol, and I fell into the same traps as any­one.”27 He sug­gests that he and his ­reader have in com­mon the same need to rebel, even if the re­bel­lion takes on dif­fer­ent forms de­pend­ing on the vogue at the time. What mat­ters is the ­shared com­mit­ment to re­sist­ing the dic­tat­or­ship. Along these lines, one of the ­memoir’s epi­graphs reads, “To nar­rate is to re­sist” (a quo­ta­tion from the great Bra­zil­ian ­writer João ­Guimarães Rosa), im­ply­ing that ­Gabeira’s book con­trib­utes to the con­tem­po­rary (post1979) strug­gle ­against the dic­tat­or­ship. And in­deed, in a sense the pub­li­ca­tion of Com­pan­heiro did test the Am­nesty Law and the ­government’s tol­er­ance of op­po­si­tion, for it was, as one ob­server notes, “one of the most vis­ible ex­pres­ sions of the new era of post­am­nesty free­dom of ex­pres­sion.”28 The blur­ring of the armed strug­gle of the late 1960s and early 1970s into the dem­o­cratic re­sis­tance of the aber­tura is com­plete with a line in the pref­ace to the sec­ond edi­tion of Com­pan­heiro, pub­lished in 1996, in which Ga­beira de­scribes his per­sonal guer­rilla ex­pe­ri­ence as part of “the col­lec­tive ad­ven­ture of the re­sis­tance to the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship in Bra­zil.”29 ­Gabeira’s por­trayal of his ex­pe­ri­ence as re­sis­tance ex­em­plifies a kind of his­tor­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion that, as so­ci­ol­og­ ist Mar­celo Ri­denti ex­plains, “tends tac­itly to flat­ten the

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rev­o­lu­tion­ary strug­gle of the 1960s and 1970s, as if it were a phase in prep­ar­a­ tion for ­today’s Bra­zil­ian de­moc­racy, thus leg­i­ti­miz­ing the past of many ­ex-guerrillas.”30 This gen­er­ous inter­pre­ta­tion of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary armed strug­gle was al­ready cir­cu­lat­ing ­widely by the time Ga­beira pub­lished his ac­count. As pre­vi­ously noted, dur­ing con­gres­sional de­bates over the am­nesty bill from June to Au­gust 1979, MDB pol­i­ti­cians stra­te­gi­cally por­trayed guer­ril­las as hav­ing been mo­ti­vated by dem­o­cratic ­ideals in order to make their case for a “broad, gen­eral, and un­con­di­tional am­nesty” and to coun­ter ARENA de­pic­ tions of par­tic­i­pants in the armed strug­gle as ter­ror­ists. Ac­cord­ing to his­to­rian Dan­iel Aarão Reis Filho, who was him­self a for­mer guer­rilla, dur­ing the late 1970s and early 1980s Bra­zil­ian so­ci­ety ­adopted re­sis­tance as the uni­fy­ing idea on which rec­on­cil­i­a­tion could be based: “Re­sis­tance : the word had been found. It be­came a motto. All that re­mained was to uni­ver­sal­ize it. And so there would be no win­ners or los­ers, for the de­sire for rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion was great.”31 Cel­e­brat­ing re­sis­tance was a way to avoid ex­am­in­ing “why the dic­tat­or­ship had been tol­er­ ated for so long in a coun­try [that saw it­self as] dem­o­cratic.”32 It was also part of a ­larger pro­cess in which vir­tu­ally all Bra­zil­ians, even for­mer re­gime al­lies, trans­formed them­selves into pas­sion­ate ad­vo­cates of de­moc­racy.33 For Reis Filho, what most peo­ple ­really ­wanted in the final years of the dic­tat­or­ship was “to re­vive mem­ory for the pur­pose of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion” (av­i­var a ­memória para con­cil­iar).34 This pop­u­lar de­mand for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory—that is, those mem­o­ries con­du­cive to the po­lit­i­cal mo­ment—re­sisted the ­regime’s pol­icy of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting, but only up to a point be­cause it fell short of chal­leng­ing the Am­nesty Law’s pro­vi­sion of im­pu­nity to tor­tur­ers. If the aber­tura was a time when pop­u­lar de­mand for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory ­reigned, then for Reis Filho, “Ga­beira and his book were the most com­plete ex­pres­sion of their time.”35 Re­sis­tance and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion may seem like in­com­pat­ible ­themes, but not in Com­pan­heiro. At the same time as Ga­beira cel­e­brates a Bra­zil­ian tra­di­tion of re­sis­tance to the dic­tat­or­ship, he also ad­dresses tor­ture in a way that ­guides read­ers to the con­clu­sion that, since every­one is re­spon­sible (human be­ings are vi­o­lent), no one can be held ac­count­able. Under such circum­stances, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion be­comes an at­trac­tive op­tion. Al­though one of the long­est chap­ters of the book fo­cuses on tor­ture and other human ­rights ­crimes, re­spon­sibil­ity is dif­fused so that every­one (and si­mul­ta­ne­ously no one) is to blame. Nar­rat­ing the tor­ture he wit­nessed in var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal pris­ons, Ga­beira re­marks that he and his fel­low pris­on­ers were “hor­rified by Bra­zil and the human race.”36 It is as if tor­ture were not prac­ticed by spe­cific in­di­vid­u­als but by na­tions or even by hu­man­ity it­self. Later, Ga­beira sim­i­larly

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dif­fuses ac­count­abil­ity when re­flect­ing on the vi­o­lence ­against the com­mon (non­po­lit­i­cal) pris­on­ers and mar­gi­nal­ized pop­u­la­tions in gen­eral: “That’s right, it’s not the Bra­zil­ian po­lice that are vi­o­lent. We are vi­o­lent. There is a place that ­awaits us in ­humanity’s mu­seum of hor­rors.”37 This kind of gen­er­al­ ized cri­tique com­ing from a vic­tim of po­lit­i­cal tor­ture was cer­tainly a pow­er­ ful state­ment at the time, re­mind­ing peo­ple that ex­treme vi­o­lence was (and still is) in­flicted every day on poor Bra­zil­ians. Yet once again, it is a vague and empty “we” that takes the blame. Mean­while, ­comrades-in-arms who are ­killed and the other de­tai­nees he meets in ­prison dis­solve into a face­less mass: the few that Ga­beira does men­tion by name serve ­mostly as sup­port­ing ac­tors or part of the back­drop ­against which his own per­sonal drama un­folds.38 Human ­rights ­abuses are de­nounced, but be­cause the vic­tims are prac­ti­cally anon­y­mous, they re­main ab­stract. Nor does Ga­beira pro­vide much in­for­ma­tion about in­di­vid­ual tor­men­tors as such.39 In fact, in de­scrib­ing his treat­ment at a mil­i­tary hos­pi­tal (he sus­tained a gun­shot wound while try­ing to flee po­lice cus­tody), Ga­beira ­presents his tor­tur­ers as al­most ­friends and even pro­tec­tors: “Every­one prom­ised in­tense tor­ture as soon as I got bet­ter and the tubes were re­moved. Over time, some po­lice­men be­came more in­ti­mate. They told their sto­ries, they were get­ting ready for Car­na­val. We had ­lively dis­cus­sions. There was even one who cau­ tioned me not to get bet­ter right away and to stay in bed as long as pos­sible.”40 Ga­beira like­wise ­closes his me­moir by paint­ing a hu­mor­ous scene of mak­ing small talk with his po­lice es­cort on the air­plane tak­ing him to exile in Al­ge­ria: “The po­lice­man sit­ting next to me said that he had a cou­sin who had com­mu­nist sym­pa­thies in Goiás. I an­swered that I had an uncle who had tu­ber­cu­lo­sis in Minas. He asked me where he could buy some­thing in Al­ge­ria. I told him to keep an eye out for the word souve­nir, s­ou-ve-nir.”41 By men­tion­ing the ­policeman’s fee­ble at­tempt to reach out to him—even while pok­ing fun at it—and his own will­ing­ness to share some ­friendly ad­vice with the “enemy,” Ga­beira ends his me­moir with a com­ical and, per­haps for some read­ers, heart­ warm­ing scene of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion ­between the guer­ril­las and the se­cur­ity ­forces—a scene that en­cap­su­lates what ­critic Joa­quim Alves de ­Aguiar ob­serves as the “cli­mate of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion [that] per­meates the en­tire book.”42 In this way, Com­pan­heiro man­ages to evoke mem­ory, but in a man­ner that is in no way threat­en­ing to the ­status quo of in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting (im­pu­nity for tor­tur­ers). What Com­pan­heiro mod­els for the ­reader is noth­ing short of rec­on­ cil­i­at­ ion by mem­ory. The con­cil­i­a­tory ­strain in ­Gabeira’s book is rel­e­vant in at­tempt­ing to as­sess the ­book’s sig­nif­i­cance and im­pact. It is tempt­ing to as­sume that Com­pan­heiro and works like it “meta­phor­i­cally ­served in lieu of of­fi­cial sanc­tions ­against

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tor­tur­ers . . . [and were] a form of jus­tice and com­pen­sa­tion for vic­tims of the re­pres­sive ­forces,” as ­claimed by Joan Das­sin, who ­helped trans­late Bra­sil: Nunca mais (Bra­zil: Never Again) into En­glish.43 Yet view­ing tes­ti­mo­nial nar­ra­tives ­through the lens of ju­rid­i­cal meta­phor is counter­pro­duc­tive to the so­cial jus­tice goals of the genre, tes­tim­o­nio theo­rist Kim­berly Nance cau­tions. “When the ­reader be­comes the lit­er­ary an­a­logue of judge or jury,” she ex­plains, “the model as­sumes that judg­ment in it­self, as op­posed to inter­ven­tion, will be suf­fi­cient as a ­reader re­sponse.”44 Adapt­ing ­Nance’s cri­tique to the Bra­zil­ian con­text, one could say that when the ­reader is po­si­tioned as judge or jury, the model im­plies that moral con­dem­na­tion can stand in for in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal con­dem­na­tion. In other words, Ga­beira and au­thors like him in­vite read­ers to sub­sti­tute the act of read­ing for mean­ing­ful so­cial ac­tion, such as de­mand­ing ­trials and truth com­mis­sions. Such a ten­dency is all the more trou­bling in the case of ­Gabeira’s book: since re­spon­sibil­ity is dif­fused, the con­dem­na­tion is mean­ing­less. A close read­ing of Com­pan­heiro con­firms that the book re­flects the po­lit­i­cal sen­sibil­ity prev­a­lent in Bra­zil­ian so­ci­ety at the time by seam­lessly com­bin­ing re­sis­tance and rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion. Schol­ars such as Dan­iel Aarão Reis Filho and Idel­ber Av­e­lar have made sim­i­lar ar­gu­ments.45 What such read­ings do not il­lu­mi­nate, how­ever, is how the me­moir also acted upon and ac­cel­er­ated the Zeit­geist. To do so re­quires step­ping back and ex­am­in­ing the circum­stances sur­round­ing the ­book’s pub­li­ca­tion in Sep­tem­ber 1979. Al­though sim­i­lar books had been pub­lished ear­lier, ­Gabeira’s me­moir of armed strug­gle was the first to come out after pas­sage of the Am­nesty Law.46 Com­pan­heiro stead­ily ­climbed the ­best-seller list, reach­ing the num­ber one spot ­within seven weeks of its ­launch and re­main­ing near the top for more than a year and a half.47 As ­critic Tânia Pel­le­grini ­points out, the ­book’s suc­cess is all the more im­pres­sive given the con­text in which it ­emerged: the late 1970s wit­nessed a slump in book pub­lish­ing and con­sump­tion as peo­ple grav­i­tated to­ward “other cul­tural prod­ucts that had until then been rig­or­ously con­trolled, such as cin­ema, music, the­a­ter, and es­pe­cially tele­vi­sion.”48 Yet Com­pan­heiro ­proved to be the ex­cep­tion by every met­ric of com­mer­cial suc­cess: in ad­di­tion to its stay­ing power on the ­best-seller list and ­Gabeira’s star­dom, the book re­ceived the pre­stig­ious Ja­buti Prize for the cat­eg­ ory of auto­biog­ra­phy and me­moir, was ­quickly trans­lated into ­French and Ger­man, and, ac­cord­ing to ru­mors cir­cu­lat­ing in 1980, would soon be ­adapted for the cin­ema—some­thing that only hap­pened many years later with Bruno ­Barreto’s 1997 film.49 Com­pan­heiro thus be­came “one of ­Brazil’s major pub­lish­ing phe­nom­ena,” as po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist João Ro­berto Mar­tins Fil­ho puts it.50 Yet that trans­for­ma­ tion did not just hap­pen on its own; ­rather it re­sulted from the ac­tions of

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spe­cific ­groups and ac­tors who lev­er­aged the ­book’s (and ­author’s) con­nec­tion to the Am­nesty Law and ­sought to make it mean­ing­ful. Key among these was Zi­raldo Alves Pinto, a ­shrewd and in­fluen­tial jour­nal­ist from the op­po­si­tion press. Zi­raldo was a co­founder of O Pas­quim, the im­mensely pop­u­lar Car­i­oca op­po­si­tion tab­loid known for its crit­i­cal and hu­mor­ous treat­ment of the mil­i­tary govern­ment. In 1978 Zi­raldo was walk­ing down the ­streets of Paris when he ­bumped into Ga­beira, who by then had been liv­ing in Eu­rope as an exile for a num­ber of years.51 From this ­chance en­coun­ter a star was born: Zi­raldo ar­ranged for an inter­view of Ga­beira, in which the ­ex-guerilla dis­cussed his tra­jec­tory from jour­nal­ist to mil­i­tant to exile, as well as tor­ture. The inter­view hit Bra­zil­ian news­stands in No­vem­ber of that year, bring­ing Ga­beira in­stant na­tional rec­og­ ni­tion and open­ing the flood­gates for a ­stream of media at­ten­tion. The inter­ view ­gained fur­ther ex­po­sure after the jour­nals Mov­i­mento and Em tempo ­praised it.52 Rid­ing the fame at­tained from that fate­ful inter­view, Ga­beira went on to pub­lish two other ­high-profile ­pieces in O Pas­quim, “Conversação sobre 1968” (Con­ver­sa­tion about 1968) and “Carta sobre a An­is­tia” (Let­ter on the Am­nesty), both of which were col­lected, along with the orig­i­nal inter­view, in a book re­leased by the ­newspaper’s pub­lisher Code­cri.53 Be­fore even set­ting foot in Bra­zil, Ga­beira was ­primed to be­come the face of the am­nesty. ­Ziraldo’s ef­forts to ­launch ­Gabeira’s star did not end in Paris. As the pub­lisher of the first edi­tion of Com­pan­heiro (which also came out under the Code­cri im­print), he wrote a mar­ket­ing blurb for the inner flap of the book that fed the myth al­ready sur­round­ing Ga­beira. Re­fer­ring to the fa­mous man­i­festo that the kid­nap­pers of El­brick sent the govern­ment and that was read aloud on TV and radio as part of their de­mands, Zi­raldo ­writes: “The ran­som note was so well writ­ten . . . that the jour­nal­ists who ­worked with Ga­beira—who had left his job as head of the re­search de­part­ment at the news­ paper to go under­ground—had no doubt: Ga­beira is in­volved in this. . . . And hav­ing been in­volved body and soul, he is the best one to tell about it.”54 Zi­raldo not only in­sin­u­ates that Ga­beira wrote the doc­u­ment—when in fact the real au­thor was Frank­lin Mar­tins—but he also over­states ­Gabeira’s role in the El­brick kid­nap­ping, pre­sent­ing him as “the best one to tell about” the event.55 Oth­ers in the media were quick to fol­low ­Ziraldo’s lead and run with ­Gabeira’s star­dom. The ef­fects of the Am­nesty Law, which ben­e­fited ­between ten and fif­teen thou­sand ex­iles and ­around sixty po­lit­ic­ al pris­on­ers, were al­ready vis­ible in the im­ages of joy­ful re­un­ions at air­ports as ­crowds ­greeted re­turn­ing ex­iles as well as in inter­views with an­istia­dos (am­nesty ben­e­fi­ci­ar­ies) that dom­i­nated news­papers, mag­a­zines, and tele­vi­sion news pro­grams for weeks and even ­months.56 The ­ex-guerrilla and his book ­caught and mag­nified

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pub­lic cu­ri­os­ity about the re­turn­ing ex­iles and their side of the story about the armed strug­gle. Much of the media cover­age of the aber­tura was heav­ily in­vested in pro­mot­ing a na­tional nar­ra­tive of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, as his­to­rian De­nise Rol­lem­ berg notes: “The re­ports on re­turn­ing ex­iles be­came fre­quent, most try­ing to ­create con­cil­i­at­ ory ver­sions that priv­i­leged heart­warm­ing, plea­sur­able ac­counts and hu­mor­ous anec­dotes [re­la­tos ­folclóricos, pit­o­res­cos, os casos di­ver­ti­dos].”57 An epi­sode that could be ­called the “tanga af­fair” is one of the more ex­treme ex­am­ples of how the media fo­cused on cer­tain as­pects of the ­ex-guerrilla and not oth­ers, shift­ing at­ten­tion away from ques­tions of human ­rights ­crimes to more tit­il­lat­ing con­sid­er­a­tions about his ­choice of beach­wear and ru­mors about his sex­u­al­ity—a shift that Ga­beira him­self seems to have en­cour­aged. ­Around the time his book ­reached the top of the ­best-seller list, Ga­beira was photo­graphed on Ipan­ema Beach clad in noth­ing but a pur­ple tanga (a ­skimpy men’s swim­suit bot­tom). The epi­sode, along with an inter­view Ga­beira gave to a news­paper pro­mot­ing gay and les­bian is­sues at ­around the same time, ­fueled ru­mors about his own sup­posed homo­sex­u­al­ity. It was, ­writes fel­low guer­rilla Al­fredo Sir­kis, “the meg­a­scan­dal of the am­nesty: the he­roic guer­rilla ­fighter ­turned gay and went ­around in a pink [sic] tanga.”58 Sir­kis notes that al­though Zi­raldo was upset about the po­ten­tial im­pact to ­Gabeira’s pub­lic image, the ­ex-guerrilla him­self took it all in ­stride, nei­ther con­firm­ing nor de­ny­ing the ru­mors about his sex­u­al­ity. In­deed, the epi­sode ap­pears to have en­deared him to the pub­lic, which saw the tanga af­fair as an in­spir­ing ges­ture of lib­er­at­ ion. As Idel­ber Av­e­lar ­states, “There are many rea­sons for [the ­book’s] ­best-seller ­status, and one of the most cel­e­brated is the ­author’s ­marked em­brace of . . . des­bunde, the aban­don­ing of tra­di­tional left­ist pol­i­tics, ­rooted in the con­cept of class, in favor of a new inter­est in the body, rec­re­a­tional drugs, and an em­pha­sis on the po­lit­i­cal po­ten­tial of cul­ture.”59 As Sir­kis puts it, if the au­thor of Com­pan­heiro be­came a “tal­is­man for myth­mak­ing, over­sim­plifi­ca­tion, and sto­ry­tell­ing on the part of cer­tain sec­tors of the media” at the time, he did so on his own terms, even cul­ti­vat­ing the at­ten­tion with his “gift for prov­o­ca­tion.”60 ­Gabeira’s prov­o­ca­tions were part of a pat­tern in which, as Av­e­lar ex­plains, Ga­beira pre­sented him­self as re­turn­ ing to Bra­zil with big “new” ideas about nu­mer­ous is­sues—rang­ing from life­ style, gen­der, and race re­la­tions to the en­vi­ron­ment—and, in doing so, dis­tanced him­self from what he de­picted as the old, “out­dated,” and op­pres­sive left of the 1960s and early 1970s.61 It mat­tered lit­tle that many of the ideas he ­claimed to have b­ rought back with him from exile had al­ready been in cir­cu­la­tion in Bra­zil for years. In the pro­cess of re­cast­ing him­self, Ga­beira was able to ­launch a new ca­reer as a ­writer and pol­i­ti­cian whose rés­umé would even­tu­ally in­clude

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help­ing found the Green Party (Par­tido Verde) in 1986 and sev­eral con­sec­u­tive re­elec­tions to the Bra­zil­ian Cham­ber of Dep­u­ties on var­i­ous party tick­ets. Ga­beira, like many of his con­tem­po­rar­ies who de­manded the pun­ish­ment of mil­i­tary and po­lice tor­tur­ers at the ­height of the na­tional am­nesty move­ ment, ­drifted away from the cause after the govern­ment im­posed its re­stricted and ­so-called re­cip­ro­cal Am­nesty Law. In Oc­to­ber 1978, when he gave his fate­ful inter­view to O Pas­quim, the ­ex-guerrilla ­echoed the na­tional move­ment at the time in call­ing for pun­ish­ment of all those im­pli­cated in the prac­tice of tor­ture, ­whether di­rectly or in­di­rectly, stat­ing un­equiv­ocally: “All those re­spon­sible [for tor­ture] ­should be pun­ished. [Be­cause] when you see tor­ture as a ­system, or­ga­nized to max­imize ef­fi­ciency, you see that it has pen­e­trated the so­cial fab­ric more ­deeply than you would im­a­gine if you saw it only in terms of ‘excesses’ or ‘ex­cep­tions.’”62 He elab­orated on this po­si­tion one month later in “Carta sobre a An­is­tia,” de­clar­ing, “We can­not guar­an­tee am­nesty to any­one [in the state se­cur­ity ­forces]. What we can do is make sure that tor­tur­ers have a right to the kind of legal de­fense that we [po­lit­ic­ al pris­on­ers] never had, that legal pro­ce­dure is fol­lowed, which did not exist in our case.”63 This state­ ment is re­mark­able for its an­tic­i­pa­tion of what would be­come the glo­bal norm of human ­rights ­trials. In­deed, Ga­beira spe­cif­i­cally calls for human ­rights ­trials ­rather than po­lit­i­cal ­trials, which dif­fer in that the for­mer rec­og­nizes the ­defendant’s right to due pro­cess.64 The po­si­tion Ga­beira out­lines in the inter­view and let­ter pub­lished in O Pas­quim ­stands in stark ­contrast with the treat­ment of tor­tur­ers in Com­pan­heiro less than a year later, in which re­spon­sibil­ity is dif­fused and se­cur­ity ­agents are por­trayed as ami­able. For the most part, his me­moir reads like an ex­panded ver­sion of the Oc­to­ber 1978 inter­view, ex­cept for its si­lence on pun­ish­ing tor­tur­ers (an issue that con­sti­tutes a major theme in the inter­view). It seems that Ga­beira, like many oth­ers, had mod­er­ated his ­stance on human ­rights ­trials in the wake of the Am­nesty Law. In 2013, when asked about the pos­sibil­ity of bring­ing state tor­tur­ers to jus­tice once the Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion com­pleted its work, Ga­beira not only pre­dicted human ­rights ­trials would never take place in Bra­zil but also de­clared his own op­po­si­tion to pun­ish­ment, stat­ing, “We live under the sign of the Am­nesty Law. When it was prom­ul­ gated, it am­nes­tied both sides. And in my case, I was happy about it. To ­change ­things now, after so many years, ­doesn’t seem right to me.”65 ­Gabeira’s re­ver­sal of po­si­tion, from de­mand­ing pun­ish­ment in 1978 to de­fend­ing im­ pu­nity in 2013, is ­hardly ­unique, re­veal­ing just how com­plex the ques­tion of am­nesty is in Bra­zil, where even some for­mer tor­ture vic­tims de­fend the 1979 law.66

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Al­fredo Sir­k is and Rec­o n­c il­ia ­ ­t ion by Mem­o ry Al­fredo ­Sirkis’s guer­rilla ac­count, Os ­carbonários, is writ­ten in much the same mold as Com­pan­heiro.67 It too be­came a best ­seller and was ­awarded the pre­stig­ious Ja­buti Prize. Like Ga­beira, Sir­kis tells the story of his pro­gres­sive in­volve­ment in rad­i­cal pol­i­tics dur­ing the late 1960s and early 1970s. He be­came a mil­i­tant at an ear­lier age than Ga­beira, get­ting ac­tive as a high ­school stu­dent and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the surge of pro­tests ­against the govern­ment that cul­mi­nated in the March of the Hun­dred Thou­sand in June 1968. With the dec­lar­a­tion of the Fifth In­sti­tu­tional Act (Ato In­sti­tu­cional ­Número Cinco, AI-5), the teen­age Sir­kis ­adopted the code name Fe­lipe and ­joined an­other ­Rio-based armed group, the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Pop­u­lar Van­guard (Van­guarda Pop­u­lar ­Revolucionária). Sir­kis re­counts in par­tic­u­lar how the El­brick kid­nap­ping in­spired his own rev­o­lu­tion­ary fer­vor, ­thereby fur­ther fuel­ing the my­thol­ogy that sur­rounds the epi­sode, a myth ­created ­partly by ­Gabeira’s ac­count. Os ­carbonários also ­shares in com­mon with Com­pan­heiro its ­behind-the-scenes nar­ra­tive of rev­o­lu­tion­ary op­er­a­tions, in this case the kid­nap­pings of the am­bas­sa­dors of Swit­zer­land and Ger­many (the lat­ter of which se­cured ­Gabeira’s re­lease from ­prison in 1970). Un­like Ga­beira, how­ ever, Sir­kis man­aged to evade po­lit­i­cal im­pris­on­ment and tor­ture: the story ends in 1971 as Fe­lipe, sens­ing the im­mi­nent de­mise of the armed strug­gle, flees the coun­try ­shortly be­fore many of his com­rades are im­pris­oned, tor­tured, and in some cases ­killed. Sir­kis ­brought dif­fer­ent qual­ifi­ca­tions to the writ­ing of his “me­moir of a lost strug­gle” (as he sub­ti­tled his book): un­like Ga­beira, who had been a pe­riph­eral mem­ber of a rev­o­lu­tion­ary or­gan­iza­tion, Sir­kis had ­played a more cen­tral role in his or­gan­iza­tion. Still, his ex­pe­ri­ence was in a cer­tain sense ex­cep­tional since, as he puts it, he “had the t­ riple luck of sur­ viv­ing, of never hav­ing been cap­tured and tor­tured, and of hav­ing never ­killed any­one.”68 ­Whereas Ga­beira ­crafts an ac­count that is con­cil­i­a­tory even as it em­pha­ sizes mem­ory as a form of re­sis­tance, Sir­kis cel­e­brates mem­ory as a ve­hi­cle of rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion much more ex­pli­citly in his book. The pref­ace Sir­kis in­cludes in the first edi­tion of Os ­carbonários, dated April 1980, is a ver­i­ta­ble man­i­festo of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory. The na­tional mood was al­ready well es­tab­lished by the time Sir­kis was put­ting the fin­ish­ing ­touches on his me­moir. So too was the ­future-oriented mo­men­tum of the newly emerg­ing po­lit­ic­ al cur­rents—and in­deed, he ­writes with ad­mi­ra­tion of the var­i­ous ­groups, men­tion­ing sev­eral by name: work­ers, neigh­bor­hood as­so­ci­a­tions, fem­i­nists, black pride ­groups,

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and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists. It there­fore makes sense that his book would have been even more in sync with the op­ti­mis­tic mood of the mo­ment than that of his pre­de­ces­sor Ga­beira. In his pref­ace, Sir­kis de­fends the need for mem­ory: “I be­lieve it’s im­por­tant to re­cu­per­ate these mem­o­ries and trans­mit them, es­pe­cially to the new gen­er­a­ tion com­ing of age in the 1980s.” Yet he also ­presents him­self as some­one who has re­turned to Bra­zil “with­out ha­tred or fear,” who plans to re­join so­ci­ety peace­fully by get­ting a job and a place to live. He sees him­self as “just a sto­ry­ teller,” al­most a neu­tral party.69 While Sir­kis does frame his pref­ace ­within the con­text of the Am­nesty Law, his ref­er­ences are in­var­i­ably pos­i­tive. In the open­ing par­a­graphs, am­nesty is ­equated with tri­um­phant re­turn. The text be­gins with a de­scrip­tion of his joy­ous re­pa­tri­a­tion as an am­nes­tied exile: em­brac­ing his fam­ily upon ar­ri­val at Rio’s ­Galeão Inter­na­tional Air­port on a sunny day and re­unit­ing with com­rades re­cov­ered from their trib­u­la­tions in Bra­zil­ian pris­ons. To­ward the end of the pref­ace, am­nesty be­comes syn­on­y­ mous with pop­u­lar strug­gle, part of a po­lit­i­cal open­ing ­achieved by “mil­lions of wills, ­voices, and empty [weap­on­less] hands.”70 In this sense, Sir­kis ­treats re­sis­tance as con­sis­tent with rec­on­cil­i­a­tion much as Ga­beira does. Tor­ture is much less prom­i­nent a theme in Os ­carbonários than in Com­pan­heiro. A close look at the pref­ace of the for­mer re­veals that ­Sirkis’s def­i­ni­tion of mem­ory is lim­ited to his own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence and does not ex­tend to human ­rights ­crimes, which he nei­ther en­dured nor wit­nessed first­ hand. At one point he does de­nounce tor­ture as a prac­tice, but ­spares those who prac­ticed it from cen­sure. In­deed, al­though the mem­oir­ist re­proaches the mil­i­tary govern­ment, his few cri­tiques are all ­oriented to the ­present, de­nounc­ ing cor­rup­tion, ­street vi­o­lence, in­equal­ity, and the ­foreign debt. As Sir­kis sees it, the guer­ril­las are in no po­si­tion to judge state per­pe­tra­tors be­cause, he ­claims, the guer­ril­las would have ­treated their en­e­mies the same had they pre­vailed. Of ­course, the his­tor­i­cal re­al­ity is that only the mil­i­tary re­gime, not the guer­ ril­las, ­adopted a pol­icy of system­at­ic­ ally tor­tur­ing its en­e­mies. Such wad­ing into hypo­thet­i­cals ­serves to side­step the ques­tion of in­di­vid­ual re­spon­sibil­ity. It also al­lows Sir­kis to con­sider the dead and dis­ap­peared not as vic­tims of human ­rights vi­o­la­tions but ­rather as ­tragic cas­u­al­ties of an armed strug­gle waged in error. If in his 1980 pref­ace Sir­kis re­af­firms and cel­e­brates the ap­proach of rec­on­ cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory, in a new pref­ace writ­ten for the 1998 edi­tion he re­veals just how close that ap­proach is to the of­fic­ ial pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion by in­sti­tu­ tion­al­ized for­get­ting. The new pref­ace re­prises ­Sirkis’s in­sis­tence on the need for mem­ory, yet with a sub­tle dif­fer­ence: the em­pha­sis now falls even more heav­ily

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on rec­on­cil­i­a­tion than on mem­ory. On the one hand, Sir­kis sum­marizes his ob­jec­tives in writ­ing the book in terms of the never again mes­sage that has be­come the slo­gan of human ­rights strug­gles ­around the world, de­clar­ing, “Tor­ture never again, dic­tat­or­ship never again, but also armed strug­gle never again.”71 On the other, he gives sev­eral ex­am­ples of how he has opted for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in his own per­sonal en­coun­ters with for­mer mem­bers of the re­gime ­through his work as a pub­lic of­fi­cial and pol­i­ti­cian. For in­stance, de­scrib­ing a tense inter­ac­tion with a for­mer re­gime of­fic­ ial in the dem­o­cratic order, he ­writes, “We both care­fully ­avoided any men­tion of the anos de ­chumbo [1968–74, the “leaden” years of harsh­est re­pres­sion]. . . . If we ­started down that path, we’d im­me­di­ately have to jump into our old re­spec­tive ­trenches. And who would gain any­thing from that?”72 Sir­kis later im­plies that mem­ory has no place in pol­i­tics. Speak­ing as a pol­i­ti­cian for the Green Party that he ­helped found and as mu­nic­i­pal sec­re­tary of the en­vi­ron­ment for Rio de Ja­neiro, he re­marks: “Per­son­ally, I get a lit­tle tired of talk­ing about ‘that pe­riod.’ . . . It’s cer­tainly not the topic I’m inter­ested in dis­cuss­ing—not by a long shot. I’d a thou­sand times ­rather talk about the en­vi­ron­ment, for ex­am­ple.”73 Not only is the sub­ject con­ten­tious, he im­plies; it is passé. Most im­por­tant, ­whereas in his 1980 pref­ace Sir­kis ­avoids the ques­tion of im­pu­nity and re­stricts his com­ments on the Am­nesty Law to high­light­ing its pos­i­tive as­pects, in the 1998 pref­ace he ex­pli­citly de­fends the im­pu­nity of state se­cur­ity ­agents: “[The Am­nesty Law] was un­just . . . but ­turned out to be wise. In his­tory, that kind of thing hap­pens.”74 This po­si­tion leads him to at­tack those who de­mand mem­ory and jus­tice. While in­sist­ing that tor­ture must be re­mem­bered so as not to be re­peated, he ac­cuses those who make this de­mand part of their ac­ti­vism of hav­ing a “fix­a­tion” with im­pugn­ing the mil­i­tary as an in­sti­tu­tion.75 He em­pha­sizes the need to cul­ti­vate a new re­la­tion­ship with the armed ­forces (many of whose mem­bers, as he cor­rectly ­points out, have no con­nec­tion to the re­pres­sion) for the bet­ter­ment of Bra­zil. In sum, while in 1980 Sir­kis—then a re­cently re­turned exile and po­lit­i­cal nov­ice—ad­vo­cated the need to re­mem­ber and rec­on­cile, in 1998 it is a dif­fer­ ent Sir­kis—now a sea­soned mem­ber of the po­lit­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment, hav­ing held var­i­ous ­elected and ap­pointed of­fices in local and fed­eral govern­ment— who seems to imply that the work of mem­ory and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion has been com­pleted.76 For all its in­sis­tence on the need to re­mem­ber the vi­o­lence that took place under the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship, Os ­carbonários does lit­tle to chal­ lenge in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting; in fact, it de­fends the state pol­icy. Given the con­cil­i­at­ ory na­ture of ­Gabeira’s and ­Sirkis’s ac­counts, it makes sense that they would both be­come ­linked with the Am­nesty Law and move ­through a cycle of mem­ory.

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Re­n ato T ­ apajós and Human ­R ights Mem­o ry Re­nato ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta was pub­lished in the late 1970s and also tells the story of the armed strug­gle from the point of view of a sur­vi­vor, but it did not link with the Am­nesty Law to move ­through a cycle of cul­tural mem­ory. The rea­sons why a link­age ­failed to occur are ­partly re­lated to circum­stances. For one thing, ­Tapajós’s book was pub­lished two years be­fore the sanc­tion­ing of the law—only to be ­banned ­shortly after pub­li­ca­tion—and had ­largely faded from pub­lic mem­ory at ­around the time Com­pan­heiro be­came a na­tional phe­nom­e­non.77 For an­other, the au­thor was not among the ben­e­fi­ ci­ar­ies of the law, hav­ing al­ready been re­leased from ­prison five years be­fore the law was ­signed. Add­ing in the fact that Em ­câmara lenta was ex­pli­citly mar­keted as a novel—the word ro­mance was em­bla­zoned on the cover—it makes sense that the book never came to be as­so­ciated with the Am­nesty Law or the tes­ti­mo­nial boom in the pop­u­lar imag­in ­ a­tion. Yet jux­ta­pos­ing Em ­câmara lenta with the two books just dis­cussed sug­gests that there is an­other, even more im­por­tant rea­son why no im­a­gined link­age oc­curred: ­Tapajós’s book ­raised ques­tions about the very mem­o­ries on which rec­on­cil­i­a­tion would come to be based, ones that few were will­ing to con­tem­plate at the time. ­Whereas Ga­beira and Sir­kis pub­lished ac­counts that both re­flected and in­ten­sified the na­tional mood, ­Tapajós’s book rep­re­sented what would be­come a dis­si­dent view­point dur­ing the po­lit­i­cal open­ing and was con­fron­ta­tional in both con­tent and tone. When Em ­câmara lenta was first pub­lished in 1977, it did pro­voke a sig­nif­i­cant re­ac­tion from both the mil­i­tary re­gime, which moved to per­se­cute the au­thor and ban the work, and sec­tors of civil so­ci­ety, which pro­tested the ­government’s dra­co­nian ac­tions in var­i­ous ways. As we will see, the book made a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact, help­ing clear the way for sub­se­quent mil­i­tant tes­ti­mo­nies even as it had lit­tle stay­ing power it­self, at least over the me­dium term of the 1980s and 1990s. Al­though Em ­câmara lenta never be­came ­linked with the Am­nesty Law or moved ­through a cycle of cul­tural mem­ory, the dras­tic shift in its re­cep­tion, from draw­ing na­tional at­ten­tion upon its pub­li­ca­tion in 1977 to be­com­ing ­largely for­got­ten by the end of the tes­ti­mo­nial boom in the mid-1980s, re­veals much about mem­ory de­bates and the so­ci­etal mood dur­ing the po­lit­ic­ al open­ing. For al­though ­Tapajós con­tem­plates sen­si­tive top­ics re­lated to human ­rights ­crimes that Ga­beira and Sir­kis avoid, it was the works pub­lished by the lat­ter that would help shape the con­tem­po­rary under­stand­ing of re­sis­tance, not Em ­câmara lenta. ­Tapajós’s book was the first sig­nif­i­cant pub­lished nar­ra­tive by a for­mer guer­rilla to nar­rate the ex­pe­ri­ence of the armed strug­gle in Bra­zil, pre­dat­ing

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­ abeira’s Com­pan­heiro by two years. As far as back­ground is con­cerned, G ­Tapajós had fol­lowed a typ­i­cal tra­jec­tory for young ac­ti­vists who came of age in the 1960s. Fol­low­ing the coup, he be­came ac­tive in the stu­dent move­ment in São Paulo, even­tu­ally join­ing the Ala Ver­melha (Red Wing), a ­Maoist mil­i­ tant group that at­tracted sev­eral other young art­ists and in­tel­lec­tu­als (Tapajós him­self was a film­maker).78 He was ar­rested in 1969 and spent the fol­low­ing five years in po­lit­i­cal and mil­i­tary fa­cil­ities, where he en­dured re­peated tor­ture until his re­lease in 1974. ­Tapajós ­shared many ex­pe­ri­ences in com­mon with Ga­beira and Sir­kis; how­ever, he de­picts them very dif­fer­ently, and Em ­câmara lenta shows no trace of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory. Al­though sub­ti­tled a novel, Em ­câmara lenta was in­spired by a real event: the 1972 mur­der by tor­ture of a young fe­male mil­it­ ant named Au­rora (Lola) Nas­ci­mento Fur­tado in Rio de Ja­neiro. The trag­edy, which oc­curred while the au­thor was in­car­cer­ated, ­struck him ­deeply: Fur­tado was some­one that ­Tapajós knew well and ad­mired, each hav­ing fol­lowed sim­i­lar paths from stu­dent ac­ti­v­ ism to armed strug­gle. Add­ing to the blow was his cer­tainty that the re­gime had cov­ered up the real circum­stances of her death: the se­cur­ity ­forces re­leased a pub­lic state­ment an­nounc­ing that the young woman had been ­caught in the cross fire dur­ing a ­shoot-out ­between po­lice and mil­i­tants, and they sub­se­ quently re­turned ­Furtado’s body to her fam­ily in a ­sealed cof­fin with or­ders that it not be ­opened. ­Tapajós im­me­di­ately in­tuited that his ­friend had died in the tor­ture cham­ber.79 His worst fears were even­tu­ally con­firmed when he ­learned that she had died in what he would de­scribe many years later as “the most ter­rible death under tor­ture: she was ­killed by the ‘Christ’s crown,’” that is, a metal vice fit­ted on the skull with ­screws that could be pro­gres­sively tight­ened.80 As a fic­tion­al­ized ren­der­ing of ­Furtado’s life and death set ­against a ­larger re­flec­tion on the pain­ful­ness of evok­ing the mem­ory of the armed strug­gle, Em ­câmara lenta dif­fers ­greatly from the works of Ga­beira and Sir­kis, which are auto­bio­graph­i­cal nar­ra­tives that take the mean­ing of the armed strug­gle to be a given and touch on human ­rights vi­o­la­tions only as they re­late to the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ences re­told. ­Whereas Ga­beira and Sir­kis write as sur­vi­vors re­in­vent­ing them­selves to par­tic­i­pate in na­tional po­lit­i­cal life, ­Tapajós ­writes as a sur­vi­vor in mourn­ing, in­tent on par­tic­u­lar­iz­ing loss.81 In Em ­câmara lenta, he trans­forms his grief into a story about an un­named hero with clear auto­bio­graph­i­cal ­traits: just as the ­real-life au­thor had done, the fic­tional char­ac­ter moves to São Paulo be­fore the coup to study at the Uni­ver­sity of São Paulo, be­comes a stu­dent ac­ti­vist, and even­tu­ally joins an un­spec­ified armed rev­o­lu­tion­ary or­gan­iza­tion. The plot re­volves ­around the ­protagonist’s ­search for the truth about the fate of a fe­male mil­i­tant dear to him, in­spired by Fur­tado but re­ferred to only as ela, or

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“she.” ­Within this fic­tional frame, ­Tapajós im­a­gines the tor­ture and death of his ­real-life ­friend in the final pages of the book. Few ges­tures could be fur­ther from rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion than in­vok­ing ­Furtado’s death. The case was cer­tainly pro­voc­a­tive to the re­gime. On the one hand, the cli­max of the novel re­volves ­around a de­tailed de­scrip­tion not just of tor­ture— the ex­is­tence of which the mil­i­tary govern­ment con­tin­ued to deny at the time of the ­book’s pub­li­ca­tion—but of a par­tic­u­larly hor­rific ­method, the ­Christ’s crown. On the other, Fur­tado had ac­tively par­tic­i­pated in armed rev­o­lu­tion­ary op­er­at­ ions, some of which re­sulted in vi­o­lence and se­cur­ity force cas­u­al­ties, as a mil­i­tant in the Na­tional Lib­er­a­tion Al­li­ance. In other words, Em ­câmara lenta ­paints a sym­pa­thetic por­trait of a young woman who epit­o­mized the ­regime’s def­i­ni­tion of a ter­ror­ist. The fic­tional por­trayal of a left­ist mil­i­tant who en­gages in vi­o­lence was also po­ten­tially dis­turb­ing to the lib­eral op­po­si­tion, in­clud­ing other for­mer mil­i­tants and those in­vested in re­mem­ber­ing the armed strug­gle as part of the dem­o­cratic re­sis­tance. ­Tapajós re­fuses to sof­ten the image of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary armed strug­gle, break­ing the taboo on dis­cuss­ing the sub­ject of ­left-wing vi­o­lence, es­pe­cially of­fen­sive vi­o­lence. Ela, for in­stance, ­shoots a po­lice­man in the face, al­though her ac­tions can be con­strued as an act of ­self-defense since she does so in an ef­fort to elude cap­ture and cer­tain tor­ture. In other cases, how­ever, there is no moral de­fense, such as when a group of guer­ril­las with plans to bring the armed strug­gle into the inter­ior per­form a sum­mary ex­e­cu­tion ( justiçamento) of the man pi­lot­ing their boat.82 In this in­stance, the de­pic­tion of the mil­it­ ant ex­e­cu­tion­ers is de­cid­edly crit­ic­ al, em­pha­siz­ing their lack of moral scru­ples and human de­cency. In­deed, the om­ni­scient nar­ra­tor ob­serves that as the guer­ril­las make their way ­through the for­est af­ter­ward, they “hardly re­mem­bered the boat and the dead pilot: ex­e­cuted be­cause he ­wanted to ­desert.”83 By por­tray­ing forms of of­fen­sive vi­o­lence, Em ­câmara lenta shows that the armed strug­gle was not sim­ply a de­fen­sive move­ment. ­Tapajós re­fuses to con­flate armed strug­gle and dem­o­cratic re­sis­tance, as Ga­beira does by fo­cus­ing on the El­brick kid­nap­ping, which was ar­gu­ably de­fen­sive in that the ­kidnappers’ pri­mary ob­jec­tive was to free their im­pris­oned com­rades. Most pro­voc­a­tive of all is the ­novel’s end­ing, which fea­tures the most shock­ing (yet en­tirely fic­tional) in­stance of ­left-wing vi­o­lence in the en­tire book: hav­ing ­learned of how ela died and be­come over­come with grief and de­spair, the pro­tag­o­nist in­ten­tion­ally walks into a po­lice am­bush, gun­ning down sev­eral state se­cur­ity ­agents in an at­tempt to ­avenge ela’s death be­fore being ­killed him­self. The story ends ­abruptly with what is in ef­fect a sui­cide. In this sense as well, Em ­câmara lenta is un­like Com­pan­heiro, which ends by nar­rat­ing ­Gabeira’s re­birth ­through his re­lease from ­prison into exile, an

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epi­sode that ­neatly par­alleled his sub­se­quent re­birth as re­turn­ing exile nine years later, a pro­cess of trans­for­ma­tion re­al­ized ­through the ­book’s in­stant suc­cess. Yet while ­Gabeira’s re­birth is made pos­sible in part by a will­ing­ness to forgo bear­ing mean­ing­ful wit­ness to those who per­ished under the dic­tat­or­ ship, it is the sym­bolic death of the hero in Em ­câmara lenta—a hero who is the ­author’s alter ego—that ­created the con­di­tions nec­es­sary for ­Tapajós to bear wit­ness to the ac­tual ­deaths of Fur­tado and oth­ers. Al­though the final sen­tence of Em c­ âmara lenta de­picts the ­hero’s death, it is not the end of the story, so to speak. While the fic­tional hero (or anti­hero) is a ­failed wit­ness, ­Tapajós is a suc­cess­ful one ­through the inter­po­la­tion of an auto­bio­graph­i­cal essay into the fic­tional nar­ra­tive. In it, the au­thor ar­tic­u­lates the same mo­ti­ vat­ing de­sire as his hero: to honor the “in­gen­uo­ us gen­e­ros­ity of those who gave every­thing, in­clud­ing their lives, in their at­tempt to ­change the world.”84 By creat­ing two main char­ac­ters who come to rep­re­sent all those ­killed by the mil­it­ ary re­gime and by em­bed­ding his own tes­ti­mony into the fic­tional nar­ra­ tive, ­Tapajós as­sumes both the role of the sur­vi­vor who bears wit­ness and the kind of col­lec­tive sub­jec­tiv­ity com­monly as­so­ciated with Latin ­American tes­tim­on ­ io. ­Whereas the hero ­chooses vi­o­lent re­venge as a sub­sti­tute for legal jus­tice, ­Tapajós pro­poses some­thing else ­through his ges­ture of em­bed­ding his tes­ti­ mony into the novel: re­sis­tance and ­truth-telling about a dic­tat­or­ship still in power. Yet this is only the first step. The ­hero’s death can also be read as a de­vice to raise ques­tions that, as it would turn out, would never be­come a mean­ing­ful part of pub­lic de­bate after 1979: given that the truth of the human ­rights ­crimes would in­ev­i­ta­bly come out (as in fact hap­pened with the 1985 pub­li­ca­ tion of Bra­sil: Nunca mais), how would Bra­zil­ians cope with that truth and how would they re­store dig­nity to the vic­tims? In Em ­câmara lenta the hero takes jus­tice into his own hands by know­ingly walk­ing into the po­lice am­ bush and shoot­ing his en­e­mies. By por­tray­ing this de­ci­sion as a point­less act of ni­hi­lism, ­Tapajós im­pli­citly asks: What kind of jus­tice is pos­sible? What al­ter­ na­tives exist for bring­ing jus­tice and res­ti­tu­tion to the dead? Em ­câmara lenta pro­vides no def­i­nite an­swers, but un­like in ­Sirkis’s Os ­carbonários there is no at­tempt to rule out the pos­sibil­ity of pun­ish­ment. Em ­câmara lenta was pro­voc­a­tive in an­other sense as well, in that it re­veals the ex­is­tence of two sep­ar­ate re­al­ities dur­ing the anos de ­chumbo: that of the ma­jor­ity of Bra­zil­ians, liv­ing the eu­phoria of the eco­nomic mir­ac­ le and ­Brazil’s 1970 World Cup vic­tory and sup­por­tive of the pop­u­lar Pres­i­dent Méd­ici, and that of the mil­i­tants, whose an­ni­hi­la­tion is oc­cur­ring prac­ti­cally un­no­ticed. The hero muses that “the econ­omy is grow­ing, ­that’s what all the news­papers

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say, and in the ­street we keep see­ing the same blank faces.”85 The au­thor in­vokes un­com­fort­able mem­o­ries of a pas­sive, ap­a­thetic civil so­ci­ety at odds with the ac­tive, im­pas­sioned one emerg­ing at the time of his ­book’s pub­li­ca­tion.86 ­Tapajós’s ­choice of fic­tion as his me­dium has mean­ing that ex­tends be­yond an at­tempt to evade the cen­sors in that it ­points to the feel­ing of un­re­al­ity in a so­ci­ety that is un­able or un­will­ing to con­front the re­al­ity of vi­o­lent re­pres­sion. The hero feels ­trapped ­between two re­al­ities: “Watch­ing peo­ple as they pass by on the ­street: they all walk nor­mally. Isn’t there a war going on? No, there isn’t. . . . If I ­scream right here right now will any­one pay at­ten­tion? No. They have no idea.”87 Those re­moved from the con­flict—those who are on­look­ers or by­stand­ers—dis­play a fail­ure to im­a­gine: “They have no idea.” The in­ ca­pac­ity to ­fathom what is going on, he ob­serves, is the re­sult of the “res­ig­na­ tion, ap­at­ hy, and fear” that per­vade and de­mo­bil­ize the pop­u­la­tion, mak­ing it pos­sible for the ­state-sponsored vi­o­lence to con­tinue.88 In many ways, the ­willed ig­nor­ance, the “hav[ing ] no idea,” per­sisted well into the po­lit­i­cal open­ing, at which point its most sin­is­ter con­se­quence ­ceased to be tacit ac­ cep­tance (of what was going on) and ­evolved into tacit de­nial (of what had hap­pened). The in­abil­ity to im­a­gine—hav­ing no idea—both re­sults from and re­in­forces the an­o­nym­ity of the vic­tims, which, along with the ­regime’s cam­paign of mis­in­for­ma­tion and sup­pres­sion of in­for­ma­tion, per­mits the ab­strac­tion of their ­deaths. The ma­jor­ity of armed mil­i­tants were anon­y­mous and their fates un­known to most Bra­zil­ians. While some lead­ers be­came house­hold names, such as Car­los Mar­i­ghella and Car­los La­marca, even they were more my­thol­o­ gized than known or under­stood. Em ­câmara lenta is thus about the need to over­come the an­o­nym­ity of the dead, to de­fine them not just in terms of their death (and de­feat) but also in terms of their lives (and gen­e­ros­ity). As the nar­ra­tor puts it: “Who were they, what did they be­lieve in, what did they wish for, why? Did they mean some­thing or did they mean noth­ing?”89 By tak­ing the mil­i­tants as fic­tional he­roes in the novel, ­Tapajós ­creates the con­di­tions for im­a­gin­ing their lives and ­deaths, for sub­sti­tut­ing em­pa­thy for ap­a­thy, and for rec­og­niz­ing the role of the rest of so­ci­ety—nei­ther per­pe­tra­tors nor vic­tims, but on­look­ers—in the ­state-sponsored vi­o­lence. To coun­ter the an­o­nym­ity of mil­i­tants and the ab­strac­tion of their ­deaths to reg­u­lar Bra­zil­ians, ­Tapajós ­adopts the strat­egy of giv­ing re­gime atroc­ities like tor­ture a human face, if not a name, by tell­ing the story of Au­rora ­Furtado’s life and mur­der. The very fact that he gives her the name ela can be seen as both de­per­son­al­iz­ing (she could be any­body) and hu­man­iz­ing (any of the vic­tims could be her), a stark ­contrast with Ga­beira, who men­tions real peo­ple by name but ends up trans­form­ing them into a face­less mass. Re­flect­ing on

