Obama, Brazil, and the Arab World

Between the involvement of European and American air forces in Libya and the ongoing news coming out of Japan this weekend, Obama's trip to Brazil was a distant third in news coverage this weekend. Yet the trip is important for a number of reasons, not least of which is that Brazil seems to be heading in the opposite direction of the U.S. in terms of international political and economic prestige. Additionally, two years into his administration, this is Obama's first trip to Brazil, and it comes on the heels of the January inauguration of Dilma Rousseff, whose election may give Lula's Workers Party (PT) the legs to remain powerful in a post-Lula context.

Although the world events made Obama's trip tertiary in the news cycle this weekend, the president wasn't in a tropical bubble in Rio de Janeiro. In a speech yesterday, he used the recent unrest in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, and elsewhere to suggest that Brazil is a model for democracy to the Middle East and the rest of the world. In the speech (transcript here), he praised Brazil's successful transition from a military dictatorship in the 1960s-80s to a thriving democracy today. In tying Brazil to the events in the Middle East, he specifically highlighted the role protestors and street movements had played in bringing down the Brazilian dictatorship. And he was right - to a degree. As Obama himself commented:

Decades ago, it was directly outside of this theater, in Cinelandia Square, where the call for change was heard in Brazil. Students and artists and political leaders of all stripes would gather with banners that said, “Down with the dictatorship. The people in power.” Their democratic aspirations would not be fulfilled until years later, but one of the young Brazilians in that generation’s movement would go on to forever change the history of this country.

It's understandable what Obama is doing here. With the wave of popular protests against autocratic and dictatorial governments in the Arab world and Iran, Obama used the trip to Brazil to highlight how important popular movements can be in effecting political change, and in the case of Brazil, he's generally right.

When he refers to students and artists and political leaders gathering in Cinelandia square, he's referring to one of two moments: 1968, or 1984. I believe it's the first, when over 100,000 people in Rio marched against the dictatorship. The student movement was at the forefront of the rally, but artists like Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil joined students, parents, white-collar professionals, and others to protest the increasing brutality of the military government of the 1960s. Rio's "March of 100,000" was but one of many rallies throughout the country that year, yet it did not mark the beginning of a new era of democracy. The other reason I suspect he's referring to 1968 over 1984 is the fact that he then comments that the return to democracy was "not fulfilled until years later." Brazil's military officially stepped down in 1985. More importantly, the 1984 rallies (which reached one million people in both Rio and Sao Paulo) focused on direct elections for president in 1985, rather than an end to the dictatorship itself.

But, as cheerful and encouraging a model as Brazil may be for the Middle East, it may not be the right model. The reason is simple: there is a lot going on in that "not fulfilled until years later." While the marches in Rio and elsewhere in 1968 were unprecedented in Brazilian history (until the marches of 1984, at least), by the end of 1968, the military regime ushered in its most repressive phase, witnessing increased use of torture, political assassinations, and "disappearances." Though nowhere on the level of Chile or Argentina in terms of murders, hundreds died at the hands of the state, and the military tortured thousands more. Many of the student leaders and those who opposed the regime went into underground guerrilla movements; many more went into exile. Throughout the 1970s, students had to find new ways to challenge military politics in the face of increasing repression and the military governments' efforts to deny students any political voice or activity. While students (and, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, workers, white-collar professionals, and opposition politicians) increasingly mobilized against the military dictatorship, the military played no small role in its own departure. After the "hard-liner" rule of presidents Artur Costa e Silva (1967-1969) and Emiliio Garrastazu Medici (1969-1974), "moderate" Ernesto Geisel began the process of "reopening." He was determined that the military would step out of power, but it would do so on its own schedule and through its own processes. In this way, the top-down control of the return to democracy was important in ways that do not apply to the Arab World. Hosni Mubarak had not determined that he would leave once he thought ideological differences had been overcome; Gaddafi isn't planning on staying in power until Libya's economy is corrected; Bahrain's King al Khalifa isn't going to step down when he decides that politics is ruining the military institutions. This is not to say popular voices in Brazil were not important to the transition to democracy; they were vital. But the role they played in 1984 was much different than the moment Obama referred to in 1968. By 1984, millions gathered to make clear they wanted direct elections for president, rather than an electoral college that did not answer to popular vote. Ultimately, the movement was both a failure and a success. While Brazilians did not vote directly in the 1985 election (direct elections for president were only held in 1989). Yet their support in these rallies for opposition candidate Tancredo Neves made clear to Brazilian senators who were popularly elected that they had better select Neves in the electoral college instead of pro-dictatorship party candidate Paulo Maluf, a civilian who represented the economic and social policies of the military regime. But in the case of Brazil, military leaders, particularly Geisel and Figueiredo, played a not-insignificant role in the transition to democracy.

It's not that Obama got his history wrong; indeed, the entire speech shows a familiarity with history and culture of another country that is remarkable, and even if it was a crash course, Obama displayed a breadth of familiarity with another country's past and present rarely seen in recent presidents. The people of Brazil did play a major role in the transition to democracy throughout the military regime, and clearly, democracy after 1985 could not have flourished without popular participation and involvement. It's simply that that "years later" part carries a lot of lessons that do not necessarily apply to the Middle East. Brazil's success has been remarkable, especially in the last 10 years, and that's due in no small part to the way democracy has functioned in Brazil. But I think that's where there are lessons to be learned from Brazil. Brazil isn't necessarily a model because of its transition to democracy itself, which does not resemble conditions in the Arab world. Rather, I think Brazil could be a model (and a very general one at that) of how societies can function and succeed in a post-dictatorial democratic system where people have a greater role in determining their country's path.