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the sig­nif­i­cance of ela’s death, the hero notes that it “rips away the im­per­sonal veil that hides all the [other ­deaths].”90 The novel per­forms the same func­tion for the ­reader. As the hero notes, ren­der­ing the ­deaths con­crete “un­ex­pect­edly shows us that all the ­deaths be­long to us, are close to us.”91 As Sho­shana Fel­man puts it in her study of the ­trauma of the Hol­o­caust in the fic­tion of Al­bert Camus, “The lit­er­a­ture of tes­ti­mony puts into ef­fect, puts into ac­tion a ques­tion of be­long­ing. To whom do the dead be­long? And con­se­quently, on whose side must the liv­ing (the sur­viv­ing) be?”92 If, two years after the pub­li­ca­tion of Em ­câmara lenta, the Am­nesty Law would bring ex­iles and pris­on­ers back into the na­tional fold, the same could not be said of the dead and dis­ap­peared, who still did not seem to be­long to Bra­zil­ian so­ci­ety. Un­like in Ar­gen­tina, where the armed rev­o­lu­tion­ary ­groups had been deci­mated be­fore the mil­i­tary took power and the vast ma­jor­ity of the ­thirty thou­sand dead and dis­ap­peared were an­ni­hi­lated as part of a gen­er­al­ized cam­paign of ter­ror to in­tim­i­date so­ci­ety, in Bra­zil a sim­i­lar de­gree of bru­tal­ity was em­ployed but on a much ­smaller scale, ­mostly tar­get­ing mem­bers of ac­tive op­po­si­tion ­groups (with lit­tle dis­crim­i­na­tion ­between those that ac­tu­ally em­braced armed strug­gle and those that did not) and sus­pected sym­pa­thiz­ers. Con­se­quently the strug­gle over jus­tice for the dead and dis­ap­peared since the end of the vi­o­lence has had an en­tirely dif­fer­ent com­plex­ion in Bra­zil than in Ar­gen­tina. The dead and dis­ap­peared in Ar­gen­tina seem to be­long to so­ci­ety as a whole; their counter­parts in Bra­zil, seem­ingly to no one, or only to the fam­i­lies that have per­sisted in de­mand­ing rec­og­ni­tion of what hap­pened. Most Bra­zil­ian vic­tims of po­lit­i­cal mur­der or dis­ap­pear­ance are thus per­ceived as oc­cu­py­ing a kind of gray zone: were they cas­u­al­ties of a just war, vic­tims of human ­rights vi­o­la­tions, or both? For the hero of Em ­câmara lenta, the dif­fi­culty lies in ac­cept­ing the re­al­ity of de­feat and ad­mit­ting that the armed strug­gle was a mis­take with­out jus­tify­ing the ­state-sponsored vi­o­lence, which, as he puts it, “would mean that they [the per­pe­tra­tors] were right, the ones who kill and tor­ture in order to keep ex­ploit­ing, op­press­ing, kill­ing, and tor­tur­ing.”93 ­Tapajós had orig­i­nally ­planned to call the novel “Not All ­Deaths Are Equal” but ul­ti­mately de­cided that the title was too pro­voc­a­tive.94 The dec­lar­a­ tion that dif­fer­ent ­deaths have dif­fer­ent val­ues or va­lences cap­tures the spe­cific res­o­nance of ­Furtado’s death, which, be­cause it meant more (to ­Tapajós) than any of the other ­deaths, ­turned ab­strac­tion into tan­gible re­al­ity. ­Tapajós has ex­plained that the orig­i­nal title was meant to sug­gest that the ­deaths of fal­len com­rades had spe­cial mean­ing to him: “The ­deaths of those dear to me, of those I love, that are part of my world, no mat­ter how much ideol­ogy I have in my head, they are not equal to the ­deaths of my en­em ­ ies.”95 Yet it also al­ludes to how ­deaths of guer­ril­las like Fur­tado ­seemed to mean less than the ­deaths of

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other vic­tims to the lib­eral op­po­si­tion awak­en­ing at the time of the ­book’s pub­li­ca­tion. Among the vic­tims ­killed by state se­cur­ity ­forces, only a few trig­gered pub­lic dis­plays of col­lec­tive in­dig­na­tion, in­clud­ing stu­dents Edson Luís (who was shot and ­killed in a nas­cent ­protest over the con­di­tions in a stu­dent caf­e­te­ria) and Alex­an­dre Van­nuc­chi Leme (whose ar­rest, which led to his death under tor­ture, was per­ceived to have been base­less) and jour­nal­ist Vlad­i­mir Her­zog (who was ar­rested under sus­pi­cion of being a com­mu­nist and whose death under tor­ture was cov­ered up as sui­cide).96 Most of the rest of those ­killed be­came part of what Bra­zil­ian ­singer Gon­za­guinha calls “the le­gion of the for­got­ten” in a 1981 song that por­trays the po­lit­i­cal open­ing as a “time with­out mem­ory.” The ­deaths of mil­it­ ants are ren­dered per­sonal and con­crete by the nar­ra­ tive of ­Furtado’s/ela’s death in the final pages of Em ­câmara lenta, in a scene re­counted from the per­spec­tive of an om­ni­scient ­third-person nar­ra­tor: Fu­ri­ous, the po­lice­men took her down from the ­parrot’s perch and threw her to the floor. One of them stuck her head into the ­Christ’s crown: a metal ring with ­screws that made it ­shrink in di­am­e­ter. They ­waited until she came to again and told her if she ­didn’t start talk­ing, she’d die a slow death. She said noth­ing and her eyes were al­ready life­less. The po­lice­man ­started to ­tighten the ­screws and pain shot ­through her, a pain that dom­i­ nated every­thing, ­erased every­thing, and ­throbbed alone in the uni­verse like an im­mense ball of fire. He kept tight­en­ing the ­screws and the pres­ sure on her skull ­forced one of her eye­balls out of its ­socket. When her skull ­cracked and gave under the pres­sure, she had al­ready lost con­scious­ ness, slip­ping into death as her brain was ­slowly ­crushed.97

The pas­sage ex­em­plifies what Sho­shana Fel­man calls “be­lated wit­ness­ing.” Tak­ing ­Camus’s novel The ­Plague and its al­le­gory of the Hol­o­caust as an ex­em­plary case, she ex­plains, “The spe­cific task of the lit­er­ary tes­ti­mony is . . . to open up in that be­lated wit­ness, which the ­reader now his­tor­i­cally be­comes, the imag­i­na­tive ca­pa­bil­ity of per­ceiv­ing his­tory—what is hap­pen­ing to oth­ers— in one’s own body, with the power of sight (of in­sight) usu­ally af­forded only by one’s own im­me­di­ate phys­i­cal in­volve­ment.”98 ­Tapajós im­a­gines—and asks the ­reader to im­a­gine with him—not only what hap­pened in the tor­ture cham­ber but how ela per­ceived it in her flesh, as “pain that dom­i­nated every­ thing, ­erased every­thing, and ­throbbed.”99 Un­like Ga­beira and Sir­kis, who would sub­se­quently write con­cil­i­a­tory nar­ra­tives, ­Tapajós pro­duced a nar­ra­tive—and a ges­ture—of re­sis­tance, as at­tested by the pains he took just to draft the novel. ­Tapajós con­ceived and wrote the first draft of the book the year fol­low­ing ­Furtado’s death, while the

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armed strug­gle and human ­rights ­crimes de­picted in the book were still tak­ing place. Be­cause he was still a po­lit­ic­ al pris­oner at the time and the govern­ment ac­tively re­pressed rev­e­la­tions about human ­rights ­crimes, ­Tapajós had to keep his writ­ing se­cret. The au­thor de­vised an in­ge­ni­ous way to smug­gle his man­u­ script out of the Ca­ran­diru Pen­i­ten­tiary, where he was being de­tained at the time: he wrote out ­drafts in his ­cramped ­script on ­sheets of tis­sue paper, which he ­folded into tiny bun­dles that were then care­fully ­wrapped in ad­he­sive tape (to pro­vide a wa­ter­proof cov­er­ing) and ­slipped to his par­ents dur­ing their vis­its. His ­mother and ­father hid the cap­sules in their ­mouths upon leav­ing the ­prison, and in this way the man­u­script was grad­u­ally spir­ited away, one page at a time. Using a mag­nify­ing glass to de­ci­pher the mini­scule hand­writ­ing, ­Tapajós’s par­ents typed out the first draft.100 The ex­tent to which Em ­câmara lenta is a true ges­ture of re­sis­tance ­rather than rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is ev­i­dent in the dra­co­nian re­ac­tion it pro­voked from the mil­i­tary re­gime at a time when the coun­try was in the midst of the ­distensão, or de­com­pres­sion pro­cess. The book was ­launched in May 1977 and ­quickly sold out; two ­months later, news­paper col­um­nist and ar­dent re­gime sup­porter Le­nildo Ta­bosa pub­lished an alarm­ist re­view that ac­cused ­Tapajós of preach­ing armed strug­gle in the novel. The re­view ap­peared in the Jor­nal da tarde, the pro­govern­ment news­paper that the São Paulo po­lit­i­cal po­lice used to broad­ cast its press re­leases—often con­tain­ing bla­tant fab­ri­ca­tions—about de­vel­op­ ments in its war ­against sub­ver­sion.101 Not long after ­Tabosa’s re­view came out, Colo­nel ­Erasmo Dias, the head of the São Paulo se­cur­ity ­forces and a no­ to­ri­ous ­hard-liner, or­dered De­tec­tive Sér­gio Par­an­hos ­Fleury to ar­rest ­Tapajós. The au­thor was ap­pre­hended as he was leav­ing work and held in­com­mu­ni­ cado for sev­eral days, dur­ing which time he was inter­ro­gated but not tor­tured. ­Tapajós’s pub­lisher and some of the book­sell­ers dis­trib­ut­ing the book were also sum­moned to the po­lit­i­cal po­lice sta­tion house in down­town São Paulo for ques­tion­ing and ha­rass­ment. Min­is­ter of Jus­tice Ar­mando ­Falcão even­tu­ally ­placed a na­tion­wide ban on Em ­câmara lenta. Soon after the ar­rest, Colo­nel Dias told the press that he de­tected in Em ­câmara lenta an in­tent to in­cite sub­ver­sion and that he had there­fore or­dered ­Tapajós’s ar­rest and ­brought the book to the at­ten­tion of the fed­eral cen­sors. As if to jus­tify his ac­tions, Dias de­scribed ­Tapajós as a “known ag­i­ta­tor and bank rob­ber.”102 The se­cur­ity ­forces in­voked the Na­tional Se­cur­ity Law, which along with AI-5 pro­vided the basis for the mil­i­tary ­government’s ar­bi­trary pow­ers.103 His­tor­i­cal con­text pro­vides one clue as to why the se­cur­ity ­forces were so vehe­ment about the ­book’s “sub­ver­sive­ness”: on May 5, only five days be­fore Em ­câmara lenta was ­launched in the São Paulo neigh­bor­hood of Pin­hei­ros,

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the re­nas­cent stu­dent move­ment or­ga­nized an il­le­gal march of ten thou­sand peo­ple in an­other part of the city to ­protest the ar­rest of two uni­ver­sity stu­dents who had been ap­pre­hended dis­trib­ut­ing po­lit­i­cal leaf­lets.104 It was the first major anti­re­gime dem­on­stra­tion in al­most a ­decade. The media im­me­di­ately drew com­par­i­sons to the bois­ter­ous stu­dent pro­tests of the fate­ful year of 1968, even ­though the stu­dents in 1977 made a point to adopt less con­fron­ta­tional tac­tics than their pre­de­ces­sors had. As Vic­toria Lang­land ob­serves, the se­cur­ity ­forces had, after AI-5, “come to see . . . the above­ground stu­dent move­ment as in­ex­tri­cably con­nected to the clan­des­tine armed lefts.”105 The co­in­ci­dence in tim­ing of the larg­est ­student-led ­protest in al­most ten years and a book about the armed strug­gle may have ­stoked fears that the rev­o­lu­tion­ary armed strug­gle would soon re­sur­face, too, or it may sim­ply have pro­vided the pre­text to claim that it would. For some­one look­ing to argue that Em ­câmara lenta was prop­a­ganda de­signed to se­duce stu­dents into ac­ti­vism and rev­o­lu­tion, a super­fi­cial read­ing of the book could be ma­nip­u­lated for that pur­pose. All the main fic­tional char­ac­ters are stu­dents who ul­ti­mately take up arms in the same rev­ol­u­tion­ary group. The un­named hero is no ex­cep­tion, and his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ­street fight­ing ­between left- and ­right-wing stu­dents in 1968 is a turn­ing point in his de­ci­sion to join the armed strug­gle. Hun­ker­ing down in a uni­ver­sity build­ing as ­right-wing stu­dents from an­other ­school spray it with bul­lets, watch­ing his col­leagues mount a val­iant de­fense with rock­ets and Mol­o­tov cock­tails, the hero tells him­self, “We’re going to have guns, too. Then we’ll see which side is ­stronger.”106 The book also fea­tures ­real-life stu­dent ­leader José Dir­ceu as a minor char­ac­ter. More­over, ­real-life stu­dents ap­pear to have been among the most avid con­su­mers of Em ­câmara lenta, and some book­sell­ers wary of the au­thor­ities may even have in­ten­tion­ally lim­ited dis­tri­bu­tion to stu­dents, if João Ro­berto Mar­tins ­Filho’s rec­ol­lec­tion is any in­di­ca­tion: “I pur­chased ­Tapajós’s book as soon as it was re­leased. I had to make the ­rounds of a num­ber of book­stores in down­town São Paulo be­fore find­ing a ­seller who ­trusted my ­college-student ap­pear­ance and drew a copy out from a stack hid­den under the coun­ter.” Mar­tins Filho re­mem­bers as pow­er­ful his ex­pe­ri­ence read­ing the book: “I read it ­through that same night. It per­mit­ted me to pin­point on the map of Bra­zil the lo­ca­tion of hell.”107 His­tor­i­cal con­text along with ­Tabosa’s in­flam­ma­tory re­view help ex­plain why Em ­câmara lenta be­came the only work of Bra­zil­ian fic­tion dur­ing the ­twenty-one-year dic­tat­or­ship to be ­banned for ex­pli­citly po­lit­i­cal rea­sons.108 ­Tapajós was even­tu­ally re­leased from po­lice cus­tody, but in April of the fol­ low­ing year he stood trial in a re­gional mil­i­tary court, ac­cused by the pros­e­cu­ tion of hav­ing writ­ten and pub­lished a book that broke the Na­tional Se­cur­ity

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Law by “mak[ing ] an apol­ogy for the guer­ril­las, po­lit­i­cally mo­ti­vated bank rob­ber­ies, and ex­e­cu­tions [ justiçamentos] and of incit[ing ] read­ers to im­i­tate the char­ac­ters, the guer­ril­las.”109 His­to­rian ­Eloísa Maués has an­a­lyzed sur­viv­ing doc­u­ments from ­Tapajós’s ar­rest and trial, show­ing how the pros­e­cu­tion built its case by quot­ing from the book se­lec­tively and tak­ing the ­quoted pas­sages out of con­text.110 ­Tapajós’s de­fense law­yer, for his part, re­sorted to var­i­ous legal strat­e­gies in an ef­fort to win an ac­quit­tal. Chief among these was the pres­en­ta­tion of ex­pert tes­ti­mony by ­Brazil’s pre­em­i­nent lit­er­ary ­critic, An­to­nio Can­dido. In a ­two-page doc­u­ ment read aloud in court, Can­dido el­o­quently de­fended Em ­câmara lenta, stress­ing the am­bi­gu­ity in­her­ent to lit­er­ary dis­course, in which “things, feel­ings, ideas never have only one mean­ing, but many, [which is] what makes it pow­er­ful.” Em­pha­siz­ing that to at­tempt to ex­tract a sin­gle mean­ing from any lit­er­ary text would be a “vul­gar error,” the ­critic con­cluded that if he were ­forced to do so, then from a “purely prag­matic” stand­point he de­tected “the sug­ges­tion—in­di­rect and un­stated, but pow­er­ful—[that the book is] ­against sub­ver­sion.”111 After two hours of de­lib­er­a­tion be­hind ­closed doors, the re­gional mil­i­tary court voted unan­i­mously to ac­quit ­Tapajós, find­ing that the book did not com­mit a crime ­against na­tional se­cur­ity, a de­ci­sion up­held six ­months later by the Su­preme Mil­i­tary Court.112 The judge as­signed to ad­ju­di­cate the ap­peal de­clared in court that “a read­ing of this ­so-called sub­ver­sive book re­veals the ­charges to be ground­less. . . . If, on the one hand, it men­tions the re­pres­sive ac­tiv­i­ties [of the govern­ment se­cur­ity ­forces], at times said to be vi­o­lent, on the other there are times when the guer­ril­las them­selves are shown to be no less vi­o­lent and cold­hearted.” In its writ­ten rul­ing, the court ­echoed this view, af­firm­ing that, far from in­cit­ing sub­ver­sion, the book por­trays the armed strug­gle as “a mis­take not to be re­peated.”113 These re­marks in­di­cate that for the ­judges, the case ­hinged on their inter­pre­ta­tion of how Em ­câmara lenta por­trays the armed strug­gle: as a he­roic ex­am­ple to be fol­lowed or as a ­tragic mis­take. In the end the ­judges de­cided on the for­mer in a de­ci­sion that, while flat­ten­ing the ­book’s nu­anced re­flec­tion on the dif­fi­culty of as­sign­ing mean­ing to the armed strug­gle, had the happy ef­fect of lib­er­at­ing ­Tapajós.114 The court went on to de­clare that the ­book’s “ref­er­ences to po­lice re­pres­ sion” did not, in them­selves, con­sti­tute an in­cite­ment to sub­ver­sion, a state­ ment that im­plies that aside from their ap­par­ent fear that Em ­câmara lenta would en­cour­age sub­ver­sion (es­pe­cially among stu­dents in São Paulo), the se­cur­ity ­forces and mil­it­ ary pros­e­cu­tors were mo­ti­vated by a de­sire to sup­press rev­e­la­tions about human ­rights ­crimes.115 Sim­i­lar ac­counts were be­gin­ning to cir­cu­late at the time, and some ­within the govern­ment might have seen the

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­ apajós case as an op­por­tu­nity to set an ex­am­ple and try to ­staunch the flow T of dis­turb­ing rev­e­la­tions about ­state-sponsored po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence. In­itially, Em ­câmara lenta rep­re­sented a form of re­sis­tance to the dic­tat­or­ ship, not only by ­Tapajós but also by those who read the book and some sec­tors of civil so­ci­ety. Upon ­Tapajós’s ar­rest, cit­i­zens and civil en­tities mo­bi­lized to ­protest and to let the mil­i­tary govern­ment and its se­cur­ity ­forces know that so­ci­ety, no ­longer ap­a­thetic and cowed, was watch­ing the case care­fully. The ­journalists’, ­filmmakers’, and Bra­zil­ian ­writers’ un­ions all is­sued pub­lic state­ ments re­pu­di­at­ing ­Tapajós’s ar­bi­trary im­pris­on­ment. After Jus­tice min­is­ter ­Falcão ­banned the book, peo­ple con­tin­ued cir­cu­lat­ing it clan­des­tinely in an act of de­fi­ance. The book be­came re­quired read­ing for cer­tain sec­tors of the op­po­si­tion in Bra­zil and also among exile com­mu­nities in Eu­rope and Af­rica.116 Not only was the book born of an act of in­di­vid­ual re­sis­tance (with its very com­po­si­tion tak­ing place clan­des­tinely in a po­lit­i­cal ­prison), but it also in­spired col­lec­tive re­sis­tance, par­tic­u­larly in São Paulo—al­though the re­sis­t­ ance did not take the form of “sub­ver­sion” that the mil­i­tary pros­ec­ u­tors had proph­e­sied. If the fic­tional story of ela had al­lowed read­ers to be­come be­lated wit­nesses of the ­dictatorship’s human ­rights ­crimes, then the ­real-life per­se­cu­tion of ­Tapajós in the wake of the ­novel’s pub­li­ca­tion had the un­in­tended con­se­quence of turn­ing those who came to the ­author’s de­fense into ­real-time wit­nesses. That is, they be­came wit­nesses of the con­tin­ued re­pres­sion car­ried out by the São Paulo se­cur­ity ­forces in the midst of Pres­i­dent ­Geisel’s ­distensão, or lib­er­al­ iza­tion, and ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in re­sist­ing that re­pres­sion as it un­folded ­through the ac­tiv­i­ties just de­scribed. This phe­nom­en ­ on of be­lated and ­real-time wit­ ness­ing is ev­i­dent in the cases of other cul­tural works as well, as the fol­low­ing chap­ters re­veal. With the lift­ing of the na­tional ban on Em ­câmara lenta in March 1979, a sec­ond edi­tion of the book soon ap­peared. ­Shortly there­af­ter, Bra­zil wit­nessed a flood of tes­ti­mo­nies by guer­ril­las and other pro­tag­o­nists of the dic­tat­or­ship years. After a brief re­ap­pear­ance on the ­best-seller list, ­Tapajós’s novel be­came lost in the shuf­fle. Some ob­serv­ers have at­trib­uted the fate of Em ­câmara lenta to its ex­peri­men­tal struc­ture, sug­gest­ing that its frag­mented and non­lin­ear plot made it rel­a­tively less ac­cess­ible or ap­peal­ing to a mass au­di­ence.117 Yet the book was enor­mously pop­u­lar when it first came out in May 1977: the ­book’s ex­peri­men­tal struc­ture did not seem to pose an ob­sta­cle then. I be­lieve the dif­fer­ent re­cep­tions that met the 1977 and 1979 edi­tions of Em ­câmara lenta had much to do with each his­tor­i­cal mo­ment and the pre­vail­ing na­tional mood at the time. ­Whereas sig­nif­i­cant sec­tors of civil so­ci­ety had ac­cepted and de­fended the novel in 1977, the pub­lic at large con­ven­iently for­got about it

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two years later. Un­like the dis­course of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory rep­re­sented by the pub­lished ac­counts of Ga­beira, Sir­kis, and oth­ers, ­Tapajós’s book of­fered a dif­fer­ent ap­proach, one that the au­thor has con­tin­ued to de­fend ever since: mem­ory and jus­tice, minus the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.118 It was an ap­proach that the ma­jor­ity of Bra­zil­ians ­roundly re­jected at the time and that many con­tinue to re­ject today. In the end, there­fore, it was not ­Tapajós’s ac­count of the anos de ­chumbo but ­rather ­Gabeira’s and ­Sirkis’s ver­sions that be­came syn­on­y­mous with am­nesty and the po­lit­i­cal open­ing.

Tes­t i­m ony and Cul­t ural Mem­o ry Pub­lished soon after the sign­ing of the Am­nesty Law in Au­gust 1979, Fer­nando ­Gabeira’s Com­pan­heiro and Al­fredo ­Sirkis’s Os ­carbonários be­came best sell­ers and sym­bols of the po­lit­i­cal mo­ment. The au­thors par­layed their ac­counts into fame and ­self-refashioning, which ­helped ­launch their po­lit­i­cal ca­reers; those ­within civil so­ci­ety who ­yearned for both mem­ory and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion found what they were look­ing for in the two books. At the same time and re­flect­ing the same wide­spread sen­ti­ment, de­mands for truth and jus­tice ­failed to gain trac­tion. The cases of Com­pan­heiro and Os ­carbónarios il­lus­trate that the re­mem­brance pro­moted by cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory does not auto­mat­i­cally lead to the of­fi­cial reck­on­ing with the human ­rights ­crimes of the pre­vi­ous dic­ta­to­rial re­gime. It all de­pends on what is being re­mem­bered, how, and why. Cul­tural texts that pair with in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms de­signed as for­mu­las for clo­sure, such as am­nes­ties, may well work ­against the pur­suit of jus­tice. This is pre­cisely what hap­pened with ­Gabeira’s and ­Sirkis’s pop­u­lar ac­counts. Fi­nally, as a con­tem­po­rary tes­ti­mo­nial work that did not link with the Am­nesty Law, Re­nato ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta il­lus­trates the rel­a­tively lower pop­u­lar ap­peal at the time of more ­openly con­fron­ta­tional cul­tural works.119 Yet the novel is nev­er­the­less im­por­tant for its role in trans­form­ing read­ers into be­lated wit­nesses of po­lit­i­cal tor­ture and mur­der, and for turn­ing those who de­fended ­Tapajós on the oc­ca­sion of his ar­rest into ­real-time ­witness-participants in the strug­gle ­against on­go­ing re­pres­sion. It did so at a crit­i­cal turn­ing point in the ­nation’s am­nesty strug­gle, when op­po­nents of the re­gime were in the midst of a re­awak­en­ing, be­gin­ning with stu­dents in 1977 and work­ers in 1978. As the fol­low­ing chap­ters bear out, the post-1979 tes­ti­mo­nial boom rep­re­ sented a mo­ment of con­cen­trated mem­ory mak­ing that ­helped lay the foun­ da­tion for some fu­ture cul­tural pro­duc­tion and mem­ory dis­courses, al­beit a foun­da­tion com­pro­mised by its as­so­ci­a­tion with the Am­nesty Law. This

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ex­pe­ri­ence sets Bra­zil apart from coun­tries like Ar­gen­tina and Chile, where the ear­li­est tes­ti­mo­nial nar­ra­tives were pub­lished out­side the coun­try and while the vi­o­lent re­pres­sion and human ­rights ­crimes were in many cases still on­go­ing. Two of the most in­fluen­tial tes­ti­mo­nial ac­counts by Ar­gen­tines are Ja­cobo ­Timerman’s Preso sin nom­bre, celda sin ­número (Pris­oner with­out a Name, Cell with­out a Num­ber), pub­lished in 1981 while the au­thor was ex­iled in Is­rael, and Ali­cia ­Partnoy’s The Lit­tle ­School, pub­lished in En­glish for a U.S. au­di­ence five years later. In Chile, the ear­li­est tes­ti­mo­nies were pro­duced and cir­cu­lated in the years fol­low­ing the 1973 coup, such as ­Hernán ­Valdés’s Tejas ­verdes in 1974. While both coun­tries have im­por­tant writ­ten tes­ti­mo­nies in their can­ons of cul­tural mem­ory, in nei­ther case were the ear­li­est tes­ti­mo­nial writ­ings ­linked to spe­cific in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms (un­less one ­counts the re­pres­sion it­self ), as oc­curred in the Bra­zil­ian case. ­Whereas the tes­ti­mo­nial boom end­ing with Bra­sil: Nunca mais in 1985 rep­re­sented the pri­mary form of ­truth-telling dur­ing the Bra­zil­ian tran­si­tion, both Ar­gen­tina and Chile in­stalled truth com­mis­sions soon after their re­turn to dem­o­cratic rule. In Bra­zil, the Am­nesty Law pre­cluded the pos­sibil­ity of a truth com­mis­sion or ­trials, and so mil­i­tants took it upon them­selves to ­record and pub­li­cize what hap­pened. The dis­course of rec­on­cil­ia­ ­ tion by mem­ory pro­moted by some in­fluen­tial tes­ti­mo­ni­al­ists pro­vided an at­trac­tive al­ter­na­tive to the of­fi­cial pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting, even as it ­failed to under­mine (and may even have re­in­forced) the po­lit­i­cally heg­em ­ onic ap­proach to the past. Ga­beira—and to a ­lesser ex­tent Sir­kis—pop­u­lar­ized the po­lit­i­cal tes­ti­mony or me­moir as a genre in Bra­zil. In the wake of Com­pan­heiro and Os c­ arbonários, many other mil­i­tants pub­lished their own ac­counts. Other in­fluen­tial “first cycle” tes­ti­mo­ni­als in­clude Au­gusto ­Boal’s Mil­a­gre no Bra­sil (Mir­a­cle in Bra­zil, 1979), ­Álvaro ­Caldas’s Ti­rando o capuz (Tak­ing Off the Hood, 1981), Her­bert ­Daniel’s Pas­sa­gem para o ­próximo sonho (Ticket to the Next Dream, 1982), and Alex ­Polari’s Em busca do te­souro (In ­Search of the Treas­ure, 1982). Writ­ing in Jan­u­ary 1981, ­critic ­Heloísa Bu­arque de Hol­landa re­marked that tes­ti­mo­nial ac­counts were a ubiq­ui­tous sight in shop win­dows at the time.120 Yet the suc­cess of guer­rilla tes­ti­mo­nies—and of the Arch­di­o­cese of São ­Paulo’s un­au­thor­ized truth re­port on tor­ture, Bra­sil: Nunca mais—elic­ited a back­lash of counter­tes­ti­mo­nies by re­gime in­sid­ers, al­beit one con­sist­ing of texts that were much less cul­tu­rally or po­lit­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant than those of their guer­rilla counter­parts. These counter­tes­ti­mo­ni­al­ists have dis­puted the ­militants’ ver­sions of ­events, es­pe­cially re­gard­ing human ­rights mem­or­ ies, launch­ing what some mil­i­tary men and re­gime sup­port­ers see as a mem­ory war.121 Two of the most well known of these ac­counts are for­mer in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cer Marco

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Pollo ­Giordani’s Bra­sil sem­pre (Bra­zil Al­ways, a title meant as a de­fi­ant re­join­der to that of the Arch­di­o­cese of São ­Paulo’s re­port) and Colo­nel Car­los Al­berto Bril­hante ­Ustra’s Rom­pendo o si­lên­cio (Break­ing the Si­lence), pub­lished in 1986 and 1987, re­spec­tively. As João Ro­berto Mar­tins Filho ­points out, the mil­it­ ary men who pub­lished counter­tes­ti­mo­nies in the 1980s per­ceived the ac­counts of Ga­beira, Sir­kis, and oth­ers not in terms of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion but as an at­tack mo­ti­vated by what they call re­van­chismo, or vin­dic­tive­ness, a po­lit­i­cally ­loaded term used es­pe­cially by re­tired mil­i­tary of­fi­cers and dic­tat­or­ship apol­o­gists who claim that their war ­against po­lit­i­cal sub­ver­sion was just. His­to­rian Celso Cas­tro ex­plains that for those ­within the mil­i­tary who use it, the term ex­presses their re­sent­ment to­ward cer­tain sec­tors of so­ci­ety that they see as with­hold­ing from the armed ­forces the kind of “moral” am­nesty ­openly given to the for­mer guer­ril­las as well as their anger at the re­sult­ing ­stigma.122 In the end, none of the prop­a­gated tes­ti­mo­nies, ­whether by mil­i­tants or mil­i­tary men, ever ­achieved the pop­u­lar suc­cess of those writ­ten by Ga­beira and Sir­kis. Yet an­other wave of prop­a­ga­tion took place over a ­decade later, when Com­pan­heiro and Os ­carbonários in­spired ad­ap­ta­tions into the vis­ual media that be­came hits and in­spired ­heated pub­lic de­bate in the 1990s. O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? ­prompted di­rec­tor Bruno ­Barreto’s 1997 po­lit­i­cal ­thriller film with the same title, re­leased in the ­United ­States as Four Days in Sep­tem­ber. Os ­carbonários in­spired the tele­vi­sion min­is­er­ies Anos re­beldes, which cap­ti­vated mil­lions of view­ers at a time when an­other in­sti­tu­tional mech­an ­ ism was under­ way: the con­gres­sional in­ves­ti­ga­tion and im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings ­launched ­against Pres­i­dent Fer­nando Col­lor de Mello. Emerg­ing al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ously, the tele­vi­sion drama and im­peach­ment pro­cess be­came ­linked in the pop­ul­ar imag­i­na­tion, trig­ger­ing a new cycle of cul­tural mem­ory, to which we now turn.

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2 

A ­P r im e -T im e M i n i­s ­e r ­ie s a n d Im ­p e a ch m ­ ent

A

s the Bra­zil­ian mil­it­ ary dic­tat­or­ship re­cedes fur­ther into the past, sto­ries about it have in­creas­ingly be­come fod­der for “must-see TV,” es­pe­cially tele­vised dra­mas.1 Tele­no­ve­las—or no­ve­las, as they are com­monly ­called—are a na­tional pas­time in Bra­zil, with view­er­ ship ­cutting ­across dem­o­graphic cat­e­go­ries of gen­der, class, race, and age. Given their im­pres­sive reach, tele­no­ve­las as well as min­is­er­ies offer the pos­sibil­ity of pro­vid­ing an at­trac­tive so­lu­tion to a major chal­lenge in the strug­gle for human ­rights in post­dic­tat­or­ial Bra­zil: sen­si­tiz­ing the pub­lic. This po­ten­tial be­came ap­par­ent in 1992, when the Globo net­work broad­ cast the ­country’s first tele­vi­sion show to dra­ma­tize re­pres­sion and po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence under the dic­tat­or­ship. Ti­tled Anos re­beldes (Rebel Years), the min­i­ s­er­ies trans­ported view­ers back to the au­thor­i­tar­ian pe­riod ­through the fic­ tional story of a group of high ­school ­friends who come of age dur­ing the most re­pres­sive phase of the dic­tat­or­ship and whose fates be­come en­meshed with the po­lit­i­cal and cul­tural up­hea­vals of the era.2 The plot re­volves ­around two ­star-crossed lov­ers: João, a stu­dent ac­ti­vist whose youth­ful ideal­ism even­tu­ally leads him to join the armed strug­gle, and Maria Lúcia, an in­di­vid­ua­ l­ist with lit­tle pa­tience for po­lit­i­cal cru­sades. Not only does the drama fea­ture a mem­ber of the re­sis­tance as its ro­man­tic lead, but it also ex­plores sub­jects long taboo on the small ­screen, par­tic­u­larly po­lit­i­cal tor­ture and mur­der. Anos re­beldes was a prod­uct of ­Brazil’s first cycle of cul­tural mem­ory in that it is ­partly based on Al­fredo ­Sirkis’s me­moir, Os ­carbonários (The Car­bo­nari), which along with Fer­nando ­Gabeira’s O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? (What’s Going On Here, Com­rade?) be­came ­linked with the 1979 Am­nesty Law. Sir­kis makes his ob­jec­tives in writ­ing the book clear in the pref­ace to the 1998 edi­tion

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of his book: “Tor­ture never again, dic­tat­or­ship never again, but also armed strug­gle never again.”3 The words never again en­cap­su­late a found­ing im­per­a­tive of human ­rights strug­gle—­namely, pre­vent­ing the rep­e­ti­tion of past atroc­ities, a mes­sage taken up by Anos re­beldes. Inter­viewed ­shortly be­fore the ­drama’s pre­miere, crea­tor and head ­writer Gil­berto Braga ex­plained that the min­is­er­ies was “against the au­thor­i­tar­ian­ism and in­tol­er­ance ex­em­plified by the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship” and pre­dicted that the show would help en­sure that “the mis­takes of the past are not re­peated.”4 The pro­tag­o­nist João (loosely mod­eled on Sir­kis) re­in­forces this mes­sage when he de­clares in the final epi­sode that he is plan­ ning to write a me­moir so that the po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence “never hap­pens again.” Over a pe­riod of less than two ­months, Anos re­beldes trans­mit­ted the never again mes­sage to an es­ti­mated ­thirty mil­lion ­nightly view­ers, over fifty times the num­ber of peo­ple who read Bra­sil: Nunca mais (Bra­zil: Never Again), the ­best-selling 1985 re­port on tor­ture pre­pared by the Arch­di­o­cese of São Paulo.5 ­Braga’s state­ments make ap­par­ent that Anos re­beldes ­served as a ve­hi­cle for what is known in Bra­zil as mer­chan­dis­ing so­cial, a term that trans­lates into En­glish as so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing, al­though the Bra­zil­ian usage dif­fers from its U.S. counter­part. In Bra­zil, so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing re­fers to the in­ten­tional in­ser­tion into a tele­vised drama of a pub­lic ser­vice mes­sage—in this case, never again.6 Tele­vi­sion can raise aware­ness ­through Bra­zil­ian so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing, but the ques­tion is: what kind of aware­ness? Anos re­beldes pro­moted the so­ci­etal need for re­mem­brance, but it ­turned view­ers into be­lated wit­nesses of a re­ im­a­gin­ing of his­tory in which the dic­tat­or­ship ­wasn’t ­really that bad. In so doing, it re­cy­cled the dis­course of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory that had made O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? and Os ­carbonários so pop­u­lar sev­eral years ear­lier. More­over, the min­is­er­ies pre­miered at a time when the Bra­zil­ian Con­gress was in­ves­ti­gat­ing then pres­i­dent Fer­nando Col­lor de ­Mello’s in­volve­ment in a major cor­rup­tion scan­dal, and cit­i­zens—es­pe­cially high ­school and uni­ver­sity stu­dents—were tak­ing to the ­streets in mas­sive ­protest ­marches to de­mand im­peach­ment. In this chap­ter, I an­a­lyze how the min­is­er­ies, the im­peach­ment pro­cess, and the pop­u­lar pro­tests all be­came ­linked in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion, launch­ing a cycle of cul­tural mem­ory. The case of Anos re­beldes sug­gests that tel­ed­ra­mas can help in­spire view­ers to take ac­tion, but that the re­la­tion­ship ­between ­Brazilian-style so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing and rad­i­cal ­change is much less straight­for­ward than it ap­pears.

So­c ial Mer­c han­d is­ing and Never Again So­cial mer­chan­dis­ing in Bra­zil is the in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized prac­tice of using tele­no­ve­las and min­is­er­ies to raise aware­ness about press­ing so­cial 60



A Prime-Time Miniseries and Impeachment

prob­lems and is­sues re­lated to pub­lic ­health and ­safety (such as do­mes­tic abuse, gun con­trol, drug ad­dic­tion, organ do­na­tion, and miss­ing chil­dren) while boost­ing the broad­cast­ing ­network’s pro­file as a so­cially re­spon­sible cor­po­rate cit­i­zen.7 It ap­plies the mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ple of prod­uct place­ment, in which the con­spic­u­ous dis­play or men­tion of a spe­cific good is de­lib­er­ately woven into the plot of a tele­no­vela or min­is­er­ies in ex­change for a nego­tiated fee.8 The dif­fer­ence in the case of Bra­zil­ian so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing is that the “prod­uct” being pro­moted is a mes­sage, issue, or be­hav­ior ­rather than a con­su­mer item, and no mon­et­ ary trans­ac­tion takes place. What Bra­zil­ians call so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing in­volves in­te­grat­ing a given issue into the plot or sub­plot of the no­vela or min­is­er­ies in ques­tion, ­thereby turn­ing the fic­tional char­ac­ters into cred­ible “public-opinion-forming ­agents” with whom view­ers can eas­ily iden­tify or em­pa­thize.9 The way the tech­nique is de­vel­oped var­ies some­what de­pend­ing on ­whether the issue is to be in­serted into a tele­no­vela or a min­is­er­ies. No­ve­las, which typ­i­cally have 180 to 200 epi­sodes and last an av­er­age of eight ­months or ­longer, are con­sid­ered rel­a­tively “open” works: only the first 20 chap­ters, or epi­sodes, are taped in ad­vance, ­whereas the oth­ers are writ­ten and pro­duced while the pro­gram is on the air. As the story line pro­gresses, the ­script of a tele­no­vela con­stantly in­cor­po­rates au­di­ence feed­back and cur­rent ­events into the plot. So­cial mer­chan­dis­ing in no­ve­las must there­fore re­main ­open-ended as well, “con­tinu[ing ] as the story un­folds, per­fectly in­te­grated with the cen­tral plot and par­allel ­threads that are de­vel­oped.”10 A min­is­er­ies, al­though sim­i­lar in basic struc­ture, is more com­pact, av­er­ag­ing 25 in­stall­ments and a run of four to six weeks, and the ­script for the en­tire pro­gram is usu­ally writ­ten in ad­vance, mean­ing that any so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing must be de­ter­mined prior to air­ing. More­over, min­is­er­ies are tra­di­tion­ally shown in a later time slot and tar­get a more so­phis­ti­cated au­di­ence than no­ve­las, thus per­mit­ting “scenes of ­greater re­al­ism and im­pact.”11 ­Brazilian-style so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing has ­proved an ef­fec­tive means of pro­mot­ing pub­lic aware­ness about a va­riety of con­tem­po­rary is­sues. In 1995 the Globo no­vela Ex­plode ­coração (Burst­ing Heart) ­launched a cam­paign to help ­real-life par­ents find their miss­ing chil­dren. The par­ents made ap­pear­ ances on the pro­gram to ask the fic­tional char­ac­ters (and view­ers) for help lo­cat­ing their sons and daugh­ters. By the end of the ­novela’s run, more than ­seventy-five chil­dren had been suc­cess­fully lo­cated.12 When in 2000–2001 an­other Globo pro­duc­tion, Laços de ­família (Fam­ily Ties), chron­ic­ led the saga of Ca­mila, a young leu­ke­mia pa­tient in des­per­ate need of a ­bone-marrow trans­plant, the coun­try wit­nessed a ­marked in­crease in the num­ber of ­bonemarrow do­na­tions, a phe­nom­e­non that be­came known as the Ca­mila ef­fect.13 So­cial mer­chan­dis­ing has even been cred­ited with help­ing pass leg­is­la­tion— an­other ex­am­ple of the inter­play ­between cul­tural pro­duc­tion and in­sti­tu­tional A Prime-Time Miniseries and Impeachment



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mech­a­nisms. The 2003 no­vela Mul­heres apaix­on ­ a­das (Women in Love), which in­cludes a sub­plot that dra­ma­tizes the ­plight of older Bra­zil­ians, was ­praised by one sen­a­tor for pres­sur­ing Con­gress to pass in six ­months a bill pro­tect­ing the eld­erly that had pre­vi­ously been ­stalled for five years.14 The same no­vela also be­came known for its suc­cess in rais­ing pub­lic aware­ness about the na­tional de­bate over gun con­trol. Bra­zil­ian so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing em­ploys three main strat­e­gies: the pres­en­ ta­tion of en­gross­ing fic­tional sto­ries that ac­ti­vate em­pa­thy for ­real-life peo­ple suf­fer­ing some form of in­jus­tice; the use of key char­ac­ters to model de­sired mes­sages or be­hav­iors; and the in­cor­po­ra­tion of re­alia—such as ref­er­ences to or im­ages of ac­tual ­events—to tie the im­a­gined world of the tele­vised drama to the ­spectator’s re­al­ity. All three types of strat­e­gies ap­pear in Anos re­beldes, the most ev­i­dent being its bor­row­ing of a ­real-life story with ­proven abil­ity to ex­cite au­di­ence iden­tifi­ca­tion and em­pa­thy (Sirkis’s story). ­Braga’s min­is­er­ies ­marked the first time on tele­vi­sion that the dic­tat­or­ship pe­riod was de­picted from the per­spec­tive of the ­left-wing op­po­si­tion to the mil­i­tary re­gime: long ab­sent from TV dra­mas or rel­e­gated to minor roles, po­lit­i­cal mil­i­tants are fea­tured in Anos re­beldes as pro­tag­o­nists and he­roes. By dra­ma­tiz­ing the daily lives of João and his ­friends and com­rades, the show hu­manizes a group tra­di­ tion­ally stig­ma­tized as ter­ror­ists. So­cial mer­chan­dis­ing is also ev­i­dent in how cer­tain char­ac­ters serve as mouth­pieces for the never again mes­sage. The char­ac­ter who most fully em­ bod­ies the cause of mem­ory in Anos re­beldes is ­Heloísa, a ­friend of João and Maria Lúcia who is ar­rested and tor­tured for her in­volve­ment in the armed strug­gle; she also hap­pens to be the daugh­ter of Fábio An­drade Brito, a ­wealthy busi­ness­per­son and loyal sup­porter of the mil­i­tary re­gime. In one of the ­drama’s most pow­er­ful ­scenes, ­Heloísa con­fronts her ­father with the grim re­al­ity of her de­tain­ment in a mil­i­tary ­prison. When the ever ar­ro­gant Fábio dis­misses the idea that a daugh­ter of his could have been mis­treated by the govern­ment, ­Heloísa un­but­tons her ­blouse and re­veals the signs of tor­ture on her ­breasts. Her back is ­turned to the cam­era the en­tire time her ­wounds are ex­posed, a strat­egy that max­imizes the dra­matic ­charge of the scene by leav­ing the ex­tent of her in­ju­ries to the imag­in ­ a­tion of the ­viewer, who sees only the look of shock and hor­ror on her ­father’s face. From a mer­chan­dis­ing per­spec­tive, ­Heloísa is an ideal mem­ory agent: al­though not the ro­man­tic lead in the story, she ­quickly be­came a fa­vor­ite with the au­di­ence, es­pe­cially ­younger Bra­zil­ians, who ad­mired the ­spoiled rich girl ­turned mil­i­tant.15 Yet her role in the mer­chan­dis­ing of mem­ory is also prob­le­matic. ­Heloísa is not just a mouth­piece for a pro–human ­rights mes­sage; she is also the only main char­ac­ter who is tor­tured and there­fore in a sense

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Heloísa (Cláudia Abreu) shows her father, Fábio ( José Wilker), the marks of torture on her body. (Anos rebeldes)

comes to rep­re­sent all tor­ture vic­tims. This gen­der­ing of the tor­ture vic­tim has dis­turb­ing im­pli­ca­tions, be­cause ­Heloísa is also an ob­vi­ous sex sym­bol and the only fe­male char­ac­ter in the min­is­er­ies to ap­pear in a nude love scene. By cast­ing her as the token tor­ture vic­tim, Anos re­beldes im­pli­citly erot­i­cizes tor­ture. More­over, ­Heloísa is also the most sex­u­ally lib­er­ated char­ac­ter in the story: she is the first to lose her vir­gin­ity, has a child out of wed­lock, and par­tic­i­pates in what is por­trayed as a man’s war. By ­contrast, her male com­rades in the armed strug­gle who take sim­i­lar risks but who ad­here more ­closely to con­ven­tional mo­ral­ity in­var­ia­ bly es­cape harm, as if to imply that tor­ture is jus­tified when peo­ple step too far out­side their pre­scribed so­cial roles. A less prob­le­matic mem­ory agent is Av­e­lar, the pop­u­lar his­tory ­teacher at the high ­school at­tended by the main char­ac­ters. Upon learn­ing of ­Heloísa’s or­deal, he re­solves to write a clan­des­tine re­port de­nounc­ing the human ­rights vi­o­la­tions com­mit­ted at the be­hest of the mil­i­tary re­gime. As a ­teacher of his­tory and some­one who is uni­ver­sally re­spected ­within the micro­cosm of the min­is­er­ies, Av­el­ar is a cred­ible ­seller of the never again mes­sage. His in­teg­rity and cou­rage are em­pha­sized in a num­ber of ­scenes in which other char­ac­ters

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at­tempt to dis­suade him from send­ing his tor­ture ex­posé to a ­foreign jour­nal­ist. These foils are por­trayed as well in­ten­tioned, but mis­guided: un­like Av­e­lar, they would ­rather not find out what is going on in the mil­i­tary pris­ons, ei­ther be­cause they are ap­a­thetic or be­cause they fear the con­se­quences of know­ing too much. Av­el­ar man­ages to con­vince them, and pre­sum­ably the ­viewer, that “every­one needs to know . . . oth­er­wise we’ll keep on cov­er­ing it up for­ever.” Par­a­dox­i­cally, in the final chap­ter of the min­is­er­ies it is the apo­lit­ical her­o­ine, Maria Lúcia, who de­liv­ers the most pro­voc­a­tive line re­gard­ing tor­ture and the govern­ment ­agents who made it pos­sible, de­clar­ing, “Of all the scoun­drels I know, I can’t think of a sin­gle one that is doing ­poorly.” Al­though the her­o­ine is re­fer­ring to the un­scru­pu­lous busi­ness­man Fábio and his under­ ling (a for­mer class­mate of the he­roes), her com­ment could also be inter­preted as re­fer­ring to the per­pe­tra­tors of po­lit­i­cal tor­ture, since the scene is set in the after­math of the pas­sage of the 1979 Am­nesty Law. This state­ment is the clos­est that Anos re­beldes comes to ques­tion­ing the blan­ket par­don that ­shields state per­pe­tra­tors from crim­i­nal ­trials to this day. With these words, Maria Lúcia comes to stand for the ar­gu­ment that even peo­ple with no inter­est in pol­i­tics have a moral ob­li­ga­tion to take a stand on the issue of human ­rights ­crimes. ­Whereas ­younger view­ers ad­mired ­Heloísa, many ­seemed to iden­tify even more ­closely with Maria Lúcia and her aloof­ness from pol­i­tics,16 mak­ing the ro­man­tic her­o­ine a par­tic­u­larly cred­ible and ef­fec­tive mem­ory agent. An­other way the min­is­er­ies trans­mits the never again mes­sage is ­through the in­ser­tion of news­paper head­lines, pe­riod foot­age, and photo­graphs doc­u­ ment­ing ­state-sponsored tor­ture and mur­der. These ves­tiges of the past pre­sum­ ably help ed­uc­ ate the un­in­formed ­viewer about the au­thor­i­tar­ian pe­riod in ad­di­tion to au­then­ti­cat­ing the re­im­ag­ ined ver­sion of it pre­sented in the min­i­ s­er­ies. The doc­um ­ en­tary se­quences, which show key ­events dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ ship as well as in­stances of every­day po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence in Bra­zil­ian ­streets, had a pow­er­ful im­pact, es­pe­cially since much of the foot­age had never be­fore been broad­cast on na­tional tele­vi­sion due to govern­ment and inter­nal cen­sor­ship. The ex­hi­bi­tion of these im­ages in Anos re­beldes was there­fore a truly his­toric event. In most cases, an ­abrupt ­change from color to ­black-and-white im­ages ­clearly sig­nals the shift ­between fic­tive and his­tor­i­cal ­frames. In other in­stances, how­ever, the dis­tinc­tion ­between fic­tion and re­al­ity is de­lib­er­ately ­blurred by the film­ing of cer­tain ­scenes in black and white and the doc­tor­ing of some his­tor­i­cal foot­age to ­create the il­lu­sion that the fic­tional char­ac­ters par­tic­ip ­ ated in im­por­tant his­tor­i­cal ­events. In one scene, for in­stance, the ac­tors play­ing João and Maria Lúcia are shown at the front of an ac­tual ­protest march from 1968, a strat­egy that ex­tends au­di­ence em­pa­thy for the fic­tional char­ac­ters to en­com­pass ­real-life stu­dent ac­ti­vists and mil­it­ ants.

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(Left to right) Actors Pedro Cardoso, Malu Mader, Cássio Gabus Mendes, and Marcelo Serrado are superimposed onto footage of a student protest circa 1968. (Anos rebeldes)

Al­though so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing is a po­tent tool, it is im­por­tant not to over­ state its in­flu­ence on the Bra­zil­ian pub­lic: peo­ple are not just pas­sive re­cep­tors of ideas, and tele­vi­sion por­tray­als are more com­plex than they ap­pear, often con­vey­ing multi­lay­ered and even con­flict­ing mes­sages that peo­ple re­spond to in dif­fer­ent ways de­pend­ing on what they bring to their view­ing. More­over, even tele­vi­sion dra­mas that ef­fec­tively de­ploy so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing are first and fore­most a form of en­ter­tain­ment; no­ve­las and min­is­er­ies make poor ve­hi­cles for ­truth-telling. As an actor in Anos re­beldes ex­plained, “You can’t ex­pect a min­is­er­ies to be a doc­u­men­tary. It’s a tele­vi­sion show [and] its main ob­jec­tive is to reach a main­stream au­di­ence.”17 Aes­thetic, com­mer­cial, and po­lit­i­cal ­forces all shape tel­ed­ra­mas, often in ways that go ­against the grain of what Bra­zil­ians call so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing.

A “Soft” Dic­t at­o r­s hip? Just be­cause so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing is de­ployed in a given no­vela or min­is­er­ies does not guar­an­tee that its mes­sage is the only one con­veyed in

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the work, or even the most pow­er­ful. Spec­ta­tors of Anos re­beldes be­came be­lated wit­nesses not of his­tory but ­rather of a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of it. In­ves­ti­gat­ing how his­tory is re­im­a­gined in the min­is­er­ies re­veals a key myth that has pow­er­fully ­shaped mem­ory pol­i­tics and the human ­rights strug­gle in Bra­zil: the no­tion that the coun­try ex­pe­ri­enced dit­a­branda, or a “soft” dic­tat­or­ship. When Anos re­beldes dra­ma­tizes or makes ref­er­ence to po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence, it tends to tone down harsh re­al­ities and dis­tort es­tab­lished his­tor­i­cal facts, ­thereby mit­ig­ at­ing its de­nun­ci­a­tion of the re­pres­sion. By sof­ten­ing harsh re­al­ities, the min­is­er­ies per­pet­u­ated the wide­spread con­vic­tion that the Bra­zil­ian mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship was rel­a­tively be­nign and the re­pres­sion mild, a mes­sage di­amet­ri­cally op­posed to the one pro­moted ­through the so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing of the never again mes­sage just de­scribed. Bra­zil­ian tel­ed­ra­mas tend to fol­low a spe­cific for­mat that con­trib­utes to wa­ter­ing down po­lit­i­cal con­tent: they ex­plore and con­tain na­tional prob­lems by re­cast­ing them as per­sonal or fa­mil­ial dra­mas.18 Often their plots re­volve ­around a ro­man­tic pair or love tri­an­gle. In pe­riod dra­mas, es­pe­cially those like Anos re­beldes that re­visit a par­tic­u­larly dis­com­fit­ing chap­ter of the past, the love story is usu­ally fore­grounded and the his­tor­i­cal con­text is rel­eg­ ated to the back­ground. In this way no­ve­las give the im­pres­sion of dis­cuss­ing sen­si­tive top­ics with­out ac­tu­ally doing so, dem­on­strat­ing how pur­port­ing to talk about some­thing can some­times be a po­tent means of si­lenc­ing. The clas­sic ex­am­ple of this ten­dency is the Bra­zil­ian slav­ery no­vela of the 1970s and 1980s, which usu­ally fea­tures a pair of white lov­ers and only shows ­Afro-Brazilians in sec­on­ dary or sup­port­ing roles. Many of these dra­mas re­in­forced the of­fi­cial ver­sion of his­tory by tell­ing the story of a white hero who ­single-handedly ­brings about ab­o­li­tion and con­clud­ing with a touch­ing scene of inter­ra­cial broth­er­hood.19 Slav­ery no­ve­las ­proved to be im­mensely pop­u­lar not only in Bra­zil but also ­abroad, where they ex­ported the myth of Bra­zil as a ra­cial de­moc­racy. Sim­i­larly, Anos re­beldes, de­spite its mer­its, per­pet­u­ates the of­fi­cially sanc­ tioned ver­sion of a ­tragic chap­ter of Bra­zil­ian his­tory by rel­e­gat­ing the trag­edy it­self to the back­ground. While the drama does por­tray ­João’s po­lit­i­cal ac­ti­v­ ism as a ­choice that ­arises out of cer­tain his­tor­i­cal circum­stances, it ­places even ­greater em­pha­sis on the ten­sion that that ­choice ­creates in his re­la­tion­ship with Maria Lúcia. Con­se­quently, the ro­man­tic over­shad­ows—and mutes— the po­lit­i­cal. Sim­i­larly, when ­Heloísa is tor­tured, the focus is ­placed on the ten­sion that her pre­dic­a­ment ­causes ­between her and her ­father (a dic­tat­or­ship fi­nan­cier). In other words, her suf­fer­ing is pre­sented less in terms of the ­state’s abuse of power over the in­di­vid­ual than in terms of a fa­mil­ial (father-daughter) con­flict, ­thereby drain­ing it of its po­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. The case of Anos re­beldes dem­on­strates how the ­well-worn strat­egy of cast­ing sen­si­tive top­ics as ro­man­tic

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or fam­ily dra­mas tends to neu­tral­ize so­cial and po­lit­i­cal con­tent. As ac­a­demic Maria Rita Kehl (who would later be­come a mem­ber of ­Brazil’s Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion) put its, the min­is­er­ies is but one of ­Globo’s many at­tempts to “trans­form the re­sis­tance [to the dic­tat­or­ship] . . . into some­thing pal­at­ able . . . [by] mak­ing the au­di­ence cry and lose all sense of con­ti­nu­ity ­between what hap­pened ­twenty or ­thirty years ago and the coun­try we live in today.”20 While the min­is­er­ies does show ­scenes in which the re­gime uses force ­against its en­em ­ ies, it tends to under­state the de­gree of bru­tal­ity em­ployed. In such ­scenes, the re­pres­sion is in­var­i­ably per­son­ified by the fic­tional char­ac­ter De­tec­tive Ca­margo, who—un­armed, in ci­vil­ian ­clothes, and ac­com­pa­nied by only one or two hench­men—re­lent­lessly pur­sues João and his com­rades. Sir­kis com­plained that these ­scenes triv­i­al­ized ­real-life re­pres­sive op­er­a­tions: “[De­tec­tive Ca­margo] in a suit, look­ing like a se­cret agent . . . it ­wasn’t ­really like that. [The na­tional se­cur­ity ­forces] acted in ­groups of ­thirty or forty peo­ple, all well armed, ­against two or three mil­i­tants. An in­de­scrib­able vi­o­lence that Globo ­didn’t want to show on tele­vi­sion.”21 In other cases, the min­is­er­ies tem­pers its por­trayal of the re­pres­sion by al­ter­ing es­tab­lished his­tor­i­cal facts, as when it ad­justs down­ward the num­ber of ar­rests in a no­to­ri­ous govern­ment raid from one thou­sand to three hun­dred.22 This wa­ter­ing down of po­lit­ic­ al vi­o­lence is ev­i­dent in the ­drama’s most pow­er­ful scene, which de­picts ­Heloísa’s ­tragic death. While try­ing to flee the coun­try, ­Heloísa is ­stopped at a road­block by De­tec­tive Ca­margo and a young sol­dier. ­Heloísa gets out of the car she is rid­ing in and ­reaches into her bag for her fake iden­tifi­ca­tion card, be­liev­ing she can charm the sol­dier into re­leas­ing her. The scene is con­structed to show the ­soldier’s point of view: the cam­era is po­si­tioned be­hind him; it is as if the ­viewer ­watches the ac­tion un­fold from over his shoul­der. From the ­soldier’s—and ­viewer’s—per­spec­tive, it ap­pears that H ­ eloísa is reach­ing into her bag to re­trieve a ­weapon. In what is por­trayed as an act of ­self-defense, the sol­dier guns her down. The ac­ci­den­tal ele­ment makes the scene more dra­matic. Yet in real life the mil­i­tary govern­ment ha­bit­u­ally tried to cover up its human ­rights ­crimes by pre­sent­ing the ­deaths of po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents as un­for­tu­nate ac­ci­dents, when the ac­tual cause was often tor­ture. From this stand­point, ­Heloísa’s death scene, far from being pro­voc­a­tive, re­in­forces the of­fi­cial ver­sion of such fa­tal­ities. The de­scrip­tion in the ­script of the rest of the scene em­pha­sizes the ­shocked and re­morse­ful re­ac­tions of the two se­cur­ity ­agents: “Cut to show ­Heloísa lying on the ­ground, dead. The cam­era moves ­slowly along her body until show­ing, in the fore­ground, in her hand, an iden­tifi­ca­tion card. . . . ­Camargo’s re­ac­tion [is] hu­mane, he under­stands that he was mis­taken. Cut to the low­ered ma­chine gun in the hand of the sol­dier, who is very young and in a state of

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A soldier (actor unknown) confronts Heloísa (Cláudia Abreu) as Detective Camargo (Francisco Milani) keeps his gun trained on her back. (Anos rebeldes)

shock.”23 Gil­berto Braga has said that his “great­est fear was that [Globo ex­ec­u­ tives] would cut ­Heloísa’s death” from the show,24 which may ex­plain why he sof­tened the most im­por­tant scene of ­state-sponsored vi­o­lence in the en­tire min­is­er­ies. In any case, ­Heloísa’s vi­o­lent death is at best a very weak de­nun­ci­a­ tion of ­dictatorship-era human ­rights ­crimes—and at worst, an apol­ogy for those same ­crimes. Not only does Anos re­beldes ex­cul­pate the se­cur­ity ­agents in­volved in ­Heloísa’s death, but it also ­shifts the blame for the trag­edy to the young ­woman’s ­father, Fábio. The very next scene shows Fábio pac­ing in his liv­ing room, mut­ter­ing, “I’ve said it all along . . . I did every­thing I pos­sibly could. . . . They ­didn’t kill her. . . . It was sui­cide.”25 Upon hear­ing these words, his en­raged wife slaps him. The re­spon­sibil­ity for ­Heloísa’s death falls on the cal­lous Fábio, not on De­tec­tive Ca­margo, who is hu­man­ized by his re­morse­ful re­ac­tion, or on the se­cur­ity ­forces, who are de­picted as young and in­ex­pe­ri­enced. In­deed, Fábio is shown to be in­di­rectly re­spon­sible for ­Heloísa’s death after hav­ing pre­vented her from flee­ing Bra­zil ear­lier in that same epi­sode and re­fus­ing to mo­bi­lize his con­sid­er­able fi­nan­cial and po­lit­i­cal re­sources to help

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his daugh­ter and her ­friends to ­safety. The only po­lit­i­cal death of a main char­ac­ter in the min­is­er­ies is thus ­sapped of its po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions and re­duced to just a fam­ily drama. The mil­i­tary, for its part, is all but ab­sent from Anos re­beldes and es­capes rel­a­tively un­scathed from the cri­tique of the dic­tat­or­ship.26 Sir­kis notes that in de­pict­ing po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence, the min­is­er­ies only shows “reg­u­lar cops when in fact the op­er­a­tions were con­ducted by the mil­it­ ary.”27 The role of re­pres­sor falls ­solely to the ci­vil­ian De­tec­tive Ca­margo, whose vil­lain­ous man­ner (ac­cen­ tu­ated by sin­is­ter music) and ward­robe (a suit and dark ­glasses) dis­tin­guish him from the few mil­i­tary of­fi­cers in the min­is­er­ies. In­deed, there are only two char­ac­ters, both minor, who are ­clearly iden­tifi­able as mem­bers of the armed ­forces. One is re­ferred to only by his rank, Co­man­dante (Com­mander), which is the only clue to his mil­i­tary iden­tity. The Co­man­dante wears a suit and tie, sits in­noc­u­ously be­hind a desk, and has a ­kindly, al­most pa­ter­nal air when he makes an ap­pear­ance to help Fábio res­cue ­Heloísa from ­prison (al­though the si­lent glare ­Heloísa di­rects at the Co­man­dante upon leav­ing cap­tiv­ity and her vis­ibly de­te­ri­orated phys­i­cal con­di­tion pro­vide an el­o­quent de­nun­ci­a­tion of his true char­ac­ter). The only other mil­i­tary fig­ure in the min­is­er­ies rep­re­sents the mod­er­ate wing of the armed ­forces: ­Capitão Ran­gel, who ­dresses in uni­form but ap­pears ­mostly in ­scenes set in­side the home he ­shares with his wife and ­brother-in-law, Ga­leno, who is a ­friend of João. In one such scene, the cap­tain tries to per­suade Ga­leno to aban­don the counter­cul­ture move­ment out of con­cern for the ­youth’s ­safety and fu­ture. Later in the min­is­er­ies, he is shown as sym­pa­thetic when Ga­leno is ­forced to de­fend his slav­ery no­vela to fed­eral cen­sors in ­Brasília. ­Capitão Ran­gel thus fur­ther so­lid­ifies the ­drama’s de­pic­tion of mil­i­tary men as be­nev­o­lent ­father fig­ures. Most sig­nif­i­cantly, there are no tor­tur­ers in Anos re­beldes, in spite of nu­mer­ous ref­er­ences to tor­ture and the mov­ing scene with ­Heloísa and her ­father. In­stead, it is as if the bru­tal­iza­tion of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers some­how oc­curred with­out per­pe­tra­tors. By cast­ing only non­mil­i­tary char­ac­ters in the role of re­pres­sors, por­tray­ing mil­i­tary of­fi­cers as pa­ter­nal fig­ures, and mak­ing tor­tur­ers in­vis­ible, Anos re­beldes sac­ri­fices his­tor­i­cal truth and contra­dicts the very mes­sage it was meant to com­mu­ni­cate ­through the so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing of the never again mes­sage. Even the video mon­tages of pe­riod foot­age at times con­trib­ute to di­lut­ing the harsh­ness of the re­pres­sion. These con­sist of a bar­rage of im­ages with lit­tle mean­ing­ful con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, an ef­fect rem­i­nis­cent of the “frag­mented vis­ual dis­course of ad­ver­tis­ing.”28 In the most fa­mous his­tor­i­cal se­quence, set to the up­beat theme song of the min­is­er­ies, po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence is ­turned into a ­source of tit­il­la­tion as dis­turb­ing im­ages of po­lice bru­tal­ity al­ter­nate with a pro­longed back­side view of a woman danc­ing samba in a mini­skirt. The se­quence may

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very well have been in­tended as a nos­tal­gic in­vo­ca­tion of the 1960s counter­ cul­ture move­ment known as ­Tropicália, which, as Chris­to­pher Dunn ex­plains, “pur­pose­fully in­voked stereo­typ­i­cal im­ages of Bra­zil as a trop­i­cal par­a­dise only to sub­vert them with ­pointed ref­er­ences to po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence and so­cial mis­ery.”29 But it is also ­likely that spec­ta­tors un­fa­mil­iar with trop­i­cal­ist aes­thet­ics, es­pe­cially from ­younger gen­er­a­tions, ­missed the al­lu­sion. In any case, the foot­age and its ac­com­pa­ny­ing sound­track are so en­thrall­ing that the ­viewer is, in the words of one ­critic, “sus­pended ­between shock, ec­stasy, and fas­ci­na­tion, with­out ever hav­ing the op­por­tu­nity to think and re­flect.”30 Anos re­beldes con­veys at least two contra­dic­tory mes­sages about ­Brazil’s au­thor­i­tar­ian past: on the one hand, the min­is­er­ies ad­vo­cates the need to re­mem­ber the ­crimes of the dic­tat­or­ship and to re­main vig­i­lant so as not to re­peat them; on the other, it de­picts the re­pres­sion as rel­a­tively “gen­tle,” im­ply­ing that per­haps Bra­zil­ians could af­ford to for­get about this un­pleas­ant chap­ter of their past after all. ­Brazilian-style so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing may have the ca­pac­ity to sen­si­tize mil­lions of view­ers to ­dictatorship-era human ­rights ­crimes, but the aes­thetic, po­lit­i­cal, and com­mer­cial ­forces that come to bear upon tel­ed­ra­mas like Anos re­beldes ­threaten to neu­tral­ize the at­ten­dant po­lit­i­cal and so­cial de­mands.

Tel­e d­r a­m as and the Pub­lic ­S phere It is tempt­ing to con­clude that the so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing of never again and the de­pic­tion of dit­a­branda can­cel each other out, with the end re­sult being that the min­is­er­ies had lit­tle or no im­pact on mem­ory pol­i­tics. But there is a ­deeper les­son to be ­learned in Anos re­beldes. ­Rather than ne­gat­ing each other, these two con­flict­ing mes­sages pro­duce am­bi­gu­ity, which might help to ex­plain the ­show’s run­away pop­ul­ar­ity. The Bra­zil­ian pub­lic has his­ tor­i­cally been in­dif­fer­ent to de­mands for mem­ory and jus­tice per­tain­ing to ­dictatorship-era human ­rights ­crimes; vic­tims and their fam­i­lies have long been iso­lated. It makes sense, then, that Anos re­beldes would ap­peal to a pub­lic that was re­cep­tive to re­vis­it­ing the dic­tat­or­ship but not to broach­ing the issue of ac­count­abil­ity. Under such con­di­tions, am­bi­gu­ity may be the only pos­sible ap­proach. Under­stand­ably, vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, human ­rights ­groups, and other ad­vo­cates of mem­ory are ­likely to find such am­bi­gu­ity un­ac­cept­able be­cause they inter­pret it as ab­solv­ing the dic­tat­or­ship. Yet am­bi­gu­ity also has the po­ten­tial to spark de­bates in the cul­tural arena that are sim­ply not pos­sible in the po­lit­i­cal realm. At the time Anos re­beldes aired, the sub­ject of state

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tor­tur­ers was ­strictly taboo, and the ­military’s code of si­lence in par­tic­u­lar was ef­fec­tive in “damp­en­ing de­bate ­within dem­o­cratic so­ci­ety over the past.”31 None­the­less, the min­is­er­ies man­aged to pro­voke a group of re­tired mil­i­tary of­fi­cers, ­clearly not as­suaged by the por­trayal of dit­a­branda, to break its si­lence and issue a state­ment pro­test­ing the so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing in the drama. One mem­ber went so far as to in­sin­u­ate that po­lit­i­cal tor­ture was a myth.32 The real de­bate, how­ever, took place not ­between vic­tims and vic­ti­miz­ers but ­rather ­within so­ci­ety at large. ­Braga’s min­is­er­ies il­lus­trates how cul­ture can serve as a kind of “pub­lic ­sphere,” to use ­Jürgen ­Habermas’s term.33 The idea that tele­no­ve­las play this kind of me­di­at­ing role in Bra­zil is not new: they have long been ­hailed as “an echo cham­ber for a pub­lic de­bate”34 and even “a cen­tral forum for the con­struc­tion of the idea of na­tion.”35 Anos re­beldes ful­filled this func­tion by gen­er­at­ing a se­ries of de­bates that ­played out over sev­eral weeks in major Bra­zil­ian news­papers and mag­a­zines, tak­ing the form of film re­views, ed­i­to­ri­als, and inter­views with var­i­ous peo­ple with a stake in the po­lemic. Most not­ably, the buzz ­around Anos re­beldes ad­vanced mem­ory pol­i­tics by call­ing at­ten­tion to ­Globo’s inter­nal prac­tice of cen­sor­ing out in­for­ma­tion about the mil­i­tary re­pres­sion from its tele­no­ve­las not only dur­ing the au­thor­i­ tar­ian pe­riod but es­pe­cially after the for­mal tran­si­tion to dem­o­cratic rule. That ­Brazil’s most pow­er­ful tele­vi­sion net­work had will­ingly com­plied with fed­eral cen­sors dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship years was a mat­ter of com­mon knowl­edge; that it con­tin­ued, on its own in­itia­tive, to sup­press in­for­ma­tion about ­crimes ­against hu­man­ity in the new dem­o­cratic era was much less ­widely known. The ­network’s tra­di­tion of ­self-censorship is part of a long his­tory of com­plic­ity with the dic­tat­or­ship. Over the ­course of the dic­tat­or­ship, Globo and the mil­i­tary re­gime de­vel­oped an al­most sym­bi­otic re­la­tion­ship. Ro­berto Ma­rinho ­founded the net­work in April 1965, one year after the coup. The fledg­ling Globo ­quickly flour­ished, ­thanks to mil­it­ ary ­leaders’ tacit per­mis­sion for an il­le­gal busi­ness ven­ture with ­Time-Life—from which the net­work de­rived tech­ni­cal ­know-how and an edge over its com­pet­i­tors—and pref­e­ren­tial treat­ment in the dis­tri­bu­tion of li­censes and govern­ment ad­ver­tis­ing ­contracts.36 With the help of its au­thor­i­tar­ian ben­e­fac­tors, Globo was able to es­tab­lish a vir­tual monop­oly over the tele­vi­sion in­dus­try ­within a mat­ter of years. Mil­i­tary lead­ers, in turn, were keen to lev­er­age tele­vi­sion as a way to dis­semi­nate their prop­a­ganda and whip up pub­lic sup­port for their pol­ic­ ies. In large part Globo was happy to com­ply, reg­u­larly ex­tol­ling the re­gime and its pro­jects while sup­press­ing in­for­ma­tion about the po­lit­i­cal tor­ture, mur­der, and po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance of the ­government’s op­po­nents.37 Ma­rinho once de­clared that “cen­sor­ship is a good thing when it comes to [fight­ing ] ter­ror­ism.”38

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Globo sup­pressed in­for­ma­tion not only about human ­rights ­crimes but also about civil so­ci­ety pres­sure for a re­turn to ci­vil­ian rule. When a na­tion­ wide cam­paign for di­rect pres­i­den­tial elec­tions—known as the Di­re­tas Já (Di­rect Elec­tions Now)—began to co­a­lesce in 1983, with as many as ten mil­lion Bra­zil­ians tak­ing to the ­streets in mass ral­lies through­out the coun­try, Globo in­itially sided with the mil­it­ ary and de­lib­er­ately ne­glected to re­port on the his­toric ­protest ­marches in its na­tional news­casts (even after rival net­works and the print media ­started giv­ing the move­ment broad cover­age).39 Pub­lic sup­port for di­rect elec­tions was so over­whelm­ing, how­ever, that ­Marinho’s net­work soon found it­self mired in a major pub­lic re­la­tions dis­as­ter: view­ers sig­naled their dis­con­tent by chang­ing the chan­nel, and key com­mer­cial spon­sors threat­ened to pull their ads un­less Globo re­versed its pol­icy.40 The net­work sub­se­quently ­shifted its sup­port to the ci­vil­ian op­po­si­tion and even­tu­ally be­came “a major fac­tor in le­git­i­mat­ing the new [dem­o­cratic] re­gime.”41 The in­ci­dent is ­widely rec­og­nized as a turn­ing point for the net­work, the mo­ment when it de­fin­i­tively aban­doned its role as a mouth­piece for the dic­tat­or­ship and began to re­make it­self as a cham­pion of de­moc­racy.42 ­Globo’s com­plic­ity with the dic­tat­or­ship has been well doc­u­mented;43 how­ever, it is also im­por­tant to ­stress that the net­work is not—nor has it ever been—a mono­lith, and that its re­la­tion­ship with the mil­i­tary govern­ments was far more com­plex and dy­namic than gen­er­ally ac­knowl­edged.44 De­spite its close ties to the ­regime’s mil­i­tary lead­ers, Globo hired no­vela writ­ers who were known crit­ics of the re­gime (many of whom came from the po­lit­i­cal the­a­ter) and ­granted them at least some de­gree of auton­omy to ex­press their po­lit­i­cal views using al­le­gory through­out much of the dic­tat­or­ship pe­riod.45 Even Re­nato ­Tapajós ­worked for the Globo tele­vi­sion net­work in the early 1980s, as did Al­fredo Sir­kis.46 More­over, Ma­rinho him­self some­times found him­self at odds with the re­gime, re­sult­ing on one oc­ca­sion in the ex­plo­sion of a bomb at his pri­vate res­i­dence.47 Still, on the whole Globo ­showed a m ­ arked ten­dency to sup­port, ­rather than to chal­lenge or con­test, the dic­tat­or­ship.48 Govern­ment cen­sor­ship of tele­no­ve­las dur­ing the au­thor­i­tar­ian pe­riod is the focus of a key scene in Anos re­beldes. In it, the fic­tional char­ac­ter Ga­leno, a no­vela ­writer, is sum­moned to ­Brasília to de­fend his lat­est pro­ject, a se­rial drama about slav­ery. He par­tic­i­pates in a ­strained meet­ing with a fed­eral cen­sor, Dona Ma­ri­léa, who in­sists that the no­vela is too in­flam­ma­tory for a mass au­di­ ence: she fears that the ­drama’s por­trayal of the op­pres­sion of ­slaves could lead ­working-class spec­ta­tors to ques­tion their own labor con­di­tions. She threat­ens to can­cel the pro­gram un­less the au­thor prom­ises to omit the word slave from the re­main­ing one hun­dred chap­ters. For Ma­ri­léa, the term con­jures up pain­ful mem­o­ries that most Bra­zil­ians would pre­fer to for­get: “The very word slave :

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why put these ideas into ­people’s heads? Why ­bother to re­mem­ber?” When Ga­leno ­points out that all Bra­zil­ian chil­dren learn about slav­ery in ele­men­tary ­school, she re­torts that it is “a page that ­should be ­ripped from the his­tory text­books.” What might ap­pear to be an ex­am­ple of so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing—the de­nun­ci­a­tion of cen­sor­ship and the will­ful for­get­ting of na­tional trau­mas—is ac­tu­ally a ­clever piece of ­self-promotion for Globo. ­Galeno’s no­vela on slav­ery is an un­mis­tak­able al­lu­sion to ­Braga’s fa­mous no­vela A es­crava ­Isaura (The Slave Girl ­Isaura), which aired on Globo in 1976. ­Through this al­lu­sion, the scene is con­structed in such a way that Ga­leno comes to rep­re­sent Globo pit­ted ­against the au­thor­it­ ar­ian re­gime. The con­fron­ta­tion with Ma­ri­léa is ­crafted to re­mind view­ers that many Globo no­vela writ­ers dur­ing those years found ways to ex­plore sub­jects ­banned by govern­ment and inter­nal cen­sors, often by creat­ing micro­cosms that ­served as al­le­go­ries for the na­tion.49 In the pro­cess, the ­network’s his­tory of col­lab­o­rat­ing with and prof­it­ing from the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship is con­ven­iently ­erased. Globo is por­trayed as hav­ing al­ways been on the side of mem­ory and jus­tice. Mean­while, the min­is­er­ies skew­ers the cor­po­rate elite that ­helped fi­nance the re­pres­sion (a group of which Globo was in fact a part) ­through its rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the ­wealthy en­tre­pren­eur, Fábio, who, as the plot un­folds, is re­vealed to be cor­rupt and amo­ral. This he­roic por­trayal of Globo in Anos re­beldes did not go un­chal­lenged. One tele­vi­sion ­critic ac­cused the net­work of using the min­is­er­ies to ab­solve it­self of any blame for what hap­pened under the dic­tat­or­ship.50 An­other mused that Anos re­beldes was less a sign that Globo had ­really aban­doned its old au­thor­i­tar­ian sym­pa­thies than an ex­am­ple of the ­network’s ten­dency to re­write the past to suit its own needs.51 Such state­ments in news­papers and mag­az­ ines in­vited read­ers to wit­ness the “real” Globo. Leaks to the print media about inter­nal cuts to po­lit­ic­ al con­tent in Anos re­beldes fur­ther ex­posed Globo to pub­lic scru­tiny and in­vited peo­ple to wit­ness the per­pet­u­a­tion of cen­sor­ship in the new and sup­pos­edly dem­o­cratic era. Dur­ing the early ­stages of pro­duc­tion, re­ports sur­faced that net­work ex­ec­u­tives had or­dered ­changes to the ­script. Braga him­self went on the ­record to dis­pel these ru­mors. While he ad­mit­ted that he and cow­riter Sér­gio Mar­quês had been told to re­write four of the most po­lit­i­cal chap­ters, he in­sisted that “we were in total agree­ment with the order to make the ­changes,” add­ing that he was “very satis­fied with how the re­writ­ten chap­ters had ­turned out.”52 In a 2010 me­moir, how­ever, he ad­mits that he ac­quiesced to the di­rec­tive in an ef­fort to safe­guard other, more im­por­tant ­scenes (namely ­Heloísa’s death) and re­veals that in fact “inter­nal cen­sor­ship was a ter­rible spec­ter” that ­haunted him and all Globo script­writ­ers at that time.53

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Net­work vice pres­i­dent José ­Bonifácio de Ol­i­veira So­brinho (known as Boni) also is­sued a pub­lic state­ment about the cuts. He ac­knowl­edged that cer­tain ­scenes had been “al­tered” but ­blamed com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions by claim­ing that an ex­cess of po­lit­i­cal con­tent would al­ien­ate main­stream view­ers. Boni fur­ther de­clared that “all of ­Globo’s pro­gram­ming” was sub­ject to inter­nal cuts “in ac­cor­dance with . . . the ­network’s inter­ests.”54 The net­work ex­ec­u­tive thus took the ­rather ­ill-considered ap­proach of at­tempt­ing to mini­mize the sig­nif­i­cance of the in­stance in ques­tion by point­ing out that the prac­tice of in­ ter­nal cen­sor­ship was not the ex­cep­tion but ­rather the norm at Globo. The issue of inter­nal cen­sor­ship re­mained in the pub­lic eye with fresh al­le­ga­ tions in the Jor­nal do Bra­sil, only a few weeks later, that net­work ex­ec­u­tives had cen­sored Anos re­beldes to con­ceal “crimes ­against human ­rights com­mit­ted by Bra­zil­ian mil­i­tary and po­lice of­fi­cers.”55 This time the ac­cuser was Frei Betto, a re­spected human ­rights ac­ti­vist, and the al­leged cuts per­tained to the pe­riod foot­age fea­tured in the doc­u­men­tary mon­tages. The next day, the same news­paper pub­lished a ­sharply ­worded re­join­der from film­maker ­Sílvio Ten­dler (who ­created the se­quences) ve­he­mently de­ny­ing the ­charges.56 The media re­ports of inter­nal cen­sor­ship led to spec­u­la­tion sur­round­ing the pos­sibil­ity of ad­di­tional cuts to Anos re­beldes and even its pos­sible can­cel­la­ tion. The ­weekly mag­az­ ine Isto É re­ported that “no one will swear . . . that . . . free­dom of ex­pres­sion will re­main un­af­fected once the min­is­er­ies hits the air. Every­thing will de­pend on ­whether or not the net­work comes under pres­sure.”57 An­other mag­a­zine, Veja, ex­pressed sim­i­lar ­doubts: “The test will be to find out ­whether Globo will ac­tu­ally see ­through to the end its bold move of put­ting in front of 30 mil­lion view­ers ques­tions ­hitherto lim­ited to text­books and news­paper ar­ti­cles.”58 In ad­di­tion, the al­le­ga­tions of net­work inter­fer­ence re­ig­nited a dor­mant con­tro­versy sur­round­ing Anos dou­ra­dos, the Globo min­is­er­ies set in the ­gilded 1950s that had ­partly in­spired Anos re­beldes as its se­quel. This ear­lier drama in­cludes an epi­logue with clips of its main char­ac­ters ac­com­pa­nied by a ­voiceover de­scrib­ing the even­tual fate of each. Look­ing back from the “present day” (the mid-1980s), the nar­ra­tor re­veals that one char­ac­ter, the ­heroine’s ­younger ­brother, was ar­rested dur­ing a stu­dent ­protest rally ­against the dic­tat­or­ship and sub­se­quently dis­ap­peared from a mil­i­tary ­prison. The ­voice-over also men­tions an­other char­ac­ter, Clau­dionor, who built a “fine mil­i­tary ca­reer” by work­ing for the ­army’s Cen­ter of In­tel­li­gence, an ­agency no­to­ri­ous for its role in the re­pres­sion. Globo broad­cast the epi­logue when the fi­nale of Anos dou­ra­dos orig­i­nally aired in 1986; how­ever, when the min­is­er­ies was shown as a rerun two years later, the en­tire epi­logue por­tion was de­lib­er­ately sup­pressed. Angry view­ers

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­called the net­work to ­protest the omis­sion, but the net­work per­sisted in cen­sor­ing the epi­logue in a sub­se­quent rerun in 1990. When ru­mors began cir­cu­lat­ing in May 1992 that Anos re­beldes had suf­fered sim­i­lar cuts, the media ­pressed Globo to jus­tify the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the ear­lier min­is­er­ies as well. Boni ­obliged by ex­plain­ing that in the case of Anos dou­ra­dos the net­work had sim­ply omit­ted a scene that it ­judged “ir­rel­e­vant to the plot”; he also in­sin­u­ated that the epi­logue had orig­i­nally aired by mis­take.59 Globo cen­sored the con­tro­ ver­sial fi­nale yet again when Anos dou­ra­dos was shown as a rerun for the third time in 2005, sug­gest­ing that the dic­tat­or­ship re­mained taboo on Bra­zil­ian tele­vi­sion long after the re­turn to de­moc­racy. Al­though its am­bi­gu­ity might be dis­taste­ful to some who would pre­fer a clear and uni­fied human ­rights mes­sage, Anos re­beldes did ul­ti­mately have a pos­i­tive im­pact on mem­ory pol­i­tics in Bra­zil by ex­pos­ing to pub­lic scru­tiny a po­tent leg­acy of au­thor­i­tar­ian­ism and si­lenc­ing force in na­tional cul­ture: the con­tin­ued cen­sor­ship of in­for­ma­tion about ­crimes ­against hu­man­ity on tele­ vi­sion. It also ­helped, al­beit in­di­rectly, to trans­form view­ers into ­real-time ­witness-participants in the first im­por­tant po­lit­i­cal mo­bil­iza­tion in Bra­zil since the dem­o­cratic tran­si­tion.

Anos re­b eldes and Im­p each­m ent So­cial mer­chan­dis­ing in Bra­zil not only ex­plores so­cial prob­lems; it also ­presents strat­e­gies for re­solv­ing them that can be em­u­lated in daily life. Anos re­beldes aired at a mo­ment when the fledg­ling Bra­zil­ian de­moc­racy was in cri­sis: two ­months be­fore its pre­miere, cor­rup­tion ­charges were ­brought ­against Fer­nando Col­lor de Mello, the ­nation’s first dem­o­crat­i­cally ­elected pres­i­dent in over ­thirty years. As so often oc­curs with Bra­zil­ian no­ve­las and min­is­er­ies, fic­tion and re­al­ity ­seemed to merge tem­po­rar­ily: on tele­vi­sion, Anos re­beldes ­showed João and Maria Lúcia par­tic­i­pat­ing in dem­on­stra­tions ­against the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship, while a new gen­er­a­tion of Bra­zil­ian youth, ­mostly ­middle-class high ­school and uni­ver­sity stu­dents, began tak­ing to the ­streets in strik­ingly sim­i­lar ­protest ­marches to de­mand ­Collor’s im­peach­ment. The 1992 dem­on­stra­tors, who be­came known as the ­caras-pintadas be­cause of their col­or­ful face paint­ing, re­vived—and were ­partly in­spired by—the tra­di­tion of ­street ­protest so viv­idly por­trayed in the Globo min­is­er­ies.60 Al­though so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing in Anos re­beldes was orig­i­nally used to trans­mit the never again mes­sage ­rather than ­pro-impeachment sen­ti­ment, the final epi­sode—in which João and Maria Lúcia re­kin­dle their re­la­tion­ship only to end it once and for all upon re­al­iz­ing that their world­views are fun­da­men­tally

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in­com­pat­ible—­clearly beck­ons view­ers to com­pare the min­is­er­ies to the Bra­zil­ian po­lit­i­cal re­al­ity at the time. The last image spec­ta­tors see be­fore the final cred­its is of the heart­broken Maria Lúcia tear­fully open­ing a photo album and gaz­ing at photo­graphs of hap­pier times. The ­breakup of the two ro­man­tic leads and this nos­tal­gic final scene were a fit­ting al­le­gory for the na­tional mood in Au­gust 1992: a time when Bra­zil­ians, stung by the pres­i­den­tial cor­rup­tion scan­dal and the seem­ingly un­bridge­able so­cial di­vi­sions it ex­posed, could not help but wist­fully look back upon the found­ing of the New Re­pub­lic in 1985—a mo­ment so full of prom­ise—and won­der what went wrong, how it could be that the high hopes they had in­vested in their new dem­oc­ ratic order had been so ­quickly and ­cruelly ­dashed.61 This end­ing not only cap­tured the pre­vail­ing emo­tional cli­mate in Bra­zil at the time; it also sup­planted the never again mes­sage with a new ­anti-Collor mean­ing. As a love story that mod­eled a vi­able so­lu­tion (the ­protest march) to a ­real-life po­lit­i­cal cri­sis (Col­lor­gate), Anos re­beldes had all the mak­ings of a ­modern-day “foun­da­tional fic­tion” for ­Brazil’s new de­moc­racy.62 Young view­ers of Anos re­beldes who took to the ­streets to ­protest Col­lor be­came ­real-time ­witness-participants in over­com­ing the po­lit­i­cal cri­sis ­through a na­tion­wide mo­bil­iza­tion that would be­come a land­mark in ­Brazil’s de­moc­rat­iza­tion pro­cess. This new gen­er­a­tion of po­lit­i­cal pro­test­ers ­marched ­through the ­streets to the theme song of the min­is­er­ies.63 The un­ions rep­re­ sent­ing sec­on­dary and col­lege stu­dents even used the show as in­spi­ra­tion for one of their slo­gans, “Anos re­beldes : Last Chap­ter,” ­printed on fifty thou­sand pamph­lets and ­twenty thou­sand pos­ters, as well as on signs bran­dished dur­ing ­protest ­marches.64 The ex­tent to which the slo­gan was used sug­gests that, with the help of the min­is­er­ies, young peo­ple came to see them­selves as heirs to the po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion of the 1960s and 1970s and, by ex­ten­sion, to see the Col­lor ad­min­is­tra­tion as a ves­tige of the mil­it­ ary dic­tat­or­ship. By point­edly in­vok­ing the min­is­er­ies in their po­lit­i­cal per­for­mance, the ­caras-pintadas de­manded their place in the cir­cle of mem­ory. In a bonus fea­ture in­cluded in the 2003 DVD set of Anos re­beldes, ac­tors from the min­is­er­ies re­flect upon the ­pro-impeachment move­ment in terms of Bra­zil­ian so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing. Mar­celo Ser­rado, who ­played ­João’s best ­friend, Edgar, em­pha­sizes the “ex­tremely im­por­tant po­lit­i­cal and di­dac­tic func­tion” of the min­is­er­ies. Malu Mader, who ­starred as Maria Lúcia, dis­cusses how en­ter­tain­ment can be used to ed­u­cate the ­masses and bring about real po­lit­i­cal ­change: “Mostly our job is to en­ter­tain peo­ple . . . but it is won­der­ful when we feel we’re also help­ing peo­ple to re­flect, to ques­tion the ­country’s po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, when we feel we’re part of some­thing im­por­tant . . . that can in­flu­ence the life of the coun­try.” ­Cláudia Abreu, who drew rave re­views

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for her per­for­mance as ­Heloísa, even re­counted that many fans ex­pected her to act like her char­ac­ter and take a lead­ing role in the ­pro-impeachment cam­paign. All three ac­tors sug­gest that so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing in Anos re­beldes led to the ­anti-Collor pro­tests. Di­rec­tor Denis Car­valho, who also ap­pears in the bonus fea­ture, puts it even more ­bluntly when he de­scribes the show as “a work of fic­tion, with a his­tor­ic­ al back­drop, that cul­mi­nated in the im­peach­ment of Col­lor.”65 The idea that Anos re­beldes “cul­mi­nated in the im­peach­ment of Col­lor” is more than just a per­sonal view held by a few par­tic­i­pants in the pro­gram: it is a nar­ra­tive that Globo has ag­gres­sively mar­keted over the years. In­itially, foot­age of the ­caras-pintadas and Anos re­beldes were jux­ta­posed by a co­in­ci­dence in the ­network’s eve­ning pro­gram­ming, since the min­is­er­ies was slot­ted after the ­nightly news pro­gram Jor­nal na­cional.66 It was not long be­fore Globo began de­lib­er­ately show­ing clips of the two media spec­ta­cles to­gether in an ef­fort to pack­age Anos re­beldes as an al­le­gory of the con­tem­po­rary sit­u­a­tion. One month after Anos re­beldes went off the air, when ­Collor’s fate was vir­tu­ally s­ ealed, Globo began air­ing a ­seventy-five-second ­self-promotional ad­ver­tise­ment high­light­ing its role in the ­pro-impeachment move­ment. The ad began with a scene from Anos re­beldes and then ­switched to strik­ingly sim­il­ar im­ages of ­caras-pintadas; it also ­showed clips from other Globo pro­grams crit­i­ciz­ing Col­lor.67 The claim that ­Braga’s min­is­er­ies ­sparked the na­tion­wide ­caras-pintadas move­ment and ­brought down a cor­rupt pres­i­dent fits ­neatly into the image that Globo has pre­sented about it­self since ­Brazil’s for­mal tran­si­tion to ci­vil­ian rule: as a watch­dog of the ­country’s new de­moc­racy. This image has been cul­ti­ vated over the years ­through pub­lic­ity cam­paigns re­mind­ing the pub­lic that Globo pi­o­neered ­Brazilian-style so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing. In 2003, for in­stance, the net­work broad­cast a se­ries of ­self-promotional ad­ver­tise­ments tout­ing its role as a so­cially re­spon­sible cor­po­rate cit­i­zen and high­light­ing the suc­cess of its so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing ­through the slo­gan “Globo’s no­ve­las have ­greatly con­trib­uted to the re­cov­ery of cit­i­zen­ship.” ­Globo’s claim that its pro­gram­ming in­spired youth to take to the ­streets over­looks the re­al­ity that the pro­tests ac­tu­ally pre­dated the broad­cast­ing of the first epi­sode of Anos re­beldes.68 In­deed, if there is any ­cause-and-effect re­la­tion­ ship at all ­between the two ­events, it is that the pro­tests ­caused Globo to over­ come its own re­luc­tance to broad­cast the pro­gram. After hav­ing put the pro­ject on hold in­def­i­nitely, net­work ex­ec­u­tives were in such a rush to air the min­is­er­ies that they broad­cast the first epi­sode be­fore the pro­duc­tion had been com­pleted, some­thing un­heard of for a min­is­er­ies.69 Anos re­beldes ex­em­plifies not ­Globo’s ex­em­plary cor­po­rate cit­i­zen­ship but ­rather how nim­bly the net­work is able to

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c­ hange tack and brand the waves of ­change as its own. The ­network’s op­por­tun­ ism re­calls a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent in­volv­ing mem­ory of the dic­tat­or­ship. In 1990 one of the ­network’s in­ves­ti­ga­tive jour­nal­ists, Caco Bar­cel­los, stum­bled upon ev­i­dence in­di­cat­ing that a São Paulo ce­me­tery con­tained a clan­des­tine mass grave dat­ing back to the dic­tat­or­ship years—what ­turned out to be the Vala dos Perus, or ­Turkeys’ Ditch. Mayor Luiza Erun­dina au­thor­ized the ex­hu­ma­ tion of the bu­rial site, re­sult­ing in the re­cov­ery and iden­tifi­ca­tion of the bod­ies of three po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers. Bar­cel­los com­pleted a doc­u­men­tary about the dis­cov­ery for the Globo ­repórter pro­gram that same year, but net­work ex­ec­u­tives de­cided to ­shelve the ex­posé at the time. The doc­u­men­tary did not air until five years later, when mo­men­tum was build­ing ­around a pro­po­sal to award fi­nan­cial rep­ar­at­ ions to the fam­i­lies of the dead and dis­ap­peared.70 More­over, ­Globo’s ­claims of a ­cause-and-effect re­la­tion­ship ­between the min­is­er­ies and the ­caras-pintadas ­glosses over the fact that the net­work in­itially ob­structed po­lit­i­cal mo­bil­iza­tion by de­lib­er­ately sup­press­ing cover­age of the cor­rup­tion ­charges and pro­tests in its na­tional news­casts. Net­work ex­ec­u­tives did not re­verse this pol­icy until the writ­ing was on the wall re­gard­ing ­Collor’s fate: only once the in­ves­ti­ga­tive par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee had found the pres­i­dent ­guilty of in­volve­ment in the cor­rup­tion scan­dal in Au­gust did Globo begin giv­ing the po­lit­i­cal cri­sis com­pre­hen­sive cover­age in its ­prime-time na­tional news­casts.71 Much as it had done with the Di­re­tas Já cam­paign sev­eral years ear­lier, the Globo net­work all but ig­nored the par­lia­men­tary in­ves­ti­ga­ tion into the pres­i­dent and the grow­ing ­pro-impeachment move­ment dur­ing their early s­ tages, even in its na­tional news pro­grams. As in the past, the net­ work was re­luc­tant to jeop­ard­ize its al­li­ance with a sit­ting ad­min­is­tra­tion.72 And Col­lor was not just any pres­i­dent: he was, in the eyes of many, the prod­uct of ­Globo’s po­lit­i­cal mach­i­na­tions. Ac­cord­ing to this ­widely held view, the net­work not only pro­pelled Col­lor into the na­tional spot­light by pub­li­ ciz­ing his early cru­sades ­against cor­rupt state of­fi­cials (or “ma­ha­ra­jas”); it had also guar­an­teed his suc­cess­ful bid for the Bra­zil­ian pres­i­dency in 1989 ­through the de­lib­er­ate ma­nip­u­la­tion of its cam­paign cover­age and even cer­tain tele­no­ve­las.73 ­Contrary to ­Globo’s lofty ­claims, then, Anos re­beldes did not ­create the ­caras-pintadas move­ment any more than it ­caused the im­peach­ment of Col­lor. Sev­eral fac­tors co­a­lesced to bring about these land­mark ­events in ­Brazil’s de­moc­rat­iza­tion, not least of which were the pre­ex­ist­ing na­tional mood of dis­en­chant­ment and the par­lia­men­tary in­ves­ti­ga­tion into ­Collor’s ac­tiv­i­ties. But the min­is­er­ies did con­trib­ute one key in­gre­di­ent to the un­fold­ing of ­events: it em­phat­ic­ ally ­framed the cor­rup­tion scan­dal as a leg­acy of the mil­i­ tary dic­tat­or­ship and sug­gested that—­through the po­lit­i­cal mo­bil­iza­tion of

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the young Bra­zil­ians, with its sim­i­lar­ities to the ­protest ­marches of their ­parents’ gen­er­at­ ion—his­tory was re­peat­ing it­self. The ­caras-pintadas took this idea and ran with it. Far from being pas­sive re­cep­tors of some so­cial mer­chan­ dis­ing mes­sage from Globo, they were ­agents in their own right who be­came ­witness-participants in mem­ory pol­i­tics, even if their de­mands for jus­tice were di­rected at the dem­oc­ rat­ic­ ally ­elected Col­lor ­rather than at mil­i­tary and po­lice tor­tur­ers.