Around Latin America

-First, the earthquake in Haiti is an absolutely devastating tragedy, and the news will only get worse as estimates become available. And it hasn't just hit Haitians. There are reports that the U.N. headquarters there has collapsed. This will affect numerous countries, especially Brazil, which has been the head of and formed the majority of the peacekeeping missions there since the early 2000s. Brazil is already reporting the confirmed deaths of "at least" 11 Brazilian soldiers, with reports on peacekeeping troops still unavailable. Randy points us to places to donate aid

Mercy Corps
Doctors Without Borders
Oxfam
Charity Navigator (interactive map for charities in Haiti).

Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, so even a tiny donation in U.S. dollars could go a long way. I strenuously urge anybody and everybody who can to contribute to help Haitians.



-In other news, Chile last week opened up its Museum of Memory, which deals with the horrors of the Pinochet Regime. Lillie has been following this for quite awhile, and offers a good summary of the pros and cons of the museum.

-Chile was also able to repatriate the remains of five indigenous people who had been taken to Europe a century ago to be displayed as "curiosities." The issue of repatriation of indigenous people's remains and indigenous artifacts in Latin America is a heated issue, of course.

-I had commented before on the Brazilian military's opposition to the formation of a Truth Commission in Brazil. Sectors of the Catholic Church are now joining in on that opposition out of fear that the broader human rights plan that includes the Commission may also pave the way to gay marriage and legalized abortion.

-Honduras's military is expected to appear before the Supreme Court tomorrow (English summarization here) to determine whether the court will drop charges or not against the military for illegally removing Manuel Zelaya from Honduras last June. Meanwhile, in disgusting news,Honduras' National Association of Industrialists named Robert Micheletti the "Hero of the 21st Century." There has been strong evidence for awhile that the coup was done at least in part to protect the interests of a tiny minority of wealthy elites, but this definitely adds to that argument.

-Finally, because it's already been far from a cheerful beginning to the year, Erwin links us to this powerful video compiling human rights abuses from the victims' perspectives. It's only 60 seconds, but it's a powerful and important reminder of how far the human rights struggle has to go, and how it affects its victims directly.

The Brazilian Military's Opposition to a Truth Commission

A couple of months ago, I commented on Brazil finally launching a truth commission into the use of torture (thousands of victims) and disappearances (several hundred) during its twenty-one year military dictatorship. A couple of weeks ago, Lula sent a bill to Congress creating the "committee". I don't have much to add in terms of my own opinions expressed in the link above.

However, an interesting little knot has emerged in the process, as certain sectors of the military have already come out against the establishment such a committee, and the heads of the army, navy, and air force all tendered their resignations to Lula, who refused them. Still, he promised to "review" the bill again. This is, suffice to say, a step backwards, even if the bill proceeds. Scholars have done a good job of showing how, through much of the 1990s, military leaders were able to exert undue influence on presidents Collor, Itamar Franco, and Cardoso from behind the scenes, with the specter of possible military intervention always hovering over the leaders. While I haven't seen similar studies on Lula's administration, it's clear that much of the military's influence has remained in spite of Brazil re-writing its constitution in 1988 in an attempt to remove the military's constitution of 1967. If Lula buckles into this pressure, then there has been little change in this arena, and the military can still influence politicians in ways that should have disappeared with the dictatorship itself.

Beyond the obvious self-serving efforts of the military leaders on this (who I imagine may very well have entered the military and even began working their way up the chain of command during the dictatorship), there are a lot of reasons why their complaints that it will "tarnish" the military's reputation are bunk. Firstly, the fact that torture and disappearances happened is not only well-know, but very detailed and chronicled in the Nunca Mais project, an abbreviated version of which was published shortly after the end of the dictatorship, and is incredibly easy to find in Brazil (I actually have a copy sitting on my desk here next to me. The names of individual torturers are even pretty well-known, and the fact that such a commission may reveal more names doesn't tarnish the military's reputation; after all, we know what it did already. It simply tarnishes some of the individual torturers who may still be alive, and I'm sorry, but I just find little reason to sympathize with torturers. Additionally, this is as much about giving closure to the families of the hundreds of disappeared in Brazil. Their rights have been repeatedly violated over the years as this has remained unstudied and hidden away; it's time that the families, rather than the murderers, get some special treatment.

As the UPI article that Lillie links to points out, Lula may lose more face if he backtracks on the bill (which is now public) than the military would if he sticks with it. But this is about more than political face-saving. It's about justice and truth for thousands of Brazilians, and it's 25 years overdue.

Lincoln Gordon Dead

Lincoln Gordon, former U.S. ambassador to Brazil, has died at 96. Gordon is one of the early "villains" in the rise of Brazil's military dictatorship. Gordon had made clear throughout the 1963-1964 period that the U.S. was strongly opposed to leftist Joao Goulart, and that it would support a return to "democracy," even if that meant an overthrow of Goulart. When the military began moving against Goulart (whose rise to the presidency was complex), Gordon immediately made clear his support of the movement, and was in communication with the generals who led the initial coup and those who established control after the coup. Fearing popular resistance to the military, Gordon had even convinced Lyndon Johnson to begin sending U.S. ships towards Brazil to support the government. Unfortunately for Brazil, the military set up power with popular support so quickly (and Goulart's administration and support collapsed so rapidly) that the ships never even made it to Brazil; before they were even halfway to Brazil, they were able to turn around, as the military had already established a control that it would not relinquish for 21 years, during which hundreds and even thousands were tortured, and hundreds more "disappeared."