Mem­o ry on the Small ­S creen Anos re­beldes and the Col­lor im­peach­ment pro­cess be­came l­inked in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion ­through the pro­tests of the c­ aras-pintadas. Young pro­test­ers lev­er­aged the con­nec­tions they iden­tified ­between the fic­tional ­characters’ re­al­ity and their own to brand their move­ment. Globo ex­ec­u­tives, for their part, cap­i­tal­ized on the as­so­ci­a­tion ­between the hit min­is­er­ies and the down­fall of a cor­rupt pres­id ­ ent to re­cast their ­network’s role in the new dem­o­ cratic order.74 Globo con­tin­ued to lev­er­age the con­nec­tions ­between the two phe­nom­ena long after Anos re­beldes went off the air and Col­lor re­signed be­fore his im­ peach­ment could be­come of­fi­cial. In fact, a kind of ­self-propagation oc­curred ­through the media ­conglomerate’s un­veil­ing of a line of mer­chan­dise that in­cluded an ­abridged ver­sion of the min­is­er­ies on VHS, a par­tial sound track on CD and LP, and even a paper­back novel that re­told the en­tire story with a lit­er­ary flour­ish. This mer­chan­dise, which ­proved to be ex­tremely pop­u­lar, rep­re­sented more than just the pos­sibil­ity of fi­nan­cial ­profit; it also prom­ised some­thing much more val­u­able by bring­ing con­tin­ued vis­ibil­ity to the min­i­ s­er­ies and thus to ­Globo’s sup­posed role in the im­peach­ment cri­sis.75 These ­spin-off prod­ucts re­veal how lit­tle Globo is in­vested in pro­mot­ing the no­tion of never again. The cover de­sign of the CD and LP fea­tures a head­ shot of Maria Lúcia, ­whereas the book cover shows an image of ro­man­tic ri­vals João and Edgar. In both cases what is being pro­moted is the love story angle of the min­is­er­ies, not its po­lit­ic­ al mes­sage. More­over, in the pro­cess of com­mod­ ify­ing the min­is­er­ies, most of its po­lit­ic­ al con­tent was di­luted or ­purged. The com­mer­cial sound track ex­cludes the two most ex­pli­citly po­lit­i­cal songs from Anos re­beldes, João Bosco and Aldir ­Blanc’s “O bê­bado e o equi­li­brista” (made fa­mous by Elis Re­gina)76 and Ge­raldo ­Vandré’s “Ca­min­hando,”77 while the novel ­glosses over the most pow­er­ful ­scenes from the min­is­er­ies, in­clud­ing the con­fron­ta­tion ­between ­Heloísa and her ­father. Un­like the orig­i­nal min­is­er­ies, there is no com­pe­ti­tion ­between contra­dic­tory mes­sages in any of these

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­spin-off prod­ucts: the mer­chan­dis­ing of mem­ory is ab­sent, and all that re­mains is the por­trayal of the au­thor­i­tar­ian pe­riod as a “soft” dic­tat­or­ship. Yet it would be a mis­take to iden­tify these ­spin-off prod­ucts as the only means ­through which Anos re­beldes has been prop­a­gated. Since the min­is­er­ies first broke the taboo of por­tray­ing the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship in a crit­i­cal light, tele­vi­sion dra­mas and other pro­gram­ming that en­gages with the dic­tat­or­ship have pro­life­rated on Globo and on Bra­zil­ian tele­vi­sion in gen­eral. The 2004 Globo no­vela Sen­hora do des­tino tells the story of a woman who be­comes sep­ar­ated from her young daugh­ter dur­ing the tumult of a po­lit­i­cal ­protest. While much of the se­ries is set in the ­present, the first four epi­sodes take place in De­cem­ber 1968. They in­clude a scene de­pict­ing a sol­dier sex­u­ally as­sault­ing a fe­male ac­ti­vist dur­ing a ­street ­protest, dem­on­strat­ing how Globo has in­creas­ ingly ­broken with its tra­di­tion of por­tray­ing a “soft” dic­tat­or­ship and has given view­ers a ­glimpse of the harsh re­al­ities of the re­pres­sion dur­ing those years. TV Cul­tura, a Bra­zil­ian net­work fo­cused on arts and cul­ture, broad­cast the ­four-episode min­is­er­ies Trago co­migo (I Carry It with Me), di­rected by Tata Am­aral (the film­maker who di­rected Hoje), in early Sep­tem­ber 2009. The min­is­er­ies in­cor­po­rates inter­views with ­real-life sur­vi­vors of the dic­ta­to­rial re­pres­sion. Fi­nally, the SBT net­work aired the no­vela Amor e ­revolução (Love and Rev­o­lu­tion), a love story ­between a stu­dent ac­ti­vist and a mil­i­tary in­tel­li­ gence of­fi­cer set en­tirely dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship pe­riod. The no­vela ran from April 2011 to Jan­u­ary 2012, end­ing five ­months be­fore the Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion was in­au­gu­rated. The use of ­Brazilian-style so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing tech­niques to pro­mote the never again mes­sage as well as mem­o­ries of pre­vi­ous dic­tat­or­ships and human ­rights ­crimes is not lim­ited to Globo, nor to Bra­zil. Two Chi­lean pro­grams fea­ture sim­i­lar strat­e­gies.78 The tele­vi­sion se­ries Los 80 (The ’80s, 2008–14) dra­ma­tizes the life of a ­middle-class fam­ily, the Her­re­ras, dur­ing the Pi­no­chet dic­tat­or­ship. The show is broad­cast on Chan­nel 13, a net­work ­linked to the Cath­o­lic Uni­ver­sity with a back­ground of hav­ing crit­ic­ ized the re­gime. While po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence is not a prom­i­nent theme in the first sea­son (which fo­cuses more on “soft” is­sues, such as the eco­nomic cri­sis and ­women’s as­pi­ra­tions to have ca­reers of their own), it has grown in im­por­tance in the later sea­sons ­through the teen­age daugh­ter ­Claudia’s ro­man­tic in­volve­ment with a dis­si­dent. Like Anos re­beldes, the Chi­lean se­ries ­presents a com­pel­ling fic­tional story that ac­ti­vates em­pa­thy for ­real-life for­mer vic­tims of po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion. It also blurs the boun­dary ­between fact and fic­tion by in­cor­po­rat­ing pe­riod foot­age as well as ref­er­ences to real ­events in a way that ­blends ed­u­ca­tion and en­ter­ tain­ment. The min­is­er­ies Los archi­vos del card­enal (The ­Cardinal’s ­Archives, 2011–­present), for its part, por­trays the his­tor­i­cal ef­forts of the Vi­car­i­ate of

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Sol­i­dar­ity, an or­gan­iza­tion under the aus­pices of the Cath­ol­ic ­Church that de­nounced human ­rights ­crimes and sup­ported the fam­il­ies of the dis­ap­peared dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship years. This pro­gram is broad­cast on the ­country’s pub­lic net­work, TVN. By vir­tue of their iden­tities as Vi­car­i­ate work­ers, the main char­ac­ters in the se­ries model be­hav­iors con­sis­tent with the never again mes­sage, par­tic­u­larly the com­mit­ment to de­fend­ing human ­rights. Like Los 80, it also in­cor­po­rates im­ages and foot­age from the past into the fic­tion­al­ized story. Given the ex­pan­sion of so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing in Bra­zil and be­yond, it is im­por­tant we an­a­lyze it crit­ic­ ally. As the trend­set­ter in dra­ma­tiz­ing the dic­tat­or­ ship on the small ­screen, Anos re­beldes of­fers at least three val­u­able in­sights into the work­ings of ­Brazilian-style so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing as a ve­hi­cle for trans­ mit­ting the never again mes­sage. First, so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing does not pre­clude the pres­ence of other, contra­dic­tory mes­sages. Sec­ond, al­though some mem­ory ad­vo­cates con­demn such mixed mes­sag­ing, the re­sult­ing am­bi­gu­ity may ac­tu­ ally be the key in­gre­di­ent to the suc­cess of tel­ed­ra­mas in the Bra­zil­ian con­text. Third, al­though so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing in Bra­zil is un­likely to have a di­rect cau­sal re­la­tion­ship with rad­ic­ al po­lit­ic­ al or so­cial ­change, no­ve­las and min­i­ s­er­ies are nev­er­the­less tools with a ­proven abil­ity to help em­power cit­i­zens to enter the cir­cle of wit­ness­ing and re­in­vent mem­ory. For all of these rea­sons, ap­pre­ciat­ing how tele­vi­sion im­parts in­for­ma­tion about po­lit­i­cal tor­ture, mur­der, and dis­ap­pear­ance and to what ef­fect is fun­da­men­tal to under­stand­ing mem­ory pol­i­tics in Bra­zil.

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3 

Li t­e r­a r y a n d O f ­f i ­c i a l ­T r u t h -Te llin g

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n 1969 a ­thirty-one-year-old rail­way ­worker named Wlad­e­miro Jorge Filho van­ished at the ­height of the au­thor­i­tar­ian re­pres­sion. More than ­twenty-five years later, when Bra­zil ­passed the Law of the Dis­ap­peared in­sti­tut­ing a rep­ar­a­tions com­mis­sion, Jorge ­Filho’s wife and son, Ue­li­ton, duly filed a claim. Nu­mer­ous eye­wit­nesses at­tested that Jorge Filho had been ac­tive in anti­dic­tat­or­ship pol­i­tics, in­clud­ing one re­spected ­ex-militant who tes­tified that the rail­way ­worker par­tic­i­pated in a ­failed at­tempt to set up a guer­rilla base camp in the ­Caparaó Moun­tains on the bor­der ­between the south­east­ern ­states of Minas Ge­rais and ­Espírito Santo.1 Based on this pre­pon­der­ance of ev­i­dence, the Spe­cial Com­mis­sion on Po­lit­i­cal ­Deaths and Dis­a p­p ear­a nces (Comissão Es­p e­c ial sobre Mor­t os e De­s par­e ­c i­d os ­Políticos, CEMDP) unan­i­mously ap­proved the Jorge Filho f­ amily’s claim in 1997. Less than a year later, how­ever, it was dis­cov­ered that a re­tiree by the name of Wlad­e­miro Jorge Filho was draw­ing a pen­sion from the govern­ment. It ­turned out to be the same man whose un­wit­ting fam­ily had re­ceived a rep­ar­a­ tions pay­ment for his pre­sumed death. Fol­low­ing this sur­pris­ing de­vel­op­ment, a re­porter from the Folha de S. Paulo inter­viewed Jorge Filho, who ex­plained that he had never dis­ap­peared, the im­pli­ca­tion being that he had sim­ply aban­doned his wife and son all those years ago. Yet some­thing did not quite add up: in the same inter­view, ac­cord­ing to the news­paper, Jorge Filho ve­he­ mently de­nied hav­ing be­come in­volved in any po­lit­i­cal mil­i­tancy dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship pe­riod, contra­dict­ing the vo­lu­mi­nous tes­ti­mony com­piled by the rep­ar­at­ ions com­mis­sion.2 The ­enigma of the sit­u­a­tion is ­touched upon, al­beit ­briefly, in the ­CEMDP’s final re­port, Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade (The Right to Mem­ory and Truth,

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2007).3 Of the many in­stances of po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance re­viewed by the com­ mis­sion, the Jorge Filho case is the only one to date in which a dis­ap­peared per­son later re­sur­faced alive and well. The Jorge Filho case is given lit­tle space in the re­port: the entry for case num­ber 076–95, which con­sists of only five short par­a­graphs, re­ports the facts, to the ex­tent that they could be as­cer­tained, and con­cludes that the case is “a mys­ter­i­ous sit­u­a­tion that can­not as yet be satis­fac­tor­ily re­solved” and that has been re­ferred to the Fed­eral Po­lice for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.4 The story of Wlad­e­miro Jorge Filho goes ­against the norm and is pro­foundly un­set­tling. Even ­though Jorge Filho was found—and was alive and able to tell his story—we are no ­closer to the “truth” since we have no way of know­ing, and in­deed may never know, w ­ hether Jorge F ­ ilho’s ver­sion of e­ vents is dis­ in­gen­u­ous or com­plete. This un­cer­tainty is a poig­nant re­min­der of the lim­its of the know­able when it comes to po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance. Just as un­set­tling is how the Jorge Filho case sub­tly under­mines the rep­ar­a­tions ­commission’s meth­o­dol­ogy, con­clu­sions, and ob­jec­tives. Jorge ­Filho’s de­nial of past po­lit­ic­ al in­volve­ment, no mat­ter how du­bi­ous that de­nial may be, casts doubt on the kind of ev­i­dence used by the CEMDP, es­pe­cially eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mony. Like­ wise, his un­ex­pected re­ap­pear­ance casts doubt on the pri­mary con­clu­sion that those who went miss­ing dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship were mur­dered by se­cur­ity ­forces and their bod­ies sub­se­quently bur­ied in clan­des­tine ­graves. Fur­ther, Jorge ­Filho’s claim that he will­fully and de­lib­er­ately chose to van­ish with­out a trace, leav­ing his fam­ily be­reft, lends cre­dence to the ­military’s in­sis­tence that it had noth­ing to do with those who went miss­ing. Fi­nally, the Jorge Filho case opens or re­in­forces the pos­sibil­ity that any of the other dis­ap­peared vic­tims might like­wise have aban­doned their fam­i­lies, under­min­ing the goal of re­stor­ing dig­nity to le­git­i­mate vic­tims and their fam­i­lies. A strik­ingly sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion un­folds in Tata ­Amaral’s film Hoje, which to­gether with the Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion (Comissão Na­cional da Ver­dade, CNV) in 2012 ­launched the cycle of cultural mem­ory ex­plored in the intro­duc­tion to this book. The film, in turn, is an ad­ap­ta­tion of Fer­nando ­ onassi’s 2003 novel Prova ­contrária (Proof to the ­Contrary), which tells the B story of a widow of a de­sa­par­e­cido who uses her rep­ar­a­tions check to pur­chase an apart­ment only to re­ceive an un­timely visit from said hus­band. The man ­avoids giv­ing a ­straight an­swer about what hap­pened to him. In­stead, he of­fers three ver­sions: the tes­ti­mony of a tor­ture vic­tim, the con­fes­sion of a col­lab­o­ra­tor, and the mil­i­tary ­government’s of­fi­cial ver­sion of a de­serter. One key de­tail sets the novel apart from the entry on Jorge Filho in the ­CEMDP’s truth re­ port: it is never cer­tain ­whether the man who re­turns is a ghost, a live per­son, or a fig­ment of the ­woman’s imag­i­na­tion. As in real life, where the mys­tery

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sur­round­ing Jorge ­Filho’s po­lit­ic­ al ac­ti­vism and dis­ap­pear­ance re­mains un­ solved, ­Bonassi’s novel pro­vides no sense of clo­sure: after re­count­ing his three ver­sions, the man de­parts as en­ig­mat­i­cally as he ar­rived, leav­ing the woman— and pre­sum­ably the ­reader—pro­foundly un­set­tled. Both the rep­ar­at­ ion ­commission’s re­port and Prova ­contrária con­tem­ plate the Law of the Dis­ap­peared as well as the na­tional ­trauma of the dis­ ap­pear­ances them­selves. Each seeks in its own way to make the dis­ap­peared re­ap­pear or be­come vis­ible so as to re­veal how the his­tor­i­cal re­al­ity of po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance con­tin­ues to haunt post­tran­si­tion Bra­zil. Fol­low­ing so­ci­ol­og­ ist Avery ­Gordon’s sug­ges­tion that truth re­ports and lit­er­ary fic­tion are both ­needed to begin to grasp the phe­nom­en ­ on of dis­ap­pear­ance and to ren­der vis­ible its haunt­ing ef­fects, I pro­pose in this chap­ter to read Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade along­side Prova ­contrária as a means for an­al­yz­ing the in­sights each ­brings to the other. The re­port en­deav­ors to ren­der the dis­ap­peared vis­ible ­through an ar­tic­u­la­tion of mem­ory as a path to­ward rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion, ­through which the au­thors grant po­lit­i­cal heg­e­mony to a dis­course that has had cul­ tural heg­e­mony ever since the works of Fer­nando Ga­beira and Al­fredo Sir­kis be­came ­linked to the Am­nesty Law and ­launched the first cycle of cul­tural mem­ory. In the pro­cess, the ques­tion of in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal ac­count­abil­ity dis­ap­pears. Prova ­contrária, for its part, ­brings vis­ibil­ity not only to the dis­ ap­peared and the issue of jus­tice but also and es­pe­cially to the am­bi­gu­ities that in­here in each. Al­though Prova ­contrária did not link to an in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nism in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion in the same way as the other works in this study, it did as­sert a link of sorts by ex­pli­citly in­vok­ing the Law of the Dis­ap­peared and tak­ing the rep­ar­a­tions pro­gram as its prem­ise. It also con­trib­uted, al­beit in­ di­rectly, to the cycle ­launched by its film ad­ap­ta­tion, Hoje, and the CNV, and the cri­tique it makes of the Law of the Dis­ap­peared and tran­si­tional jus­tice in gen­eral confers an ad­di­tional layer of mean­ing to both the film and the truth com­mis­sion.

Brazil’s First Of­fi­c ial Truth Re­p ort The pref­ace to Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade be­gins with a state­ment intro­duc­ing the re­port as well as iden­tify­ing its ob­jec­tives of build­ing re­spect for human ­rights in the coun­try and sup­port­ing the ­nation’s bid to be­come a glo­bal power, fol­lowed by a sum­mary of the ­report’s con­tents, which reads in part:

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Two faces of Bra­zil . . . will ­emerge be­fore ­readers’ eyes . . . One face is that of the coun­try that has been strength­en­ing its dem­o­ cratic in­sti­tu­tions for over ­twenty years. It is the good, in­spir­ing, and prom­is­ing face of a na­tion that seems to have opted de­fin­i­tively for de­moc­ racy, under­stood to be a pow­er­ful ­shield ­against the im­pulses of ha­tred and war re­sult­ing from op­pres­sion. The read­ing will re­veal an­other face as well. It is the face dis­cerned in the ob­sta­cles con­fronted by those who de­mand to know the truth, es­pe­ cially those de­mand­ing their mil­len­ary and sa­cred right to bury their loved ones.5

With these words, the au­thors em­pha­size the idea that the re­port will ren­der vis­ible that which is not read­ily ap­par­ent, de­fined in terms not only of the achieve­ments of dem­o­cratic tran­si­tion but also of the his­tor­i­cal intran­si­gence of the state in the face of de­mands for mem­ory and jus­tice. I wish to call at­ten­tion to this em­pha­sis on vis­ibil­ity/in­vis­ibil­ity, for if we ac­cept Avery ­Gordon’s def­i­ni­tion of vis­ibil­ity as “a com­plex ­system of per­mis­ sion and pro­hi­bi­tion, punc­tu­ated al­ter­nately by ap­pa­ri­tions and hys­ter­i­cal blind­ness,” then we can ex­pect that the vis­ibil­ity cham­pioned in the re­port is par­tial and com­plex, and that the re­port it­self is char­ac­ter­ized by (to use ­Gordon’s words) “a con­stant nego­ti­a­tion ­between what can be seen and what is in the shad­ows.”6 The rhet­o­ric of the pref­ace ­presents the re­port it­self as a form of light and vis­ibil­ity in di­rect op­po­si­tion to the opac­ity that has pre­ceded it: the goal of Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade is, it says, to “shed light on a pe­riod of dark­ness.”7 Yet for all its em­pha­sis on ren­der­ing vis­ible cer­tain re­al­ities that have not his­tor­i­cally been ap­par­ent to the pub­lic (the two faces), the re­port it­self pro­duces (or re­pro­duces) cer­tain in­vis­ibil­ities, par­tic­u­larly re­gard­ing the ques­tion of in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal ac­count­abil­ity. It is im­por­tant to at­tend crit­i­ cally to the ques­tion of vis­ibil­ity be­cause this re­port is a foun­da­tional nar­ra­tive of the Bra­zil­ian ­state’s new pol­i­tics of mem­ory: it marks the first time the state has of­fi­cially and system­at­i­cally laid out its vi­sion of what tran­si­tional jus­tice means in the Bra­zil­ian con­text. The ­report’s very title il­lus­trates how the vis­ibil­ity of­fered by the re­port is only par­tial. It makes ap­par­ent ­Brazilians’ ­rights to mem­ory and truth but ren­ders jus­tice in­vis­ible. There is no cor­re­spond­ing “right to jus­tice” rec­og­nized in the title or any­where else in the doc­u­ment.8 It is in­deed re­mark­able that the word jus­tice ap­pears only once in the en­tire re­port, and even then it re­fers not to crim­i­nal pun­ish­ment but ­rather to mem­ory: “The work of the rep­ar­a­tions com­mis­sion rep­re­sents first and fore­most the pos­sibil­ity, ­through the ­state’s re­sponse, of re­stor­ing peace and jus­tice, so that per­se­cu­tion, mur­der, and ­forced

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dis­ap­pear­ance never again occur in this coun­try.”9 The au­thors of the re­port thus do not ­equate jus­tice with crim­i­nal pun­ish­ment (nor even with the iden­tifi­ca­tion of per­pe­tra­tors). More­over, they re­de­fine jus­tice as a syno­nym for the re­cov­ery of a dif­fi­cult past: “Re­de­moc­ra­tized, the Bra­zil­ian state also ­played a cer­tain role as the judge of his­tory upon re­cov­er­ing mem­ory and truth.”10 ­Within this con­text, fi­nan­cial rep­ar­a­tions be­come, in the ­report’s words, the “nat­u­ral and legal con­se­quence” of the ­state’s rec­og­ni­tion of its re­spon­sibil­ity for the ­deaths and dis­ap­pear­ances. The use of the term nat­u­ral is not for­tui­tous: it ­serves to nat­u­ral­ize rep­ar­a­tions and ­thereby de­nat­u­ral­ize human ­rights pros­e­cu­tions, which, to­gether with truth com­mis­sions, are more com­monly the in­itial legal con­se­quences of dem­o­cratic tran­si­tions than rep­ar­a­ tions pro­grams. A sim­i­lar era­sure oc­curs in the ­report’s nar­ra­tive his­tory of the strug­gle waged by fam­i­lies of the dis­ap­peared over the past forty years. A close read­ing re­veals that this his­tory ­largely sup­presses the ex­is­tence of de­mands for pun­ish­ ment. For ex­am­ple, in nar­rat­ing the strug­gle of the fam­i­lies in the late 1970s, the re­port men­tions their “le­git­i­mate pres­sure . . . in favor of am­nesty and the right to truth.”11 By omit­ting the fact that at least some fam­i­lies also pres­sured for pun­ish­ment, the re­port not only si­lences those de­mands but also im­plies that even if they did exist, they ­weren’t le­git­i­mate. This is not to say that the re­port ig­nores the issue of im­pu­nity com­pletely. It ac­knowl­edges that am­nesty is po­lem­i­cal, gives voice to the ­families’ cri­tiques of the Law of the Dis­ap­peared, and con­cludes by rais­ing the ar­gu­ment that until a body is lo­cated, a dis­ap­pear­ance is on­go­ing and con­sti­tutes a con­tin­u­ous crime. Yet the ref­er­ences tend to be brief, super­fi­cial, and rel­a­tively mild. The harsh­est cri­tiques are con­tained in quo­ta­tions, sprin­kled through­out, of state­ ments by non­state ac­tors. For ex­am­ple, the writ­ers of the re­port note that “so­ci­ety ap­pears to have ac­cepted the ar­gu­ment that the am­nesty ­should ­shield the tor­tur­ers [from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion],” but they im­me­di­ately fol­low up with a re­but­tal from legal ­scholar ­Belisário dos San­tos Jr., who ­states that the ar­gu­ment “is in­cor­rect from a ju­rid­ic­ al stand­point.”12 Sig­nif­i­cantly, the re­port ne­glects to iden­tify San­tos as a one­time mem­ber of the rep­ar­a­tions com­mis­sion, pre­sent­ing him here ­rather as a pri­vate cit­i­zen whose views do not rep­re­sent those of the com­mis­sion. A timid cri­tique of the pre­vail­ing inter­pre­ta­tion of the Am­nesty Law is ex­pressed, but only ­through at­tri­bu­tion to a dis­sent­ing or mi­nor­ity voice that does not re­flect the of­fi­cial view of the state. The same oc­curs with re­spect to the ques­tion of “con­tin­uo­ us ­crimes”: the writ­ers of the re­port them­selves quote the view up­held by “highly re­spected legal schol­ars” that the Am­nesty Law can­not cover ­forced dis­ap­pear­ances be­cause the com­mis­sion of

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the crime is on­go­ing until the bod­ies are lo­cated.13 How­ever, the ­report’s writ­ers stop short of draw­ing the con­clu­sion them­selves. De­spite the ­report’s hint­ing at dis­satis­fac­tion on the part of cer­tain ­promemory ­groups, the over­all ­thrust of the re­port is to ren­der de­mands for pun­ ish­ment in­vis­ible. No­where is this ­clearer than in the last par­a­graphs of the pref­ace: No ­spirit of re­van­chismo [vin­dic­tive­ness] nor of nos­tal­gia for the past will be ca­pable of se­duc­ing the na­tional ­spirit. . . . The pub­li­ca­tion of this book on the date that marks the ­twenty-eighth an­ni­ver­sary of the 1979 Am­nesty Law . . . rep­re­sents the de­sire for unity, the sen­ti­ment of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and the hu­man­i­tar­ian ob­jec­tives that in­spired the ­eleven years of the Spe­cial ­Commission’s work.14

By ex­alt­ing the “de­sire for unity, the sen­ti­ment of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion,” the re­port ­adopts the rhet­o­ric of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory. ­Through its un­crit­i­cal use of the term re­van­chismo, the re­port re­in­forces—and im­pli­citly ­endorses—the con­vic­tion ­within parts of the mil­i­tary and so­ci­ety that jus­tice in the form of in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal ac­count­abil­ity is tan­ta­mount to petty ven­geance and is there­fore some­how ­un-Brazilian. The idea that jus­tice (re­cast as re­venge) is ­un-Brazilian stems from in­fluen­ tial dis­courses that cel­e­brate conciliation and cor­dial­ity—the pref­er­ence for the peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of con­flicts—as a de­fin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of na­tional iden­tity.15 Per­haps no Bra­zil­ian ­thinker bet­ter em­bod­ies this dis­course than Gil­berto ­Freyre, whose writ­ings extol the vir­tues of the ­country’s soft ap­proach to con­flicts.16 For ex­am­ple, in his trea­tise New World in the Trop­ics (pub­lished in 1959, just five years be­fore the blood­less mil­i­tary coup), the so­ci­ol­o­gist ­praises the “‘white,’ or peace­ful, rev­o­lu­tions” that char­ac­ter­ize Bra­zil­ian his­tory, list­ing in­de­pen­dence from Por­tu­gal, the trans­for­ma­tion from em­pire to re­pub­lic, and the ab­o­li­tion of slav­ery as ex­am­ples.17 In the con­text of post­dic­tat­orial Bra­zil, this dis­course is main­tained by the po­lit­i­cal elite in par­tic­u­lar ­through the cel­e­bra­tion of the Am­nesty Law as a tri­umph of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Even pol­i­ti­cians on the left—Dilma Rous­seff being a prime ex­am­ple—ap­pro­pri­ate this lan­guage in order to dis­arm crit­ics of their tran­si­tional jus­tice in­itia­tives (by pref­ac­ing their pres­en­ta­tion of such in­itia­tives with the dis­claimer that the mo­ti­va­tion is not re­van­chismo) and to side­step de­bates about their own pasts. Those on the left who chal­lenge it are la­beled re­van­chis­tas and de­leg­i­ti­mized. Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade ­grants dis­ap­pear­ance vis­ibil­ity in a po­lit­i­cal sense, yet it ren­ders the ques­tion of in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal li­abil­ity—of jus­tice—

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in­vis­ible. It em­braces the dis­course of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory, giv­ing this cul­tu­rally dom­i­nant ap­proach to the past po­lit­i­cal heg­em ­ ony. The head au­thor of Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade was Human ­Rights Min­is­ter Paulo Van­nu­chi, a key state actor and pro­tag­o­nist in the strug­gle to put mem­ory of the dic­tat­or­ ship on the na­tional ­agenda.18 The con­ser­va­tism of the re­port re­flects the dif­fi­ cult po­si­tion of the Human ­Rights Min­is­try, which was ap­pointed to speak on be­half of the Lula ad­min­is­tra­tion in power at the time yet which was cog­ni­zant of the vocal dis­sent ­within other ­branches of the govern­ment, es­pe­cially parts of the mil­i­tary. The fact that no re­port was pro­duced dur­ing the Car­doso govern­ment, which had de­signed and im­ple­mented the Law of the Dis­ap­peared, re­flects this dif­fic­ ulty. In­deed, ­Vannuchi’s in­itial pro­po­sal for a na­tional truth com­mis­sion, pre­sented to the pres­i­dent in De­cem­ber 2010, ­sparked a po­lit­ic­ al cri­sis when Min­is­ter of De­fense Nel­son Jobim and the heads of the three ­branches of the armed ­forces threat­ened their col­lec­tive res­ig­na­tion if ­changes were not made. ­Granted, truth re­ports are but one way that ­states—or, more ac­cu­rately, govern­ments or min­is­tries ­within them—ar­tic­u­late their pol­i­cies and vi­sions about the past. Re­al­ity is more com­plex than the nar­ra­tives ­drafted to shape or de­scribe it. More­over, im­por­tant de­vel­op­ments in re­la­tion to in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal li­abil­ity of the ­dictatorship’s tor­tur­ers have oc­curred since the pub­li­ca­ tion of Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade in 2007: the Su­preme Court re­con­sid­ered the Am­nesty Law in 2010 (ul­ti­mately vot­ing to up­hold it); the ­Inter-American Court of Human ­Rights con­demned Bra­zil in 2010 for dis­ap­pear­ances oc­cur­ ring dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship and the im­pu­nity that en­sued; and the Of­fice of the Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tor has begun try­ing to bring crim­i­nal ­charges ­against some ac­cused human ­rights vi­ol­a­tors. Nev­er­the­less, Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade re­veals the re­sil­ience of the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory ap­proach and its ap­pro­ pri­a­tion by the Bra­zil­ian state.

Fer­n ando Bo­n assi and An­o ther Way of See­ing Prova ­contrária was pub­lished in 2003—that is, while the CEMDP was still ac­tively ful­fill­ing its man­date of re­view­ing and rul­ing on rep­ar­a­tions ­claims, and four years be­fore the pub­li­ca­tion of its final re­port. An ­author’s note of sorts sum­marizes the Law of the Dis­ap­peared and ends with a post­script: “PS: The law . . . ­doesn’t au­thor­ize the in­ves­ti­ga­tion into the circum­stances in which [the ­deaths and dis­ap­pear­ances] oc­curred, nor the iden­tifi­ca­tion of the per­pe­tra­tors.”19 From the out­set, Bo­nassi calls upon read­ers

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to wit­ness the blind spots in the Law of the Dis­ap­peared (and by ex­ten­sion, the vi­sion of tran­si­tional jus­tice that the state would later ­present in Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade) per­tain­ing to the circum­stances of the ­deaths and dis­ ap­pear­ances as well as to the iden­tity of the per­pe­tra­tors. The novel be­gins with a de­scrip­tion of the phys­i­cal set­ting, in which a woman is sit­ting in an apart­ment that is empty ex­cept for the boxes and ­crates wait­ing to be un­packed: “The boxes are still ­sealed with ­strips of white tape on which the word ‘fragile’ ap­pears in red let­ter­ing. Every­thing ap­pears frag­ile.”20 The con­tain­ers ­marked frag­ile keep the ­woman’s ­worldly pos­ses­sions—ma­te­rial sym­bols of the past—from erupt­ing and intro­duc­ing dis­or­der into the empty apart­ment, which is the ma­te­rial em­bodi­ment of the ­present and fu­ture. ­Through lit­er­ary fic­tion, Bo­nassi is able to re­veal (at least par­tially) what re­mains stub­bornly ­veiled in the rep­ar­a­tions ­commission’s re­port: how, in Avery ­Gordon’s words, “dis­ap­pear­ance . . . ex­ists and is liv­ing with us, doing ­things to us, scar­ing us, . . . mak­ing us in­con­sol­ably ­lonely, or crazy, or un­able to see what is right in front of our faces.”21 The sce­nario of a house­hold move and de­scrip­ tions of the ex­ter­nal (vis­ible) en­vi­ron­ment serve to em­pha­size the ­woman’s inter­nal (in­vis­ible) state. And yet the past keeps seep­ing out de­spite her ef­forts to con­tain it. The ­narrator’s de­scrip­tions of the apart­ment re­veal that the past lurks be­neath the ve­neer of new­ness, as the bland tech­ni­cal lan­guage of a real es­tate bro­chure gives way to some­thing more sin­is­ter: “Liv­ing area: ­seventy-five ­square me­ters. . . . Two bed­rooms. Floor to ceil­ing dec­o­ra­tive tile. . . . ­Cherry cab­i­netry. Mar­ble counter­tops. Light ­switches ­flecked with dried ce­ment. Light bulbs dan­gling [es­ga­ na­das] from their wires.”22 The de­scrip­tion of the ­apartment’s fea­tures pro­gresses to two im­ages that bring to mind the tor­ture cham­ber: light ­switches and light­bulbs dan­gling (as if being stran­gled) by their wires. The light­bulbs lit­er­ally “stran­gled” by their wires are the “ghostly ele­ments” that in­ti­mate the ­woman’s la­tent mem­ory of her ­husband’s tor­ture. As the woman be­gins the task of un­pack­ing and mov­ing into her new apart­ment, the lit­tlest thing is ca­pable of trig­ger­ing in­vol­un­tary mem­or­ ies: for in­stance, as she ­stands hold­ing the blue­print of her new apart­ment, the trans­fer of ink on her fin­gers re­minds her so ­strongly of the mimeo­graph ma­chines that she used as a mil­i­tant that she ­quickly en­closes the blue­print in a pro­tec­tive plas­tic ­folder and ­stashes it out of sight. A wel­com­ing visit from the build­ing man­ager and ten­ant board pres­i­dent like­wise trig­gers a flash­back to po­lice raids, and she dis­penses with them as ­quickly as pos­sible. In­itially, the woman ap­pears rec­on­ciled. As she sur­veys the boxes of her ­worldly be­long­ings wait­ing to be un­packed in her new apart­ment, she be­gins mak­ing a men­tal in­ven­tory “to fig­ure out what can stay, ­besides her.”23 It is as

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if she ­wishes to di­vest her­self of un­wanted bag­gage: “She ­doesn’t use the word rep­ar­a­tions. She ­doesn’t ap­prove of it. She ­doesn’t ac­cept that there was a fi­nan­cial loss that needs res­ti­tu­tion. She ­speaks—when she ­speaks of it at all— of the ‘apart­ment money.’ But in any case, she ­doesn’t re­mem­ber these sub­tle­ ties at the mo­ment, nor the copy of the ­government’s check, nor the deed to the apart­ment.”24 ­Through her ­choice of words (“apart­ment money”), the woman at­tempts to de­ceive her­self about her dis­com­fort in ac­cept­ing the ­government’s rep­ar­a­tions check. By ac­cept­ing the check, the woman has, at least super­fi­cially, ac­cepted her ­husband’s ab­sence; how­ever, the de­scrip­tions of the ex­ter­nal, vis­ible en­vi­ron­ment re­veal her inner, in­vis­ible state, which per­ceives him as what Gor­don calls a “seeth­ing pres­ence,” in the sense that she is in­tensely aware of his ab­sence.25 On some ­deeper level, there­fore, the woman re­mains un­rec­on­ciled with her loss. It is when the woman at­tempts to ex­ter­nal­ize or per­form her rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion with the past with a bot­tle of cham­pagne that mem­ory, which had been la­tent, just under the sur­face, ­erupts into the ­present and ­forces its rec­og­ni­tion: she re­ceives an un­ex­pected visit from her dis­ap­peared hus­band. The un­timely ap­pa­ri­tion of the man ­brings all of the ­woman’s re­pressed emo­tions to the sur­face: she weeps in grief, be­comes en­raged, reads aloud from the death cer­ tif­i­cate is­sued by the govern­ment, and so on. Yet the im­pulse to re­press re­mains, as ev­i­denced in the ­woman’s fre­quent hints that it is time for the man to leave. As she ad­mon­ishes him at one point, “I’ve al­ready been ­through this. First they stole your life from me, and now ­you’re steal­ing your death.”26 The novel is or­ga­nized into three ac­counts, each of which of­fers a dif­fer­ent ex­pla­na­tion and casts the male pro­tag­o­nist in a dif­fer­ent role. In the first ac­count, in which nar­ra­tive pre­dom­i­nates over di­alogue, the man ap­pears to be a ghost who of­fers the tes­ti­mony of a de­sa­par­e­cido; the ex­change that en­sues ­between the man and woman can be read as an al­le­gory of the so­ci­etal in­abil­ity to lis­ten.27 In the sec­ond ac­count, in which di­alogue pre­dom­in ­ ates over nar­ra­ tive, the man shows every sign of being alive and well (he car­ries a cell phone and even­tu­ally has sex with the woman) and of­fers the con­fes­sion of a col­lab­o­ ra­tor; the re­sult­ing inter­ac­tion in­volves an abun­dance of words but very lit­tle pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tion. In the third ac­count, which ends ­abruptly and ­thereby con­fronts the ­reader with an ab­sence of text, the man seems to be a fig­ment of the ­woman’s imag­i­na­tion who of­fers the mil­i­tary ­government’s of­fi­cial ver­sion of a de­serter; after he com­pletes this third ac­count, the man gets up and ­leaves as mys­ter­io­ usly as he came, sym­bol­iz­ing the Bra­zil­ian ­state’s long tra­di­tion of at­tempt­ing to re­cuse it­self from de­bates over the mean­ing of the dic­tat­or­ship, a tra­di­tion that was only be­gin­ning to break down when Bo­nassi pub­lished his novel. The use of fic­tion per­mits this fluid­ity of the man’s roles.

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Prova ­contrária ren­ders vis­ible not only a de­sa­par­e­cido (through the man’s lit­eral and un­ex­pected re­ap­pear­ance), but also the ques­tion of jus­tice ren­dered in­vis­ible in Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade. Al­though Bo­nassi does not di­rectly raise the issue of pun­ish­ment in his ­author’s note (men­tion­ing only the ­state’s fail­ure to in­ves­ti­gate the ­crimes and iden­tify the per­pe­tra­tors), the novel ­raises the ques­tion of in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal ac­count­abil­ity ­through the woman, who in a key pas­sage near the end of the book de­clares her de­sire to see per­pe­tra­tors held ac­count­able for their ­crimes: I still ­haven’t con­vinced my­self that it’s best to leave the ­wounds as they are. Maybe the best thing is to re­open them once and for all. . . . Maybe now we can speak about hu­man­ity with­out get­ting ­bogged down in ideol­ogy. Maybe it’s time for the cow­ards to ex­plain their rea­sons, not just the ­state’s rea­sons. It’s in­tol­er­able that they ­haven’t been pun­ished with any rigor. That we can’t make it ­harder for them to sleep at night, at least. That they ­aren’t ex­posed as the ones who were ca­pable [of com­mit­ ting atroc­ities] ­against those who were in­ca­pable. To shame them. Yes, that first. Then the fir­ing squad. Or some­thing pain­less. A pill. What will hap­pen to jus­tice if there isn’t some form of ven­geance [vingança]?28

With these words, the woman up­ends the ar­gu­ment that jus­tice ­equals ven­ geance by sug­gest­ing that jus­tice with­held fo­ments the de­sire for ven­geance. The man, for his part, re­fuses to an­swer her ques­tion, choos­ing in­stead to ­change the sub­ject. His re­fu­sal or in­abil­ity to re­spond not only ­stands for the state and ­society’s un­will­ing­ness to con­tem­plate jus­tice as a le­git­i­mate sub­ject of pub­lic de­bate but also im­plies that the woman has the moral high ­ground, since he seems un­able to de­fend the ­status quo. In the first part of the novel, the man as­sumes the role of a de­sa­par­e­cido or ghost whose body is ­slowly van­ish­ing as the con­ver­sa­tion pro­gresses. Both the man and woman bear wit­ness to their suf­fer­ing under dic­tat­or­ship, shar­ing their re­spec­tive ex­pe­ri­ences. While each is able to offer a co­her­ent per­sonal ac­count, they seem to talk past each other, as if no true di­alogue were pos­sible. The woman in par­tic­u­lar is de­scribed as “dis­tracted” dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, as if she ­weren’t ­really pay­ing at­ten­tion to what the man is say­ing.29 Con­se­quently, in each case, the ­speaker en­gages in a mono­logue ­rather than a di­alogue since, as the nar­ra­tor ­points out, “in order to have a con­ver­sa­tion, you need to lis­ten.”30 The woman is the first to tes­tify, bear­ing wit­ness to the suf­fer­ing in­flicted on her by the dis­ap­pear­ance: “I ­waited for you ­calmly, I ­waited for you im­pa­ tiently, I ­waited long after it was con­ven­ient to wait. I ­waited out of spite, I ­waited out of in­san­ity. I ­waited for you like it was my last ­chance. I ­waited for the sake of wait­ing. Then it hit me. I ­started talk­ing to peo­ple. But by then

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t­ hings were dif­fer­ent. Then the vig­ils, the trips, the ques­tions . . . and then the doc­u­ments . . . the check . . . and now this home. This home that I ­bought with your ab­sence.”31 With these words, the woman de­scribes the agony— first of wait­ing, then of los­ing all hope once the tran­si­tion was under way (when “things were dif­fer­ent”). Yet her words seem to fall on deaf ears: the man ­avoids eye con­tact and re­mains si­lent, show­ing no signs of cu­ri­os­ity or com­pas­sion. After the woman has ­spoken her piece, the roles are re­versed, as the man of­fers the tes­ti­mony of a de­sa­par­e­cido. He be­gins with how he came to join the re­sis­tance (to prove his mas­cu­lin­ity) and talks about his po­lit­i­cal ac­ti­vism (as “a kind of sec­re­tary” for a dis­si­dent group, contra­dict­ing the idea of “man­li­ ness”). While he ­speaks, the woman ­fusses over the cig­ar­ette he is smok­ing and inter­rupts him twice to nag at him, point­ing out that she ­doesn’t have an ash­tray. When the man tries to en­gage her as a lis­tener by ask­ing her if she re­mem­bers cer­tain de­tails, her re­sponse is de­void of af­fect or em­pa­thy: she ­smiles “with­out com­plic­ity.”32 Just like the man did when she was speak­ing, the woman ­betrays an in­abil­ity to re­ceive his tes­ti­mony. The ­woman’s cold­ness not­with­stand­ing, the man pro­ceeds to re­late how he was ar­rested and tor­tured. ­Through the ar­ti­fice of fic­tion, the male pro­tag­o­ nist bears wit­ness—­through his words and his body, which ­slowly be­comes trans­par­ent as his nar­ra­tive pro­gresses—to an event that, in real life, left no wit­nesses: “I’m sent to the ­coroner’s of­fice. I ar­rive naked. No one cares why my body was ­stripped or about the signs of tor­ture. Every­one knows how I died. Some­one makes a no­ta­tion in a file. It’s the last time my real name will be writ­ten next to my ali­ases. No one is con­cerned about who I am or with the prep­ar­a­tion of my body. I’m bur­ied in a clan­des­tine grave. I dis­ap­pear.”33 The ­woman’s only re­ac­tion is to weep “on the in­side”—an emo­tional re­ac­tion, to be sure, but not one that leads to a di­alogue. The man’s com­ment about “the last time [his] real name will be writ­ten” ges­tures at how po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance ­strips its vic­tims of both voice and name. Once she has re­com­posed her­self, the woman asks the man how she ­should ad­dress him: —What name ­should I call you? The man says a name. Then an­other. And yet an­other after that. Full names.34

It is un­clear ­whether the names the man ­speaks are his own, of mur­dered or dis­ap­peared com­rades, or of per­pe­tra­tors, since the nar­ra­tor inter­venes to sup­press the man’s re­sponse—and the names. On the other hand, if tes­ti­mony is at its es­sence the act of pro­nounc­ing (speak­ing in) one’s own name, then the

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­reader is pre­vented from re­ceiv­ing both name and tes­ti­mony. The woman, for her part, re­mains aloof and dis­tant as a lis­tener, re­fus­ing to ac­knowl­edge the names the man ut­ters, opt­ing in­stead to im­pose on him a name of her own choos­ing. Her re­fu­sal to re­peat his names—to ac­knowl­edge his tes­ti­mony— ef­fects a kind of sec­ond dis­ap­pear­ance, lit­er­al­ized by the grad­ual fad­ing of the man’s phys­i­cal form, which be­comes, in the ­woman’s words, “trans­par­ent, trans­par­ent . . .”35 Even­tu­ally, as the first part of the novel draws to a close, the woman gets out the of­fi­cial doc­u­ments from the rep­ar­a­tions com­mis­sion, and she and the man read them to­gether. But even then the con­ver­sa­tion keeps de­rail­ing, and at one point the woman, out­raged by the man’s lack of sen­si­tiv­ity to what she has en­dured, calls him a “son-of-a-bitch” and slaps him.36 This cli­max in their ver­bal ex­change ­speaks to a con­ver­sa­tional “dead end”: de­spite the ef­forts of each to com­mu­ni­cate his or her ex­pe­ri­ence, it is as if, as the nar­ra­tor ob­serves, “they were back to ­square one.”37 And in­deed, at this point in the novel, the con­ver­sa­tion “re­sets” back to the be­gin­ning as the man ­launches into his sec­ond ac­count. In this sec­ond part of the novel—which be­gins with the sec­ond ac­count— the man con­fesses to the woman what hap­pened to him so many years be­fore: he be­came a col­lab­o­ra­tor who ­helped govern­ment se­cur­ity ­forces ar­rest and bru­tal­ize his for­mer com­rades in the armed strug­gle. He ex­plains his sub­se­quent dis­ap­pear­ance as a vol­un­tary at­tempt to pre­serve the pact of si­lence made with his fel­low re­pres­sors: “One day we swear on our lives. I, the trai­tor, the ‘col­lab­o­ ra­tor,’ and the oth­ers, the se­cur­ity ­agents, the en­e­mies. We swear to keep si­lent about what we did and what we knew and we took care of what life we had left.”38 ­Whereas in the first part of the novel the nar­ra­tor is a ­strong and al­most au­thor­i­tar­ian pres­ence (even sup­press­ing parts of the ex­change), in the sec­ond part the ­narrator’s voice is over­shad­owed by di­alogue.39 Yet the in­crease in ver­bal ex­change ­between the man and the woman does not nec­es­sar­ily ­equate with pro­duc­tive di­alogue. As the man ob­serves, just be­cause two peo­ple are talk­ing “doesn’t mean that it’s a good con­ver­sa­tion [que uma con­versa tenha sem­pre qual­idades]. You ­choose what you get out of it.”40 This time, as the woman re­sumes re­count­ing her fruit­less quest to find her hus­band, the two do man­age to have what seems like a mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­ tion. When she tells him of the many let­ters she sent to the au­thor­ities after his dis­ap­pear­ance plead­ing for help and de­mand­ing an­swers, he asks: —What did the let­ters say? —The same as al­ways. I told them your ar­rest was ir­reg­u­lar. [I sub­mit­ted

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de­tails I ­learned] from other pris­on­ers. Eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mony. Doc­u­men­ta­ tion from the au­thor­ities. Abun­dant proof. —And no one ­seemed upset when pre­sented with this in­for­ma­tion? —­Uh-huh. Every­one was al­ways ­really sorry. Even when they were lying. —Es­pe­cially at a time like that. And then?41

Here di­alogue be­gins to un­fold. Yet al­though the di­alogue takes prec­e­dence over nar­ra­tion in this sec­ond part, there are abun­dant signs that what ap­pears to be a con­ver­sa­tion is not in fact a ­two-way act of ­meaning- and ­memorymaking. At one point the woman re­marks that one of the most alarm­ing con­se­quences of the man’s dis­ap­pear­ance has been her sub­se­quent in­abil­ity to have mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions, fill­ing her days in­stead with triv­ial ex­changes with strang­ers.42 The man, for his part, keeps ig­nor­ing the ring­ing of his cell phone, a po­tent meta­phor for the so­ci­etal need to con­verse about the past, de­spite the im­ped­i­ments. More­over, much of the di­alogue seems to be mne­monic dis­course with lit­tle mean­ing­ful con­tent. For ex­am­ple, in a frag­ment with the head­ing “Words and ­Things,” the man and woman take turns list­ing words that evoke Bra­zil­ian re­al­ity in the 1960s and 1970s, such as rev­o­lu­tion, space­ships, and birth con­trol pills. The re­sult is a tor­rent of words that do not rise to a mean­ing­ful or pro­duc­tive ex­change. Words like sub­ver­sion, ter­ror­ism, trea­son, and ag­i­ta­tors are mixed with words like ha­beas cor­pus, inter­ro­ga­tion, tor­tur­ers, re­sis­tance, and even friv­o­lous terms like ­beauty pa­geant.43 While many of the words do refer to the po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence and op­pres­sion, there is no order or hier­ar­chy among them—nor any­thing to in­di­cate the ideo­log­i­cal ­charge that many of them carry. There is no anal­y­sis, no syn­the­sis, no crit­i­cal re­flec­tion. This sec­ond part of the novel there­fore sug­gests an­other cause for the di­alog­i­cal void in Bra­zil: a pro­life­ra­tion of ver­bal ex­changes that pro­duce no mean­ing. Si­lence is usu­ally as­so­ciated with an ab­sence of words. How­ever, as Vered ­Vinitzky-Seroussi and Chana ­Teeger point out, the op­po­site—an abun­dance of talk—can also be a po­tent form of si­lenc­ing if the talk con­tains no mean­ing­ful con­tent. They call this phe­nom­e­non ­covert si­lence, contrast­ing it with the more con­ven­tional (overt) form of si­lence.44 The rep­ar­a­tions com­mis­sion re­port dis­cussed ear­lier ex­em­plifies these nu­ances of si­lence.45 ­Whereas Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade calls upon read­ers to wit­ness and re­pu­di­ate the his­toric, and to some ex­tent on­go­ing, overt si­lenc­ ing of mem­o­ries of the dic­tat­or­ship and its human ­rights ­crimes, the same doc­u­ment also per­pet­u­ates other, more ­covert forms of si­lenc­ing by sup­press­ing the word jus­tice. All the talk about rec­on­cil­i­a­tion fills the void left by the si­lence sur­round­ing the issue of in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal ac­count­abil­ity.46 94



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The kind of overt si­lence re­pu­di­ated in Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade is ex­plored in the last of the three ver­sions pre­sented in the novel, in which the man con­fesses that he sim­ply de­serted the armed strug­gle one day and went into hid­ing so as to avoid the judg­ment of the woman and his com­rades: “There will be no more rev­o­lu­tion, no more death, no more ­betrayal. I’m de­sert­ing. I don’t go to my ap­point­ment. I’m no ­longer ob­sessed with the idea of being ­caught. I’m no ­longer ­afraid. I don’t have any­thing to do with any­thing any­more. No one will find out. . . . It will be my third iden­tity. I’ll make my way [vou me virar]. I dou­ble over laugh­ing. I turn my back and dis­ap­pear.”47 This third ver­sion of a de­serter is con­sis­tent with the of­fi­cial ex­pla­na­tion the mil­i­tary govern­ment used to give when ­pressed to ac­count for the dis­ ap­pear­ances of po­lit­i­cal ac­ti­vists. In such cases, the se­cur­ity ­forces typ­i­cally de­nied hav­ing any knowl­edge of what hap­pened and de­clared that the per­son in ques­tion was a fu­gi­tive (encontra-se for­a­gido/a), ­thereby plac­ing on the fam­il­ies the onus of prov­ing that a human ­rights crime had taken place. For the first two ­decades after the prac­tice of ­forced dis­ap­pear­ance had ta­pered off, the ­military’s dis­avowal of knowl­edge about the dis­ap­peared suc­ceeded and was sup­ported by an of­fic­ ial pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by for­get­ting. It is thus fit­ting that this ver­sion of a de­serter is the last of the man’s three ac­counts—the last word—and that after fin­ish­ing his say the man de­parts for good, ­thereby with­draw­ing from the con­ver­sa­tion and pre­vent­ing any fur­ther di­alogue. The ­stated goal of Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade is to ­achieve clar­ity about the past, to “reach the de­fin­i­tive ver­sion of the facts.”48 Clar­ity is men­tioned twice in Prova ­contrária, the first time to char­ac­ter­ize the rep­ar­a­tions com­ mis­sion and the sec­ond, the of­fi­cial doc­u­ments it is­sued to those re­ceiv­ing com­pen­sa­tion. In the first in­stance, Bo­nassi ded­i­cates the novel to com­mis­sion pres­i­dent Luís Fran­cisco da Silva Car­valho Filho (2001–4) “for his clar­ity” ( pela cla­reza).49 In the sec­ond, the woman de­clares “Doc­u­ments ­should be clear!” in ref­er­ence to the of­fi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion of her rep­ar­a­tions claim.50 Yet when she reads aloud from the man’s newly is­sued death cer­tif­i­cate, it be­comes ap­par­ent that the doc­u­ments offer not clar­ifi­ca­tion but ob­fus­ca­tion: the doc­um ­ ent at­trib­utes the cause of death not to an act of vi­o­lence but to the Law of the Dis­ap­peared. Bo­nassi fur­ther chal­lenges the ­commission’s claim to bring clar­ity to the past by em­pha­siz­ing the am­bi­gu­ity in­her­ent in po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance. The power of the novel comes from what ­critic Leila Leh­nen calls the “her­me­neu­tic un­cer­tainty”51: each of the three ac­counts the man ­presents is plau­sible, but none is es­tab­lished as the truth. Prova ­contrária re­minds us how, as Avery Gor­don puts it, when it comes to cases of po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance, “the boun­dar­ies of . . . fact and fic­tion, . . . know­ing and not know­ing are con­ stit­u­tively un­stable.”52 More­over, this lack of cer­tainty ­raises ques­tion about L i t e r a r y a n d O f f i c i a l Tr u t h - Te l l i n g



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the man’s on­to­log­i­cal ­status: is he a ghost, a liv­ing man, or a fig­ment of the ­ oman’s imag­i­na­tion? This last pos­sibil­ity ­places in doubt the en­tire prem­ise w of the novel as a di­alogue: are the ver­bal ex­changes in the novel a con­ver­sa­tion or a mono­logue? It is never clear in the novel ­whether the woman is ac­tu­ally talk­ing to her dis­ap­peared hus­band or to her­self. There are pe­ri­odic hints that the woman may ac­tu­ally be en­gag­ing in a long mono­logue. Early in their con­ver­sa­tion, the man re­as­sures the woman that “if this is ­really hap­pen­ing, you can keep the money”—alert­ing the ­reader that the en­coun­ter may be a fig­ment of the ­woman’s trau­ma­tized imag­i­na­tion. At an­other point, what ap­pears to be di­ alogue ­creates un­cer­tainty: —How does one con­verse with the dead? The man ­lights a cig­ar­ette. —How does one talk to one­self ? [Como se con­versa so­zinho?] The woman wants to know where the man is plan­ning to de­posit his ashes since there isn’t an ash­tray in sight. Then she ­smiles at her own stu­pid­ity. She can’t help feel­ing a sense of re­lief. At least that ­quiets her. So much so that when he says: —I ­didn’t come to ex­plain any­thing. There is no anger when she re­sponds: —As if any­one could ever ex­plain some­thing like that.53

While it is clear that the woman asks the in­itial ques­tion, it is un­clear ­whether she or the man ut­ters the re­sponse (which is it­self for­mu­lated as a ques­tion), “How does one talk to one­self ?” (which could also be trans­lated as “Like talk­ing to one­self ?,” ­thereby add­ing to the am­bi­gu­ity). Here, as else­where through­out the novel, it is un­clear who is doing the speak­ing. It is as if the woman and man were inter­change­able as speak­ers, or as if there were only one ­speaker—the woman—as­sum­ing both roles. In the end, the an­swer is ir­rel­e­vant: am­bi­gu­ity and in­de­ter­mi­nacy are the whole point of the novel. As such, Prova ­contrária rep­li­cates the state of af­fairs dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship—and af­ter­ward—re­gard­ing the ­status of the dis­ap­peared in Bra­zil. The un­cer­tainty as to ­whether the man is ­really there en­gag­ing in a con­ver­sa­ tion be­comes more pro­nounced in one of the final frag­ments of the novel, ti­tled “Fi­nally, a Sex Scene,” which be­gins: “There’s dark­ness. ­There’s si­lence. ­There’s a pause. ­There’s a sound ­nearby. ­There’s a de­ci­sion. ­There’s a hand, lift­ing. ­There’s a watch, rat­tling. ­There’s an arm, draw­ing away. ­There’s a ­lighter in the way. ­There’s a hand, sus­pended in mid­air. ­There’s an­other pause, an­other si­lence. ­There’s an arm, yield­ing. ­There’s re­morse. ­There’s de­sire. ­There’s meet­ing half­way. ­There’s the con­sum­ma­tion of an im­pulse: ­there’s hair get­ting

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tan­gled, fin­gers inter­twin­ing, and palms rub­bing.”54 The en­tire scene fol­lows this struc­ture (“There is, there are . . .”). It’s im­pos­sible to de­duce for cer­tain ­whether the nar­ra­tor is de­scrib­ing a scene of inter­course or mas­tur­ba­tion. The nar­ra­tor men­tions sex­ual or­gans with­out a clear ref­er­ence to gen­der (nip­ples, but­tocks, pubic hair, ­thighs) or any­thing ex­pli­citly fe­male (va­gina, labia). The final de­scrip­tion of sex­ual re­lease is ­equally am­big­u­ous: “There’s kiss­ing. There are teeth. ­There’s strug­gle. ­There’s sur­ren­der. ­There’s pen­e­tra­tion. ­There’s a ­killer in­stinct. ­There’s con­tem­pla­tion. ­There’s suf­fer­ing. ­There’s wound­ing. ­There’s ex­plo­sion. ­There’s some­thing ­gained and some­thing lost.”55 It is un­ clear who or what is doing the pen­e­trat­ing, and who is being pen­e­trated. Add­ing to the am­bi­gu­ity is the in­cor­po­ra­tion of bel­li­cose im­agery (strug­gle, sur­ren­der, ­killer in­stinct, wound­ing, ex­plo­sion), which ­leaves the ­reader un­cer­tain as to ­whether what is being de­picted is an act of love­mak­ing ­between the two char­ac­ters or pos­sibly a flash­back to a pre­vi­ous rape in yet an­other ref­er­ence to the dic­tat­or­ship.56 At the ­novel’s end, the woman, like any fam­ily mem­ber of a dis­ap­peared vic­tim, is left to won­der ­whether her hus­band is dead or alive. This in­de­ter­mi­ nacy is the quan­dary of po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance: the vic­tim re­mains for­ever sus­pended ­between life and death, and there can be no cer­tainty. Only one thing is clear: the man’s re­turn has per­ma­nently shat­tered any il­lu­sion that the rep­ar­a­tions pay­ment has ef­fected a com­ing to terms with the past. The last line of the novel reads: “The woman goes back to being dis­quieted [in­ quieta].”57 Has the woman gone back to the task of un­pack­ing, turn­ing her back on the past once again? Has she ­paused to mourn the past? Or is she still torn ­between the two? Bo­nassi ­leaves the ­reader with this final haunt­ing am­bi­gu­ity.

Mak­ing Leg­a ­c ies of Dic­t at­o r­s hip Vis­ible “To write sto­ries con­cern­ing ex­clu­sions and in­vis­ibil­ities is to write ghost sto­ries,” af­firms Gor­don.58 Lit­er­a­ture about haunt­ing ac­ti­vates “a dif­fer­ent way of see­ing” be­cause it is ­through haunt­ing that “some­thing lost, or ­barely vis­ible, or seem­ingly not there to our sup­pos­edly ­well-trained eyes, makes it­self known or ap­par­ent to us.”59 It en­ables us to begin to grasp the gap—­what’s miss­ing in the truth re­ports, with their ra­tional and ob­jec­tive way of look­ing at the past. Both Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade and Prova ­contrária take as their sub­ject the Law of the Dis­ap­peared and its out­comes, re­veal­ing two dif­fer­ent “faces” of ­Brazil’s first major tran­si­tional jus­tice mech­a­nism. ­Whereas Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade ­presents a vi­sion of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by

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mem­ory that ob­scures the ques­tion of in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal ac­count­abil­ity, Prova ­contrária ­brings the dis­ap­peared, jus­tice de­nied, and their ef­fects back into the field of vis­ibil­ity. Sig­nif­i­cantly, it is when the woman is un­pack­ing a box of old books that the first clear mem­o­ries of the man sur­face, sug­gest­ing the power of the ­printed word, and es­pe­cially lit­er­a­ture, to ­elicit mem­ory. Prova ­contrária sug­gests that the task of pro­mot­ing mem­ory ­should not fall only to those di­rectly af­fected by the dic­ta­to­rial vi­o­lence, thus open­ing the pos­sibil­ity for crea­tive inter­ven­ tions by writ­ers, art­ists, and oth­ers in the pro­cess of so­cial mem­ory mak­ing. At one point the woman de­clares that those who sur­vived the dic­tat­or­ship can­not and ­should not carry the bur­den of mem­ory alone: “We, the ones who lived to see those and other ­things [the re­pres­sion], ­shouldn’t have an opin­ion. We ­should let oth­ers im­a­gine how it was. Let them in­vent every­thing. Let them lie if nec­es­sary. Let them contra­dict us, out­rage us.”60 Like the final re­port of the rep­ar­a­tions com­mis­sion, Prova ­contrária ­treats mem­ory as some­thing to be ­openly ad­dressed and con­tin­ua­ lly re­in­vented by so­ci­ety, es­pe­cially new gen­er­at­ ions. Re­turn­ing to Steve J. ­Stern’s no­tion that mem­ory in­itia­tives can serve ei­ther as “for­mu­las for clo­sure” (by at­tempt­ing to lay the mem­ory ques­tion to rest) or as “wedges” (by prompt­ing fur­ther mem­ory work), Prova ­contrária is an ex­am­ple of a cul­tural work that con­tested the for­mer ten­dency and ­helped pro­duce the lat­ter. In an ­author’s note, Bo­nassi (a script­writer whose cred­its in­clude the ac­claimed film Ca­ran­diru) ex­plains that he wrote the book “to sug­gest a stag­ing.”61 It is, in other words, not a story that one reads in iso­la­tion but a story to be per­formed and ­shared. And this is pre­cisely what has hap­pened. Prova ­contrária has in­spired var­i­ous ­real-life per­for­mances, in­clud­ing a pro­ fes­sional theat­ri­cal pro­duc­tion in São Paulo in 2003 and a stu­dent one in Cu­ri­tiba in 2008—both ­staged be­fore Tata Am­aral trans­posed the novel into her ­award-winning film. ­Whereas the Law of the Dis­ap­peared has been crit­i­ cized as treat­ing the issue of po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance as a mat­ter to be set­tled ­between the fam­i­lies and the state, Prova ­contrária ­brings both law and issue to a ­larger au­di­ence, ­thereby ex­tend­ing and pro­long­ing (in a crit­i­cal way) the im­pact of ­Brazil’s first tran­si­tional jus­tice mech­a­nism.

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4 

Fr o m To r ­t u r e Ce n t­ e r t o S t a g e a n d S i te o f Me m ­o r y

I

t is Sat­ur­day, July 20, 2002, and I find my­self peer­ing in­side one of the ­prison cells in the for­mer sta­tion house of the São Paulo po­lit­i­cal po­lice, known by its ac­ro­nym, DOPS.1 The cell is part of a small pub­lic me­mo­rial that ­opened a few weeks ear­lier, one of the first ­state-sponsored sites of mem­ory in the en­tire coun­try. Be­hind the ­building’s neo­clas­si­cal fa­cade, se­cur­ity ­agents once ­worked with bru­tal ef­fi­ciency, im­ pris­on­ing sus­pected “sub­ver­sives” in ­filthy, over­crowded cells on the ­ground level—where I now stand—and tor­tur­ing their de­tai­nees on one of the upper ­floors. The build­ing is the first cen­ter of po­lit­i­cal tor­ture and de­ten­tion—a total of 242 are known to have ex­isted under the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship2—to be ­opened to the pub­lic for use as an of­fi­cial me­mo­rial. Var­i­ous ar­tis­tic and cul­tural ­events pro­mot­ing mem­ory have been held here. And it was in front of this build­ing in Au­gust 1999 that then ­governor Mário Covas ­signed a his­toric bill for a state rep­ar­a­tions pro­gram for tor­ture vic­tims. Once a sym­bol of po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion, the sta­tion house is in­creas­ingly as­so­ciated with mem­ory. I’ve come to see this his­tor­i­cal site of re­pres­sion for my­self, to be­come a be­lated wit­ness of the ­crimes ­against hu­man­ity per­pe­trated here and a ­real-time wit­ness of how the dic­tat­or­ship is re­mem­bered in Bra­zil. Ex­cept that there is noth­ing to see. I crane my neck to get a bet­ter look at the cell—there is a guard rope pre­vent­ing me from en­ter­ing—but aside from a ­barred win­dow on the far wall and a thick, ­imposing-looking door ­thrown open for vis­i­tors, there is no other vis­ible ev­i­dence to sug­gest that peo­ple

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The building in downtown São Paulo that served as the station house for the state political police, or DOPS, from 1940 to 1983. (Photo by author)

were ever de­tained here. Anach­ron­is­tic track light­ing hangs ob­tru­sively from the ceil­ing, il­lu­mi­nat­ing a non­de­script room with bare, gray walls smell­ing ­strongly of fresh paint. On this Sat­ur­day after­noon, I’m the only vis­i­tor here. Ac­cord­ing to the do­cent ­posted at the door, I’m one of the few peo­ple to visit the me­mo­rial since its in­au­gu­ra­tion. As I gaze at the ­prison cell and try to eke out some mean­ing from the scene be­fore me, it oc­curs to me that I’m wit­ness­ing some­ thing quite dif­fer­ent from what I ex­pected. What I’m ac­tu­ally wit­ness­ing is the cos­metic re­touch­ing, if not the out­right sup­pres­sion, of mem­ory, which has lit­er­ally been cov­ered up with a coat of ­neutral-colored paint. The pres­ence of the guard rope, al­beit a tem­po­rary meas­ure while the paint dries, ­serves to im­pose fur­ther dis­tance, as if to pre­vent the vis­i­tor from get­ting too close to the past. This sup­pres­sion of mem­ory is ev­i­dent even in the nam­ing of the site: al­though the ­plaque on the wall reads “Me­mo­rial do ­Cárcere” (Prison Me­mo­rial), the space has since been re­chris­tened the Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade (Free­dom Me­mo­rial), a name that will­fully ig­nores the in­con­ven­ient de­tail that ­prison cells exist pre­cisely to de­prive peo­ple of lib­erty. As I leave and make my way back to the ­nearby metro stop, I ask my­self what the Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade means for mem­ory pol­i­tics in Bra­zil. 100



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A cell remodeled as part of the Memorial da Liberdade. (Photo by author)

This chap­ter ex­am­ines how in 1999–2000, not long be­fore the crea­tion of the Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade, a theat­ri­cal play be­came ­linked with the São Paulo state ­government’s trans­fer of the DOPS sta­tion house into the pub­lic do­main as a site of mem­ory. ­Whereas some of­fic­ ials ­within the state govern­ment lev­er­aged the play to pub­li­cize a plan to trans­form the site into a cul­tural cen­ter, oth­ers in­volved in the ­play’s pro­duc­tion took ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­nity to F r o m To r t u r e C e n t e r t o S t a g e a n d S i t e o f M e m o r y



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help the pub­lic feel a sense of own­er­ship of the build­ing in hopes of trans­ form­ing it into a per­ma­nent me­mo­rial. These con­flict­ing agen­das pro­duced fric­tions, and the play was ­closed down, os­ten­sibly due to re­mod­el­ing plans that ended up rad­i­cally al­ter­ing the space. In 2009, ­nearly ten years after the play ended, and fol­low­ing the lack­luster oc­cu­pa­tion by the Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade, state and fed­eral govern­ment of­fi­cials un­veiled the new Re­sis­tance Me­mo­rial (Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia). Al­though it pays hom­age to and bor­rows cer­tain ele­ments from the play, the new me­mo­rial di­lutes the mes­sage of the orig­i­nal theat­ri­cal oc­cu­pa­tion. By choos­ing re­sis­tance as its theme, the me­mo­rial re­pro­duces a dis­course that has long ­served to ­smooth over un­com­fort­able ele­ments of the past; as such, it rep­re­sents the ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion of the ­state’s new pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory, the same pol­i­tics ar­tic­u­lated in the 2007 truth re­port Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade. In­deed, both re­port and me­mo­rial are part of the same bun­dle of in­itia­tives ­created under the fed­eral Min­is­try of Human ­Rights. This chap­ter is di­vided into two main parts, each cor­re­spond­ing to a dis­tinct phase in the ­building’s iden­tity. The first tells the story of Lem­brar é re­sis­tir (To Re­mem­ber Is to Re­sist), a theat­ri­cal play writ­ten for the ex­press pur­pose of being ­staged in the ­prison cells and of in­volv­ing the pub­lic in the pro­cess of re­claim­ing the build­ing for mem­ory a few years be­fore my visit in 2002.3 The sec­ond part fol­lows the tra­jec­tory of the space after the play was per­emp­tor­ily ­closed down by state govern­ment of­fi­cials to make way for the Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade and, even­tu­ally, the new, more ef­fec­tive Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia. The check­ered his­tory of the build­ing over a pe­riod of ten years il­lus­trates the com­plex­ities of the re­la­tion­ship ­between cul­ture and tran­si­tional jus­tice.

A Play Star­r ing the DOPS Build­ing In 1998 ­Belisário dos San­tos Jr., who was then sec­re­tary of jus­tice of the state of São Paulo, do­nated the DOPS build­ing for use as a cul­tural cen­ter. ­Prompted by the ap­proach­ing twen­ti­eth an­ni­ver­sary of the con­tro­ver­sial Am­nesty Law, a small group of state govern­ment of­fi­cials and sur­vi­vors with es­tab­lished rep­u­ta­tions in the­at­ er ob­tained au­thor­iza­tion to inter­rupt sched­uled ren­ov­ a­tions of the build­ing in order to stage a per­for­m­ ance that would tell the story of the DOPS and the peo­ple im­pris­oned there. The play ­opened on Sep­tem­ber 9, 1999. Lem­brar é re­sis­tir trans­formed au­di­ence mem­bers not only into be­lated wit­ nesses of the his­tory of the build­ing, but also—and per­haps more im­por­tant—

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into ­real-time wit­nesses who par­tic­i­pated in re­claim­ing the build­ing and in con­front­ing the ab­sence of bold legal and po­lit­i­cal re­sponses to ­dictatorshipera human ­rights ­crimes. The phys­i­cal site it­self did not con­sti­tute mem­ory; ­rather, mem­ory was ac­ti­vated ­through per­for­mance, that is, ­through the em­ bod­ied ac­tions of per­form­ers and spec­ta­tors. By an­a­lyz­ing the range of ac­tions em­bod­ied by par­tic­i­pants in the per­for­mance, I hope to il­lu­mi­nate the sub­tle ways that the play me­di­ated the ­audience’s en­coun­ter with this space. Sta g­in g Ru i n s

At the time the DOPS sta­tion house was do­nated, the build­ing was fall­ing apart, hav­ing re­cently been va­cated due to se­ri­ous struc­tu­ral prob­lems. It was, for all in­tents and pur­poses, a ruin. Ruins are an im­por­tant sym­bol of Latin Amer­ica at the turn of the mil­len­nium: by si­mul­ta­ne­ously evok­ing past, ­present, and fu­ture, they serve as a “ma­te­rial em­bodi­ment of ­change” that con­sti­tutes “a fer­tile lo­cale for com­pet­ing . . . sto­ries about his­ tor­i­cal ­events.”4 This is par­tic­u­larly true for coun­tries in the re­gion emerg­ing from pe­ri­ods of au­thor­i­tar­ian rule, as Idel­ber Av­e­lar ex­plains: “Im­ages of ruins are cru­cial for post­dic­ta­to­rial mem­ory work, for they offer an­chors ­through which a con­nec­tion with the past can be re­es­tab­lished.”5 Ma­te­rial ruins ­steeped in ­trauma, such as the old DOPS build­ing, have enor­mous po­ten­tial to cat­a­lyze strug­gles for mem­ory and jus­tice in tran­si­tional so­ci­eties. “The phys­i­cal site, the ma­te­rial ob­ject, mat­ters,” ­writes Eliz­a­beth Jelin, but only “in­so­far as it [can come to rep­re­sent] an em­bodi­ment of a given mean­ing and cer­tain his­tor­i­cal mes­sage.”6 A ­site’s cat­a­lyz­ing po­ten­tial is la­tent, in other words, until some per­son or group (“mem­ory en­tre­pren­eurs,” in ­Jelin’s par­lance7 ) calls at­ten­tion to and inter­prets what hap­pened there. The very build­ings that once ­housed clan­des­tine de­ten­tion cen­ters cer­tainly con­sti­tute hard ev­i­dence that tor­ture and other ­crimes oc­curred. This ev­i­dence is pow­er­ful and could con­ceiv­ably even be used in crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions,8 which is pre­cisely why human ­rights ­groups strug­gle so per­sis­tently to wrest these sites from mil­i­tary or po­lice con­trol (and why the mil­i­tary or po­lice oc­cu­pants op­pose such ef­forts with equal te­nac­ity).9 Yet, in spite of what­ever ma­te­rial proof they may pro­vide, such ter­ri­to­rial mark­ers ­should not be con­fused with mem­ory it­self; ­rather, they are “ve­hi­cles and ma­te­rial sup­ports for the sub­jec­tive la­bors of mem­ory.”10 The re­cov­ery of the DOPS build­ing and sub­se­quent at­tempts to oc­cupy it il­lus­trate how phys­i­cal sites exert what Steve J. Stern calls “cul­tural magic,” con­sti­tut­ing a near sa­cred link to the past they rep­re­sent.11 The magic con­sists in the sen­sa­tion that a mo­ment in time has been fro­zen and pre­served. Yet phys­i­cal­ity ­presents a par­a­dox: it ex­erts magic, but only up to a point. Time can­not ­really be fro­zen, and no phys­i­cal site can be pre­served ex­actly as it

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was in­def­i­nitely. Phys­i­cal ruins erode, and the best that can be done is to try and shore them up. In other words, the magic only hap­pens if peo­ple inter­ vene to make it hap­pen. And to make it hap­pen re­quires re­sort­ing to ar­ti­fice.12 Par­ad ­ ox­i­cally, ar­ti­fice is re­quired to pre­serve the sen­sa­tion of the real, and this is where cultural interventions such as theatrical performances can play a val­u­ able role. DOPS ­agents in São Paulo had tried to oblit­er­ate the ev­id ­ ence of their pres­ence (and il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties) in the build­ing be­fore va­cat­ing it in 1983, the year the force was of­fi­cially dis­banded. They took spe­cial care to re­move most of the po­lit­i­cal ­detainees’ graf­fiti from the ­prison walls but left the cells them­ selves ­mostly in­tact.13 The sur­viv­ing struc­ture of the cells was phys­i­cal ev­i­dence, to be sure, prov­ing with­out a ­shadow of a doubt that the build­ing had been used to im­prison peo­ple. None­the­less, it pro­vided ­hardly any clue as to who had been de­tained there, when, or why, much less how those de­tai­nees might have suf­fered and re­sisted. This is where Lem­brar came in: the crea­tors and per­form­ers took ad­van­tage of what lit­tle ma­te­rial proof re­mained and used it to evoke the ­building’s clan­des­tine past. Or, to put it an­other way, Lem­brar ex­ploited ­theater’s ­unique ca­pac­ity to make vis­ible the in­vis­ible. What ex­actly was Lem­brar ? The crea­tors ­called it a play, but as one re­viewer ob­served, the work was some­how “both more and less than the­a­ter.”14 The dra­matic text cer­tainly did not fit a tra­di­tional, Aris­to­te­lian def­i­ni­tion of drama: for one thing, there was no pro­tag­o­nist, ex­cept the build­ing it­self. Of ­course, such de­vi­a­tion from clas­si­cal con­ven­tion often makes for great the­a­ter,15 but Lem­brar is not a mas­ter­piece of dram­a­turgy, nor was it in­tended to be. Given only a week to pro­duce a rough draft, dram­a­tists Analy ­Álvarez and ­Izaías Al­mada bor­rowed lib­er­ally from ex­ist­ing plays about the dic­tat­or­ship, cob­bling to­gether a se­ries of eight ­loosely con­nected ­scenes, one for each room or cell the au­di­ence would visit dur­ing the per­for­mance. While there are some very pow­er­ful parts, over­all the dra­matic text comes ­across as ­choppy, the lan­guage ­stilted, the char­ac­ters ­one-dimensional. Lead­ing the au­di­ence on a tour of the ­building’s ­ground floor, Lem­brar dra­ma­tizes the his­tory of the DOPS, with an em­pha­sis on the cou­rage and re­sis­tance of the peo­ple im­pris­oned there and in sim­il­ar de­ten­tion cen­ters at the ­height of the re­pres­sion ­between 1968 and 1975. The char­ac­ters in­clude three DOPS ­agents: the head de­tec­tive (based on the no­to­ri­ous tor­turer Sér­gio Par­an­hos ­Fleury) and his two under­lings, An­do­rinha and Mão de Vaca. The re­main­ing ­eleven char­ac­ters are pris­on­ers. A few are based on real peo­ple, such as Thi­ago (de Mello, the poet), the ­Priest (Frei Tito de Alen­car Lima), and Hilda (the wife of mur­dered rev­o­lu­tion­ary ­Virgílio Gomes da Silva). Ac­tress Nilda Maria, who had been in­car­cer­ated in the DOPS, plays her­self. Other char­ac­ters are arche­types: the ­Singer, the ­Mother, the Tor­ture Vic­tim. 104



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The play­wrights at­trib­ute the dra­matic im­pact of Lem­brar to the DOPS build­ing.16 But more than that, the play owes its power to the var­io­ us ways in which live per­for­mance me­di­ated the ­audience’s en­coun­ter with the site and ­turned each spec­ta­tor into a wit­ness. Lem­brar was in­deed “both more and less than the­a­ter”: it was part play, part ­guided tour, part tes­ti­mony, and part ­government-sponsored tran­si­tional jus­tice in­itia­tive. T h e Si te o f Re­p res ­s i o n as ­A rchive

The re­la­tion­ship ­between the phys­i­cal space of the DOPS and Lem­brar re­calls Diana ­Taylor’s for­mu­la­tion of the ­archive and the rep­er­toire as sep­ar­ate but often com­ple­men­tary ­systems of knowl­edge trans­mis­sion. The ­archive en­com­passes ma­te­rial ev­i­dence such as doc­u­ments, photo­graphs, bones, and build­ings, ­whereas the rep­er­toire re­fers to the sort of em­bod­ied acts we as­so­ciate with dance, rit­ual, and other kinds of live per­for­mance.17 In this case, as­sign­ing the old DOPS build­ing to the realm of the ­archive seems par­tic­u­ larly ap­pro­pri­ate for at least three rea­sons. First, the site has in­trin­sic value as ma­te­rial ev­i­dence, as pre­vi­ously men­tioned. Sec­ond, the en­tire pur­pose of the po­lit­ic­ al po­lice be­fore and dur­ing the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship was to con­duct sur­veil­lance and then to gen­er­ate and an­a­lyze an ac­tual ­archive of in­tel­li­gence re­ports. Over sev­eral ­decades, DOPS ­agents care­fully ­amassed, re­corded, and ­stored mil­lions of ­pieces of in­for­ma­tion about any per­son or group that might have been a po­ten­tial “enemy” of the state (which ­turned out be a ­rather elas­tic cat­e­gory).18 The very rea­son for the ­building’s ex­is­tence ­between 1940 and 1983 was to serve as a base for gath­er­ing this in­for­ma­tion and as a ware­house for stor­ing it. As such, the build­ing was, quite lit­er­ally, an ­archive. Third, ma­te­ri­als sub­se­quently dis­cov­ered in this ­real-life DOPS ­archive (which had been re­moved from the build­ing and even­tu­ally, after en­act­ment of the Reg­u­la­ tory Law of Ha­beas Data of 1997, re­lo­cated to the State ­Archive of São Paulo) were in­cor­po­rated into Lem­brar. Spec­ta­tors ex­pe­ri­enced the pow­er­ful inter­ac­tion of the ­archive and the rep­er­toire from the mo­ment they ar­rived, when each re­ceived a mod­ified re­ pro­duc­tion of the ac­tual fin­ger­print card ( ficha) that dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship was in­cluded in the file of every in­com­ing po­lit­i­cal pris­oner. The front of the card con­sisted of a form for the re­cord­ing of basic iden­tify­ing in­for­ma­tion (name, ad­dress, mar­i­tal ­status, pro­fes­sion, com­plex­ion, hair and eye color, ­height, and so on); the back con­tained two rows of five blank ­spaces for fin­ger­ prints. The cards rep­re­sented the ­real-life ­archive ­amassed by the po­lit­i­cal po­lice, a cache of hard ev­i­dence that re­vealed just as much, if not more, about the Bra­zil­ian ­state’s mon­i­tor­ing of the pop­u­la­tion over sev­eral ­decades as it did about the ob­jects of that sur­veil­lance. Every en­ter­ing spec­ta­tor had his or her right thumb inked and ­pressed onto a card, thus par­tic­i­pat­ing in the em­bod­ied F r o m To r t u r e C e n t e r t o S t a g e a n d S i t e o f M e m o r y



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The prologue of Lembrar é resistir, in which spectators and the character Marcelo (Pedro Pianzo, pictured above in the foreground) are “processed” as DOPS prisoners. (Lembrar é resistir)

act of hav­ing one’s fin­ger­prints taken and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing first­hand the trans­for­ ma­tion of one’s own body into an ­archive—one that could be mined, often ­through inter­ro­ga­tion and tor­ture, for truth. The pro­gram also al­ludes to the DOPS ­archive ­through the ar­range­ment of old ­black-and-white ­photos of the cast and crew mem­bers in the form of a “Wanted” ­poster under the head­ing “terrorist criminals wanted by the national security forces.” The ­poster urges view­ers en­coun­ter­ing any of the peo­ple pic­tured to seek out the near­est po­lice of­fi­cer or call one of the phone num­bers pro­vided (in re­al­ity these num­bers were in­for­ma­tional hot­lines for Lem­brar). The photo of play­wright ­Izaías Al­mada was an ac­tual mug shot re­cov­ered from his DOPS file. Fi­nally, the dram­a­tists of Lem­brar bor­rowed from yet an­other ­archive: a col­lec­tion of lit­er­ary works pro­duced dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship, in­clud­ing the ­poetry of Thi­ago de Mello and the cor­pus of pub­lished plays com­pris­ing ­Brazil’s re­sis­tance the­at­ er of the 1960s and 1970s. They took pas­sages from three such plays: Lauro César ­Muniz’s Sinal de vida (Sign of Life, the pro­tag­o­nist of which, Mar­celo Es­trada, is a char­ac­ter in Lem­brar), Chico de ­Assis’s Missa

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Part of the original program for Lembrar é resistir. (Courtesy of Annita Malufe)

leiga (Layman’s Mass), and Gian­fran­cesco ­Guarnieri’s Ponto de par­tida (Point of De­par­ture, about the mur­der of jour­nal­ist Vlad­i­mir Her­zog in a dif­fer­ent São Paulo po­lit­i­cal ­prison).19 By in­cor­po­rat­ing these plays into Lem­brar, ­Álvarez and Al­mada ren­dered hom­age to the­a­ter prac­ti­tion­ers who to­gether rep­re­sented a major front of re­sis­tance dur­ing the mil­it­ ary dic­tat­or­ship. Above all, Lem­brar was about the em­bod­ied act—car­ried out by per­form­ers and spec­ta­tors alike—of en­ter­ing, ex­plor­ing, and re­claim­ing the ma­te­rial ruins of the DOPS, a space long for­bid­den to the pub­lic. In the words of ­Belisário dos San­tos Jr., who made the de­ci­sion to do­nate the site for use as a cul­tural cen­ter (and, along with dram­a­tist Analy ­Álvarez, had the idea for Lem­brar): “The play ­needed to have this story of peo­ple pro­gres­sively oc­cu­py­ing the cells. So, it was kind of mag­i­cal for you—first as a pris­oner and then as an in­vis­ible wit­ness—to have to ‘reoccupy’ [the build­ing ]. The re­oc­cu­pa­tion had to be ac­com­plished in a ­highly sym­bolic way as well, and thus the play was im­por­tant so that peo­ple felt like ac­tors in this pro­cess.”20 Lem­brar me­di­ated ­spectators’ en­coun­ter with the DOPS, trans­form­ing them into wit­nesses: not only be­lated wit­nesses of the ­building’s grim his­tory, but es­pe­cially—as the quote above sug­gests—into ­real-time ­witness-participants in the re­claim­ing of this no­to­ri­ous site of re­pres­sion.21 Ac ts o f W i t­n es s i­n g

As Diana Tay­lor ex­plains, per­for­mance ­shares cer­tain af­fin­ities with the act of bear­ing wit­ness, mak­ing it an ideal mo­dal­ity for pro­vok­ing re­flec­tion on the trau­matic ex­pe­ri­ences that took place in­side the DOPS build­ing. Wit­ness­ing, like live per­for­mance, “is a live pro­cess, a doing, an event that takes place in real time.”22 Per­for­mance is there­fore ­uniquely ­suited for trans­form­ing or­di­nary peo­ple into wit­nesses. This qual­ity is all the more pro­nounced in ­site-specific works, which, as Lau­rie Beth Clark ­points out, “allow the place to ‘speak’ its own mem­ory of the atroc­ity that hap­pened ­within its walls and con­vey that feel­ing to the vis­i­tors.”23 Clark de­scribes how per­for­mance can con­vert spec­ta­tors into be­lated wit­nesses of the ­site’s “mem­ory of atroc­ity,” and this con­ver­sion is ­clearly ev­i­dent in the case of Lem­brar. Yet the play ­staged in the DOPS trans­formed spec­ta­tors not only into be­lated wit­nesses of the acts of bru­tal­ity and cou­rage that took place in the build­ing dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship years but also into ­real-time ­witness-participants who took part in a rit­ual of re­oc­cu­pa­tion de­signed to re­sig­nify the prem­ises as a sym­bol of re­mem­ber­ing (lem­brar) and re­sist­ing (re­sis­tir). Be­fore the dra­matic ac­tion even be­gins, spec­ta­tors are tac­itly asked to play the role of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers ­through the dis­tri­bu­tion and fill­ing out of the ar­rest cards. The clos­ing of the ­street door and the emer­gence of the two

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per­pe­tra­tor char­ac­ters, An­do­rinha and Mão de Vaca, sig­nal the be­gin­ning of the play ­proper; the first lines, ­spoken by the for­mer, re­in­force the ­audience’s role in this first scene: “(Di­rect­ing his gaze at the au­di­ence and speak­ing in an au­thor­i­tar­ian tone): At­ten­tion! I want peace and quiet on my watch. (Points to the door lead­ing to the ­prison wing) Once we pass ­through that door, no­body is in­no­cent. ­You’re all ­guilty until ­proven oth­er­wise. Keep your ­mouths shut and your hands be­hind your backs. . . . All of you! No ex­cep­tions! (To a spec­ta­tor) You there! Hands be­hind your back!”24 As he ­speaks, An­do­rinha paces back and forth in front of the spec­ta­tors, lean­ing in to sneer men­ac­ingly at some of them be­fore pick­ing up the pile of fin­ger­print cards lying on a ­nearby table. He ­thumbs ­through the cards, call­ing out names of spec­ta­tors at ran­dom. Un­ be­knownst to the au­di­ence mem­bers, a “spec­ta­tor” in their midst is ac­tu­ally an actor in ­street ­clothes. When An­do­rinha calls out “with sur­prise and satis­fac­tion” the name of Mar­celo Es­tra­das, this ­spectator-turned-character “tim­idly ­raises his hand.” An­do­rinha and Mão de Vaca im­me­di­ately ­launch into a bar­rage of ques­ tions about ­Marcelo’s in­volve­ment in the op­po­si­tion and the iden­tity of his as­so­ciates. Al­though they ­barely touch the pris­oner, the scene is the most vi­o­lent of the en­tire play. As Sev­e­rino Al­bu­querque con­tends, when it comes to con­vey­ing vi­o­lence in the the­a­ter, in­di­rect sug­ges­tion (for ex­am­ple, ­through ver­bal or other cues) can be much more dra­matic and pow­er­ful than the stag­ing of phys­i­cal acts of ag­gres­sion.25 This was all the more true in Lem­brar, where the sheer prox­im­ity ­between per­form­ers and spec­ta­tors—often only a few feet—pre­cluded stag­ing acts of phys­i­cal ag­gres­sion. As the two inter­ro­ga­tors ha­rangue Mar­celo, they ­slowly close in on him and shout with in­creas­ing fury. At the pre­cise mo­ment when the two ­agents seem on the brink of phys­i­ cally as­sault­ing the pris­oner, all three men sud­denly ­freeze at the sound of a ­woman’s ­scream off­stage ac­com­pa­nied by the flick­er­ing of the ­lights (sig­nal­ing the use of an ­electric shock ma­chine).26 After a pause, the dra­matic ten­sion con­tin­ues to build as the inter­ro­ga­tors shift tac­tics and begin threat­en­ing their ­quarry: andorinha: You’d bet­ter start re­mem­ber­ing real quick be­cause the guys up­stairs are ­hard-core. They don’t let any­one off easy. marcelo: (rais­ing his hand to his mouth) I think I’m going to throw up.

Soon after, An­do­rinha grabs the pris­oner and ­shoves him ­through the door lead­ing to the ­prison wing. As the ter­rified Mar­celo is led away, he looks back beseech­ingly at the au­di­ence. An­do­rinha or­ders every­one to re­main si­lent, ef­fec­tively pre­vent­ing any un­scripted inter­ven­tions by the spec­ta­tors.

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What are the im­pli­ca­tions of po­si­tion­ing spec­ta­tors in this way, as po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers? Does this ­anti-Brechtian tac­tic col­lapse the dis­tance nec­es­sary for the au­di­ence to en­gage in crit­i­cal re­flec­tion? Does Lem­brar cross a line by en­cour­ag­ing a fa­cile or in­ap­pro­pri­ate iden­tifi­ca­tion with ­real-life pris­on­ers? While risky, the strat­egy seems jus­tified in this case. After all, the per­for­mance de­rives its power from the ex­pe­ri­en­tial ele­ment: the point is to suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tion of im­ag­ in­ing one­self as a po­lit­i­cal pris­oner. Fur­ther­more, by po­si­tion­ing spec­ta­tors as de­tai­nees at the out­set, Lem­brar in­dulges this in­cli­na­tion to­ward iden­tifi­ca­tion, but it also man­ages it. As the first scene draws to an end, au­di­ence mem­bers file into the next room (an el­e­va­tor lobby) and are ­quickly re­po­si­tioned as wit­nesses of the ­building’s par­tially im­a­gined his­tory. Im­me­di­ately Mão de Vaca as­sumes the per­sona of a tour guide, treat­ing the au­di­ence as cu­ri­ous vis­i­tors and re­fer­ring to the po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers as “them” (eles) ­rather than as “you all” (vocês). The ­abrupt ­change in his de­meanor and the dis­tinc­tion he makes ­between the au­di­ence and the po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers com­mu­ni­cate the ­change in the ­spectators’ ­status: the au­di­ence mem­bers are no ­longer to play the role of de­tai­nees; ­rather, from this point for­ward they will be ex­pected to as­sume the role of wit­nesses. In the sec­ond scene, Mão de Vaca es­corts the au­di­ence into a small of­fice ­sparsely fur­nished with a desk, a sin­gle chair, and a bat­tered fil­ing cab­i­net above which hangs a por­trait of Pres­i­dent ­Emílio Gar­ras­tazu Méd­ici.27 It soon be­comes ev­i­dent that the group has en­tered the inner sanc­tum of Sér­gio Par­an­hos ­Fleury, one of ­Brazil’s most no­to­ri­ous po­lice tor­tur­ers.28 De­le­gado (de­tec­tive) ­Fleury sits be­hind the desk tin­ker­ing with a small ­hand-held radio and be­gins talk­ing with An­do­rinha and Mão de Vaca as if the au­di­ence were in­vis­ible, im­pos­ing the ­fourth wall and thus re­in­forc­ing the ­audience’s new po­si­tion as be­lated wit­nesses of the ­building’s his­tory. At one point in the con­ver­sa­tion, An­do­rinha re­in­forces the im­pres­sion even fur­ther by look­ing ­straight at (or ­through) the as­sem­bled spec­ta­tors and re­mark­ing with a shud­der, “Some­times I have the funny feel­ing we’re being ­watched.”29 This line high­ lights not only the un­ex­pected prox­im­ity of actor and au­di­ence but also the fact that the scene en­acted (in which per­pe­tra­tors ­openly dis­cuss tor­ture and the ­system by which ­high-ranking mil­i­tary of­fi­cials re­warded tor­tur­ers) is pre­cisely one with­out any wit­nesses in real life. Of the three DOPS ­agents, An­do­rinha in par­tic­u­lar is a car­i­ca­ture of the sad­is­tic tor­turer. Every­thing about him sug­gests a thug ­rather than an of­fic­ er of the law, from the thick gold ­chains vis­ible under his ­half-unbuttoned shirt to his navy skull­cap. He chews on a tooth­pick through­out the per­for­mance, ac­cen­tu­at­ing his coarse­ness and dis­tort­ing his fea­tures into a per­ma­nent sneer. An­do­rinha re­peat­edly and con­spic­uo­ usly ­scratches his gen­it­ als, wipes his nose,

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Perpetrators Detective Fleury (Carlos Meceni) and Mão de Vaca ( João Acaiabe) discuss the details of political repression in São Paulo under the watchful “gaze” of President Emílio Garrastazu Médici. (Lembrar é resistir)

and even spits on the floor. Every ges­ture, every line of this char­ac­ter is cal­cu­ lated to re­pulse the au­di­ence. As the three ­agents pre­pare to inter­ro­gate Mar­celo Es­tra­das, An­do­rinha fan­ta­sizes out loud about rap­ing one of the young fe­male pris­on­ers, il­lus­trat­ing his in­ten­tions with a lewd ges­ture. He asks ­Fleury for per­mis­sion to in­crease the volt­age on the ­electric shock ma­chine, im­i­tat­ing the in­vol­un­tary mus­cu­lar ­spasms of ­electric shock vic­tims and laugh­ing with his col­leagues. This liv­ing por­trait of the mon­strous tor­turer not­with­stand­ing, Lem­brar dis­abuses spec­ta­tors of the no­tion that human ­rights ­abuses were car­ried out by a few rogue ­agents with a sad­is­tic ­streak; ­rather, it em­pha­sizes that tor­ture was a wide­spread, system­atic prac­tice en­gi­neered by the very mil­i­tary lead­ers who dis­avowed any knowl­edge of it. A re­cord­ing of Lem­brar made by TV Cul­tura shows ­Fleury and Mão de Vaca stand­ing di­rectly under­neath the por­trait of Méd­ici while they spec­u­late on their pros­pects of win­ning a cash bonus for ar­rest­ing and tor­tur­ing as many sus­pects as pos­sible. The po­si­tion­ing of the two men be­neath ­Médici’s smil­ing image vis­u­ally con­nects the mil­i­tary govern­ment (and the pres­i­dent in par­tic­u­lar) with the DOPS ­agents and their

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human ­rights ­crimes, in a si­lent (but no less el­o­quent for that) de­nun­ci­a­tion of the mil­i­tary per­pe­tra­tors. By ­contrast, rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the dic­tat­or­ship in mass cul­ture have his­tor­i­cally ­tended to down­play the role of the mil­i­tary (both as an in­sti­tu­tion and in terms of its per­son­nel) in human ­rights ­crimes; in such por­tray­als, mil­i­tary of­fi­cers are ei­ther con­spic­u­ously ab­sent or de­picted as be­nev­o­lent pa­ter­nal fig­ures, as we saw in the case of Anos re­beldes. Once Mão de Vaca es­corts the au­di­ence out of the ­Delegado’s of­fice and into the cor­ri­dor where the ­prison cells are lo­cated, he re­sumes his role as tour guide, elim­i­nat­ing the ­fourth wall once again. This time Lem­brar re­in­forces the ­audience’s role as wit­ness ­through the use of per­for­ma­tives. By re­peat­edly an­nounc­ing that spec­ta­tors are wit­nesses (as op­posed to pris­on­ers), the per­ form­ers make it so. “You are all wit­nesses! They are tak­ing me away to be tor­tured,” one woman calls to the au­di­ence as she is ­dragged away.30 Even the DOPS agent Mão de Vaca re­minds the au­di­ence mem­bers of their ­proper role: “You all will be wit­nesses that every­one here is very well ­treated!”31 Again, by draw­ing a line ­between the spec­ta­tors (vocês) and the ac­tors in the cells (todos aqui), the guard em­pha­sizes that the spec­ta­tors are not to re­vert to their in­itial sub­ject po­si­tion of im­a­gin­ing them­selves as po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers at a crit­i­cal junc­ture when the au­di­ence is en­ter­ing the first ­prison cell. More­over, Mão de ­Vaca’s per­for­ma­tive—which is laden with irony since what the au­di­ence wit­ nesses is ac­tu­ally the mis­treat­ment of the de­tai­nees—al­ludes to the many ways in which ­Brazil’s mil­i­tary govern­ments tried to con­trol what peo­ple saw— for ex­am­ple, by cen­sor­ing the media and by at­tempt­ing to di­vert at­ten­tion with pa­tri­otic spec­ta­cles (its am­bi­tious pub­lic works pro­jects,32 the 1970 World Cup, to name but two).33 Lem­brar thus con­tin­ues the tra­di­tion of Latin ­American op­po­si­tional the­a­ter of the 1960s—what Diana Tay­lor calls a “thea­tre of cri­sis”—in which play­wrights “alert their au­di­ences to the dan­ger of po­lit­i­cal theat­ri­cal­ity.”34 As the DOPS agent leads the au­di­ence down the hall­way, spec­ta­tors pass in front of a row of cells and catch their first ­glimpse of the po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers, some of whose hag­gard faces press ­against small ­barred win­dows set into the heavy cell doors. Up until this point, the au­di­ence has had no con­tact with the po­lit­i­cal pris­oner char­ac­ters, ex­cept Mar­celo Es­tra­das. Be­gin­ning with scene 3, spec­ta­tors spend the re­main­der of the per­for­mance ­locked up with Mar­celo and the other de­tai­nees. ­Scenes 3 ­through 6 con­sist of four auton­o­mous vig­nettes that un­fold in the four cells that line the cor­ri­dor; they dra­ma­tize the lone­li­ness of sol­it­ ary con­fine­ment, the ­plight of women pris­on­ers, the psycho­log­ic­ al im­ pact of tor­ture, and the re­sil­ience and cou­rage of tor­ture vic­tims, re­spec­tively. In these ­scenes the play ­shifts some crea­tive ­agency to the spec­ta­tor, al­beit in sub­tle ways. In scene 3, the au­di­ence mem­bers enter a cell where they

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en­coun­ter Thi­ago, who re­cites a frag­ment of a poem by poet Thi­ago de Mello, “Faz es­curo mas eu canto” (It’s dark yet I sing): (Pause. He looks at the walls. They are full of in­scrip­tions. He looks ­around and finds a dis­carded piece of coal or stone. He takes it and ­writes the word “love.” . . .). thiago: Love must be the first word To be re­corded in this cell To keep me com­pany for now And to cheer ­whoever needs it after me.35

After pro­nounc­ing these lines, Thi­ago si­lently turns to offer the writ­ing im­ple­ ment to mem­bers of the au­di­ence so that they might ­record their own mes­sages. This in­vi­ta­tion, which was spon­ta­ne­ously in­itiated by actor Wal­ter Breda in one of the first per­for­mances and sub­se­quently be­came rit­ua­ l­ized, ­creates an open­ing for spec­ta­tors to take part in the pro­cess of sym­bol­ic­ ally re­claim­ing the DOPS as ­real-time ­witness-participants. Wit­ness­ing be­comes “a live pro­cess, a doing,”36 as au­di­ence mem­bers in­scribe their own, new mean­ings on the very sur­face where ­real-life pris­on­ers re­corded the ­dictatorship’s ­crimes ­thirty years ear­lier. In the final two ­scenes (7 and 8), sev­eral key char­ac­ters ad­dress the au­di­ence, usu­ally di­rectly, re­mind­ing each spec­ta­tor that wit­ness­ing is not just about watch­ing and lis­ten­ing, it is about act­ing upon what is seen and heard. As an ac­tive pro­cess, bear­ing be­lated wit­ness to the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers ­brings with it the ­real-time re­spon­sibil­ity of tak­ing ac­tion so that the mis­takes of the past are not re­peated. Scene 7 com­mences in the re­creio (com­mon room), where the pris­on­ers ­gather after over­hear­ing An­do­rinha re­port the news that an armed mil­it­ ant or­gan­iza­tion has ab­ducted a ­foreign am­bas­sa­dor and is de­mand­ing the re­lease of ­seventy po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers as ran­som. The char­ac­ter iden­tified sim­ply as ­Mother im­me­di­ately sits down and be­gins to com­pose a let­ter out loud to her son: mother: . . . but the world can­not re­main this way for­ever and you [você ] must be pre­pared for the Bra­zil of the fu­ture. It is up to you all [vocês] to ­spread the mes­sage from this point for­ward. (Stops writ­ing and ­speaks as if ab­sorbed in ­thought) To your gen­er­a­tion falls the task of build­ing a bet­ter Bra­zil, with­out so­cial in­jus­tice or vi­o­lence. ­That’s what we were fight­ing for. The stain of this epi­sode will only be ­erased once and for all when we can all live to­gether in a more just, eth­i­cal, and har­mo­ni­ous so­ci­ety. (Now ad­dress­ing the au­di­ence, as if still writ­ing) This is the hope [being ­passed on] today and that you all [vocês] must carry, like a ban­ner, for the years to come.37

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The tran­si­tion ­between the sin­gu­lar “you” (você ) to the plu­ral “you all” (vocês) and ­Mother’s di­rect gaze at the au­di­ence make clear that she is di­rect­ing these words to each and every au­di­ence mem­ber. It is as if by the very act of at­tend­ing the play, the spec­ta­tors have tac­itly ac­cepted the role of ­real-time ­witnessparticipants, a po­si­tion that en­tails the re­spon­sibil­ity of doing some­thing about what they have seen and heard. As the au­di­ence looks on, the pris­on­ers re­ceive word that the ­priest is among those who will be re­leased in ex­change for the am­bas­sa­dor. A det­ainee named João ­Gregório ­echoes ­Mother’s words as he ex­plains to the cler­gy­man why it is so im­por­tant that he take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­nity to be re­leased: “Go and make pub­lic how­ever you can, ­wherever you can, every­thing that you have seen and ex­pe­ri­enced here, so that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions will know that our re­cent his­tory has . . . been writ­ten in blood.”38 The ­prisoner’s plea is di­rected not only at the ­priest but also im­pli­citly at the spec­ta­tors, whose exit from the DOPS is like­wise im­mi­nent. In the last scene, pris­on­ers and au­di­ence enter the final room and dis­cover the out­line of an empty noose pro­jected onto one of the brick walls, an image that ­evokes the ­dictatorship’s mur­der of jour­nal­ist Vlad­i­mir Her­zog, which of­fi­cials ­staged to look like a sui­cide by hang­ing in a ­clumsy ef­fort to cover up the real cause of death (tor­ture). En­raged, one of the fe­male pris­on­ers, Nilda, turns to the spec­ta­tors and ­beseeches them in the words of a char­ac­ter from ­Guarnieri’s play Ponto de par­tida to ­spread the truth of what ­really hap­pened: “Go, raise your ­voices, ex­pose [the truth].”39 The ­choice to re­stage ­Herzog’s death—al­beit in an ab­stract way—in the final scene of Lem­brar is ­highly sig­nif­i­ cant, since this ­real-life event is ­widely cred­ited with giv­ing im­pe­tus to the mass mo­bil­iza­tions de­mand­ing am­nesty and an end to the dic­tat­or­ship. By evok­ing Her­zog as a sym­bol, the play en­cour­ages spec­ta­tors to fol­low the foot­ steps of the mil­lions of Bra­zil­ians who de­manded truth and jus­tice more than ­twenty years ear­lier. In a sort of epi­logue, the ac­tors slip out of char­ac­ter. One actor as­sumes the role of nar­ra­tor and in­forms the au­di­ence that al­though “de­nounced count­less times in Bra­zil­ian mil­i­tary ­courts, the crime of tor­ture has never been in­ves­ti­gated or pun­ished.”40 An­other ex­plains that in 1978 a fed­eral judge found the state re­spon­sible for ­Herzog’s death, which was ruled a hom­ic­ ide (in what, one might add, could be con­sid­ered a pre­cur­sor to the of­fi­cial reck­on­ing pro­cess in Bra­zil). The as­sem­bled ac­tors cheer this small vic­tory of truth over de­cep­tion and se­crecy. Cu­ri­ously, the last to speak are the three ac­tors who ­played the per­pe­tra­tor char­ac­ters. It is An­do­rinha who “lib­er­ates” the spec­ta­tors, in­vit­ing them to ex­plore the space on their own and re­flect upon what they have just seen.41

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Mão de Vaca de­clares that the build­ing will never again be used for re­pres­sion (an al­lu­sion to plans for the build­ing to func­tion even­tu­ally as a cul­tural cen­ter), but he warns that the re­oc­cu­pa­tion of the DOPS is only the first step and that each spec­ta­tor must re­main “alert and ­strong.” This call upon the au­di­ence to be alert and ­strong sug­gests that the crea­tors of Lem­brar ­sought to trans­form spec­ta­tors into ­real-time wit­nesses not only of the pro­cess of re­claim­ing the build­ing but also—and es­pe­cially—of the leg­a­cies of dic­tat­or­ship in the ­present, in­clud­ing the con­tin­ued ab­sence of jus­tice and ac­count­abil­ity re­lat­ing to past and on­go­ing human ­rights ­crimes. The De­le­gado con­cludes by par­a­ phras­ing a quo­ta­tion by Theo­dor ­Adorno and Max Hork­heimer that ­serves as an epi­graph to the dra­matic text (and is ­printed on the pro­gram), de­clar­ing, “And to re­main alert and ­strong, it is not ­enough to re­mem­ber the past; we must also res­cue the hopes of the past.” In the final scene, the ac­tors (all of whom were in their fif­ties and six­ties and had come of age dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ ship) pass on the re­spon­sibil­ity of re­mem­ber­ing and ­truth-telling to an au­di­ence con­sist­ing pri­mar­ily of young Bra­zil­ians who had no di­rect ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­pres­sion, ­thereby wid­en­ing the cir­cle of mem­ory and wit­ness­ing. Iden­tify­ing and an­al­yz­ing the ob­jec­tives of Lem­brar is one thing; mea­ s­ur­ing the ­production’s suc­cess in achiev­ing those goals is quite an­other. To do so would en­tail an ­in-depth study of ­spectators’ ac­tions upon de­part­ing the DOPS at the end of the per­for­mance, a task ren­dered vir­tu­ally im­pos­sible by the more than ten years that have ­passed since the clos­ing of the play in 2000. Nev­er­the­less, there is some in­di­ca­tion that the crea­tors at least par­tially ­achieved their ob­jec­tive of trans­form­ing spec­ta­tors into ­actor-participants in their t­ ruth-telling pro­ject. First and fore­most, the play was so suc­cess­ful that its orig­i­nally ­planned run of one week was ex­tended by more than a year. All told, an es­ti­mated ­twenty thou­sand peo­ple at­tended the play (some more than once). Word of mouth must have been a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in this suc­cess, since the small pro­duc­tion bud­get did not allow for a sus­tained ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign: moved by what they saw and ex­pe­ri­enced, spec­ta­tors rec­om­mended the play to oth­ers, help­ing to ex­tend the ­play’s run and draw­ing the at­ten­tion of the media, in­clud­ing a fea­ture on MTV Latin Amer­ica.42 In fact, Lem­brar was such an astound­ing hit that a ­spin-off was ­staged in Rio de Ja­neiro the fol­ low­ing year; the TV Cul­tura net­work also tele­vised a re­cord­ing of the orig­in ­ al São Paulo ver­sion. With the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, it is also pos­sible to eval­u­ate the ­play’s suc­cess in trans­form­ing the DOPS from a sym­bol of re­pres­sion into a site of re­mem­brance (and in serv­ing as a wedge for fur­ther mem­ory work). Lem­brar con­tested yet also even­tu­ally fell vic­tim to the pol­it­ ics of si­lence in force at the time. In the short term, it ­failed to have a sus­tained ef­fect. In De­cem­ber 2000

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state govern­ment of­fi­cials or­dered the clos­ing of the play so ren­o­va­tions of the build­ing could re­sume. The play was ­pulled from the space even ­though there was more than ­enough fund­ing and au­di­ence de­mand to keep it run­ning in­ def­i­nitely. At least one par­tic­i­pant in the pro­ject, play­wright ­Izaías Al­mada, spec­u­lates that the state govern­ment can­celed Lem­brar for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons: “So it all ended, and why? .  .  . ­That’s where—and I’m speak­ing very ­frankly—­that’s where ideo­log­i­cal fac­tors come into play, be­cause some of the peo­ple who par­tic­i­pated in the pro­cess [of stag­ing the play] had no idea what they were get­ting into and, when it ­dawned on them, they said, ‘Oh my God, this is a Com­mu­nist play. What am I doing?’ . . . The show was sup­pos­edly ­created by a bunch of pro­gres­sives and lib­er­als, but when they re­al­ized what it was ­really about, they im­me­di­ately de­cided to pull the plug.”43 Al­mada hints ­strongly that some of the same state govern­ment of­fi­cials who in­itially spon­sored Lem­brar later moved to close it down, ­alarmed by the ­play’s pow­er­ful de­nun­ci­a­tion of the im­pu­nity en­joyed by per­pe­tra­tors of ­dictatorship-era human ­rights ­crimes.