While the U.S. was not directly involved in the Brazilian coup in the way it would be in Chile in 1973 and in Argentina in the late-1970s, its rapid support for the military hinted at the policies that would overlook democracy in the name of anti-Communism in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, and Lincoln Gordon was at the epicenter of these policies in Brazil. Gordon himself openly admitted his role in quickly supporting the generals in 1964 (see here, with thanks to Greg). As a result, while you cannot blame the U.S. for its role in overthrowing a democratic government in Brazil to the same extent that you can in other places, Gordon did play the key role among U.S. actors in supporting that process, and is definitely one of the more villainous characters in the opening act of Brazil's dictatorship.

Honduran President-Elect Proposes a General Amnesty, and Why It's a Terrible Idea

This seems like a terrible idea:

Honduras' president-elect said Tuesday he wants amnesty for ousted President Manuel Zelaya and for all of those involved in the June 28th coup that deposed him.

"There should be (an amnesty) for all those involved," Porfirio Lobo said in Costa Rica, where he met with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli in an effort to build support for his presidency and break his nation's isolation.

I understand why Lobo may want to do this. He certainly is walking a tight line between acknowledging it was a coup and not irritating the military so that they do it again.

Still, in the larger picture, this is just a terrible, terrible, terrible idea. The fact that you forgive the military and Micheletti does not only offer the message that future coup-leaders who overthrow democratically-elected leaders can expect to be let off scot-free; it also forgives Micheletti and the military for the gross acts of human rights violations, ranging from censorship to curfews to blatant violence against Hondurans, in the wake of the June 28 coup. If you want to know how well these "general amnesties" work, just ask Brazil, whose military government offered a general amnesty in 1979 that allowed political exiles back in the country and set political prisoners free, but also prevented torturers and murderers in the military from ever being charged in their crimes. As a result, to this day, Brazil has not fully reconciled and confronted the legacy of its dictatorship, and particularly the repressive arm, in ways that Chile and Argentina have. Connected to this, practices of torture and executions by military police against the poor continue to this day in Brazil, with little interest in inquiring as to the institutional origins or continuation of these practices.

Again, Lobo's declaration isn't without its logic, particularly in the short-term. But if a general amnesty in Honduras goes through, letting Micheletti and the coup-leaders off the hook, then Lobo will have established a dangerous precedent for the future, and Honduras may never fully deal with the real causes, events, and legacies of the coup and Micheletti's repressive regime.

Six Charged in Murder of Former Chilean President Eduardo Frei

In one of the more intriguing human rights cases in the Southern Cone, six men have been charged in the murder of former Chilean president Eduardo Frei. Frei had been president of Chile from 1964 to 1970, and while Frei wasn't a "radical," he did launch some significant reform programs in Chile, including agricultural reforms. While Salvador Allende would push for even broader social and economic reforms, many of Allende's own efforts were extensions of processes Frei had already begun. Frei had originally been opposed to Allende's administration and reforms, but in the wake of the overthrow of Allende in 1973 and the establishment of the Pinochet regime, Frei became a major leader in the effort to organize opposition to the regime. As the report mentions, Frei died mysteriously in 1982, and rumors that he was murdered because he was too powerful a threat against the Pinochet regime have existed for years.

Indeed, Frei isn't even the only Latin American ex-president who many feel was murdered; many suspect that Brazil's Juscelino Kubitschek (who governed from 1955 to 1960, and who "built" Brasilia) was likewise murdered in Brazil. Although Kubitsheck died in a car crash in 1976, there is reasonable evidence not only that a military vehicle forced him off the road to almost certain death, but that the military used this technique against other high-profile opponents to the dictatorship, including Zuzu Angel, who died in the same year as Kubitschek and who suspected the military was trying to kill her after she fought to find out what happened to her son, whom the military had disappeared.

Which leads us back to the Frei case. While I don't have high hopes, it would be wonderful if this unprecedented case could have long-term results in places like Brazil. While it seems the Chilean prosecutors have a case against these six men, I honestly don't know how strong that case is. That said, if the charges result in conviction and jail time in Chile, maybe the case could set a precedent for similar investigations into the deaths of Kubitschek, Angel, and others in Brazil. I don't think it will result in trials - the 1979 amnesty law granted amnesty to both political prisoners and members of the military involved with torture and murder. But at this point, just learning the truth about these deaths, be they Frei's or Kubitschek's or anybody else's, is more than a worthwhile quest unto themselves.

Around Latin America - Human Rights

A few items of note this week:

-In Guyana, police are facing (rightfully) severe criticism and outrage over a brutal case of torture. While interrogating a 14-year-old boy about a murder, they apparently set his genitals on fire in an effort to torture answers out of him. Outrage among Guyanans of all sectors was immediate, in part exacerbated by pictures of the boy (caution: the previous link is very graphic and disturbing) on the front page of one of the daily newspapers. The chief of police is saying that the entire police force is being castigated for the actions of a few bad apples; however, citizens in Guyana are saying torture has long been a problem in the police force for a long time, and their skepticism; every government and regime that has used torture tends to deny the widespread practices and blames a few "rogue elements" (see: Rumsfeld, Donald).

-I'm late in getting to this, but in Argentina this week, General Reynaldo Benito Bignone, the final president of Argentina's dictatorship during the "Dirty War" (1976-1983), went on trial for his role in human rights abuses. Bignone was president of Argentina from the Argentine defeat in the Malvinas/Falklands War in June 1982 until the inauguration of Raul Alfonsin in December 1983. The specific charges against Bignone include the torture of 56 people, as well as the use of illegal searches. Bignone is one of the last "presidents" of the "Dirty War" to face charges, and is currently under house arrest. While I don't know what the outcome will be, or if he will see any prison-time, the fact that Argentina is going after him is just another good step in addressing the terrors of one of its darkest periods in history, when the military government killed upwards of 30,000 of its own citizens in just 7 years.