From Me­m o­r ial da Li­b er­d ade to Me­m o­r ial da Re­s is­t ên­c ia Lem­brar in­volved the pub­lic in the pro­cess of re­claim­ing the DOPS build­ing as a mem­ory site; how­ever, this in­volve­ment was con­strained from the out­set by the fact that the fate of the build­ing was pre­de­ter­mined be­fore the play even ­opened. When of­fi­cials began re­mod­el­ing the for­mer DOPS sta­tion house in 1999, their ­stated goal was “to trans­form it into a tem­ple of cul­ture,”44 ­rather than a site of mem­ory. Dis­cus­sions over what to do with the build­ing thus took place be­hind ­closed doors at the high­est lev­els of the state govern­ment and cul­mi­nated in the bland Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade de­scribed in the be­gin­ning of this chap­ter. In­deed, state­ments is­sued by the State Sec­re­tar­iat of Cul­ture ­between when Lem­brar was shut down in De­cem­ber 2000 and when the Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade was in­au­gu­rated in July 2002 re­veal not a de­bate but ­rather an im­posed mean­ing, in which the state govern­ment grad­ua­ lly began em­pha­siz­ing the ­building’s role in the on­go­ing re­newal of São ­Paulo’s his­toric cen­ter.45 Upon the com­ple­tion of the re­model, State Sec­re­tary of Cul­ture Mar­cos ­Mendonça pro­claimed the re­al­iza­tion of his in­ten­tion “to make this his­toric build­ing one of the most im­por­tant an­chors for res­cu­ing the old down­town area.”46 In the pro­cess, he and oth­ers grad­u­ally ­erased the ­building’s as­so­ci­a­tion with human ­rights ­crimes and ne­gated its iden­tity—in­scribed by the play—as a site of mem­ory, pav­ing the way for the in­ef­fec­tive Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade. 116



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An of­fi­cial pub­li­ca­tion de­voted to the newly re­mod­eled build­ing con­firms this read­ing. One ar­ti­cle, de­scrib­ing the ­prison cells as “to­tally re­stored,”47 de­clares that “the build­ing . . . has fi­nally freed it­self of the ­stigma of tor­ture and human ­rights ­crimes.”48 The title of an­other—“Out with Dark­ness, In with Cul­ture”—sug­gests that pain­ful mem­o­ries can sim­ply be sub­sti­tuted or ex­or­cized with cul­tural works, a prem­ise that is ex­pounded upon in the text: “The place sym­bol­iz­ing hor­ror and dark­ness has been re­born as a sym­bol of cul­ture.”49 Such state­ments re­veal that the human ­rights mes­sage of Lem­brar had been re­placed by the logic of neo­lib­er­al­ism with the cel­eb­ ra­tion of an urban re­newal pro­ject de­signed to at­tract ­middle-class cul­tural con­su­mers to a ­blighted part of the city. Far from being a ve­hi­cle for mem­ory, cul­ture as it was en­vi­sioned in the ­state’s dis­course ­served in­stead to sup­press re­mem­brance. More­over, al­though orig­i­nally meant by its crea­tors as a way of in­volv­ing the pub­lic in re­claim­ing the build­ing as a par­tic­i­pa­tory pro­cess, Lem­brar ul­ti­mately con­trib­uted to mak­ing the state ­government’s uni­lat­eral ­decision-making pro­cess ap­pear dem­o­cratic. This is not to mini­mize the sig­nif­i­cance of the play or to ques­tion the sin­cer­ity of the par­tic­i­pants but ­rather to point out one of the ­play’s un­in­tended ef­fects. The value of sites of mem­ory comes not only from the fin­ished me­mo­rial per se but also from the strug­gles over mean­ing—the di­alogue—that occur along the way to its com­ple­tion. In­deed, ­critic James E. Young has ­argued that it is the de­bates over the crea­tion of me­mo­ri­als that fos­ter under­stand­ing of the past and pro­mote so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ac­tion, more so than the ac­tual sites them­selves.50 By mak­ing a ­top-down de­ci­sion about the ­building’s fu­ture, the state govern­ment ­missed a val­u­able op­por­tu­nity for a col­lec­tive re­work­ing of the past. Im­me­di­ately after the Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade ­opened, var­i­ous ­groups mo­bi­lized to ­protest its name and de­sign. Chief among them was the Per­ma­ nent Forum of For­mer Po­lit­i­cal Pris­on­ers and the Po­lit­i­cally Per­se­cuted of São Paulo (Fórum Per­ma­nente dos ­Ex-Presos e Per­se­gui­dos ­Políticos), which had been de­mand­ing the crea­tion of a me­mo­rial “that told the story of the strug­gles ­against the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship” since the 1990s, be­fore the play even ­opened.51 The Forum group—many mem­bers of which had been de­tained in the DOPS build­ing—ob­jected to the Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade, call­ing it “pretty, but with­ out his­tor­i­cal mean­ing,” the prod­uct of what they per­ceived to be an “au­thor­i­ tar­ian” ­decision-making pro­cess.52 The state govern­ment ig­nored these and other calls for a new me­mo­rial until early 2007, when ­partly as a re­sult of what Forum lead­ers Ivan ­Seixas and Mau­rice Po­liti de­scribe as “a new mo­bil­iza­tion [within the govern­ment] for real tran­si­tional jus­tice” the ­government’s po­si­tion ­changed.53 The for­mer DOPS sta­tion house came under the aus­pices of the Pin­a­cot­eca do Es­tado F r o m To r t u r e C e n t e r t o S t a g e a n d S i t e o f M e m o r y



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(State Pic­ture Gal­lery), which ap­pointed a team of his­to­rians and mu­seum de­sign ex­perts to col­lab­o­rate with the Forum group to ­create a new me­mo­rial that pre­sented “the view­point of the peo­ple who re­sisted” the dic­tat­or­ship. The re­sult was the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia, in­au­gu­rated in Jan­u­ary 2009. Vis­i­tors to the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia en­coun­ter a care­fully ­planned space. The focus of the me­mo­rial is a cor­ri­dor with four ­prison cells (the only ones re­main­ing), each of which has been de­voted to a dif­fer­ent theme: a per­ma­ nent ex­hibit on the “mak­ing of ” the me­mo­rial, a multi­me­dia hom­age to vic­tims of po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion, a ­re-creation of what the cells ­looked like dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship, and an audio cen­ter with head­phone sets that play a re­peat­ing loop of oral tes­ti­mo­nies by Forum mem­bers. In ad­di­tion to the cells there is a room for screen­ing a ­ten-minute video about the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship and an­other that fea­tures inter­ac­tive video ­kiosks and a giant time line of Bra­zil­ian his­tory high­light­ing im­por­tant mo­ments of re­pres­sion and re­sis­tance over the past hun­dred years. The me­mo­rial is de­signed to en­cour­age vis­i­tors to spend time in these two rooms to get a sense of the his­tor­i­cal con­text of the space be­fore pro­ceed­ing to the ac­tual ­prison cells. The par­tic­i­pa­tion of Forum mem­bers is ap­par­ent through­out the me­mo­ rial, par­tic­ul­arly in the cells them­selves. The first of the four cells, for ex­am­ple, nar­rates the pro­cess of how the me­mo­rial came to exist and fea­tures ­photos de­pict­ing the ­ex-prisoners and the de­sign team work­ing side by side. This nar­ra­tive po­si­tions vis­i­tors to view the rest of the me­mo­rial as the prod­uct of a di­alogue ­between the state and Forum mem­bers. The me­mo­rial also rep­re­sents a di­alogue in which state and ­ex-prisoners, speak­ing in uni­son, en­gage the pub­lic. The de­sign­ers have ex­pressed their ob­jec­tive in terms of “open­ing a new di­alogue with the pub­lic.”54 As Forum group lead­ers ­Seixas and Po­liti ex­plain in an essay about their par­tic­i­pa­tion, the me­mo­rial in­vites vis­i­tors to par­tic­i­pate in a “live ex­pe­ri­ence of di­alogue [that] com­ple­ments the archi­val part of the ex­hibit.”55 The Forum group ­didn’t want vis­it­ ors to see the for­mer DOPS sta­tion house as some­thing “just from ‘the past.’” In other words, the ­group’s goal was to pro­mote not only be­lated wit­ness­ing but ­real-time wit­ness­ing as well: they hope that the me­mo­rial and the di­alogue that it fos­ters will “con­trib­ute so that each [vis­it­ or] can en­ vi­sion and be­come aware of the role he or she has to play in con­tem­po­rary so­ci­ety, es­pe­cially in the un­con­di­tional de­fense of human ­rights.” Both state and Forum group mem­bers em­pha­size the cen­tral­ity of di­alogue to the ­memorial’s suc­cess. While the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia has cer­tainly ­helped in­crease so­ci­etal di­alogue about the past, es­pe­cially when com­pared to the ear­lier Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade, it has not en­tirely over­come the di­alog­ic­ al void, since some ­groups and view­points are not rep­re­sented in the space,

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The same cell as shown on page 101, this time remodeled to look much as it did during the dictatorship period, is the centerpiece of the Memorial da Resistência. (Photo by author)

­ amely the fam­i­lies of the dead and dis­ap­peared as well as de­mands for crim­i­nal n ac­count­abil­ity. While vis­it­ing the me­mo­rial, I was sur­prised to hear a tour guide tell a fel­low vis­i­tor, “It’s not the Tor­ture Me­mo­rial, you know. It’s the Re­sis­tance Me­mo­rial.” The ­guide’s state­ment re­flects how the me­mo­rial sub­or­di­nates the topic of re­pres­sion to the ­larger theme of re­sis­tance, even ­though the var­i­ous ex­hib­its do ad­dress tor­ture, mur­der, and po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ ance. In any case, it is un­clear how the ­memorial’s cel­e­bra­tion of re­sis­tance ap­plies to those who did not sur­vive the mil­i­tary and po­lice vi­o­lence.

For­m ula or Wedge? Over the short term, Lem­brar did not have a sus­tained ef­fect, judg­ing by the ­short-lived Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade. The eu­phe­mis­tic name and un­in­spir­ing ren­o­va­tions vir­tu­ally ­erased the mean­ings that the cast and crew of Lem­brar had ­sought to in­scribe upon the site. Over the long term, how­ever, the play did make a con­crete dif­fer­ence by pav­ing the way for the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia. The new me­mo­rial res­ur­rects and re­works key ideas from Lem­brar, ­namely the focus on re­sis­tance, as its name sug­gests. The de­ sign­ers ren­der ex­plicit hom­age to the play on a panel con­spic­uo­ usly ­placed at the en­trance to the me­mo­rial, rec­og­niz­ing the ­performance’s role in se­cur­ing the lo­ca­tion for mem­ory work. The po­lit­i­cal per­for­mances ­staged at the for­mer DOPS sta­tion house over the years make ap­par­ent three ­points. First, they under­score the power of am­bi­gu­ity. Both Lem­brar and the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia gave new mean­ing to the DOPS sta­tion house as a space of both re­pres­sion and re­sis­tance. Yet ­whereas the ten­sion ­between these two mean­ings comes out ­strongly in the play, the me­mo­rial ­clearly em­pha­sizes the idea of re­sis­tance over re­pres­sion, as its name in­di­cates. Con­se­quently, the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia lacks the am­bi­gu­ity that makes Lem­brar such a pow­er­ful work. Sec­ond, the case of the Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade dem­on­strates that cultural interventions do not al­ways pro­mote mem­ory and jus­tice, as ev­i­dent in the São Paulo state ­government’s at­tempt to make its white­wash­ing of the for­mer DOPS sta­tion house more pal­at­able by claim­ing to act in the name of cul­ture. Just be­cause cul­ture is in­voked as part of a me­mo­rial (or other pro­ject) does not nec­es­sar­ily mean that di­alogue is being fos­tered. Third, there may be a delay ­between when a cul­tural work is pro­duced and con­sumed, on the one hand, and when its full ef­fect is felt, on the other. In the case of Lem­brar, al­most ten years would pass be­fore the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia would re­sus­ci­tate and relay to a na­tional au­di­ence the ­play’s never again mes­sage.

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While it would be a gross over­state­ment to claim a cau­sal re­la­tion­ship b­ etween ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms of reck­on­ing, Lem­brar is a case in which a crea­tive work had a con­crete im­pact on an of­fi­cial mem­ory in­itia­tive. Over the long run, the play ­helped open up a space—in both the lit­eral and fig­ura­tive sense—for the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia and for the reck­on­ing of ­Brazil’s dic­ta­to­rial past more ­broadly.

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

Con ­c lu ­s io n Me mo r y ’s Tu r n s a nd Re­t ur ns

N

early two ­decades after Fer­nando Ga­beira pub­lished his ­best-selling tes­ti­mony of the armed strug­gle, help­ing to set off a cycle of cul­tural mem­ory, O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? (What’s Going On Here, Com­rade?) in­spired a film ad­ap­ta­tion di­rected by Bruno Bar­reto. The ­fast-paced po­lit­i­cal ­thriller, re­leased in the ­United ­States as Four Days in Sep­tem­ber, in­cludes a fic­tional scene—not drawn from ­Gabeira’s tes­ti­mony— in which a mil­i­tary tor­turer con­fesses to his wife the truth about what he does for a liv­ing as well as the feel­ings of an­guish and re­morse it pro­vokes in him. The scene ig­nited a fire­storm of de­bate, in which nu­mer­ous for­mer guer­ril­las, human ­rights ­groups, and ac­a­dem­ics crit­i­cized Bar­reto for what they ­viewed as a sym­pa­thetic por­trait of a re­pen­tant tor­turer. Some crit­ics ac­cused the di­rec­tor of “ab­solv­ing” the mil­i­tary re­gime and its human ­rights vi­ol­a­tors.1 Re­spond­ing to the con­tro­versy, Ga­beira de­clared, “The film is not a ver­dict and the di­rec­tor is not a judge.”2 The re­mark is a de­fense of the film and its di­rec­tor—al­beit a some­what dis­in­gen­u­ous one, since the ­choice to ren­der his­tor­i­cal ­events (even in a fic­tional mode) ­brings with it an eth­i­cal ob­li­ga­tion to por­tray ­rather than ­betray what hap­pened. Yet there are two ­larger ­points em­bed­ded in ­Gabeira’s words. On one level, they are a re­min­der of the in­her­ent open­ness of ar­tis­tic crea­tion: great films, like other aes­thetic works, are rife with am­bi­gu­ities, and the task of the di­rec­tor (or any other art­ist) is not to im­pose a sin­gle mean­ing (the way a judge and jury do in a trial, ­whether that mean­ing be guilt or in­no­cence, con­vic­tion or ex­on­er­a­tion) but to in­vite multi­ple inter­pre­ta­tions of his or her work. On an­other level, the for­mer guer­rilla is stat­ing a sim­ple fact: cul­tural works and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms serve dif­fer­ent func­tions, and these ­should not be con­fused. ­Whether or not 122

one ap­proves of the im­pulse to de­fend the film, ­Gabeira’s re­mark ­raises im­ por­tant ­points about ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion and how it re­lates to in­sti­tu­ tional mech­a­nisms such as truth com­mis­sions and human ­rights pros­e­cu­tions. The re­la­tion­ship ­between ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms is com­plex, no less so in a coun­try like Bra­zil, which has taken an un­usu­ally pro­tracted and cir­cui­tous path in reck­on­ing with its dic­ta­to­rial past. With the pas­sage of the 1979 Am­nesty Law, the Bra­zil­ian state at­tempted to im­pose rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion (a rec­on­cil­ia­ ­tion many Bra­zil­ians de­sired) ­through a form of in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting de­signed to pre­clude truth com­mis­sions and es­pe­cially ­trials, an of­fi­cial pol­i­tics that pre­vailed for over ­thirty years. In­deed, the most sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tional jus­tice meas­ure under­taken dur­ing the pe­riod, the es­tab­lish­ment of a fed­eral rep­ar­a­tions com­mis­sion to ad­dress ­deaths and dis­ap­pear­ances, was ­framed in terms of the Am­nesty Law. The 1995 Law of the Dis­ap­peared, which ­created the rep­ar­a­tions pro­gram, con­tin­ued the tra­di­tion of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting by treat­ing the ­crimes as a question to be resolved pri­vately ­between the state and the fam­i­lies, ­rather than pub­licly. Until ­around 2005, then, along with the main pro­tag­o­nists—human ­rights ­groups and ac­ti­vists—it fell to cul­tural pro­duc­ers to lead the turn to mem­ory in Bra­zil and to pres­sure the state to fol­low suit. Art­ists, writ­ers, and other cul­tural work­ers con­tested the of­fi­cial pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ ized for­get­ting by in­sist­ing on the need to re­mem­ber so as not to re­peat the past, to re­store dig­nity to vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, and to ­deepen de­moc­racy. Yet from the out­set there was enor­mous vari­a­tion among cul­tural pro­duc­ers and how they ­viewed mem­ory, ­whether as a path to rec­on­cil­i­a­tion (and thus semi­for­get­ting) or to jus­tice. ­Whereas some like Fer­nando Ga­beira and Al­fredo Sir­kis pro­moted an al­ter­na­tive dis­course of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory (by shar­ing their rec­ol­lec­tions of vi­o­lence and re­pres­sion while si­mul­ta­ne­ously sug­gest­ing that in­di­vid­ual ac­count­abil­ity is im­pos­sible or even un­de­sir­able), oth­ers have in­sisted on the need for mem­ory and jus­tice (by ex­press­ing the con­vic­tion that crim­i­nal ac­count­abil­ity must be part of the ­state’s re­sponse). It would there­fore be in­cor­rect to view art­ists, writ­ers, and other cul­tural work­ers as func­tion­ing as a kind of bloc. By 2005, the Bra­zil­ian state, or at least of­fi­cials ­within the ex­ec­u­tive ­branch of the Lula and Dilma govern­ments, aban­doned its ­long-held ­stance and made its own turn to mem­ory—that is, to the kind of pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory pro­moted by early po­lit­i­cal tes­ti­mo­ni­al­ists like Ga­beira and Sir­kis. This pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory takes the form of in­itia­tives to ed­u­cate the pub­lic about the dic­tat­or­ship and their con­sti­tu­tion­ally guar­an­teed “right to mem­ory and truth” (but pre­sum­ably not jus­tice) and has cul­mi­nated in the crea­tion of the Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion (Comissão Na­cional da Ver­dade, Conclusion



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CNV). Yet the turn to mem­ory stops short of in­di­vid­ual crim­in ­ al ac­count­abil­ ity, with the Su­preme Court up­hold­ing the Am­nesty Law in 2010. Nev­er­the­less, inter­nal and ex­ter­nal pres­sure for human ­rights pros­e­cu­tions con­tin­ues to mount, and fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors have begun using the the­sis of con­tin­u­ous ­crimes in an at­tempt to hold some per­pe­tra­tors ac­count­able. I have pro­posed the model of the cycle of cul­tural mem­ory as a frame­work for bet­ter under­stand­ing ­Brazil’s ex­pe­ri­ence of ad­dress­ing mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ ship and its leg­a­cies. This frame­work fo­cuses on how in­di­vid­ual cul­tural works have inter­acted with a range of in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms, in­clud­ing the Am­nesty Law, the im­peach­ment of Fer­nando Col­lor, the Law of the Dis­ap­ peared, multi­ple at­tempts to con­vert a for­mer tor­ture cen­ter into a me­mo­rial, and the CNV. The cycle pro­ceeds in four ­phases, as il­lus­trated in the case stud­ies an­a­lyzed in this book. First, a new cul­tural work and an in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nism ­emerge more or less ­around the same time, as in the case of Tata ­Amaral’s film Hoje, re­leased while Bra­zil­ians were an­tic­i­pat­ing the crea­tion of the CNV. Sec­ond, the two phe­nom­ena be­come ­linked in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­ tion, such as when pub­lic dis­cus­sion of Hoje in­var­i­ably ­framed the film in terms of the con­text of the CNV. Third, one or more par­ties rec­og­nize the con­nec­tion and seek to lev­er­age it for their own agen­das, as the truth com­mis­ sion­ers did by at­tend­ing a de­bate about Hoje, and as Am­aral has done in media inter­views pro­mot­ing the film. And fi­nally, the orig­i­nal cul­tural work gives rise to new crea­tive ex­pres­sions of mem­ory, gen­er­at­ing the po­ten­tial for new turns of the cycle. Bra­zil has seen at least three other sig­nif­i­cant cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory over the past forty years. The first such cycle was set in mo­tion in 1979, when for­mer guer­ril­las began pub­lish­ing their tes­ti­mo­nies of the armed strug­gle in the wake of the Am­nesty Law. The ­best-selling books of Fer­nando Ga­beira and Al­fredo Sir­kis came to em­ble­ma­tize the law and the con­cil­i­a­tory cul­tural mood it ­helped bring about (whereas books that ­raised the ques­tion of pun­ish­ ment, such as Re­nato ­Tapajós’s tes­ti­mo­nial novel, found a com­par­a­tively small read­er­ship). Ac­counts by guer­ril­las and other po­lit­i­cal ac­tors (in­clud­ing re­gime in­sid­ers react­ing to the per­ceived re­van­chismo, or vin­dic­tive­ness, of for­mer guer­ril­las; cer­tain ­left-wing pol­it­ i­cians; and the media) con­tin­ued to make up an im­por­tant part of cul­tural mem­ory through­out the 1980s. By the 1990s, how­ever, a new cycle of cul­tural mem­ory was set in mo­tion with the air­ing of the tele­vi­sion min­is­er­ies Anos re­beldes (Rebel Years)—it­self in­spired ­partly by ­Sirkis’s ac­count—dur­ing the con­gres­sional in­ves­ti­ga­tion into cor­rup­tion ­charges (even­tu­ally lead­ing to an im­peach­ment pro­cess) ­against ­Brazil’s first dem­o­crat­i­cally ­elected pres­i­dent in ­nearly ­thirty years, Fer­nando Col­lor de Mello. A third cycle began at the turn of the mil­len­nium with the play Lem­brar

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Conclusion

é re­sis­tir (To Re­mem­ber Is to Re­sist), which was in­stru­men­tal in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the de­ci­sion by the state govern­ment of São Paulo to open to the pub­lic a for­mer tor­ture cen­ter and, after much strug­gle, its even­tual trans­for­ma­tion into a per­ma­nent site of mem­ory. In what fol­lows, I offer three inter­re­lated con­clu­sions, two of which per­tain spe­cif­i­cally to the Bra­zil­ian case and one of which con­cerns the re­la­tion­ship ­between cul­tural and tran­si­tional jus­tice stud­ies ­within a more glo­bal con­text.

S

tep­ping back to con­sider how the dif­fer­ent cases pre­sented in this book fit to­gether leads to a first con­clu­sion: cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on mem­ory strug­gles in Bra­zil over the long run. Each turn of the cycle pro­duces its own “re­turns” or ­yields, which can be sep­ar­ated into two cat­e­go­ries: cul­tural and in­sti­tu­tional. On the cul­tural level, the cy­cles stud­ied in this book have pro­duced val­u­able re­turns over time by in­spir­ing fur­ther crea­tive and imag­i­na­tive works in Bra­zil, which them­selves have in­creased the po­ten­tial for fu­ture cy­cles. ­Whereas each of the chap­ters in this book ­traces an in­di­vid­ual cycle of cul­tural mem­ory, if we take the book as a whole it be­comes pos­sible to trace a ­larger cy­cli­cal phe­nom­en ­ on ­across chap­ters, in which the tes­ti­mo­nies from the first cycle of cul­tural mem­ory (chap­ter 1) are re­vived in later cy­cles, di­rectly or oth­er­wise. ­Sirkis’s book ­partly in­spired the min­is­er­ies Anos re­beldes (chap­ter 2), for ex­am­ple, and the under­ stand­ings of re­sis­tance ar­tic­u­lated in ­Gabeira’s tes­ti­mony are re­prised in the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia (chap­ter 4). ­Tapajós’s novel was used in the Rio de Ja­neiro ver­sion of Lem­brar é re­sis­tir (chap­ter 4). ­Bonassi’s novel Prova ­contrária (Proof to the ­Contrary) (chap­ter 3), for its part, in­spired Tata ­Amaral’s film Hoje (intro­duc­tion). Tak­ing a step back re­veals that these in­di­vid­ual cy­cles are not ­closed loops but ­rather form part of a ­larger ­system by feed­ing into one an­other in my­riad ways. Cul­tural mem­ory be­gets more cul­tural mem­ory. Even more im­por­tant is the im­pact of cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory on the in­sti­tu­tional level: when cul­tural works link with in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms, the re­sult­ing cycle not only can help those mech­a­nisms reach a ­larger swath of the pub­lic but may also help de­ter­mine ­whether a given in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­ nism be­comes a for­mula for clo­sure or a wedge to push for fur­ther mem­ory work, to re­turn to Steve J. ­Stern’s use­ful no­tion. Vir­tu­ally any tran­si­tional jus­tice mech­a­nism has the po­ten­tial to be one or the other, ei­ther fos­ter­ing the per­cep­tion that the mat­ter of the past has been set­tled or un­set­tling the issue fur­ther and ­thereby un­leash­ing new strug­gles. Hopes and ex­pec­ta­tions that a given mech­a­nism will lay to rest the mem­ory ques­tion once and for all are often in­tense among po­lit­i­cal ­elites and cer­tain sec­tors of so­ci­ety with a ­vested inter­est in mov­ing on. And in­deed, as the Bra­zil­ian ex­pe­ri­ence dem­on­strates,

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many mech­a­nisms tend to­ward be­com­ing for­mu­las for clo­sure un­less so­cial ac­tors inter­vene. The Law of the Dis­ap­peared had all the mak­ings of a for­mula for clo­sure, with its pro­po­sal to set­tle the ­state’s debt to the fam­i­lies of the dead and dis­ap­peared ­through fi­nan­cial rep­ar­a­tions. Many so­cial ac­tors and ­groups ­fought, how­ever, to turn it into a wedge: some fam­i­lies used their rep­ar­a­ tions ­checks to fund fur­ther strug­gle; tor­ture sur­vi­vors ­pressed state govern­ments for local rep­ar­at­ ions pro­grams; and after the Car­doso and Lula ­administrations’ de­ci­sion to use the rep­ar­a­tions pro­gram as a way to settle accounts in private with the fam­i­lies, ­Lula’s min­is­ter of human ­rights Paulo Van­nu­chi pub­lished the rep­ar­a­tions ­commission’s find­ings in ­Brazil’s first of­fi­cial truth re­port. Often, the ac­tors who work to turn in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms into ­wedges are the sur­vi­vors or fam­i­lies of vic­tims, human ­rights ac­ti­vists or ­groups, or state ac­tors. Yet the cases in this book sug­gest that ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion also has the po­ten­tial to help tip the ­scales away from a for­mula and to­ward a wedge.3 Per­haps the best ex­am­ple of this phe­nom­e­non is how the play Lem­brar é re­sis­tir ­nudged the in­sti­tu­tional de­ci­sion to trans­fer the DOPS build­ing away from the di­rec­tion it was ­headed (for­mu­laic closure) and ­steered it to­ward the op­po­site di­rec­tion (wedge). The de­ci­sion by state govern­ment of­fi­cials to hand over the build­ing to new, non­po­lice oc­cu­pants was a kind of in­sti­tu­tional step. Would the new oc­cu­pa­tion serve to high­light mem­ory (wedge) or sup­press it (for­mula)? The orig­in ­ al plan by the São Paulo govern­ment was in­ar­gu­ably a for­mula for clo­sure: of­fi­cials in­itially in­tended to turn the build­ing into a music con­ser­va­tory with no con­nec­tion to mem­ory, and al­though they spon­sored the ­one-week run of a ­site-specific play about the ­building’s his­tory, Lem­brar é re­sis­tir, the event was orig­i­nally in­tended for a se­lect group of in­vited ­guests. Yet the crea­tors of Lem­brar man­aged to ­create a wedge. The per­for­mance ended up run­ning for ap­prox­i­mately fif­teen ­months and at­tracted an au­di­ence of more than ­twenty thou­sand peo­ple from all walks of life who came to par­ tic­i­pate in the pro­cess of re­claim­ing the build­ing as a site of mem­ory; it also in­spired a ­spin-off in Rio de Ja­neiro and a TV spe­cial. Lem­brar took on a life of its own, which is ­likely part of the rea­son that of­fi­cials in the ­closure-seeking state govern­ment de­cided to shut down the play at the ­height of its suc­cess. And even ­though Lem­brar was re­placed by the “for­mu­laic” (or ­closureinducing) Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade, it re­tained its wedge func­tion in the long run by pav­ing the way for the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia (which, un­like its pre­de­ces­sor, has both wedge and for­mula char­ac­ter­is­tics). The po­ten­tial for cer­tain cul­tural works to pro­long and ­deepen in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms cuts both ways, in that it ex­ists both for suc­cess­ful reck­on­ing with the past as well as for meas­ures de­signed to pre­vent such a reck­on­ing, like

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am­nes­ties. Con­se­quently, just be­cause a cul­tural work moves ­through a cycle of cul­tural mem­ory does not auto­mat­i­cally mean that it will end up pro­mot­ing the kind of ­ideals (truth-seeking, ac­count­abil­ity) as­so­ciated with tran­si­tional jus­tice. The tes­ti­mo­nial ac­counts of Ga­beira and Sir­kis, for ex­am­ple, may seem like a counter­ex­am­ple to the ar­gu­ment that cul­tural works can help nudge in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms away from a for­mula for clo­sure and to­ward a wedge, and in a cer­tain sense they are. Am­nesty laws are by def­i­ni­tion mech­a­ nisms de­signed to im­pose clo­sure, and in­fluen­tial tes­ti­mo­ni­al­ists like Ga­beira and Sir­kis re­in­forced that for­mula as well as so­ci­etal re­luc­tance to pros­e­cute in­di­vid­ual tor­tur­ers, even as they in­sisted on the need to re­mem­ber. The re­al­ity that cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory can cut both ways sug­gests a sec­ond con­clu­sion: the im­pact of these cy­cles is nei­ther uni­di­rec­tional nor lin­ear. A cycle may not lead to a sin­gle out­come but ­rather to multi­ple, contra­ dic­tory ones: the mem­ory re­turns of each turn of the cycle are man­i­fold. This is cer­tainly true for ­Gabeira’s and ­Sirkis’s works: ­whereas over the short run they re­in­forced the Am­nesty Law (the for­mula for clo­sure par ex­cel­lence) more than they chal­lenged it, over the ­longer run both books be­came ­wedges of sorts by in­spir­ing block­buster adap­tions in the vis­ual media, which in turn pro­voked pub­lic de­bate and, in ­Sirkis’s case, a new cycle of mem­ory. In other words, a cul­tural work may serve as more than just a wedge or just a for­mula: it may be both. The Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia is an­other ex­am­ple in which inter­plays ­between the cul­tural and in­sti­tu­tional ­spheres are not uni­di­rec­tional nor con­fined to a sin­gle out­come. On the one hand, the me­mo­rial dis­plays cer­tain for­mu­laic ten­den­cies, ­namely by re­pro­duc­ing re­duc­tive and re­as­sur­ing nar­ra­ tives of the dic­tat­or­ship pe­riod as one of “re­sis­tance” and by serv­ing as a sym­bol of the Bra­zil­ian ­state’s pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory. But the mem­ory site has also ­proved to be a wedge in that it has be­come a space where new cul­tural works and de­bates are reg­u­larly ­staged. The Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia is there­fore nei­ther ­solely a for­mula nor ­solely a wedge: it is both si­mul­ta­ne­ously. It dem­on­strates the con­tin­gent qual­ity of many in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms, es­pe­cially of­fi­cial me­mo­ri­als, which are often per­pet­ual sites of strug­gle ­between for­mula and wedge ten­den­cies. The contra­dic­tory out­comes of cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory are ­hardly sur­pris­ing given that cul­tural works them­selves often con­tain multi­ple and con­flict­ing mes­sages. The min­is­er­ies Anos re­beldes is a case in point: al­though the show pro­moted the never again mes­sage and broke cer­tain ta­boos about crit­i­ciz­ing the mil­it­ ary re­gime on ­prime-time tele­vi­sion, it also per­pet­u­ated the no­tion that the dic­tat­or­ship had been mild and por­trayed the Globo net­work in a he­roic light. The contra­dic­tion ­between the ­show’s human ­rights

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sym­pa­thies on the one hand and its por­trayal of a soft dic­tat­or­ship, or dit­a­ branda, on the other did not so much can­cel each other out as pro­duce am­bi­ gu­ity. Given the Bra­zil­ian ­public’s his­toric am­biv­a­lence to­ward the issue of in­di­vid­ual crim­i­nal ac­count­abil­ity for tor­tur­ers, this am­bi­gu­ity may help ex­plain why the min­is­er­ies be­came such a hit: it dealt with the mem­ory ques­tion, but it did so in a way that was non­threat­en­ing to a mass au­di­ence. The case of Anos re­beldes also dem­on­strates that cul­tural pro­duc­ers can­not al­ways dic­tate or con­trol the re­per­cus­sions of their works: through­out the ­show’s run and af­ter­ward, the Globo net­work ­worked to re­vamp its image as a cham­pion of de­moc­racy, yet its ef­forts were under­mined when the min­is­er­ies in­ad­ver­tently ­brought the ­network’s con­tin­ued prac­tice of ­self-censorship into the lime­light. As the cases an­a­lyzed in this book il­lus­trate, the re­la­tion­ship ­between the cul­tural and in­sti­tu­tional ­spheres is com­plex. An­other layer of com­plex­ity ­arises when the scope is broad­ened to in­clude cul­tural works pro­duced by re­gime in­sid­ers or apol­og­ ists, a prime ex­am­ple being the book ­Memórias de uma ­guerra suja (Mem­o­ries of a Dirty War) by ­Cláudio ­Guerra, a for­mer po­lit­i­cal po­lice de­tec­tive ­turned ev­an­gel­i­cal pas­tor. ­Guerra’s work is ­unique among ac­counts by pro–mil­i­tary re­gime mem­oir­ists be­cause of its con­fes­sional na­ture: the for­mer se­cur­ity agent re­counts his in­volve­ment in mur­ders, dis­ap­pear­ances, and other vi­o­lent ­crimes com­mit­ted dur­ing the anos de ­chumbo (years of lead) and aber­tura (po­lit­i­cal open­ing) pe­ri­ods, and per­haps this is why it is among the very few such per­pe­tra­tor ac­counts to have had such a close con­nec­tion with an in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nism.4 Pub­lished a few weeks be­fore the Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion was con­sti­tuted, ­Memórias de uma ­guerra suja be­came a media event: news out­lets re­ported the ­book’s rev­e­la­tions in sto­ries in­var­i­ably ­framed ­within the con­text of the new CNV.5 ­Guerra later coop­er­ated with the Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion, elab­orat­ing on the tes­ti­mony con­tained in his pub­lished ac­count. One could argue that ­Memórias de uma ­guerra suja moved ­through a cycle of cul­tural mem­ory of sorts in­so­far as the au­thor was sum­moned to tes­tify (link­ing book and mech­a­nism in a con­crete ­rather than imag­i­nary way) and at least one party (the CNV) at­tempted to lev­er­age the con­nec­tion (to glean in­for­ma­tion). In any case, ­Guerra’s me­moir chal­lenges even as it con­firms the model of cul­tural and in­sti­tu­tional inter­ac­tions out­lined in this book. The cycle of cul­tural mem­ory in Bra­zil is far from an ­all-encompassing ex­pla­na­tion of cul­tural pro­duc­tion in the coun­try. Most crea­tive works never man­age to forge a link with an in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nism, with­out which they can­not move ­through the cycle. At the same time, a work need not ­launch a cycle to make an im­pact. Some ­highly in­fluen­tial works do not: ­Barreto’s film ad­ap­ta­tion Four Days in Sep­tem­ber never ­linked with an in­sti­tu­tional

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mech­a­nism nor trig­gered a cycle, yet it man­aged, ­through its po­lem­i­cal de­pic­ tion of a re­pen­tant tor­turer, to pro­voke in­tense pub­lic de­bate, ar­gu­ably bring­ing more at­ten­tion to the mem­ory ques­tion than even Anos re­beldes, which did move ­through a full cycle. If cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory in Bra­zil are so dy­namic—and to some ex­tent un­pre­dict­able—is it pos­sible to ex­tract any les­sons or ge­ner­a­liz­able knowl­edge from them? I be­lieve that there is value in stud­y­ing these cy­cles pre­cisely be­cause they do not fol­low a sin­gle, pre­dict­able path. They prove that the re­la­tion­ship ­between cul­tural works and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms is ­rarely straight­for­ward or sim­ple, re­veal­ing how lit­tle we ac­tu­ally know about how the two ­realms— cul­tural and in­sti­tu­tional—inter­act. From this re­al­iza­tion ­emerges a third con­clu­sion: the study of how ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms inter­act is nec­es­ sary in order to ob­tain a ­fuller pic­ture of mem­ory pol­i­tics and the reckoning pro­cess in Bra­zil or any post­con­flict so­ci­ety. While there is a ­wealth of stud­ies on cul­tural pro­duc­tion in tran­si­tional and post­tran­si­tional con­texts as well as on tran­si­tional jus­tice mech­a­nisms, what is lack­ing is a per­spec­tive that em­pha­sizes the syn­er­gies ­between the two. In­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms are not ­created—nor do they un­fold—in a vac­uum. Peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence them in real time, in con­junc­tion with other ­forces at play, in­clud­ing block­buster cul­tural works and the pub­lic de­bates that these un­leash. Stud­ies that focus on official mech­a­nisms in iso­la­tion risk los­ing sight of some of the more in­no­va­tive and un­ex­pected ways that a given ­mechanism’s goals and out­comes are com­mu­ ni­cated to and re­worked by the pub­lic. By the same token, stud­ies of cul­tural works that ne­glect to ac­count fully for how such works do or do not inter­act with of­fi­cial and un­of­fi­cial re­sponses to the past and the strug­gles that sur­round them may miss cru­cial in­sights into the mem­ory pol­i­tics of which they are a part. More­over, at­ten­tion to the syn­er­gies ­between ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms al­lows us to trace pat­terns over time that may not be so ev­i­dent by a focus on ei­ther phe­nom­e­non alone. In the case of Bra­zil, the lim­i­ta­tions and con­ser­va­tism of the ­state’s post-2005 pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­ tion by mem­ory (ex­em­plified in the 2007 truth re­port, the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­ tên­cia, and the Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion) be­come ­clearer if we rec­og­nize the roots of that pol­i­tics in cer­tain cul­tural re­ac­tions to the Am­nesty Law back when the mil­i­tary still held power. Trac­ing cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory puts into sharp re­lief how a cer­tain lex­i­con and nar­ra­tive per­tain­ing to the dic­tat­or­ ship pe­riod (in­clud­ing terms such as re­sis­tance, re­cip­ro­cal am­nesty, ­memory-asjustice, anos de ­chumbo, re­van­chismo, dit­a­branda) that co­al­esced be­fore tran­si­tion tend to sur­face again and again long after tran­si­tion in var­i­ous per­mu­ta­tions

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and in all kinds of media. Under­stand­ing how mem­ory came to be dis­cussed and nar­rated the way that it did is nec­es­sary for a crit­i­cal en­gage­ment with mem­ory pol­i­tics in any so­ci­ety.

A

s of this writ­ing, the Bra­zil­ian Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion is in the midst of its la­bors. Will it mark a new era in Bra­zil­ian mem­ory pol­i­tics? Will its final re­port gain ac­cep­tance as a new na­tional nar­ra­tive? And, per­haps most im­por­tant, will it be a wedge for fur­ther mem­ory work? An af­fir­ma­tive re­sponse to any of these ques­tions is ­hardly a given. As ex­pe­ri­ences in other coun­tries re­veal, truth com­mis­sions ­rarely bring the de­sired break with the past, and al­ter­na­tive nar­ra­tives in­var­i­ably per­sist.6 A case in point is Peru, a na­tion that ­emerged from a very dif­fer­ent type of con­flict but whose ex­pe­ri­ence with a com­mis­sion of in­quiry is none­the­less in­struc­tive. More than ten years have ­passed since its Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­ sion com­pleted its work, mak­ing it pos­sible to draw some con­clu­sions about its im­pact, as Cyn­thia Mil­ton does in the intro­duc­tion to her ed­ited vol­ume Art from a Frac­tured Past. Mil­ton ex­plains that while the re­sults of the mech­a­ nism have been mixed, there is one area in which it has made a sig­nif­i­cant im­ pact: art and cul­ture. Al­though the ­commission’s find­ings have not been well dis­semi­nated nor ­widely em­braced (even by of­fi­cials), the very ex­is­tence of the body has nur­tured new crea­tive forms of ­truth-telling. Of ­course, art and cul­ture ­played an im­por­tant role in re­work­ing the past in Peru even be­fore the commission, but Mil­ton finds that they “car­ried a new sa­liency and im­me­diacy and at­tained pub­lic rec­og­ni­tion at a na­tional level” in the post–truth com­mis­sion era.7 If any­thing, the Pe­ru­vian ex­pe­ri­ence sug­gests that ­artistic-cultural pro­ duc­tion may be even more im­por­tant after the in­sti­tu­tion of a truth com­mis­ sion, serv­ing as the next fron­tier or “bat­tle­ground for mem­ory nar­ra­tives.”8 Ar­tis­tic re­sponses, in other words, may play a crit­i­cal role in pre­vent­ing the truth com­mis­sion from be­com­ing a for­mula for clo­sure and prod­ding it in­stead to­ward be­com­ing a wedge for driv­ing new dis­cus­sions and de­bates. How will the role of ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion adapt and ­evolve in Bra­zil as the coun­try en­ters its own post–truth com­mis­sion era? Given the im­por­tance of cul­tural pro­duc­tion over the past ­thirty years, and the flood of new works ­launched since the ­state’s aban­don­ment of its pol­i­tics of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting in 2005, every­thing in­di­cates that Bra­zil, like Peru, will see ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion in­crease in im­por­tance. If that is the case, then we can ex­pect that Bra­zil­ian cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory will keep turn­ing— and re­turn­ing.

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

Notes

Intro­d uc­t ion 1. Of­fi­cially, the CNV is ­charged with in­ves­ti­gat­ing human ­rights vi­o­la­tions com­mit­ted after 1946 but be­fore 1988. This ­broader time frame was de­signed to pla­cate crit­ics, es­pe­cially those from ­within the mil­i­tary. In prac­tice, how­ever, the CNV has inter­preted its man­date more nar­rowly by fo­cus­ing on ­crimes com­mit­ted after the coup of April 1, 1964. 2. A de­bate with the film­maker, co­stars, and screen­writer was held the fol­low­ing day. 3. The Cham­ber of Dep­u­ties ­passed the bill on Sep­tem­ber 21, a week be­fore the ­film’s pre­miere. 4. L. Lima, “Ci­neasta Tata Am­aral traz ao fes­ti­val”; Ta­vares, “‘Hoje,’ de Tata Am­aral”; and L. Lima, “Atores de Hoje de­fen­dem.” 5. The goal of sen­si­tiz­ing the pub­lic dis­tin­guishes the ob­jec­tives of the CNV from those of the ear­lier Law of the Dis­ap­peared, which ­treated po­lit­i­cal ­deaths and dis­ap­pear­ ances as a ques­tion to be resolved pri­vately ­between the state and in­di­vid­ual fam­i­lies ­through the pay­ment of fi­nan­cial rep­ar­a­tions. 6. Dir­e­toria do GTNM/RJ, “A ­Comissão da Ver­dade.” 7. Leal, “Tata Am­aral.” Here and through­out, all trans­la­tions from the Por­tu­guese (and from the Span­ish, as such occur) are my own un­less oth­er­wise noted. 8. “‘Hoje,’ de Tata Am­aral,” and Car­neiro, “As con­se­quên­cias da dit­a­dura.” 9. Steve J. Stern ­writes of the abil­ity of ex­cep­tional crea­tive works to em­body and ­strengthen a cul­tural mo­ment or an emerg­ing sen­sibil­ity in his dis­cus­sion of the Chi­lean film Ma­chuca. See Stern, Reck­on­ing with Pi­no­chet, 311. 10. In Bra­zil, the sec­ond of the two na­tional rep­ar­a­tions in­itia­tives, known as the Am­nesty Com­mis­sion, in­cludes a pro­gram ­called “Mar­cas da ­Memória” (Marks of Mem­ory) that fos­ters ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion re­lated to the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship and its leg­a­cies. Wid­en­ing the scope to Latin Amer­ica, Peru of­fers an ex­cel­lent ex­am­ple of how truth com­mis­sions can fos­ter cul­tural pro­duc­tion. See Mil­ton, “At the Edge.”