-I recently mentioned that Brazil's government appears on the verge of launching its own truth commission, 24 years after its military dictatorship (1964-1985) finally ended. While this would be the first governmentally-sponsored Truth commission, we already know much about the mechanisms and practices of torture in Brazil, as I mentioned, and a large part of that knowledge comes from the "Never Again" project that the Catholic Church and Protestant leaders cooperated on. In short, they managed to find a loophole in law under Brazil's dictatorship, in which lawyers could, for a 24-hour period, take out secret military files detailing arrests, tortures, and "trials" before tribunals. The original intention of the law was to allow some facade of "defense" in these trials. However, Archbishop Cardinal Arns and Reverend Jamie Wright realized what the loophole offered, and so they had a team of lawyers taking out these files for 24 hours, and (without the government's awareness) the Church would photocopy all of the files, returning them on time. As the dictatorship came to a close, the Church compiled the files into a 6-volume set, and published a condensed one-volume report in 1985 titled Brasil: Nunca Mais ("Brazil: Never Again"). Well, for those interested, you can download the entire report from University of Texas Press. You have to pay, but if you go to this link, you can also read the introduction to the project for free. And for those interested in the narrative of how the Church was able to photocopy the files and create a huge archive documenting the Brazilian dictatorship's regime of torture and abuses, check out this book.

-Speaking of the military, in Paraguay this week, Fernando Lugo fired his military chiefs just one day after denying that he was worried about the possibility of a coup. As has often been the case in Latin American history (Brazil 1964; Chile 1973; Guatemala 1954), Lugo's rhetoric and efforts to help the poor were at the base of the rumors:

Since winning the presidency last year and ending 61 years of domination by the conservative Colorado Party, Lugo has been trying to push reforms that would benefit Paraguay's numerous poor.

He has criticized an elite class that "sits comfortably in air-conditioned offices," while the poor "survive on just one meal a day if they are lucky ... without safe drinking water, surrounded by misery."

Lugo's rivals have been searching for ways to force him about of office before his term ends in August 2013.

Last week, a majority of lawmakers threatened to mount an impeachment trial over comments he allegedly made in a poor neighborhood that some interpreted as a call for class warfare. Lugo denied saying that.

Lugo also assured everybody that there was no broad threat from the military, even while saying that "There could be small military groups that are connected to or could be used by the political class, but institutionally, the military does not show any intent of reversing the process of democratic consolidation." While I suspect he's right about the overall military establishment in Paraguay, the fact that he fired some of those chiefs makes it clear he didn't find the rumors to be completely unsubstantiated, either.

-Finally, the Obama administration announced this week that it was in favor of offering political asylum to a Guatemalan woman fleeing her abusive husband:

With White House backing, Rody Alvarado Peña likely will be allowed to stay in the United States after fighting immigration court since 1995, The New York Times reported.

Alvarado currently lives in California where she is a housekeeper at a home for elderly nuns. She told the newspaper she was pleased but wondered why it took so long.

Immigration lawyers said the administration had taken a major step toward defining the legal grounds in a murky area of asylum law under which battered and sexually abused women in foreign countries could seek U.S. protection.

This is just great news. While some may (and certainly will) complain about the use of "political" asylum for victims of domestic abuse, or mount some weak, racist anti-immigration stance over this, it's a great humanitarian step on the part of the Obama administration. Many countries in Latin America still don't offer a good way out for women in abusive marriages. By offering political asylum for these victims, Obama has taken a good, significant step in doing what he can to help women who face domestic violence in other countries, and that's a good thing.

Brazil to Establish a Truth Commission for Its Dictatorship Period (1964-1985)

Well, this is interesting news:

Twenty four years after the military left power in Brazil, the government is to create a Truth Commission to investigate crimes committed by the security forces between 1964 and 1985.

Brazil is the only country in Latin America which has not investigated deaths, disappearances and torture which took place during its dictatorship, or put alleged perpetrators on trial.

Anytime a Truth Commission is established, it's good news for multiple reasons: it forces governments and societies to recognize the horrible crimes some sectors have committed (and many more supported, tacitly or explicitly); it frequently allows closure for victims' families who still don't know the fate of their loved ones; and the sheer act of a truth commission hopefully deters such actions from future governments (though it's in no way guaranteed).

I'd like to say what all can emerge from this, but I really have no idea right now. It's not like the country, human rights organizers, or historians are going to be incredibly shocked by the techniques of torture and of murder by state agents - those accounts have been well-known and well-detailed both through non-state-sponsored commissions like the "Nunca Mais" ("Never Again") project, as well as testimonials of many others who were tortured. As for the disappearances and murders, it's true that sometimes details are missing, as in the case of the Araguaia guerrilla war in the early-1970s, when the military killed and buried dozens-to-hundreds of guerrillas challenging the dictatorship.

Additionally, I really do hope the military archives are opened up. The military's line that the archives were burnt and destroyed years ago and don't even exist rings hollow for a number of reasons. First, the military's stance on this has shifted throughout time; first, it said the archives didn't exist anymore, then that they never existed at all, then that they were did, but were closed, and then that they were destroyed. I suppose this is possible, but I find it unlikely. Additionally, I fail to see how some central components of the military security apparatus remain in archives like the Department of Public Order and Security (DOPS) archives in places like Rio and Sao Paulo, as well as the Division of Security and Information (DSI) archive at the National Archive, both of which I've had experience with. While the security apparati in Brazil were varying and multiple, they all ran through at least some branch of the military, so I fail to see how the DSI and DOPS collections could survive and make it into archives, yet the "military archives" have been destroyed. Plus, if my research experience showed anything in general terms, its that the "banality of evil" and the desire to document everything, no matter how incriminating, is a frequent feature (not a bug) of authoritarian regimes.

That said, I also suspect this can only illuminate so much. Even if the commission reveals the general whereabouts of the bodies of the victims of the Araguaian war, for example, it was in one of the most forbidding and rapidly shifting environmental areas in Brazil, and tracking down the bodies' remains could be difficult (though the fact that some remains have been found is somewhat encouraging).

I hate to end on a pessimistic note, so I'll make it the penultimate point. One of the people quoted in the article points out that state agents still actively practice torture in prisons and against the poor, and he's absolutely right. However, I don't have much hope that a Truth Commission into the dictatorship period in Brazil will lead to an end to current practices of torture. Torture and "alternate" rights for the poor and marginalized in Brazil have existed since slavery; the poor and the rich/darker and lighter have always had alternate sources of justice, prisons, etc. Torturing the poor and marginalized has been a part of the landscape of Brazilian "law" since the late-1800s, and I just don't see why a commission studying just 21 years would suddenly lead everybody to support an end to torture today. Again, it's not like the practice and methods of torture in the dictatorship are some secret - most people in Brazil (and those studying the dictatorship) are familiar with the "parrot's perch," the "dragon chair," and other torture mechanisms. If society has known about these for more than 30 years, I really don't see how a truth commission will suddenly lead to an "awakening." I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see it.

That said, the fact that the government and state apparatuses themselves are finally forcing themselves to deal with this dark period in Brazil's history is nothing but good news. Again, scholars and others have known much of this for decades, but new details are always valuable to historians and human rights activists, and especially to the victims' families, and the fact that the government is finally willing to confront its past is an important step, even if it is symbolic. If nothing else, Brazil's governments and state owe this to the families who lost loved ones in their struggles against a repressive, authoritarian regime.

Report Emerges on the First "Disappeared" of Brazil's Military Dictatorship

Last week, O Globo published a fairly important report on the Brazilian dictatorship. In it, they pointed to a document from 1969 in which the Brazilian Army "assumes responsibility for the death of guerrilla Virgilio Gomes da Silva, [AKA] Jonas, considered the first political "disappeared" of the dictatorship." [English summarization of the report here.]

If it's accurate, and it seems to be, this is relatively big news. Although the military government in Brazil came to power in 1964, the first four years of the dictatorship were complicated. Many believed that the first military president, Humberto Castelo Branco, expected to be in power just long enough to stabilize Brazil, at which point the country would return to democracy. In between 1964 and 1967, though, the military fractured into two segments; the "moderates," who followed Castelo Branco, and the "hard-liners," led by Artur Costa e Silva, the Secretary of the Army under Castelo Branco. By 1967, Costa e Silva and the hardliners had maneuvered behind the scenes to take over, and Costa e Silva became president that year.

On top of this, the social and political situation in Brazil was increasingly polarizing in the context of the Cold War. University students were heightening their attacks on the dictatorship and getting more and more radical in their politics. The support of the middle class was wavering as it became increasingly clear that democracy was not returning anytime soon and as their children were now increasingly targets of police violence in protests. And conservatives were increasingly insistent on the need to stamp out communism and protect "freedom" in Brazil. As a result, at the end of 1968, Costa e Silva issued Institutional Act No. 5 ("AI-5"), which, among other things, indefinitely closed Congress, increased the president's power, and ushered in the most repressive phase of the dictatorship, during which torture and "disappearances" would become more prevalent.

To combat this, and to fight for the release of 15 political prisoners (including student and labor leaders and communist intellectuals), a group of students, with the aid of two "revolutionary" leaders, kidnapped the American ambassador, Charles Elbrick, in September 1969. The events are chronicled fairly well (albeit embellished and lopsided) in the movie "Four Days in September", as well as the outstanding (but not available in the U.S.) documentary "Hercules 56." Ultimately, the 15 political prisoners were released, and the students released Elbrick, who was relatively unharmed (save for a minor head-wound).

All of this matters because, as the students who organized and executed the kidnapping of Elbrick were young and relatively disorganized, two men were sent to help them - an older man who'd fought in Spain and was code-named "Toledo," and a younger radical named "Jonas," Virgilio Gomes da Silva. Ultimately, all of the kidnappers were caught and tortured (and many of them subsequently released in the kidnapping of the Swiss Ambassador in 1970). However, "Jonas" was one of the few who was never released, and it has been presumed that he had been disappeared. But there had never really been any documentary evidence that this was the case; all that we had were piecemeal eyewitness reports. Until now.

What's particularly interesting is that we now have what appears to be an official, albeit rough, date for the first disappearance in Brazil. Compared to Chile and Argentina, the numbers of "disappeared" in Brazil are relatively low (a few hundred). And while Brazil employed torture and arbitrary and political arrests and killings in the first 5 years of the dictatorship, apparently, it did not begin disappearing people until 1969, five years after the dictatorship arrived in power, and by about 1974, the practice was discontinued (though torture and political arrests continued), again marking a major difference between Brazil's dictatorship and those of Chile and Argentina, who began "disappearing" people almost immediately.

Of course, those who committed these acts remain anonymous, and it's not unlikely that those who killed "Jonas" are themselves dead at this point. And any effort at punishment will not happen; once again, Brazil is markedly different from Chile and Argentina, in that, outside of some doctors who were present for torture sessions, Brazil has not juridically punished any of the perpetrators of torture and disappearances. Still, this new information could help the fight to open military archives that remain secret and closed. If nothing else, it has offered a little more detail into actions and timelines that many people suspected, but that lacked documentary evidence. Until now.