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11. On Ar­gen­tina, see, for ex­am­ple, Tay­lor, Dis­ap­pear­ing Acts, and Tay­lor, ­Archive and the Rep­er­toire. On Chile, see Stern, Reck­on­ing with Pi­no­chet; Laz­zara, Chile in Tran­si­tion; and ­Gómez-Barris, Where Mem­ory ­Dwells. On Peru, see Mil­ton, intro­duc­ tion to Art from a Frac­tured Past. 12. Sik­kink, Jus­tice Cas­cade, 150. 13. Sec­tors that ­called for the coup and sup­ported the dic­tat­or­ship, at least in­itially, in­cluded the busi­ness and po­lit­i­cal elite, the ­church, and wide ­swaths of the mid­dle class. 14. ­Schwarz, “Cul­ture and Pol­i­tics in Bra­zil,” 127. 15. To carry out this po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence, the re­gime ­relied on a vast net­work of mil­i­tary and po­lice agen­cies that in­cluded the in­tel­li­gence ser­vices of the army (CIE), navy (CEN­I­MAR), and air force (CISA) as well as the var­i­ous state ­branches of the po­lit­ic­ al po­lice (De­par­ta­mento Es­tad­ual de Ordem ­Política e So­cial, DEOPS). A joint ­military-police com­mand unit (OBAN, later re­named ­DOI-CODI) co­or­di­nated the ac­tiv­i­ties of the se­cur­ity ­forces. To­gether, these agen­cies com­posed what Mar­tha Hug­gins and her col­leagues call the mil­i­tary ­dictatorship’s “as­sem­bly line of re­pres­sion.” Hug­gins, ­Haritos-Fatouros, and Zim­bardo, Vi­o­lence Work­ers, 246. 16. The ex­pres­sion anos de ­chumbo is it­self an ap­pro­pri­a­tion from post–World War II Eu­rope. It was a­ dapted from the Ital­ian anni di pi­ombo, which in turn comes from the Ital­ian trans­la­tion of the title of a 1981 Ger­man film by Mar­ga­rethe von ­Trotta, Die ­bleierne Zeit (lit­er­ally, The ­Leaden Times). The film, which was a hit in Italy, por­trays the Ger­man armed ­left-wing group ­Baader-Meinhof. Ital­ians began to use the ex­pres­sion anni di pi­ombo to refer to the years of vi­o­lent con­flicts that took place in their coun­try in the late 1970s, es­pe­cially 1977–78, and even to the en­tire 1968–78 ­decade. (As his­to­rians Ma­nuel Rota and Jerry ­Dávila ex­plained to me, the ­film’s title comes from a poem by Frie­drich ­Hölderlin that re­fers to the clas­si­cal myths of the four ages of gold, sil­ver, ­bronze, and lead. For Ital­ians it took on an ad­di­tional layer of mean­ing, how­ever, be­cause pi­ombo, or lead, also re­fers to bul­lets and gray, un­ pleas­ant days—the Ital­ian “gior­nata plum­bea” means a gray, rainy, and sad day.) The Bra­zil­ians prob­ably bor­rowed the ex­pres­sion from the Ital­ians in the early 1980s to refer (retroac­tively) to their own years of vi­ol­ent con­flict from 1969 to 1974. 17. ­Brazil’s first of­fi­cial truth re­port, pub­lished in 2007, rec­og­nizes a total of 353 vic­tims ­counted as fa­tal­ities, “about 150” of whom were dis­ap­peared, in­clud­ing the 62 from the Ara­guaia mas­sa­cre (CEMDP, Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade, 41, 48, 49). Human ­rights ­groups put the num­bers ­higher, with a total of 436 known fa­tal­ities in Bra­zil and ­abroad, in­clud­ing 159 dis­ap­peared (CFMDP, Dos­siê dit­a­dura, 19). In Bra­zil, the es­ti­mated num­ber of fa­tal­ities in­cludes not only ­deaths and dis­ap­pear­ances but also sui­cides that took place in exile. These es­ti­mates, of­fi­cial and ­extra-official, do not take into ac­count the num­ber of in­dig­e­nous peo­ples ­killed. A 1967 re­port on human ­rights ­crimes ­against in­dig­e­nous ­tribes that was re­dis­cov­ered in 2013 re­veals cases of gen­o­cide, rape, and tor­ture in­volv­ing un­known num­bers of vic­tims (Watts and Rocha, “Brazil’s ‘Lost ­Report’”). Were such cases to be in­cluded, the num­ber of fa­tal­ities under the dic­tat­or­ship would un­doubt­edly be much ­higher.

132



Notes to pages 8–10

More­over, as Edson Teles and Vlad­i­mir Sa­fa­tle point out, the num­ber of fa­tal­ities is but one meas­ure of the vi­o­lence of a dic­tat­or­ship. An­other is the leg­acy left in the ­present, and in this sense Bra­zil ex­pe­ri­enced the most vi­o­lent of the Latin ­American dic­tat­or­ships, con­tend the two schol­ars, cit­ing the in­crease in in­ci­dences of tor­ture since the tran­si­tion to de­moc­racy and the im­pu­nity en­joyed by tor­tur­ers there. Teles and Sa­fa­tle, intro­duc­tion to O que resta da dit­a­dura, 10. 18. Le­thal vi­o­lence did per­sist into the Gei­sel pres­i­dency, how­ever. The mil­i­tary was in the midst of the Ara­guaia op­er­a­tion when Gei­sel took of­fice, and in urban cen­ters, par­tic­u­larly São Paulo, se­cur­ity ­forces con­tin­ued to tor­ture and kill sus­pected sub­ver­sives even after the dec­lar­a­tion of ­distensão. 19. Mez­a­robba, Um ­acerto de con­tas, 29. 20. Mon­daini, Di­rei­tos hu­ma­nos, 84–87. 21. The bill cov­ered “po­lit­i­cal and con­nected ­crimes,” word­ing de­signed to grant im­mu­nity to state tor­tur­ers. 22. Mez­a­robba, Um ­acerto de con­tas, 52. 23. Al­though the na­tional am­nesty move­ment and some prom­i­nent ex­iles had ­called for pun­ish­ment of tor­tur­ers at the ­height of the move­ment in late 1978 and early 1979, those calls ­seemed to evap­o­rate after the sign­ing of the law. One exile who vo­cally de­manded pun­ish­ment be­fore en­act­ment of the Am­nesty Law but sub­se­quently mod­er­ated his po­si­tion was Fer­nando Ga­beira, a case I ex­plore in chap­ter 1. 24. In the wake of the re­sound­ing de­feat of the armed strug­gle, the dis­course of rev­o­lu­tion rang hol­low and the Bra­zil­ian left began a pro­cess of ­self-critique, a fea­ture com­mon to most mod­ern ­left-wing move­ments. Al­though this pro­cess may have ­seemed ­self-absorbed and te­di­ous to some crit­ics, it nev­er­the­less al­lowed for a re­im­a­gin­ing of left­ist pol­i­tics to­ward the end of the ­decade, and par­tic­u­larly ­around the var­io­ us so­cial move­ments emerg­ing dur­ing those years. 25. Das­sin, “Tes­ti­mo­nial Lit­er­a­ture,” 167. 26. Idel­ber Av­el­ar, per­sonal con­ver­sa­tion, Feb­ru­ary 15, 2013. 27. Kath­ryn Sik­kink chal­lenges the ten­dency to inter­pret the Ar­gen­tine ex­pe­ri­ence as proof of the non­vi­abil­ity or fu­til­ity of human ­rights ­trials. See Sik­kink, Jus­tice Cas­cade, 76. 28. For a de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion of ­Sarney’s po­lit­i­cal ped­i­gree, see Power, Po­lit­i­cal Right, 66–70. 29. In this sense, ­Brazil’s ex­pe­ri­ence mov­ing from au­thor­i­tar­ian to dem­o­cratic rule is ­closer to that of Uru­guay, where a mem­ber of dic­ta­tor Juan María ­Bordaberry’s Col­or­ ado Party was ­elected pres­i­dent of the tran­si­tional govern­ment. 30. ­Wiebelhaus-Brahm, “What Does Bra­zil Have to Gain?,” 5. 31. Mez­a­robba, Um ­acerto de con­tas, 73. 32. The re­la­tion­ship ­between ­whether or not a coun­try rat­ifies anti­tor­ture trea­ties and its ac­tual tor­ture prac­tices is com­plex, as Oona Hath­away shows. Her re­search re­veals that coun­tries that join the Con­ven­tion ­against Tor­ture, for ex­am­ple, do not al­ways have bet­ter tor­ture ­records than those that do not. In fact, some coun­tries that rat­ify the Con­ven­tion sub­se­quently main­tain or even in­crease the use of tor­ture. Bra­zil

Notes to pages 10–14



133

is one such coun­try. Hath­away finds that in such cases, coun­tries ap­pear to be mo­ti­vated to rat­ify the Con­ven­tion out of a de­sire to im­prove their inter­na­tional rep­u­ta­tions ­rather than out of a de­sire to curb tor­ture. More­over, weak inter­na­tional en­force­ment means that the Con­ven­tion ­relies on do­mes­tic rule of law in­sti­tu­tions to be ef­fec­tive. Where such in­sti­tu­tions are weak, tor­ture tends to con­tinue un­checked. See Hath­away, “Prom­ise and Lim­its.” 33. Av­rit­zer, De­moc­racy and the Pub­lic Space, 113. 34. For a more de­tailed his­tory of Bra­zil since 1989, see ­McCann, The ­Throes of De­moc­racy. 35. Sim­il­ar sites were sub­se­quently dis­cov­ered in Rio de Ja­neiro and Re­cife. 36. Mez­a­robba, Um ­acerto de con­tas, 81. 37. Other non­govern­men­tal or­gan­iza­tions that have ­formed over the years to de­fend the ­rights of the vic­tims of dic­tat­or­ship in­clude the Co­mitê Ca­tar­i­nense ­Pró-Memoria dos Mor­tos e De­sa­par­e­ci­dos P ­ olíticos de Santa Cat­a­rina (Com­mit­tee for the Mem­ory of the Dead and Dis­ap­peared of Santa Cat­a­rina) and, more re­cently, the São Paulo–based Fórum Per­ma­nente dos ­Ex-Presos e Per­se­gui­dos ­Políticos (Per­ma­ nent Forum of For­mer Po­lit­i­cal Pris­on­ers and the Po­lit­ic­ ally Per­se­cuted) and ­Núcleo de ­Preservação da ­Memória ­Política (Nu­cleus for the Pres­er­va­tion of Po­lit­i­cal Mem­ory). See N. Schnei­der, “Wait­ing for a Meaningful State Apology.” 38. Re­gard­ing the Tor­ture Never Again Mon­u­ment in Re­cife, see Brito, “El mon­u­mento para no ol­vi­dar,” and Lang­land, “Where the Past Seeks the Fu­ture,” 27. For the fas­ci­nat­ing story of a sim­i­lar ­planned mon­u­ment that never got off the draw­ing board in Rio de Ja­neiro, see A. Schnei­der, “Un­set­tling and Un­set­tled Mon­u­ment.” 39. Mez­a­robba, Um ­acerto de con­tas, 89–90. 40. For over­views and anal­y­ses of this legal meas­ure, see Cano and Fer­reira, “Rep­ar­a­ tions Pro­gram in Bra­zil”; Mez­a­robba, Um ­acerto de con­tas, 65–113; and Mez­a­robba, “Between Rep­ar­a­tions,” 13–14. 41. Mez­a­robba, “Between Rep­ar­a­tions,” 14. 42. Stern, Reck­on­ing with Pi­no­chet, 163. 43. Ibid., 371. 44. Nina Schnei­der char­ac­terizes Pres­i­dent ­Cardoso’s apol­ogy for system­atic state vi­o­lence under the dic­tat­or­ship, of­fered on the oc­ca­sion of the sign­ing of the Law of the Dis­ap­peared in 1995, as “timid” and ques­tions ­whether the Bra­zil­ian state has ever made a mean­ing­ful apol­ogy for the human ­rights ­crimes of the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship. See N. Schnei­der, “Wait­ing for a Meaningful State Apology.” 45. Rod­e­ghero, Dienst­mann, and Trin­dade, An­is­tia ampla, 288. 46. My think­ing about the dif­fer­ent ap­proaches to the mem­ory ques­tion in Bra­zil has been ­greatly in­flu­enced by my col­league and ­friend Nina Schnei­der. In her ar­ti­cle “Break­ing the ‘Silence’ of the Mil­i­tary Re­gime,” she sug­gests that ­around 2005 the Bra­zil­ian state aban­doned what she calls its “pol­it­ ics of si­lence” in favor of a new “pol­i­tics of mem­ory.” For my own pur­poses, I have found it use­ful to think in terms of a “rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by for­get­ting” ap­proach and a “rec­on­cil­ia­ ­tion by mem­ory” ap­proach in order to under­score the under­ly­ing sim­i­lar­ity ­between the two (their im­plicit re­jec­tion

134



Notes to pages 14–17

of pun­ish­ment for in­di­vid­ual per­pe­tra­tors). More­over, what I am at­tempt­ing to de­scribe with these terms is not lim­ited to a state pol­icy but can also be as­so­ciated with cer­tain in­di­vid­ua­ ls or ­groups, such as for­mer guer­ril­las who au­thored tes­ti­mo­nial texts. 47. ­Comissão Na­cional da Ver­dade, “Comissão da Ver­dade re­al­iza au­diên­cias.” 48. Dir­e­toria do GTNM/RJ, “A ­Comissão da Ver­dade.” In the Q&A ses­sion of a panel on the CNV at the Latin ­American Stud­ies As­so­ci­a­tion Con­gress on June 1, 2013, mem­ory ac­ti­vist ­Janaína Teles made the ar­gu­ment that the CNV “is not an ac­cel­er­a­tor [for fur­ther of­fi­cial reck­on­ing with ­dictatorship-era human ­rights ­crimes], it’s a brake.” The ­brake-versus-accelerator meta­phor re­calls ­Stern’s con­cept of for­mula ver­sus wedge. 49. Even be­fore the mil­i­tary left power, a court rec­og­nized the ­state’s civil li­abil­ity in its 1978 rul­ing re­gard­ing the death under tor­ture of jour­nal­ist Vlad­i­mir Her­zog; sim­il­ar rul­ings fol­lowed. 50. For a de­tailed dis­cus­sion of the case, see San­tos, “Memória na Justiça.” 51. Mez­a­robba, “Between Rep­ar­a­tions,” 17–18. 52. Ol­iv­ eira, “Ação do MPF ­contra Curió.” 53. N. Schnei­der, “Break­ing the ‘Si­lence,’” 201. 54. Mez­a­robba, Um ­acerto de con­tas, 150–51, and Mez­a­robba, “Between Rep­ar­a­ tions,” 16. 55. The very con­cept of tran­si­tional jus­tice (and re­lated con­cepts, such as post­ tran­si­tional jus­tice) is the sub­ject of much schol­arly cri­tique and de­bate. It is not my in­tent here to re­hearse these ar­gu­ments or to ad­vo­cate a par­tic­u­lar ­stance. I have cho­sen to use the term tran­si­tional jus­tice in this book as short­hand to des­ig­nate the range of in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms that dem­o­cratic govern­ments adopt to re­dress the human ­rights vi­o­la­tions of their au­thor­i­tar­ian pre­de­ces­sors. The term can also refer to the study of those mech­a­nisms. For a small sam­pling of the range of def­i­ni­tions of tran­si­ tional jus­tice, see Bick­ford, “Tran­si­tional Jus­tice,” and Tei­tel, Tran­si­tional Jus­tice, 69. For ex­am­ples of how the con­cept of tran­si­tional jus­tice has been em­braced by some legal schol­ars in Bra­zil as well as parts of the Bra­zil­ian govern­ment, par­tic­u­larly the Am­nesty Com­mis­sion that op­er­ates under the aus­pices of the Min­is­try of Jus­tice, see Tor­elly, ­Justiça de ­transição e es­tado, and Abrão and Tor­elly, “The Rep­ar­a­tions Pro­gram.” For crit­i­cal per­spec­tives on the con­cept of tran­si­tional jus­tice as it per­tains to Bra­zil, see, for ex­am­ple, San­tos, “Memória na ­Justiça,” 133–34, and Qui­nalha, ­Justiça de ­transição. 56. Sik­kink, Jus­tice Cas­cade, 75. 57. Lo­renz, “‘Tomála vos, ­dámela a mí.’” 58. Sik­kink, Jus­tice Cas­cade, 79. 59. H.I.J.O.S. is an ac­ro­nym that ­stands for Hijos e Hijas por la Iden­ti­dad y la Jus­ti­cia ­contra el Ol­vido y el Si­len­cio, or Sons and Daugh­ters for Iden­tity and Jus­tice ­against Obliv­ion and Si­lence. 60. Fel­man, Ju­rid­i­cal Un­con­scious, 165, em­pha­sis in orig­i­nal. 61. See in par­tic­u­lar Jelin and Lon­goni, Es­cri­tura, ­imágenes y es­cen­a­rios. 62. Bil­bija et al., intro­duc­tion to Art of ­Truth-Telling, 4.

Notes to pages 17–22



135

63. Ibid., 3. 64. See, for ex­am­ple, Mil­ton, intro­duc­tion to Art from a Frac­tured Past ; Av­e­lar, Un­timely ­Present ; Tay­lor, Dis­ap­pear­ing Acts ; Tay­lor, ­Archive and the Rep­er­toire ; and Laz­zara, Chile in Tran­si­tion. 65. Bar­a­hona de Brito, “Tran­si­tional Jus­tice and Mem­ory.” 66. Re­gard­ing the re­la­tion­ship ­between mem­ory and mar­ket ­forces in Latin Amer­ica, see Bil­bija and Payne, intro­duc­tion to Ac­count­ing for Vi­ol­ence.

Chap­t er 1.  Tes­t i­m o­n ies and the Am­n esty Law 1. Das­sin, “Tes­ti­mo­nial Lit­er­a­ture,” 162, and Hol­landa, “Um eu en­co­berto,” 191. 2. In re­fer­ring to Com­pan­heiro, I have opted to al­ter­nate ­between the terms tes­ti­ mony and me­moir for sty­lis­tic vari­a­tion and be­cause in my view the text has the char­ac­ter­ is­tics of both. Nev­er­the­less, I do be­lieve that the book is more me­moir than tes­ti­mony in the sense that the bear­ing of wit­ness to human ­rights ­crimes is sub­sumed by a ­larger pro­ject of ­self-refashioning. 3. For the for­mer, see Reis Filho, “Um pas­sado ­imprevisível”; Reis Filho, “Versões e ­ficções”; and Av­e­lar, Un­timely ­Present. For the lat­ter, see M. Silva, Os es­cri­tores da guer­rilha ur­bana, and Mar­tins Filho, “War of Mem­ory.” 4. ­Aguiar, “O astro da An­is­tia,” 146. 5. Rod­eg­ hero, Dienst­mann, and Trin­dade, An­is­tia ampla, 40. 6. Ibid., 307. 7. Ibid., 26. 8. Ibid., 252. 9. Green, “De­sire and Rev­o­lu­tion,” 256. 10. For sty­lis­tic rea­sons, I will omit quo­ta­tion marks (as well as qual­ifi­ers such as ­so-called ) when re­fer­ring to the am­nesty as “re­cip­ro­cal” from this point for­ward, but it ­should be under­stood that the term re­cip­ro­cal is mis­lead­ing and in­ac­cu­rate, in­so­far as the Am­nesty Law ben­efi ­ ted all state se­cur­ity ­agents but only a por­tion of the op­po­si­tion. 11. Rod­e­ghero, Dienst­mann, and Trin­dade, An­is­tia ampla, 309. 12. Ibid., 212. As be­comes clear later in this chap­ter, many his­to­rians and other schol­ars have ques­tioned the char­ac­ter­iza­tions of the armed strug­gle as a form of dem­o­cratic re­sis­tance to the dic­tat­or­ship. 13. Ibid., 267. 14. Ibid., 310. 15. As James N. Green ex­plains, The op­po­si­tion po­lit­i­cal party, the Bra­zil­ian Dem­o­cratic Move­ ment, had been doing bet­ter in each suc­ces­sive elec­tion, even ­though the electo­ral laws were ­stacked ­against it. The gen­er­als ­feared that the op­po­si­tion was get­ting too ­strong, so they ­passed the Party Re­form Act, which per­mit­ted the for­ma­tion of new par­ties. The re­gime in­tended to split up the op­po­si­tion. The ma­jor­ity of the labor move­ment, left­ists, and rad­i­cal sec­tors of the Cath­o­lic

136



Notes to pages 22–32

­ hurch ­formed the ­Workers’ Party as an al­ter­na­tive to the other C po­lit­i­cal par­ties that were being ­formed but that were dom­i­nated by sec­tors of the eco­nomic elite that op­posed the dic­tat­or­ship. (Green, “De­sire and Rev­o­lu­tion,” 261)

16. Rod­e­ghero, Dienst­mann, and Trin­dade, An­is­tia ampla, 273. 17. Mez­a­robba, Um ­acerto de con­tas, 18, and Rod­eg­ hero, Dienst­mann, and Trin­dade, An­is­tia ampla, 311. 18. Car­valho and Silva Ca­tela, “31 de marzo de 1964,” 211n14. 19. See Ri­denti, “Re­sis­tên­cia e ­mistificação,” and Reis Filho, “Dit­a­dura e so­ ci­edade,” 46–49. 20. Ga­beira, O que é isso, com­pan­heiro?, 119. 21. Ibid., 147. Mil­i­tant Vera ­Magalhães dis­putes this claim. See Salem, “Exmilitante in­spira per­son­ag­ens fem­i­ni­nas,” 63. 22. Ga­beira, O que é isso, com­pan­heiro?, 85. 23. Ibid., 161. 24. Ibid., 224. 25. Com­pan­heiro and the var­i­ous state­ments that Ga­beira made in pub­lished inter­views leave no doubt that by the time of his re­turn from exile the mem­oir­ist had come to view the armed strug­gle as an error not to be re­peated. Yet it is also clear that Ga­beira and oth­ers em­braced the cred­ibil­ity and ca­chet that their rev­o­lu­tion­ary pasts con­ferred upon them in the new lib­er­al­iz­ing at­mos­phere of the late 1970s and early 1980s, hence the no­tion of the armed strug­gle as a kind of pre­cur­sor of the dem­o­cratic re­sis­tance to the dic­tat­or­ship. 26. M. Silva, Os es­cri­tores da guer­rilha ur­bana, 109. 27. Ga­beira, O que é isso, com­pan­heiro?, 89. 28. Mar­tins Filho, “War of Mem­ory,” 93. 29. Ga­beira, O que é isso, com­pan­heiro?, 9, my em­pha­sis. 30. Ri­denti, “Re­sis­tên­cia e ­mistificação,” 58. 31. Reis Filho, “Dit­a­dura e so­ci­edade,” 46. Schol­ars have dis­cussed the dan­gers of un­crit­i­cally ap­ply­ing the term re­sis­tance to the Bra­zil­ian armed strug­gle. Mar­celo Ri­denti ex­plains that the mean­ing of the term ­within the so­cial sci­ences is ­shaped by its his­toric usage in Eu­rope dur­ing World War II to refer to “all move­ments that op­posed the ­Nazi-fascist oc­cu­pa­tion” (Ri­denti, “Re­sis­tên­cia e ­mistificação,” 54). In the strict­est sense, then, re­sis­tance ex­presses the idea of de­fen­sive ­rather than of­fen­sive ac­tion (op­po­si­tion as op­posed to rev­o­lu­tion) and, in the Bra­zil­ian con­text, would apply only to those ­groups that es­chewed armed strug­gle, in­clud­ing part of the Cath­o­lic left and the Bra­zil­ian Com­mu­nist Party. 32. Reis Filho, “Versões e ­ficções,” 103. 33. Reis Filho, “Dit­a­dura e so­ci­edade,” 45. 34. Reis Filho, “Um pas­sado ­imprevisível,” 36. 35. Reis Filho, “Versões e ­ficções,” 103. 36. Ga­beira, O que é isso, com­pan­heiro?, 198. 37. Ibid., 209.

Notes to pages 32–37



137

38. Aside from a brief list­ing of the fates of his im­me­di­ate ­comrades-in-arms, he names few of the vic­tims of vi­o­lence that he en­coun­tered dur­ing his im­pris­on­ment, an im­por­tant ex­cep­tion being Frei Tito. Ibid., 181–83. 39. One ex­cep­tion re­lates to a tor­turer he iden­tifies as Cap­tain ­Maurício, who was one of “those tor­tur­ers who work over­time for pleas­ure.” Ibid., 171. 40. Ibid., 174. 41. Ibid., 224. 42. ­Aguiar, “O astro da An­is­tia,” 161. 43. Das­sin, “Tes­ti­mo­nial Lit­er­a­ture,” 167. 44. Nance, Can Lit­er­a­ture Pro­mote Jus­tice?, 28. 45. See Reis Filho, “Um pas­sado ­imprevisível”; Reis Filho, “Versões e ­ficções”; and Av­e­lar, Un­timely ­Present, 65–66. 46. Com­pan­heiro was pub­lished the week of Sep­tem­ber 22, 1979, some three weeks after Ga­beira re­turned to Bra­zil from exile on Sep­tem­ber 2, 1979. M. Silva, Os es­cri­tores da guer­rilha ur­bana, 161. 47. Com­pan­heiro re­mained on the ­best-seller list for ­eighty-six weeks. Pel­le­grini, Ga­ve­tas va­zias, 37n2. 48. Ibid., 35–36. 49. M. Silva, Os es­cri­tores da guer­rilha ur­bana, 166. 50. Mar­tins Filho, “War of Mem­ory,” 92. 51. M. Silva, Os es­cri­tores da guer­rilha ur­bana, 74. 52. Ibid., 161. 53. Ga­beira, Carta sobre a An­is­tia. 54. ­Quoted in M. Silva, Os es­cri­tores da guer­rilha ur­bana, 81, em­pha­sis in orig­i­nal. 55. Ga­beira iden­tifies the real au­thor of the man­i­festo in the pref­ace to the sec­ond edi­tion of his tes­ti­mony. See Ga­beira, O que é isso, com­pan­heiro?, 9. ­Critic Mário Au­gusto Me­dei­ros da Silva notes a dis­junc­ture ­between ­Ziraldo’s hyper­bolic blurb and ­Gabeira’s more “sober” ac­count in the me­moir. See M. Silva, Os es­cri­tores da guer­rilha ur­bana, 82. 56. Es­ti­mates at the time the Am­nesty Law was ­signed ­placed the num­ber of ex­iles at ten thou­sand (Mez­a­robba, Um ­acerto de con­tas, 33). The exact num­ber re­mains un­ clear due to lack of re­li­able sta­tis­tics (Rol­lem­berg, ­Exílio, 53). 57. Rol­lem­berg, ­Exílio, 16. 58. Sir­kis, Os ­carbonários, 26. The con­tro­versy was all the more acute be­cause homo­sex­u­al­ity ­clashed with the image of hetero­sex­ual mas­cu­lin­ity em­braced by many for­mer rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. 59. Av­e­lar, “Fer­nando Ga­beira,” 137. While the pop­u­la­tion em­braced Ga­beira, some on the left crit­i­cized him. James N. Green ­writes, “Many of his for­mer com­rades in arms ­quickly dis­missed him. In their minds, he was no ­longer part of the strug­gle. He had des­bun­dado.” Green, “‘Who Is the Macho?,’” 467. 60. Sir­kis, Os ­carbonários, 26. 61. Av­e­lar, “Fer­nando Ga­beira,” 141. 62. Ga­beira, Carta sobre a An­is­tia, 28.

138



Notes to pages 37–41

63. Ibid., 13. 64. Sik­kink, Jus­tice Cas­cade, 13. 65. Maia, “‘Comissão da Ver­dade.” 66. To be fair, Ga­beira was far from alone in mod­er­at­ing his po­si­tion on human ­rights ­trials. After the Am­nesty Law went into ef­fect the dic­tat­or­ship re­mained in power for an­other five and a half years, a pe­riod char­ac­ter­ized by grow­ing pop­u­lar sup­port for a re­turn to de­moc­racy but also by fears of an­other au­thor­i­tar­ian crack­ down. The mil­i­tary rul­ers care­fully con­trolled the po­lit­i­cal open­ing, and the dan­ger was al­ways ­present that they could re­verse ­course if they felt threat­ened. Given such re­al­ities it’s not sur­pris­ing that Ga­beira and oth­ers ­turned their at­ten­tion to has­ten­ing the re­turn of de­moc­racy and to pol­i­tics of iden­tity and the body as the next fron­tiers for po­lit­i­cal strug­gle (rather than con­tin­u­ing to strug­gle for jus­tice and ac­count­abil­ity along­side the fam­i­lies of the dead and dis­ap­peared). The point of contrast­ing the state­ ments that Ga­beira made about human ­rights ­trials be­fore the Am­nesty Law with those he made after is not to crit­i­cize the mem­oir­ist but ­rather to il­lus­trate the con­di­tions of pos­sibil­ity for chal­leng­ing the Am­nesty Law at the time. 67. ­Sirkis’s title was in­spired by the Ital­ian film ­Nell’anno del Sig­nore (The Con­spi­ra­tors, 1969), di­rected by Luigi Magni. The film de­picts the Car­bo­nari, a se­cret so­ci­ety that waged an un­suc­cess­ful strug­gle ­against ab­so­lut­ism in ­nineteenth-century Eu­rope. In the book, Sir­kis nar­rates how see­ing the film in 1971 ­played a role in his de­ci­sion to leave the armed strug­gle. 68. Sir­kis, Os ­carbonários, 18. 69. Ibid., 38–39, 40. 70. Ibid., 39. 71. Ibid., 23. 72. Ibid., 20. 73. Ibid., 34. 74. Ibid., 24. 75. Ibid., 22. 76. Sir­kis cur­rently rep­re­sents the state of Rio de Ja­neiro in ­Brazil’s Cham­ber of Dep­u­ties. 77. Em ­câmara lenta was orig­i­nally pub­lished in May 1977 and ­banned the fol­low­ing Au­gust. The na­tion­wide ban was ­lifted in March 1979, at which time a sec­ond edi­tion was pub­lished. 78. Ri­denti, Em busca do povo bras­il­eiro, 152, and John­son, “Lit­er­at­ ure, Film, and Pol­i­tics,” 184. 79. ­Tapajós, “A flo­resta de panos,” 352–53. 80. Ibid. 81. For an ac­count of ­Tapajós’s tra­jec­tory after pas­sage of the Am­nesty Law, see M. Silva, Os es­cri­tores da guer­rilha ur­bana, 188–92. 82. Such ­justiçamentos ac­tu­ally oc­curred on at least four oc­ca­sions dur­ing the armed strug­gle. See Green, “‘Who Is the Macho?,’” 438. 83. ­Tapajós, Em ­câmara lenta, 39.

Notes to pages 41–47



139

84. Ibid., xi. 85. Ibid., 49. 86. Cen­sor­ship, re­pres­sion, and a per­va­sive cli­mate of fear made it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple in Bra­zil to ­protest the ex­is­tence of po­lit­i­cal tor­ture, mur­der, and dis­ap­pear­ance, but the same was not true out­side the coun­try. Many Bra­zil­ians liv­ing ­abroad dur­ing those years ­worked tire­lessly along with ac­ti­vists in their ­adopted coun­tries to ex­pose and de­nounce the mil­i­tary ­dictatorship’s human ­rights ­crimes to the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity. Re­gard­ing this kind of ac­ti­vism in the ­United ­States, see Green, We Can­not Re­main Si­lent. 87. ­Tapajós, Em ­câmara lenta, 85. 88. Ibid., 49. 89. Ibid., 152. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid. 92. Fel­man, “Camus’ The ­Plague,” 116–17. 93. ­Tapajós, Em ­câmara lenta, 48. 94. Maués, “‘Em ­câmara lenta,’” 51. 95. M. Silva, Os es­cri­tores da guer­rilha ur­bana, 111. 96. Ser­bin, Se­cret Di­alogues, 200–218, and Lang­land, Speak­ing of Flow­ers, 226–28. 97. ­Tapajós, Em ­câmara lenta, 172. 98. Fel­man, “Camus’ The ­Plague,” 108, em­pha­sis in orig­i­nal. 99. For a de­tailed read­ing of the tor­ture scene in Em ­câmara lenta, see Ginz­burg, ­Crítica em tem­pos de vi­o­lên­cia, 455–71. 100. Maués, “De­fesa ­notável,” 35–36. 101. Ri­denti, Em busca do povo bras­i­leiro, 155, and Kush­nir, Cães de ­guarda, 377. 102. “‘Pior que um livro de Mao.’” 103. Skid­more, Pol­i­tics of Mil­i­tary Rule, 203. 104. Lang­land, Speak­ing of Flow­ers, 225–26. 105. Ibid., 193. 106. ­Tapajós, Em ­câmara lenta, 37. 107. Mar­tins Filho, “War of Mem­ory,” 104n12. 108. Other fic­tional works were also ­banned at the time, but the ex­pla­na­tion given was in­var­i­ably that the book in ques­tion of­fended good mo­rals and cus­toms, even when it was ap­par­ent that the real mo­tive was po­lit­ic­ al. For a nu­anced dis­cus­sion of po­lit­i­cal ver­sus moral cen­sor­ship dur­ing the Bra­zil­ian mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship, see Fico, “‘Pre­zada Cen­sura.’” 109. Maués, “‘Em ­câmara lenta,’” 92. 110. Ibid., 81. 111. ­Candido’s state­ment was pub­lished in Maués, “De­fesa ­notável,” 37–38. 112. The rul­ing did not af­fect the na­tion­wide ban, which re­mained in ef­fect until March 1979. 113. “STM nega que livro de Re­enato [sic].”

140



Notes to pages 48–54

114. It was not the first time dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship that the ­courts had ­struck down the ban­ning of a book about tor­ture. In 1966 the govern­ment ­banned ­Márcio Mo­reira ­Alves’s Tor­tu­ras e tor­tu­ra­dos (Tor­ture and Tor­ture Vic­tims), a book about the human ­rights vi­o­la­tions that oc­curred in the after­math of the coup, but the Bra­zil­ian Su­preme Court over­turned the order. 115. “STM nega que livro de Re­enato [sic].” 116. Maués, “‘Em ­câmara lenta,’” 63n85. 117. Mar­tins Filho, “War of Mem­ory,” 93. 118. ­Tapajós has con­tin­ued to press the issue of truth and jus­tice for the dead and dis­ap­peared in his work as a film­maker. See, for ex­am­ple, his doc­u­men­tary O fim do es­que­ci­mento (The End of For­get­ting, 2013). 119. Al­though Em ­câmara lenta did be­come ­linked to an in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nism— the po­lit­i­cal trial of ­Tapajós—that par­tic­u­lar link­age was not con­du­cive to mov­ing ­through a cycle of cultural mem­ory. 120. Hol­landa, “Um eu en­co­berto,” 191. 121. Mar­tins Filho, “War of Mem­ory,” 90, and Cas­tro, “Co­mem­o­rando a ‘revolução’ de 1964,” 135. 122. Based on inter­views with for­mer mil­i­tary men, Cas­tro found that those who ­reached the pin­na­cle of their ca­reers dur­ing the dic­tat­or­ship are the most ­likely to use the term and tend to apply it not only to ­left-leaning pol­i­ti­cians (use of the term was es­pe­cially ev­i­dent dur­ing the draft­ing of ­Brazil’s 1988 Con­sti­tu­tion) but also to the media. Cas­tro, “Co­mem­o­rando a ‘revolução’ de 1964,” 135–36.

Chap­t er 2.  A ­P rime-Time Min­is­e r­ies and Im­p each­m ent 1. On the Globo net­work alone, no­ve­las in­clude Roda de fogo (Wheel of Fire, 1986) and Sen­hora do des­tino (Lady of Des­tiny, 2004). Its min­is­er­ies Anos dou­ra­dos (Golden Years, 1986) ­briefly men­tions re­pres­sion. Other kinds of pro­gram­ming have ­probed the dic­tat­or­ship on oc­ca­sion, in­clud­ing the ­network’s pop­u­lar his­tor­i­cal crime show Linha di­reta ­justiça (Hot­line Jus­tice), which ded­i­cated two epi­sodes to the ­high-profile mur­der cases of Zuzu Angel (2003) and Vlad­i­mir Her­zog (2004). Globo ­repórter’s in­ves­ti­ga­tive jour­nal­ism pro­gram and Você de­cide (You De­cide), which uses au­di­ence polls to de­ter­mine how its sto­ries ­should end, have ad­dressed the un­earth­ing of the re­mains of de­sa­par­e­ci­dos and the Ara­guaia mas­sa­cre, re­spec­tively. For a dis­cus­sion of these last two pro­grams, see Bar­cel­los, “O Globo ­repórter sobre,” and Kehl, “‘Sangue no Ara­guaia.’” 2. Al­though the ear­lier Globo no­vela Roda de fogo, set in the post­dic­tat­or­ship pe­riod with a cast that in­cludes a for­mer tor­ture vic­tim and her tor­men­tor, also ­alerted the Bra­zil­ian pub­lic to past tor­ture, un­like Anos re­beldes it does not in­clude ac­tual im­ages and dra­ma­ti­za­tions of the ­dictatorship’s po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence. 3. Sir­kis, Os ­carbonários, 23.

Notes to pages 54–60



141

4. Giron, “Gil­berto Braga res­taura,” 1. 5. Bra­sil: Nunca mais is re­ported to have sold over two hun­dred thou­sand cop­ies in the first two years fol­low­ing its pub­li­ca­tion. See Wesch­ler, A Mir­ac­ le, a Uni­verse, 72. 6. By ­contrast, the term so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing is used in the ­United ­States to refer to the use of so­cial media to pro­mote con­su­mer prod­ucts. 7. Be­fore the early 1990s, “the so­cial con­tent of tele­no­ve­las [was] not ­planned by broad­cast own­ers, ad­ver­tis­ers, or govern­ment in a spe­cific way.” Straub­haar, “Re­flec­tion of the Bra­zil­ian Po­lit­i­cal Open­ing,” 71–72. 8. Bra­zil­ians em­ploy the En­glish term mer­chan­dis­ing to refer spe­cif­i­cally to the strat­egy of prod­uct place­ment, a usage that can eas­ily ­prompt con­fu­sion for En­glish speak­ers, for whom the word mer­chan­dis­ing de­notes a much ­broader mar­ket­ing strat­egy. 9. Schi­avo, “So­cial Mer­chan­dis­ing,” 258. 10. Ibid., 259–60. 11. Ibid., 260. 12. Schi­avo, “Mer­chan­dis­ing so­cial.” 13. Rêgo, “No­ve­las, Nov­e­lin­has, ­Novelões.” 14. Mat­tos, “Per­so­nal­i­dades ap­ro­vei­tam.” 15. Caten, “1968,” 59. 16. ­Stycer, “Fil­hos da re­bel­dia mos­tram a cara,” 1. 17. Fer­reira, “Para ­ex-militantes,” 3. 18. Lopez, “Our Wel­comed ­Guests,” 261. 19. ­Araújo, A ­negação do Bra­sil, 213. 20. Kehl, “‘Sangue no Ara­guaia,’” 228. 21. Sir­kis, ­quoted in Lobo, ­Ficção e ­política, 304. 22. Caten, “1968,” 59. 23. Braga, Anos re­beldes, 606, em­pha­sis in orig­i­nal. 24. Ibid., 30. 25. Ibid. 26. Writ­ing in 2000, Nar­ciso Lobo notes that “the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the armed ­forces in the re­pres­sion is still taboo in the elec­tronic media,” re­fer­ring par­tic­u­larly to tele­vi­sion and cin­ema in the 1980s and 1990s. He cites as ex­am­ples the films Pra ­frente Bra­sil (1982) and O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? (1997), which dra­ma­tize po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence but show only ci­vil­ian per­pe­tra­tors. See Lobo, ­Ficção e ­política, 310–11. 27. ­Quoted in ibid., 304. 28. ­Martín-Barbero, “Mem­ory and Form,” 280. 29. Dunn, Bru­tal­ity Gar­den, 3. 30. Caten, “1968,” 59. 31. Payne, Un­set­tling Ac­counts, 179. 32. Ante­nore, “Mil­i­tares dis­cutem.” 33. Ha­ber­mas, Struc­tu­ral Trans­for­ma­tion. 34. Matte­lart and Matte­lart, Car­ni­val of Im­ages, 79. 35. Porto, “Re­al­ism and Pol­i­tics,” 43.

142



Notes to pages 60–71

36. Globo also paid off its out­stand­ing debt to ­Time-Life using govern­ment loans. See Straub­haar and La Pas­tina, “Tele­vi­sion and Heg­e­mony in Bra­zil,” 159. 37. For an ­in-depth dis­cus­sion of the sym­bi­otic re­la­tion­ship b­ etween Globo and the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship, see Matte­lart and Matte­lart, Car­ni­val of Im­ages, 19–35; see also Straub­haar, “Re­flec­tion of the Bra­zil­ian Po­lit­i­cal Open­ing,” 60–72. 38. Ma­rinho, ­quoted in Gas­pari, A dit­a­dura der­ro­tada, 234. 39. Porto, “Mass Media and Pol­i­tics,” 292. 40. Straub­haar and La Pas­tina, “Tele­vi­sion and Heg­e­mony in Bra­zil,” 157, and Porto, “Mass Media and Pol­i­tics,” 292. 41. Porto, “Mass Media and Pol­it­ ics,” 293. 42. See, for ex­am­ple, Straub­haar and La Pas­tina, “Tele­vi­sion and Heg­e­mony in Bra­zil,” 157; V. Lima, “State, Tele­vi­sion, and Po­lit­i­cal Power,” 114; Porto, “Mass Media and Pol­i­tics,” 292; and Porto, Media Power and De­moc­rat­iza­tion. 43. In 1993, one year after Anos re­beldes went off the air, Chan­nel 4 in the ­United King­dom broad­cast a doc­u­men­tary di­rected by Simon Har­tog ti­tled Bra­zil: Be­yond Cit­iz­ en Kane, which in­ves­ti­gates ­Globo’s com­plic­i­tous re­la­tion­ship with the mil­i­tary dic­tat­or­ship and lik­ens Ma­rinho to the anti­hero of Orson ­Welles’s clas­sic film Cit­i­zen Kane. The doc­u­men­tary re­mains ­banned in Bra­zil to this day. 44. Xa­vier, “Lem­brar para es­quecer,” 249. 45. Porto, “Mass Media and Pol­it­ ics,” 298. 46. ­Tapajós ­worked for the news pro­gram Globo ­repórter, ­whereas Sir­kis had a brief stint as a script­writer for a show ­called Tele­tema. M. Silva, Os es­cri­tores da guer­rilha ur­bana, 188, 194. 47. Gas­pari, A dit­a­dura en­cur­ra­lada, 276–77. 48. In Au­gust 2013 the news­paper O Globo, owned by the same con­glom­er­ate as the Rede Globo tele­vi­sion net­work, of­fi­cially apol­o­gized for hav­ing sup­ported the 1964 mil­i­tary coup in its ed­i­to­ri­als at the time. Yet the apol­ogy read more like a pub­lic re­la­ tions ploy than an ex­pres­sion of sin­cere re­gret, es­pe­cially given ­Globo’s emer­gence as a major tar­get of the na­tion­wide pro­tests that ­erupted in Bra­zil the pre­vi­ous June, dur­ing which one of the ­demonstrators’ ral­ly­ing cries was “A ver­dade é dura: a Globo ­apoiou a dit­a­dura” (The truth is hard: Globo sup­ported the dic­tat­or­ship). See “Apoio ed­i­to­rial ao golpe.” 49. Porto, “Mass Media and Pol­i­tics,” 298. 50. Co­elho, “Anos Re­beldes é ­exercício,” 1. 51. Giron, “Minis­sé­rie faz ­geração,” 1. 52. Braga, ­quoted in Giron, “Gil­berto Braga res­taura,” 1. 53. Braga, Anos re­beldes, 624. 54. Ol­i­veira So­brinho (Boni), ­quoted in Mol­ica, “Globo faz ­mudanças,” 3. 55. Betto, ­quoted in “Globo não é bobo.” 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. Gian­nini, “Ro­mance nos ­porões,” 87. 59. Ol­i­veira So­brinho (Boni), ­quoted in Mol­ica, “Globo faz ­mudanças.”

Notes to pages 71–75



143

60. Guil­ler­mo­prieto, Heart That ­Bleeds, 311. 61. Xa­vier, “Lem­brar para es­quecer,” 254. 62. Doris Som­mer coins the term foun­da­tional fic­tion in her book Foun­da­tional Fic­tions. For a dis­cus­sion of the Latin ­American tele­no­vela as a mod­ern foun­da­tional fic­tion, see Es­till, “Mex­ic­ an Tele­no­vela,” 169–70. 63. Chris­to­pher Dunn notes that the ­demonstrators’ ­choice of ­protest an­them was ­ironic since Cae­tano ­Veloso’s “Ale­gria, Ale­gria” nar­rates the story of a sol­i­tary ­flâneur who is dis­en­gaged from po­lit­i­cal de­bates. See Dunn, Bru­tal­ity Gar­den, 206. 64. Rubim, Mídia e ­política no Bra­sil, 55. 65. “A ­história,” Anos re­beldes. 66. Paiva, “Crimes de ­paixão.” 67. Mol­ica, “Globo vin­cula ­manifestações,” 12. 68. See, for ex­am­ple, Porto, “Mass Media and Pol­i­tics,” 302–3; ­O’Dougherty, Con­sump­tion In­ten­sified, 158; and Bucci, O peixe morre pela boca, 152–53. 69. Mig­li­ac­cio, “Minis­sé­rie ainda está em ­gravação,” 1. 70. Bar­cel­los, “O Globo ­repórter sobre,” 226. 71. Porto, “Mass Media and Pol­i­tics,” 302. 72. Ibid., 301–2. 73. V. Lima, “Bra­zil­ian Tele­vi­sion”; Straub­haar, Olsen, and Nunes, “The Bra­zil­ian Case”; C. Silva, “Bra­zil­ian Case”; Guil­ler­mo­prieto, Heart That ­Bleeds; and Porto, “Mass Media and Pol­i­tics,” 296–99. 74. In June 2013 a rerun of Anos re­beldes, this time on ­Globo’s paid Canal Viva chan­nel, co­in­cided with na­tion­wide pro­tests ­sparked by pop­u­lar out­rage over in­creases in bus fares and fur­ther ­fueled by more gen­er­al­ized dis­con­tent over cor­rup­tion and run­away spend­ing on sta­diums for the 2014 World Cup, among other is­sues. The 1992 min­is­er­ies be­came newly rel­e­vant as young Bra­zil­ians once again made ­street pro­tests their out­let of ­choice for ex­press­ing anger at the govern­ment. 75. The video, CD, and LP ­quickly sold out; the novel is cur­rently in its tenth re­print­ing. 76. “O bê­bado e o equi­li­brista” (The Drunk and the Tight­rope ­Walker) be­came the hymn of the am­nesty move­ment in the late 1970s. For an in­sight­ful anal­y­sis of the song, see Per­rone, Mas­ters, 197–99. 77. It is also pos­sible that a li­cens­ing issue pre­vented the in­clu­sion of the two songs. 78. I am in­debted to my col­league Jen­ni­fer Ash­ley for draw­ing my at­ten­tion to the sim­i­lar­ities ­between Anos re­beldes and re­cent Chi­lean pro­gram­ming, es­pe­cially Los 80 and Los archi­vos del card­enal. Our con­ver­sa­tions on Latin ­American tele­vi­sion have en­ riched my under­stand­ing of the topic.

Chap­t er 3.  Lit­e r­a ry and Of­fi­c ial ­Truth-Telling 1. In­spired by the Cuban guer­ril­las in the ­Sierra Maes­tra, a group of Bra­zil­ian mil­i­tants at­tempted to set up the ­Caparaó base camp in 1966–67. It was the first sig­nif­i­ cant at­tempt to es­tab­lish a rural guer­rilla base camp in Bra­zil.

144



Notes to pages 75–82

2. The ar­ti­cle in the Folha de S. Paulo, dated Au­gust 9, 1998, was ti­tled “Re­ap­a­rece em SP de­sa­par­e­cido de 69” (Dis­ap­peared per­son from 1969 re­ap­pears in São Paulo) and is ­quoted in CEMDP, Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade, 111. 3. CEMDP, Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade, 111. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., 9, em­pha­sis mine. 6. Gor­don, ­Ghostly Mat­ters, 17. 7. CEMDP, Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade, 9. 8. Re­gard­ing the ques­tion of ­rights and cit­i­zen­ship in con­tem­po­rary Bra­zil, see Hols­ton, In­sur­gent Cit­i­zen­ship, and Leh­nen, Cit­i­zen­ship and Cri­sis. 9. CEMDP, Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade, 41, em­pha­sis mine. 10. Ibid., 18, em­pha­sis mine. 11. Ibid., 30. 12. San­tos, ­quoted in ibid., 45. 13. Ibid., 50. 14. Ibid., 9. 15. See his­to­rian Sér­gio Bu­arque de ­Holanda’s chap­ter “O homem cor­dial” in his clas­sic work ­Raízes do Bra­sil (Roots of Bra­zil ). 16. Al­though Ho­landa first pro­posed cor­di­al­i­dade (cor­dial­ity) as a na­tional char­ac­ ter­is­tic in ­Raízes do Bra­sil, it was Gil­berto ­Freyre, in his So­bra­dos e mu­cam­bos and other works, who gave the term its pop­u­lar mean­ing. See Rocha, O ­exílio do homem cor­dial. 17. ­Freyre, New World in the Trop­ics, 138. In­deed, the sub­se­quent Por­tu­guese trans­la­tion of the book con­tains a ­phrase (not found in the orig­i­nal ver­sion in En­glish) that ­contrasts Bra­zil­ians fa­vor­ably with “other peo­ples, less fe­lic­i­tous in the solv­ing of their so­cial con­flicts [out­ros povos, menos ­felizes na ­solução dos seus de­sa­jus­ta­men­tos so­ci­ais].” ­Freyre, Nôvo mundo nos ­trópicos, 123. 18. Mez­a­robba, “Between Rep­ar­a­tions,” 19. For a short biog­ra­phy of Van­nu­chi, see N. Schnei­der, “Truth No More,” 165–66. 19. Bo­nassi, Prova ­contrária, 5. 20. Ibid., 13. 21. Gor­don, ­Ghostly Mat­ters, 113. 22. Bo­nassi, Prova ­contrária, 13–14. 23. Ibid., 15. 24. Ibid., 14. 25. Gor­don, ­Ghostly Mat­ters, 195. 26. Bo­nassi, Prova ­contrária, 46. 27. The re­marks can also be inter­preted as an al­le­gory for the ­woman’s de­sire to re­press trau­matic mem­o­ries, in which case the man ­stands for the re­turn of the re­pressed at the in­di­vid­ual as well as col­lec­tive level. See Leh­nen, “O re­torno do re­pri­mido.” 28. Bo­nassi, Prova ­contrária, 92. 29. Ibid., 41. 30. Ibid., 20. 31. Ibid., 25.