Brazilian Government Launches Portal for Dictatorship-Era Documents

Well, this is excellent news:

Brazil has shone a light into one of the most troubled periods of its recent past, as the government published documents dating from the country's 20 years of dictatorship.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched a website on Wednesday containing information dating from 1964 to 1985, when the country was under the sway of the military.
The portal, which is part of the national archives, includes documents held by state governments and universities.
Dilma Rousseff, the head of Lula's cabinet and the person tipped to succeed him, said the initiative would help end "the culture of state secrets."

While it's not the military archives, which remain secret (and which some top-brass in the military continue to insist do not exist and never existed), this will really allow even better and broader understanding of some of the policies and actions of Brazil's military dictatorship, especially as it combines in one digital collection documents which had previously been spread all over the country.

Plus, it offers yet another excuse for me to prolong my dissertation even further.

Dealing with Brazil's Dictatorship and Its Legacies: Good News and Terrible "Journalism"

In spite of having ended nearly 25 years ago, Brazil's dictatorship is still very much present in current politics and society, and two events this week have hammered this point home.

First, in the "despicable journalism" category (non O Globo category), there is a story about Dilma Rousseff, Lula's Chief of Staff and the PT's candidate for president in 2010, published this week in Folha de Sao Paulo. The headline reads: "Dilma's group planned the kidnapping of Delfim in 1969." Basically, the story alleges that Dilma's group of radicals who fought against the dictatorship planned to kidnap the Treasury Minister, Delfim Netto, back in 1969. While it's true that Dilma was a member of opposition groups in the 1960s and 1970s, radical opposition to the dictatorship hasn't exactly prevented others from arriving to the presidency. What is more, though she admits (and has long admitted) to her involvement in radical student groups, there is absolutely no evidence linking her to any plans to kidnap Netto (who never was kidnapped), and she has adamantly denied the latest story.

What is so despicable about this is that it is nothing short of an early effort on Folha's part to use its influential role as one of Brazil's top newspapers to prevent the PT (or the left) from winning the elections in 2010. The article presents Dilma as somebody who was involved in bank robberies (or "appropriations," as young "revolutionaries" at the time called them) and planned murders, in addition to the kidnapping. The article apparently tries to use her police records (from archives) to make its case, and ends up giving her the stigma of a "terrorist." I haven't seen the actual evidence the article uses (it was available only in the dead-trees version of the paper), but I do know from having worked with literally thousands of police reports for my own dissertation, they are far from an "objective" report on people's activities. Trapped in a Cold War mindset in which "subversive" and "communist" threats were to be found everywhere (and which, indeed, the security apparatus under the dictatorship had to continue to find to justify and legitimate its own repressive and invasive measures and existence), the police during the dictatorship often embellished students' and others' positions and activities, making mountains out of what were by any account molehills, and making connections between "radicals" that quite simply did not exist. Although I may be wrong, I suspect that these "vague connections" that were never there are what appear in the police reports cited in the article.

These aren't the only appalling aspects of the article. As critics of Folha have already pointed out, it hardly seems "objective" that Dilma is a "terrorist" in the article, but the family whose car company built and sold the vans that the military used to kidnap civilians and take them to torture centers have never been labeled such. What is more, despite any evidence directly connecting Dilma to plans (again, never executed) to kidnap the Minister of Finance, Folha opted to run a headline that explicitly said she was involved with such plans, thereby immediately jaundicing readers who simply had to glance at the headline to be impressed with the image of the PT candidate as a "terrorist." Even more blatantly evil, Folha apparently received the tip on the police files from none other than the public relations team of Jose Serra of the PSDB, one of Dilma's main rivals in the 2010 elections. That Folha is publishing this, not out of any "fair and balanced" "investigative" interest, but at the suggestion of her main political rival, is as base and disgusting a "journalism" as one could possibly conceive.

Finally, there is the fact that Folha has begun semiotically reducing the power of the dictatorship. The word dictatorship in Portuguese is ditadura, and, by itself, dura means "hard" (as in "hard-liners"). However, Folha has begun using a play on words to diminish the actions of the dictatorship, calling it the ditabranda, replacing "dura" with "branda" (bland); in other words, it was a "bland" dictatorship that didn't do much. Nevermind the thousands of people who were tortured, the tens of thousands who were exiled, the hundreds who were murdered - at the same time that Folha is painting the PT's presidential candidate as a "terrorist" and kidnapper, it's painting the dictatorship as something that wasn't so bad. It's just appalling and scary all around.

In the face of this, there actually was good news about the pursuit for justice against human rights violators during the dictatorship. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights declared last week that Brazil's 1979 general amnesty and the statues of limitations on human rights violations do not apply to crimes against humanity that the dictatorship committed. Unlike in neighboring countries (Argentina and Chile), Brazil never really saw any major punishment against those who committed torture or disappearances during the dictatorship. The 1979 amnesty law that the final president of the dictatorship, Joao Figueiredo, decreed, not only forgave "political prisoners" and exiles that had resisted the dictatorship; it also gave blanket amnesty to the armed forces and leaders. While some doctors who helped monitor torture sessions were disbarred, nobody else has ever really seen punishment for the actions the dictatorship, armed forces, and security apparati committed. The Commission's ruling is in response to the case brought forth by more than 70 families whose loved ones were involved in a guerrilla movement against the military government in the Brazilian northeast. From 1971-1974, the military systematically disappeared the rebels, and to this date, their fates and the location of their remains are unknown, hidden by still-classified government documents and hidden by plant growth and always-shifting landscapes in the Brazilian "hinterlands."