Notes to pages 82–92



145

32. Ibid., 27. 33. Ibid., 30. 34. Ibid., 43. 35. Ibid., 33. 36. Ibid., 38. 37. Ibid., 40. 38. Ibid., 53. 39. Re­gard­ing the role of the nar­ra­tor, see Leh­nen, “O re­torno do re­pri­mido,” 93. 40. Bo­nassi, Prova ­contrária, 44. 41. Ibid., 54–55. 42. Ibid., 63. 43. Ibid., 73–76. 44. ­Vinitzky-Seroussi and ­Teeger, “Un­pack­ing the Un­spoken,” 1104. 45. My think­ing on si­lence has been ­greatly in­flu­enced by the work of Nancy J. ­Gates-Madsen. See, for ex­am­ple, ­Gates-Madsen, “Bear­ing False Wit­ness?” and “Tor­tured Si­lence.” 46. ­Covert si­lences are not in­trin­si­cally bad. They can serve a prag­matic func­tion. In cer­tain cases, ­Vinitzky-Seroussi and ­Teeger note, “covert si­lences are about wid­en­ing the au­di­ence that can share a less di­vi­sive ver­sion of the past. The power of ­veiled si­lences as a mech­a­nism for cop­ing with a dif­fic­ ult past lies pre­cisely in their abil­ity to mini­mize the po­ten­tial for so­cial con­flicts” (Vinitzky-Seroussi and ­Teeger, “Un­pack­ing the Un­spoken,” 1117). ­Covert si­lences may be nec­es­sary and even de­sir­able if they can help widen the cir­cle of mem­ory. Nev­er­the­less, while ­covert si­lences can re­flect a de­sire to re­mem­ber ­rather than to for­get, they may also have un­in­tended con­se­quences: “Covert si­lence in the do­main of mem­ory may lead to so­cial am­ne­sia as more and more of the nar­ra­tive gets lost in the at­tempt to ap­pease too many au­di­ences” (ibid., 1118). 47. Bo­nassi, Prova ­contrária, 96. 48. CEMDP, Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade, 16. 49. Car­valho was the sec­ond of two com­mis­sion pres­i­dents. The first was Mi­guel Reale ­Júnior (1995–2001). 50. Bo­nassi, Prova ­contrária, 36. 51. Leh­nen, “O re­torno do re­pri­mido,” 92. 52. Gor­don, ­Ghostly Mat­ters, 97. 53. Bo­nassi, Prova ­contrária, 25. 54. Ibid., 94. 55. Ibid., 95. 56. I’m grate­ful to Leila Leh­nen for point­ing out the lat­ter pos­sibil­ity. 57. Bo­nassi, Prova ­contrária, 97. 58. Gor­don, ­Ghostly Mat­ters, 17. 59. Ibid., 24, 8. 60. Bo­nassi, Prova ­contrária, 34. 61. Ibid., 7.

146



Notes to pages 92–98

Chap­t er 4.  From Tor­t ure Cen­t er to Stage and Site of Mem­o ry 1. The São Paulo De­part­ment of Po­lit­i­cal and So­cial Order (De­par­ta­mento de Ordem ­Política e So­cial, DOPS) was es­tab­lished in 1924 with the pur­pose of main­tain­ ing “more se­ri­ous and per­ma­nent sur­veil­lance of ac­tiv­i­ties threat­en­ing the tra­di­tional prin­ci­ples of Re­li­gion, Father­land, and Fam­ily” (quoted in Pin­heiro and Sader, “O con­trole da ­polícia,” 80). In 1940 it moved into the build­ing it would oc­cupy until the ­agency was de­ac­ti­vated in 1983. Both the Var­gas and mil­i­tary re­gimes im­pris­oned and tor­tured po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents there. Some­times the ac­ro­nym DEOPS (De­par­ta­mento Es­tad­ual de Ordem ­Política e So­cial) is also used. 2. Wesch­ler, A Mir­a­cle, a Uni­verse, 54. 3. The­a­ter has re­sponded to and ­helped ad­vance a va­riety of tran­si­tional jus­tice pro­jects through­out Latin Amer­ica. In 1990, ­shortly be­fore the final re­port of the Ret­tig Com­mis­sion was pub­lished in Chile, Ariel Dorf­man wrote the play La ­muerte y la don­cella, which ex­plores the lim­i­ta­tions of such of­fi­cial ­truth-seeking bod­ies. In 2002 ­Peru’s Truth and Rec­on­cil­ia­ ­tion Com­mis­sion ­relied on the the­a­ter ­troupe Yuy­ach­kani to help raise aware­ness about its pub­lic hear­ings and to en­cour­age po­ten­tial wit­nesses to come for­ward. Ex­tend­ing the scope be­yond official mechanisms, per­for­mance pro­tests, such as es­cra­ches in Ar­gen­tina (which pub­licly shame, or “out,” ac­cused per­pe­ tra­tors by creat­ing a spec­ta­cle at their homes or work­places), have de­nounced im­pu­nity and pres­sured govern­ments to adopt ­bolder tran­si­tional jus­tice pol­i­cies. In the ­months lead­ing up to the in­au­gu­ra­tion of ­Brazil’s Na­tional Truth Com­mis­sion in May 2012, youth in that coun­try began or­ga­niz­ing their own ver­sion of per­pe­tra­tor “out­ings,” known in Por­tu­guese as es­cra­chos or es­cu­la­chos. 4. Laz­zara and Unruh, intro­duc­tion to Tell­ing Ruins in Latin Amer­ica, 1. 5. Av­e­lar, Un­timely ­Present, 2. 6. Jelin, “Pub­lic Me­mo­ri­al­iza­tion in Per­spec­tive,” 147. 7. See Jelin, State Re­pres­sion, 33–34. 8. Brett et al., Me­mo­ri­al­iza­tion and De­moc­racy, 29. 9. For­mer sites of re­pres­sion such as the Es­cuela Super­ior de ­Mecánica de la Ar­mada (ESMA) in Ar­gen­tina and Villa Gri­maldi in Chile are two not­able ex­am­ples. In Bra­zil, the State ­Archive and human ­rights ­groups ­fought with—and even­tu­ally pre­vailed over—the Civil Po­lice for the right to oc­cupy the DOPS build­ing in Rio de Ja­neiro (Ca­tela, “Ter­rit­o­rios de mem­oria ­política,” 74–75). Rio de ­Janeiro’s state truth com­mis­sion has pro­posed that the build­ing be trans­formed into a per­ma­nent me­mo­rial to re­mind Bra­zil­ians of the ­site’s sin­is­ter his­tory, but as of this writ­ing no de­fin­i­tive plans have been made. A mod­ified ver­sion of Lem­brar was ­staged in that build­ing but was not as suc­cess­ful as the orig­in ­ al. 10. Jelin, “Pub­lic Me­mo­ri­al­iza­tion in Per­spec­tive,” 147. 11. Stern, Re­mem­ber­ing ­Pinochet’s Chile, 123. 12. Sarah ­Farmer pro­vides an ex­treme ex­am­ple of this par­a­dox in her book about at­tempts to pre­serve the ­French vil­lage of Ora­dour ex­actly as it was on the day Nazi

Notes to pages 99–104



147

sol­diers in­vaded and mas­sa­cred the en­tire pop­u­la­tion save a few who man­aged to es­cape. See ­Farmer, Mar­tyred Vil­lage. 13. Dur­ing sev­eral vis­its to the Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia, I noted that the do­cents em­pha­sized that it was the DOPS of­fi­cers them­selves who pur­posely de­stroyed the graf­fiti on the cell walls be­fore va­cat­ing the build­ing. I pre­sume that the ­guides ­stress this point not only as an ex­am­ple of how the dic­tat­or­ship at­tempted to cover up its re­pres­sive ac­tiv­i­ties but also to il­lus­trate the chal­lenges that me­mo­rial de­sign­ers faced in at­tempt­ing to ­re-create what the space ­looked like dur­ing the pe­riod in ques­tion— and to de­flect ac­cu­sa­tions that the de­sign­ers of the ear­lier ­state-sponsored Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade, which oc­cu­pied the space from 2002 to 2008, had (in­ten­tion­ally or not) ef­faced the mark­ings. 14. “Ter­ror, ­heróis e cli­chês,” 6. 15. A prime ex­am­ple is Ar­gen­tine dram­a­tist Gri­selda ­Gambaro’s ­Información para ex­tran­je­ros, a so­phis­ti­cated ­site-specific play writ­ten be­fore the Ar­gen­tine dic­tat­or­ship that has much in com­mon with Lem­brar. Spec­ta­tors of ­Gambaro’s work are led ­through the rooms and cor­ri­dors of an anon­ym ­ ous house (not an ac­tual for­mer site of re­pres­sion), where they wit­ness ­scenes that pro­mote re­flec­tion on po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence and dis­ap­pear­ance. 16. Al­mada told an inter­viewer, “I think that the pro­tag­o­nist of the play is the space. . . . The space has a very im­por­tant role, per­haps more so than the dram­a­turgy. The show is mov­ing not be­cause of the dra­matic text, it is mov­ing . . . ­mainly be­cause of the space” (quoted in Al­meida, “As ­esperanças do pas­sado,” 65). 17. Tay­lor, ­Archive and the Rep­er­toire, 19–20. 18. For an over­view of the ­archives re­cov­ered from the de­funct state and fed­eral po­lit­i­cal po­lice ­forces, see Ca­tela, “Ter­rit­o­rios de mem­oria ­política.” 19. Jour­nal­ist Vlad­i­mir Her­zog was tor­tured to death in a São Paulo ­prison in Oc­to­ber 1975. Se­cur­ity ­agents at­tempted to cover up his mur­der by stag­ing it as a sui­cide. 20. San­tos, ­quoted in Al­meida, “As ­esperanças do pas­sado,” 22. 21. My dis­tinc­tion ­between these two lev­els of wit­ness­ing in the play—be­lated and real time—is in­debted to feed­back from Leila Leh­nen. 22. Tay­lor, ­Archive and the Rep­er­toire, 167. 23. Clark, “Per­form­ing Truth,” 87. 24. ­Álvarez and Al­mada, “Lem­brar é re­sis­tir,” 3. 25. Al­bu­querque, Vi­o­lent Acts, 94. 26. ­Álvarez and Al­mada, “Lem­brar é re­sis­tir,” 4. 27. ­Emílio Gar­ras­tazu ­Médici’s pres­i­dency (1969–74) co­in­cided with the harsh­est phase of the mil­it­ ary dic­tat­or­ship. 28. This char­ac­ter is ex­pli­citly iden­tified as ­Fleury in the dra­matic text. 29. ­Álvarez and Al­mada, “Lem­brar é re­sis­tir,” 8. 30. Ibid., 17. 31. Ibid., 9. 32. See Beal, “Obras ­públicas mon­u­men­tais,” and Beal, Bra­zil under Con­struc­tion.

148



Notes to pages 104–112

33. An­other ex­am­ple is ­through prop­a­ganda. See N. Schnei­der, Bra­zil­ian Prop­a­ganda. 34. Tay­lor, Thea­tre of Cri­sis, 6. 35. ­Álvarez and Al­mada, “Lem­brar é re­sis­tir,” 9–10. 36. Tay­lor, ­Archive and the Rep­er­toire, 167. 37. ­Álvarez and Al­mada, “Lem­brar é re­sis­tir,” 21–22. 38. Ibid., 26. 39. Ibid., 28. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 29. 42. Fer­raz, “Aula de ­história,” 7. 43. Al­mada, ­quoted in Al­meida, “As ­esperanças do pas­sado,” 87. 44. ­Mendonça, “A força da cul­tura.” 45. Re­gard­ing the dra­matic ­changes that the city of São Paulo has under­gone since the 1970s, as well as the re­la­tion­ship of those ­changes to dic­tat­or­ship and de­moc­rat­iza­ tion, see Cal­deira, City of Walls. 46. ­Mendonça, “A força da cul­tura.” 47. ­Loures, “Nas anti­gas celas,” 10. 48. Ibid., 8. 49. K. F., “Sai a ­escuridão.” 50. In his 1994 book The Tex­ture of Mem­ory: Hol­o­caust Me­mo­ri­als and Mean­ing, Young takes the ex­treme po­si­tion that de­bates are more im­por­tant than ac­tual ma­te­rial sites, de­clar­ing that the best me­mo­rial “may not be a sin­gle me­mo­rial at all—but sim­ply the ­never-to-be-resolved de­bate over which kind of mem­ory to pre­serve, how to do it, in whose name, and to what end” (Young, Tex­ture of Mem­ory, 21). He mod­ifies his po­si­tion, how­ever, in his 2000 book At ­Memory’s Edge: ­After-Images of the Hol­o­caust in Con­tem­po­rary Art and Archi­tec­ture, ac­knowl­edg­ing the need for me­mo­ri­als to reach com­ple­tion. 51. ­Seixas and Po­liti, “Os elos que vin­cu­lam,” 199. 52. Ibid., 200. 53. Ibid., 201. 54. ­Araujo et al., “A aber­tura de um novo ­diálogo.” 55. ­Seixas and Po­liti, “Os elos que vin­cu­lam,” 206.

Con­c lu­s ion 1. Mem­bers of the ­Comissão de Fa­mil­i­ares dos Mor­tos e De­sa­par­e­ci­dos ­Políticos (Com­mis­sion of Rel­a­tives of the Dead and Dis­ap­peared) were among those to make this ac­cu­sa­tion. Neri, “Para ­famílias, ­versão ‘absolve’ dit­a­dura,” 14. 2. Ga­beira con­tin­ues: “Over the years, I’ve ­learned that art is at least ten years ahead of pol­i­tics.” ­Quoted in Name and Suk­man, “Equipe de ‘O que é isso, com­pan­heiro?’” 3. This is not to say that ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion is the only force that pro­vides this nudge; human ­rights ­groups and ac­ti­vists, for ex­am­ple, can also do so. The fam­ily

Notes to pages 112–126



149

mem­bers of the dead and dis­ap­peared in par­tic­u­lar have strug­gled for truth and jus­tice in Bra­zil since the early 1970s, achiev­ing sev­eral sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ries. See J. Teles, “Os fa­mil­ia­ res de mor­tos e de­sa­par­e­ci­dos.” 4. The other I know of is Pedro ­Cabral’s novel ­Xambioá, in which the au­thor, a for­mer Air Force hel­i­cop­ter pilot, pro­vides a fic­tion­al­ized ac­count of his in­volve­ment in the no­to­ri­ous Ara­guaia mas­sa­cre. The ­book’s pub­li­ca­tion in 1993 ­prompted the Bra­zil­ian Con­gress to open an of­fic­ ial in­quiry into what hap­pened. Payne, Un­set­tling Ac­counts, 206. 5. The emer­gence of the ac­count took human ­rights ­groups by sur­prise be­cause ­Guerra’s name does not ap­pear on lists of per­pe­tra­tors, ap­par­ently be­cause he was an ex­e­cu­tioner ­rather than a tor­turer, and none of his vic­tims sur­vived. 6. Some al­ter­na­tive nar­ra­tives take a lit­er­ary form. Re­gard­ing truth com­mis­sions and works of lit­er­ary fic­tion, see Ro­sen­berg, Der­e­chos hu­ma­nos. 7. Mil­ton, intro­duc­tion to Art from a Frac­tured Past, 15. 8. Ibid., 23.

150



Notes to pages 128–130



Bi b ­li o g ­r a ­p h y

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

Index

Note: page num­bers in ital­ics refer to il­lus­tra­tions. aber­tura (po­lit­i­cal open­ing) pe­riod: Am­nesty Law and, 12–13; ­Gabeira’s Com­pan­heiro and, 28, 35, 36; ­Guerra’s ­Memórias de uma ­guerra suja and, 128; media cover­age and, 40 Abrão, Paulo, 17 Abreu, ­Cláudia, 76–77 ac­count­abil­ity: Am­nesty Law and, 11, 124; Anos re­beldes and, 70, 128; “Ar­gen­tin­iza­ tion” and, 12; in ­Bonassi’s Prova ­contrária, 91; cul­tural pro­duc­tion and, 123; Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade and, 84, 85, 87, 94; jus­tice as, 18; Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia and, 120; ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta and, 29; tor­ture, dif­fu­sion of re­spon­sibil­ity for, 36–37, 43; turn to mem­ory and, 124 ­Aciabe, João, 111 ­Adorno, Theo­dor, 115 ­Aguiar, Joa­quim Alves de, 37 AI-5 (Ato In­sti­tu­cional ­Número Cinco; Fifth In­sti­tu­tional Act) (1968), 9, 10 Al­bu­querque, Sev­er­ ino, 109 “Ale­gria, Ale­gria” (Ve­loso), 144n63 ­Alfonsín, Raúl, 21 ­Aliança Li­ber­ta­dora Na­cional (Na­tional Lib­er­a­ tion Al­li­ance), 33–34 Al­mada, ­Izaías, 104, 106, 108, 116, 148n16 ­Álvarez, Analy, 104, 108 Alves, ­Márcio Mo­reira, 141n114

Am­aral, Tata, 4, 80, 98. See also Hoje (Today) (film) am­bi­gu­ity. See un­cer­tainty and am­bi­gu­ity am­nesty: early calls for, 10–11; mass move­ment for, 11; mean­ings of, 29–30, 33; ­phases of, 31–33; “re­cip­ro­cal,” 11, 31 Am­nesty Com­mis­sion, 17, 32, 131n10 Am­nesty Law (1979): cor­dial­ity dis­course and, 87; cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory and, 28, 129; Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade on, 86–87; ­Gabeira’s Com­pan­heiro and, 33– 41; num­ber of ex­iles at time of, 138n56; re­cip­ro­cal am­nesty in, 11; rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by for­get­ting and, 12–13, 123; re­peal, lack of mass move­ment for, 12; re­turn­ing ex­iles and, 39, 43; sign­ing of, 32–33; ­Sirkis’s Os ­carbonários and, 42–44; ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta and, 45–56; up­held by Su­ preme Court, 18 Amor e ­revolução (Love and Rev­o­lu­tion) (no­ vela), 80 Angel, Zuzu, 141n1 an­o­nym­ity of vic­tims, 49–51 anos de ­chumbo (“years of lead”): Bra­zil­ians in exile dur­ing, 140n86; de­fined, 10, 132n16; ­Guerra’s ­Memórias de uma ­guerra suja and, 128; ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta and sep­ar­ate re­al­ity of, 48–49. See also Ara­guaia mas­sa­cre

163

Anos dou­ra­dos (Golden Years) (min­is­er­ies), 74–75, 141n1 Anos re­beldes (Rebel Years) (TV min­is­er­ies): am­b i­g u­i ty in, 70, 75; ­c aras-pintadas, Col­lor im­peach­ment, and, 75–79; cy­cles of cul­t ural mem­o ry and, 59–60, 124; his­tory re­im­a­gined as dit­a­branda (“soft” dic­tat­or­ship) in, 65–70; mer­chan­dise ­spin-offs and com­mod­ifi­ca­tion of, 79– 80; multi­ple and con­flict­ing mes­sages in, 127–28; plot over­view, 59; pub­lic ­sphere and media ­self-censorship and, 70–75; rerun (2013) of, 144n74; so­cial mer­chan­ dis­ing and never again mes­sage in, 60–65, 77–79 ap­a­thy, so­ci­etal, 19–20, 49 Ara­guaia mas­sa­cre, 10, 132n17, 133n18, 150n4. See also anos de ­chumbo ­archive, site of re­pres­sion as, 105–8 Los archi­v os del card­e nal (The ­C ardinal’s ­Archives) (min­is­er­ies), 80–81 ARENA (Aliança Re­nov­a­dora Na­cional; Al­li­ ance for Na­tional Ren­o­va­tion), 9, 32 Ar­gen­tina: Bra­zil case com­pared to, 50; es­cra­ches (per­pe­tra­tor “out­ings”) in, 147n3; fear of “Ar­gen­tin­iza­tion” in Bra­zil, 12; ­Sikkink’s The Jus­tice Cas­cade, 20–22; tes­ti­mo­ni­als in, 57 Art from a Frac­tured Past (Mil­ton), 130 ­artistic-cultural pro­duc­tion and in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms. See cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ ory; and spe­cific cases The Art of ­Truth-Telling about Au­thor­i­tar­ian Rule (Bil­bija et al.), 22 Assis, Chico de, 106 At ­Memory’s Edge (Young), 149n50 Av­e­lar, Idel­ber, 12, 38, 40, 103 b­ anned books, 45, 53–54, 55, 140n108, 141n114 Bar­a­hona de Brito, Alex­an­dra, 22 Bar­cel­los, Caco, 78 Bar­reto, Bruno, 58 “O bê­bado e o equi­li­brista” (Bosco and Blanc), 79, 144n76 Betto, Frei, 74 Bev­i­lac­qua, Peri, 31 Bil­bija, Kse­nija, 22

164



Blanc, Aldir, 79 Die ­bleierne Zeit (film) (von ­Trotta), 132n16 Boal, Au­gusto, 57 Bo­nassi, Fer­nando, 83, 88–89, 95, 98 Bosco, João, 79 Braga, Gil­berto, 60, 68, 73. See also Anos re­beldes ­Branco, Hum­berto Cas­telo, 9 Bra­sil: Nunca mais (Bra­zil: Never Again) (re­ port), 13–14, 57, 60, 142n5 Bra­sil Sem­pre (Bra­zil Al­ways) (Gior­dano), 58 Bra­zil: Be­yond Cit­i­zen Kane (doc­um ­ en­tary) (Har­tog), 143n43 Breda, Wal­ter, 113 Ca­bral, Pedro, 150n4 Cal­das, ­Álvaro, 57 “Ca­min­hando” (Van­dré), 79 Camus, Al­bert, 50, 51 Can­dido, An­to­nio, 54 ­Caparaó base camp, 82, 144n1 ­caras-pintadas (painted faces) move­ment, 15, 76–79 Os ­carbonários (The Car­bo­nari) (Sir­kis), 29, 42–44, 56, 59–60 Car­d oso, Fer­n ando Hen­r ique, 15–17, 126, 134n44 Car­valho, Ales­san­dra, 33 Car­valho Filho, Luís Fran­cisco da Silva, 95 Cas­tro, Celso, 58, 141n122 CBA (Co­mitê Bras­i­leiro pela An­is­tia; Bra­zil­ian Am­nesty Com­mit­tee), 11, 30 CEMDP (Comissão Es­pe­cial sobre Mor­tos e De­spar­e­ci­dos ­Políticos; Spe­cial Com­mis­ sion on Po­lit­i­cal ­Deaths and Dis­ap­pear­ ances), 16–17, 82. See also Di­reito à ­me­mó­ria e à ver­dade cen­sor­ship and ­self-censorship, 71–75 Chile, 34, 57, 80–81 Clark, Lau­rie Beth, 108 CNV (Comissão Na­cional da Ver­dade; Na­ tional Truth Com­mis­sion): crea­tion of, 3, 17–18, 123–24; cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ ory and, 128; fu­ture pros­pects for, 130; Hoje (film), link with, 4–5, 7; Law of the Dis­ap­peared com­pared to, 131n5; man­ date of, 3, 131n1

Index

Col­lor de Mello, Fer­nando, 14–15, 19, 75–79 ­Comisão Ex­e­cu­tiva Na­cional (Na­tional Ex­ec­u­ tive Com­mis­sion), 30 ­Comissão de Fa­mil­i­ares dos Mor­tos e De­sa­ par­e­ci­dos ­Políticos (Com­mis­sion of Rel­a­ tives of the Dead and Dis­ap­peared), 149n1 ­Comissão de ­Representação Ex­terna de Busca dos De­sa­par­e­ci­dos (Com­mis­sion of Ex­ ter­nal Rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the ­Search of the Dis­ap­peared), 15 Com­pan­heiro (Ga­beira). See O que é isso, com­ pan­heiro? (Ga­beira) con­fron­ta­tion phase of am­nesty, 32 Con­selho de De­fesa dos Di­rei­tos da Pes­soa Hu­mana (Coun­cil for the De­fense of the Human Being), 11 con­sol­id ­ a­tion phase of am­nesty, 30–31 Con­sti­tu­tion of Bra­zil (1988), 14 Con­ven­tion ­against Tor­ture, 133n32 cor­di­al­i­dade (cor­dial­ity), 87, 145n16 Costa e Silva, Artur da, 9 Covas, Mário, 99 ­covert si­lences, 94–95, 146n46 cul­tural di­men­sion of tran­si­tional jus­tice, 20–24 “cul­tural magic,” 103–4 cul­tural mem­ory. See cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ ory; mem­ory Curió Ro­drigues de Moura, ­Sebastião, 18 cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory: ­cultural-level im­ pacts of, 125; ­institutional-level im­pacts of, 125–27; “memory’s turn” and, 26– 27; multi­ple, contra­dic­tory out­comes of, 127–29; nar­ra­tive and, 129–30; ­phases of, 6–8, 124; tes­ti­mony and, 56; tran­si­tional jus­tice and, 129. See also for­mu­las for clo­sure vs. ­wedges Dan­iel, Her­bert, 57 Das­sin, Joan, 38 ­Dávila, Jerry, 132n16 ­deaths and dis­ap­pear­ances, num­ber of, 10, 132n17. See also anos de ­chumbo dem­o­cratic re­sis­tance and armed strug­gle in ­Gabeira’s Com­pan­heiro, 34–35, 137n25 dem­o­cratic tran­si­tion, 10, 13–14. See also Di­re­ tas Já (Di­rect Elec­tions Now) cam­paign

Index



de­sa­par­e­cido tes­ti­mony in ­Bonassi’s Prova ­con­trária, 92–93 Dias, ­Erasmo, 52 Díaz, Pablo, 20–21 Dienst­mann, Ga­briel, 30 Dir­ceu, José, 53 Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade (The Right to Mem­ory and Truth) (CEMDP): ­Bonassi’s Prova ­contrária and, 89, 91, 94–95, 97– 98; Jorge Filho case and, 82–83; si­lenc­ing in, 94–95; Van­nu­chi and, 17, 88; vis­ibil­ ity/in­vis­ibil­ity and jus­tice in, 84–88 Di­re­tas Já (Di­rect Elec­tions Now) cam­paign, 12, 13, 72 dis­ap­pear­ances, num­ber of, 10, 132n17. See also anos de ­chumbo; Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade; Law of the Dis­ap­peared; Prova ­contrária (Bo­nassi) ­distensão (lib­er­al­iza­tion) era, 10, 55 dit­ab­ randa (“soft” dic­tat­or­ship), 65–70 DOPS sta­tion house, São Paulo, 100; ­archive, site of re­pres­sion as, 105–8; as for­mula or wedge, 120–21, 126; his­tory of, 99, 147n1, 147n9; as Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade, 99– 100, 101, 116–17, 120; as Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia, 118–21, 119, 127, 148n13; as ruins, 103–4. See also Lem­brar é re­sis­tir Dorf­man, Ariel, 147n3 Dunn, Chris­to­pher, 70, 144n63 El­brick, ­Charles, 33–34, 35, 39, 42, 47 Em busca do te­souro (In ­Search of the Treas­ure) (Po­lari), 57 Em ­câmara lenta (In Slow Mo­tion) (Tapajós), 29, 45–56 Erun­dina, Luiza, 14, 78 es­cra­chos or es­cu­la­chos (per­pe­tra­tor “out­ings”), 147n3 A es­c rava ­I saura (The Slave Girl ­I saura) (Braga), 73 exile and re­turns, 39, 43, 140n86 Ex­plode ­coração (Burst­ing Heart) (no­vela), 61 ­ alcão, Ar­mando, 52 F fam­ily, in am­nesty dis­course, 30 ­Farmer, Sarah, 147n12 Fel­man, Sho­shana, 22, 50, 51

165

Fig­uei­redo, João Ba­tista, 11, 31–32 ­ leury, Sér­gio Par­an­hos, 52 F for­get­ting. See rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ ized for­get­ting for­mu­las for clo­sure vs. ­wedges: am­nesty and, 33; ­a rtistic-cultural pro­d uc­t ion and, 125–27; in ­Bonassi’s Prova ­contrária, 98; DOPS sta­tion house and, 120–21; Law of the Dis­ap­peared and, 16–17, 126; Lem­ brar é re­sis­tir and, 126; Me­mo­rial da Re­ sis­tên­cia and, 127; multi­di­rec­tional out­ comes, 127–28; re­cip­ro­cal am­nesty and, 31; tes­ti­mo­nies and, 127 Fórum Per­ma­nente dos ­Ex-Presos e Per­se­ gui­dos ­Políticos (Per­ma­nent Forum of For­mer Po­lit­i­cal Pris­on­ers and the Po­lit­i­ cally Per­se­cuted), São Paulo, 117–18 Foun­da­tional Fic­tions (Som­mer), 144n62 Four Days in Sep­tem­ber (film) (Bar­reto), 58, 122–23, 128–29 Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Law, 17–18 ­Freyre, Gil­berto, 87, 145nn16–17 fric­tional syn­er­gies, 16–17. See also for­mu­las for clo­sure vs. ­wedges Fur­tado, Au­rora (Lola) Nas­ci­mento, 46–48, 49–51 Ga­beira, Fer­nando: on Bar­reto film ad­ap­ta­ tion, 122–23; image of, 39–41; O Pas­quim ­pieces, 39, 41; O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? (What’s Going On Here, Com­rade?), 28–29, 33–41, 56, 122; tanga af­fair and gay ru­mors about, 40 Gam­baro, Gri­selda, 148n15 Gei­sel, Er­nesto, 10, 55, 133n18 Genro, Tarso, 17 Gior­dano, Marco Pollo, 57–58 Globo: Bra­zil: Be­yond Cit­iz­ en Kane (doc­u­ men­tary), 143n43; image of, 77–78; mer­ chan­dise sales by, 79–80, 144n75; other pro­gram­ming, 141n1; ­self-censorship and com­p lic­i ty with dic­t at­o r­s hip, 71–75; trans­for­ma­tion of re­sis­tance by, 67; Vala dos Perus doc­u­men­tary, 78. See also Anos re­beldes ; no­ve­las and TV min­is­er­ies O Globo news­paper, 143n48

166



Gomes Lund v. Bra­zil (“Guer­rilha do Ara­ guaia” case), 18 Gon­za­guinha, 51 Gor­don, Avery, 84, 85, 89, 90, 95, 97 Gou­lart, João ( Jango), 9 Green, James N., 136n15, 138n59 Green Party, 44 grief and mourn­ing, 46, 47, 90, 97 Grupo de Arte Cal­le­jero (Street Art Group), 21 GTNM/RJ (Grupo Tor­tura Nunca Mais/Rio de Ja­neiro; Tor­ture Never Again Group), 15 Guar­nieri, Gian­fran­cesco, 108, 114 ­Guerra, ­Cláudio, 128, 150n5 “Guer­rilha do Ara­guaia” case (Gomes Lund v. Bra­zil ), 18 guer­ril­las, MDB por­trayal of, 32, 36 guer­rilla tes­ti­mo­nies. See tes­ti­mo­nies of for­mer guer­ril­las Ha­ber­mas, ­Jürgen, 71 Har­tog, Simon, 143n43 Hath­away, Oona, 133n32 her­me­neu­tic un­cer­tainty, 95–96 hero, sym­bolic death of, 48 Her­z og, Vlad­i ­m ir, 51, 114, 135n49, 141n1, 148n19 H.I.J.O.S., 21, 135n59 La his­toria ofi­cial (film), 22 Hoje (Today) (film), 4–7, 83, 84, 124. See also Prova ­contrária (Bo­nassi) Hol­landa, ­Heloísa Bu­arque de, 57 Hork­heimer, Max, 115 Hug­gins, Mar­tha, 132n15 human ­rights in 1988 Con­sti­tu­tion and inter­ na­tional trea­ties, 14 Human ­Rights Min­is­try, 88, 102 human ­rights ­trials, 12, 41 imag­in ­ ary link­age phase in cycle of cul­tural mem­ory, 6 ­I nformación para ex­t ran­j e­r os (Gam­b aro), 148n15 in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by, 12–13, 43–44, 123

Index

in­sti­tu­tional mech­a­nisms and cul­tural works. See cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory; and spe­cific cases ­Inter-American Court of Human ­Rights, 18 Jelin, Eliz­a­beth, 22, 103 Jobim, Nel­son, 88 Jorge Filho, Wlad­e­miro, 82–84 Jor­nal da tarde, 52 jus­tice: as ac­count­abil­ity, 18; in ­Bonassi’s Prova ­contrária, 91; cul­tural pro­duc­ers on mem­ ory along with, 123; Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade and, 85–88; si­lenc­ing and, 94. See also ac­count­abil­ity The Jus­tice Cas­cade (Sik­kink), 20–22 Kehl, Maria Rita, 67 kid­nap­ping (El­brick), 33–34, 35, 39, 42, 47 Laços de ­família (Fam­ily Ties) (no­vela), 61 Lang­land, Vic­toria, 53 Law of the Dis­a p­p eared (1995): ­B onassi’s Prova ­contrária and, 84, 88–89, 97–98; CNV com­pared to, 131n5; as con­tin­u­a­ tion of Am­nesty Law, 32; fric­tional syn­er­ gies and for­mula for clo­sure vs. wedge and, 16–17, 126; Jorge Filho case, 82–83; pro­vi­sions of, 16; rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­ tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting and, 123. See also Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade left, Bra­zil­ian, 47–48, 133n24 Leh­nen, Leila, 95 Lem­brar é re­sis­tir (To Re­mem­ber Is to Re­sist) (Álvarez and Al­mada), 106, 111 ; ­archive, site of re­pres­sion as, 105–8; ef­fect of, 120–21; for­m ula vs. wedge and, 126; stag­ing ruins in, 103–5; suc­cess of, 115– 16; “Wanted” ­poster pro­gram, 106, 107 ; wit­ness­ing and, 102–3, 108–15 Leme, Alex­an­dre Van­nuc­chi, 51 lev­er­ag­ing phase in cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory, 6–7 The Lit­tle ­School (Part­noy), 57 Lobo, Nar­ciso, 142n26 Lo­renz, Fe­der­ico Guil­lermo, 20–21 Los 80 (The ’80s) (TV se­ries), 80

Index



Luís, Edson, 51 Lula da Silva, Luiz ­Inácio, 17, 126 Mader, Malu, 76 magic, cul­tural, 103–4 Mar­cas da ­Memória (Marks of Mem­ory) pro­ gram, 131n10 ­marches. See pro­tests and ­marches Ma­rinho, Ro­berto, 71–72, 143n43 Mar­quês, Sér­gio, 73 Mar­tins, Frank­lin, 39 Mar­tins Filho, João Ro­berto, 38, 53, 58 Maués, ­Eloísa, 54 MDB (Mov­i­mento ­Democrático Bras­i­leiro; Bra­zil­ian Dem­o­cratic Move­ment), 9, 10, 30, 32, 36 Me­cini, Car­los, 111 Méd­ici, ­Emílio Gar­ras­tazu, 10, 110, 111, 148n27 Mello, Thi­ago de, 106, 113 me­moirs. See tes­ti­mo­nies of for­mer guer­ril­las Me­mo­rial da Li­ber­dade (Free­dom Me­mo­rial), 99–100, 101, 116–17, 120 Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­tên­cia (Re­sis­tance Me­mo­ rial), 118–21, 119, 127, 148n13 Mem­or­ias de la ­represión (Mem­o­ries of Re­ pres­sion) (book se­ries) ( Jelin), 22 ­Memórias de uma ­guerra suja (Mem­o­ries of a Dirty War) (Guerra), 128 mem­ory: in ­Bonassi’s Prova ­contrária, 98; ­Brazil’s turn to, 8–9, 17–18, 123–24; mer­ chan­dis­ing of, 62–63, 80; mne­monic dis­course in ­Bonassi’s Prova ­contrária, 94; power of the ­printed word and, 98; rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­ get­ting, 12–13, 43–44, 123; ruins and, 103; si­mul­ta­ne­ous emer­gence, imag­i­nary link­age, lev­er­ag­ing, and prop­a­ga­tion ­phases of cul­tural mem­ory, 6–8; tes­ti­mony and cul­tural mem­ory, 56–58. See also cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory; rec­on­cil­i­at­ ion by mem­ ory; and spe­cific top­ics, such as tes­ti­mo­nies of for­mer guer­ril­las “memory’s turn,” 26–27 ­Mendonça, Mar­cos, 116 Menem, Car­los, 21 Mez­a­robba, ­Glenda, 11

167

MFPA (Mov­i­mento Fem­i­nino pela An­is­tia; ­Women’s Am­nesty Move­ment), 10–11, 30 Mil­a­gre no Bra­sil (Mir­a­cle in Bra­zil) (Boal), 57 mil­i­tary. See spe­cific top­ics and lead­ers Mil­ton, Cyn­thia, 130 min­is­ter of human ­rights, 17 Mi­randa, ­Nilmário, 15 Missa leiga (Layman’s Mass) (Assis), 106–8 mourn­ing and grief, 46, 47, 90, 97 Mov­i­mento ­Revolucionário 8 de Out­ubro (Oc­to­ber 8 Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Move­ment), 33 La ­muerte y la don­cella (Dorf­man), 147n3 Mul­heres apaix­o­na­das (Women in Love) (no­ vela), 62 Muniz, Lauro César, 106 name, act of pro­nounc­ing, 92–93 Nance, Kim­berly, 38 Na­tional Se­cur­ity Law, 52, 53–54 ­Nell’anno del Sig­nore (The Se­cret Con­spi­ra­tors) (film) (Magni), 139n67 neo­lib­er­al­ism, 117 never again mes­sage: Anos re­beldes min­is­er­ies and, 60–65; in Chi­lean TV se­ries, 80–81; in ­Sirkis’s Os ­carbonários, 44, 60. See also Bra­sil: Nunca mais Neves, Tan­credo, 13 New World in the Trop­ics (Freyre), 87, 145n17 La noche de los ­lápices (Night of the Pen­cils) (book and film), 20–21 no­ve­las and TV min­is­er­ies: Amor e ­revolução (Love and Rev­o­lu­tion), 80; Anos dou­ ra­dos (Golden Years), 74–75, 141n1; Los archi­vos del card­enal (The ­Cardinal’s ­Archives) (Chile), 80–81; Los 80 (The ’80s) (Chile), 80; Ex­plode ­coração (Burst­ ing Heart), 61; his­tor­i­cal con­tent fore­ grounded by ro­mance or fam­ily drama in, 66–67; Laços de ­família (Fam­ily Ties), 61; Mul­heres apaix­o­na­das (Women in Love), 62; Roda de fogo (Wheel of Fire), 141nn1–2; Sen­hora do des­tino, 80; slav­ery no­ve­las, 66; so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing in, 61–62; so­cial role of, 59; Trago co­migo (I Carry It with Me), 80. See also Anos re­beldes

168



Ol­i­veira So­brinho, José ­Bonifácio de (“Boni”), 74, 75 O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? (What’s Going On Here, Com­rade?) (Ga­beira), 28–29, 33–41, 56 O que é isso, com­pan­heiro? or Four Days in Sep­tem­ber (film) (Bar­reto), 58, 122–23, 128–29, 142n26 Part­noy, Ali­cia, 57 Party Re­form Law, 32, 136n15 O Pas­quim, 39 Pas­sa­gem para o ­próximo sonho (Ticket to the Next Dream) (Dan­iel), 57 Pas­seata do Cem Mil (March of the Hun­dred Thou­sand), 9, 42 PCB (Par­tido Co­mu­nista Bras­i­leiro; Bra­zil­ian Com­mu­nist Party), 9 PCdoB (Par­tido Co­mu­nista do Bra­sil; Com­ mu­nist Party of Bra­zil), 9–10 Pel­le­grini, Tânia, 38 per­for­mance as wit­ness, 108. See also Lem­brar é re­sis­tir Peru, 130, 147n3 Pin­a­cot­eca do Es­tado (State Pic­ture Gal­lery), 117–18 Pinto, Zi­raldo Alves, 39–40 pi­o­neer­ing phase of am­nesty, 30 Po­lari, Alex, 57 Po­liti, Mau­rice, 117, 118 po­lit­i­cal his­tory of Bra­zil (over­view), 9–18 Ponto de par­tida (Point of De­par­ture) (Guar­ nieri), 108, 114 Pra ­frente Bra­sil (film), 142n26 Preso sin nom­bre (Pris­oner with­out a Name) (Ti­mer­man), 57 prop­a­ga­tion phase in cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory, 7–8 pro­tests and ­marches: in Anos re­beldes min­i­ s­e r­i es and, 64–65, 65 ; ­c aras-pintadas move­m ent, 15, 76–79; March of the Hun­dred Thou­sand (Pas­seata do Cem Mil), 9, 42 Prova ­contrária (Proof to the ­Contrary) (Bo­ nassi), 83–84, 88–98 pub­lic ­sphere, in Anos re­beldes min­is­er­ies, 70–71

Index

Reale ­Júnior, Mi­guel, 146n49 Reck­on­ing with Pi­no­chet (Stern), 23 rec­on­cil­ia­ ­tion: aber­tura and, 40; am­nesty as, 33; in ­Gabeira’s Com­pan­heiro, 34, 37; ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta and, 45 rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized for­get­ting, 12–13, 43–44, 123 rec­on­cil­i­a­tion by mem­ory: cul­tural pro­duc­ers and, 123; de­fined, 13; Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade and, 97–98; ­Gabeira’s Com­ pan­heiro and, 36–37; Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­ tên­cia and, 102; re­sis­tance and, 36; ­Sirkis’s Os ­carbonários and, 42–43 Reis Filho, Dan­iel Aarão, 36, 38 rep­ar­a­tions, 90 rep­er­toire vs. ­archive, 105 re­sis­tance: am­nesty as, 33; in ­Gabeira’s Com­ pan­heiro, 34, 35–36; Me­mo­rial da Re­sis­ tên­cia, 118–21, 119; rec­on­cil­i­a­tion based on, 36; ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta and, 51–52, 55; use of term, 137n31 re­van­chismo (vin­dic­tive­ness), 58, 87, 124 Ri­denti, Mar­celo, 35–36, 137n31 Roda de fogo (Wheel of Fire) (min­is­er­ies), 141nn1–2 Rod­e­ghero, Carla Si­mone, 30, 31, 32 Rol­lem­berg, De­nise, 40 Rom­pendo o si­lên­cio (Break­ing the Si­lence) (Ustra), 58 Rosa, João ­Guimarães, 35 Rota, Ma­nuel, 132n16 Rous­seff, Dilma, 17, 87; CNV and, 3 ruins, 103–4 San­tos, ­Belisário dos, Jr., 86, 102, 108 Sar­ney, José, 13–14 Schnei­der, Nina, 19, 134nn44–45 ­Seixas, Ivan, 117, 118 Sen­hora do des­tino (no­vela), 80 Ser­rado, Mar­celo, 76 Sik­kink, Kath­ryn, 20–22, 133n27 si­lence and si­lenc­ing, 94–95, 146n46 Silva, Mário Au­gusto Me­dei­ros da, 35 Silva Ca­tela, Lud­mila da, 33 si­mul­ta­ne­ous emer­gence phase in cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory, 6 Sinal de vida (Sign of Life) (Muniz), 106

Index



Sir­kis, Al­fredo: ca­reer of, 139n76; on Ga­beira, 40; Globo and, 72; on ­N ell’anno del Sig­nore (film), 139n67; Os ­carbonários (The Car­bo­nari), 29, 42–44, 56, 59–60 slav­ery, 66, 72–73 so­cial mer­chan­dis­ing, 60–65, 77–79, 142n6 Som­mer, Doris, 144n62 Stern, Steve J., 16, 23, 31, 98, 103, 125, 131n9 stu­dent move­ments, 15, 53, 64–65, 65, 76–79. See also pro­tests and ­marches sur­vi­vor role in ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta, 47–48 Ta­bosa, Le­nildo, 52 ­Tapajós, Re­nato: ar­rest and trial of, 53–55; Em ­câmara lenta (In Slow Mo­tion), 29, 45– 56; as film­maker, 141n118; Globo and, 72; as pris­oner, 52 Tay­lor, Diana, 105, 108, 112 ­Teeger, Chana, 94, 146n46 Tejas ­verdes (Val­dés), 57 tele­no­ve­las. See no­ve­las and TV min­is­er­ies Teles, ­Janaína, 135n48 Ten­dler, ­Sílvio, 74 tes­ti­mo­nies of for­mer guer­ril­las: in Ar­gen­ tina and Chile, 57; counter­tes­ti­mo­nies, 57–58; cul­tural mem­ory and, 5–6, 28, 56–57; cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory and, 124; as for­mula or wedge, 127; ­Gabeira’s Com­pan­heiro, 28–29, 33–41, 56; ju­rid­i­cal meta­phor and, 38; mean­ings and ­phases of am­nesty and, 29–33; other ac­counts, 57; ­Sirkis’s Os ­carbonários, 29, 42–44, 56; ­T apajós’s Em ­c âmara lenta, 29, 45–56 tes­ti­mony of a de­sa­par­e­cido in ­Bonassi’s Prova ­contrária, 92–93 The Tex­ture of Mem­ory (Young), 149n50 the­a­ter: per­for­mance as wit­ness, 108; re­sis­tance the­a­ter of 1960s and 1970s, 106; “thea­tre of cri­sis,” 112; tran­si­tional jus­tice and, 147n3; vi­o­lence in, 109; vis­ibil­ity and, 104. See also Lem­brar é re­sis­tir ­Time-Life, 71 Ti­mer­man, Ja­cobo, 57 Ti­rando o capuz (Tak­ing Off the Hood) (Cal­ das), 57

169

Tor­tu­ras e tor­tu­ra­dos (Tor­ture and Tor­ture Vic­tims) (Alves), 141n114 tor­ture: in Anos re­beldes min­is­er­ies, 62–64, 63; anti­tor­ture trea­ties and prac­tice, 133n32; dif­fu­sion of re­spon­sibil­ity for, 36–37, 43; erot­i­ciza­tion of, 63; ­Gabeira’s Com­pa­ n­heiro and, 36–37; ­Sarney’s re­ac­tion to re­port on, 13–14; ­Sirkis’s Os ­carbonários on, 43; in ­Tapajós’s Em ­câmara lenta, 46. See also Bra­sil: Nunca mais Trago co­migo (I Carry It with Me) (min­is­er­ies), 80 tran­si­tional jus­tice: con­cept of, 135n49; cul­ture and, 20–24; cy­cles of cul­tural mem­ory and, 129; the­a­ter and, 147n3 Trin­i­dade, Ta­tiana, 30 Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion, Peru, 130, 147n3 truth com­mis­sion, lack of call for, 12. See also CNV truth re­port. See Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­dade TV min­is­er­ies and no­ve­las. See Anos re­beldes ; no­ve­las and TV min­is­er­ies un­cer­tainty and am­bi­gu­ity: in Anos re­beldes min­is­er­ies, 70, 75; ­Bonassi’s Prova ­con­trária and, 83–84, 95–97; cy­cles of cul­ tural mem­ory, contra­dic­tory out­comes of, 127–28; her­me­neu­tic un­cer­tainty, 95–96; Jorge Filho case and, 83

170



Uru­guay, 133n29 Ustra, Car­los Al­berto Bril­hante, 58 Vala dos Perus (Turkey’s Ditch) bu­rial site, 78 Val­dés, ­Hernán, 57 Van­dré, Ge­raldo, 79 Van­guarda Pop­u­lar ­Revolucionária (Rev­o­lu­ tion­ary Pop­u­lar Van­guard), 42 Van­nu­chi, Paulo, 17, 88, 126 Ve­loso, Cae­tano, 144n63 ­Vinitzky-Seroussi, Vered, 94, 146n46 vis­ibil­ity and in­vis­ibil­ity: in ­Bonassi’s Prova ­contrária, 84, 91; Di­reito à ­memória e à ver­ dade and, 85–88; Lem­brar é re­sis­tir and, 104 ­wedges. See for­mu­las for clo­sure vs. ­wedges wit­nesses and wit­ness­ing, be­lated vs. ­real-time: in Anos re­beldes min­is­er­ies, 60, 66; in ­Bonassi’s Prova ­contrária, 43–44; DOPS sta­tion house and, 99, 118; Fel­man on, 51; Lem­brar é re­sis­tir and, 102–3, 108–16; per­f or­m ance and, 108; ­T apajós’s Em ­câmara lenta and, 55, 56. See also tes­ti­ mo­nies of for­mer guer­ril­las ­Xambioá (Ca­bral), 150n4 Young, James E., 117, 149n50 Zer­bine, There­zinha, 10

Index

C r i t i­ ­c a l H u m a n ­R i g h t s ­ emory’s Turn: Reck­on­ing with Dic­tat­or­ship in Bra­zil M Re­becca J. Aten­cio Archiv­ing the Un­speak­able: Si­lence, Mem­ory, and the Photo­graphic ­Record in Cam­bo­dia Mi­chelle Cas­well Court of Re­morse: In­side the Inter­na­tional Crim­in ­ al Tri­bu­nal for ­Rwanda ­ hierry Cru­vel­lier; trans­lated by Chari Voss T How Dif­fi­cult It Is to Be God: Shin­ing ­Path’s Pol­i­tics of War in Peru, 1980–1999 Car­los Iván De­gre­gori; ed­ited and with an intro­duc­tion by Steve J. Stern In­no­cence and Vic­tim­hood: Gen­der, Na­tion, and ­Women’s Ac­ti­vism in Post­war ­Bosnia-Herzegovina ­Elissa Helms Tor­ture and Im­pu­nity Al­fred W. McCoy The Human ­Rights Par­a­dox: Uni­ver­sal­ity and Its Dis­con­tents Ed­ited by Steve J. Stern and Scott ­Straus Human ­Rights and Trans­na­tional Sol­i­dar­ity in Cold War Latin Amer­ica Ed­ited by Jes­sica ­Stites Mor Re­mak­ing ­Rwanda: State Build­ing and Human ­Rights after Mass Vi­o­lence Ed­ited by Scott ­Straus and Lars Wal­dorf Be­yond Dis­place­ment: Cam­pe­si­nos, Ref­u­gees, and Col­lec­tive Ac­tion in the Sal­va­do­ran Civil War Molly Todd The Pol­i­tics of Ne­ces­sity: Com­mu­nity Or­ga­niz­ing and De­moc­racy in South Af­rica Elke Zuern