Unfortunately, the Commission's ruling doesn't automatically have any standing in Brazil, and if the government chooses to disregard the ruling, it can. However, this is still a major ruling, for a couple of reasons. First, it's the time an international decision has been made regarding the deeds and actions of Brazil's military dictatorship of 1964-1985. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it is just one more example of growing insistence on re-examining and punishing those involved in crimes against humanity in Brazil during the dictatorship. Already, the government has given reparations to victims of the dictatorship, and while the Brazilian government has never given a full account of the dictatorship's activities (unlike what Truth Commissions accomplished in Chile, Argentina, or elsewhere), the government in 2007 acknowledged the Brazilian state's direct role in 356 deaths and disappearances. And as of now, there are several cases pending before the Supreme Court that challenge the legitimacy of the Amnesty law and that are seeking the declassification of documents that were given "permanent secrecy."

Certainly, many of the leaders and highest military brass will avoid any punishment, as many of them have died (including all five presidents during the dictatorship, including the first two, Humberto Castelo Branco and Artur Costa e Silva, both of whom were dead before 1970), and the cases may move so slowly or be challenged to the point that prosecutions for a majority of the torturers and murderers may never happen. Nonetheless, the general trend towards re-examining and questioning the Amnesty law and its applicability to specific cases is good news, and offers hope, even when the Brazilian media continues to wage a war against the "dangerous leftists" of 40 years ago and tries to diminish the overall horrors of the dictatorship.

RIP - Marcio Moreira Alves

Brazilian journalist and politician Marcio Moreira Alves has died at 72. Born in 1936, Alves was from a well-off family, and like many in Brazil, he originally supported the military coup of 1964. However, Alves soon became disheartened when the military did not return power to civilians and stripped many of Brazil's politicians of their political rights for 10 years. Reports of torture also disturbed Alves, and he began to decry the torture and the dictatorship in his news reports. Deciding journalism wasn't enough, Alves ran for and won a position in Brazil's House of Deputies (the lower chamber of Brazil's Congress).

Alves would play a central role in the dictatorship's turn to its most repressive phase (from 1968-1973). In September 1968, Alves took the floor to issue what came to be called the "Lysistrata" speech, in which he suggested Brazilian women not date or even associate with any member of the military as a form of protest against the ongoing torture and lack of rights. Although little was originally made of this speech, the "hardliners" in the military claimed the speech to be a terrible affront, and used it as a pretext to try to usher in more extreme repression to combat the "subversion" they saw everywhere. Originally, the military government, under Gen. Artur Costa e Silva, asked the Deputies to strip Alves of his position so that they could prosecute him, something from which he was exempt as a member of Congress. The military expected that Congress would follow their request with little resistance. However, Congress, disturbed by the military's interference in the legislature and aware of the growing social unrest and protests against the dictatorship in 1968, voted 216-141 not to strip Alves of his position. In the wake of the vote, members of Congress even sang the national anthem in what was a pretty obvious defiance of the military's wishes.

In response, the government of Costa e Silva issued what came to be known as the "Institutional Act No. 5" on December 13, 1968. Among other things, AI-5 (as it is known) allowed the president to summarily and indefinitely close Congress (which Costa e Silva promptly did), as well as issue even more extreme measures for censorship, allowing broader use of torture against "subversives," increase the activities of the numerous security apparati in Brazil, and clamp down even further on political rights of individuals. AI-5 marked the initiation of the most repressive period of Brazil's dictatorship.

Although Alves was thrilled with the result, he also knew that, no matter the outcome, the military would come after him, so immediately after the vote and AI-5, he left the country. In self-imposed exile, Alves spent time in Chile, Cuba, the U.S., Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, France, and Portugal, among other places. While exiled, Alves continued to fight against the dictatorship, publishing books (such as his English account of the events leading up to his exile, A Grain of Mustard Seed) and meeting with other exiles. In 1979, the government of Gen. Joao Baptista Figueiredo issued the General Amnesty Law, which allowed exiles to return to Brazil and freed political prisoners (while also giving amnesty to torturers and other members of Brazil's security apparati). After the end of the dictatorship, he continued to be involved in politics, as well as writing both in newspapers and his own books. His sister, Maria Helena Moreira Alves, also became one of the foremost scholars on Brazil's military regime, publishing one of the first books on the dictatorship (a must-read for any initiates interested in Brazil's military government).

Alves was not popular with all - like many, he initially supported the overthrow of the constitutional president of Brazi, and he was a firm centrist, which occasionally angered leftist leaders who also fought against repression during and after the dictatorship. However, the role he played in the dictatorship, and especially in the early years when he was one of the first journalists to detail and decry the military's use of torture, make him an important figure to 20th century Brazilian history, and his loss (in the same week that Brazil's military coup marked its 45th anniversary and Argentina's Raul Alfonsin, another important politician in fighting military governments in South America, died) is unfortunate if inevitable.

The Worst April Fools Day Trick? How about a 21-year-dictatorship

Today marks forty-five years to the day since Brazilians awoke to discover that the military had overthrown constitutionally-legitimate president Joao Goulart. Although the military moved on March 31st, the coup was only successful on April 1st; however, the military, aware of the connotations of an April 1st coup even in Brazil, would always refer to the "revolution of March 31st". Although some workers, politicians from the left, and students tried to resist the dictatorship and opposed it from the start, the military's coup saw broad support from most politicians and many civilians who felt the country was headed towards "chaos" and "communism," and who supposed that, as in previous cases of military intervention, civilian rule would return once the situation was normalized. They couldn't realize at the time how wrong they were, as the military would go on to last another 21 years, and by the end, almost all of society was against the military in any function, a sentiment that still exists to some extent today. But at the time, the Brazilian population was jubilant and openly received what would become a government that murdered hundreds, tortured thousands, and created disruptions in the political institutions and processes in Brazil that persist even today, in what was unquestionably one of the most sinister April Fools' Day "tricks" of all time.

How to Overthrow a Government (I): Brazil in 1964

Brazil's political trajectory since independence is one of the weirder ones in Latin America. In a nutshell, Brazil took a fundamentally different path from the rest of Latin America, gaining independence peacefully and immediately setting up a monarchical empire that lasted until 1889, when Brazil finally became a constitutional republic. However, the presidency from 1889 to 1930 was little more than a cyclical network of oligarchs alternately from the major states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. In 1930, Getulio Vargas, from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, challenged this hegemony and, after losing what many felt was a fraudulent election, Vargas was swept into power via a bloodless revolution. Vargas was a figure far too complicated to go into here, but he ruled as president/dictator from 1930 to 1945, wildly vacillating from the left to the right and back again. After a five-year respite, Vargas returned to the office of president by being popularly elected in 1950. However, as scandal built up around him when one of his bodyguards try to kill one of his main rivals (the despicable Carlos Lacerda), Vargas committed suicide, becoming a national hero and leaving a gaping vacuum in the office of president. After much turmoil (including threats of military intervention), Juscelino Kubitschek was elected in 1955, serving until 1960 and overseeing an era of development that culminated in the creation of Brasilia in the middle of nowhere and a decreasing income for the growing expenses that arise from the basic model of import-substitution industrialization.


This brings us to the 1960s. In 1961, Janio Quadros, a relative political outsider who Brazil's right felt would represent their interests strongly, was elected president. However, Quadros ran an erratic administration, offering seemingly contradictory policies from day-to-day and giving one of Brazil's highest honors to Che Guevara, further alienating a right-wing that had been discontent with Vargas and Kubitschek and that, in the context of the Cold War and the Cuban revolution , was increasingly frightened of the "Communist threat." When Brazil's legislature resisted Quadros's efforts to increase his authority, he offered his resignation only six months into his administration, expecting the population to rise up and support him and the legislature to decline his offer. Instead, they accepted, and the leftist vice-president (at this time, the vice-president of the country was elected separately), Joao Goulart, a disciple of Vargas, was to assume power.


However, Goulart was on a visit to Communist China, which was even more threatening to the anti-communist right. With a sudden power vacuum, Brazil's military leaders, who had been vaguely and ominously hovering over the political happenings since at least 1945 and who were strongly anti-communist, entered into the political scene. They threatened a military coup if Goulart were given full control of the presidency. Not wanting to cede civilian governance, the legislature agreed to become a Presidental Parliamentary system, in which Goulart's power would be greatly reduced for an indeterminate amount of time. Goulart accepted this situation because he had too, but he soon began working to restore full presidential power, which finally happened after a special election on the matter was held in late 1963.


At this point, believing he had a mandate for social reform and progress, Goulart tried to shift Brazil further to the left. He pushed for land reform and expropriated refineries and unused farm land. This leftward shift was not playing well in an increasingly polarized Brazil, however. While many workers, Vargas supporters, and even soldiers rallied to Goulart's causes, the middle-class and elites (led by Carlos Lacerda), conservatives, military, and anti-communitsts increasingly felt threatened by Goulart. What is more, the United States under Lyndon Johnson in 1964 was increasingly aware of the situation in Brazil.


Nor was the political climate of the Cold War the only thing working against Goulart. The effects of ISI were getting more severe, and Brazil was facing rapidly increasing inflation during his administration, reaching 85% and higher. Basic goods like rice and bread were getting harder and harder to find in stores, leading to long lines. What is more, Goulart at times seemed uncertain of which way he was leading the country, wavering between the policies of his fiercely leftist brother-in-law (and governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul), Leonel Brizola, and the unions, and a more conciliatory, centrist approach to reform. These vacillations only made Goulart appear weak, something the media jumped on in their portrayals of Goulart in the media. Finally, Lyndon Johnson, already getting the United States further involved in Vietnam, was increasingly sensitive of Brazil's situation, not wanting to see "another Cuba" in the America, particularly one that geographically occupied more than half of the South American continent.


The breaking point came in March of 1964. The soldier corps of the military was increasingly demanding greater pay and making clear their support of Goulart, something that troubled the military brass to no end - if they lost control of the conscripts, the leaders would have nothing. Goulart tried to capitalize on this in a major rally held in the center of Rio de Janeiro on March 13th, finally taking a stance with his brother-in-law and abandoning his half-hearted centrist efforts. At another speech in Rio, Goulart said that the conscripts should rise up against their officers if their political will was not respected or was repressed. This was the last thing the military wanted to hear. On March 31st, General Olympio Mourao Filho ordered his army unit, stationed on the border of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais states, to move on Goulart in Rio.


However, the coup's success was far from a guaranteed thing. Many members of the military brass were initially hesitant to openly support such a blatant coup d'etat. What is more, many felt that Goulart would be able to rally the lower-class troops, students, union members, and others to his defense, and if the resistance were drawn out, the military would be irrevocably stained. However, none of that support really substantially materialized beyond isolated rallies supporting Goulart, and the president himself left Rio quietly on a plane for Brasilia before heading to the southern part of the country and then into Uruguay, where he would spend the rest of his life. Also, the previously-hesitant military brass on April 1st came out in full support of Moura's resistance, leading to the great comment that "Brazil's military went to bed in favor of the government and woke up revolutionaries." [The dictatorship and its supporters would try to legitimize the military government by claiming that it was they who had launched a "revolution" against Goulart, an argument I would still hear strains of occasionally when I was in Brazil].

However, in a sign of things to come later down the road, the military could not agree on how power should now be set up. The speaker of Brazil's house of representatives, Pascoal Ranieri Mazzilli, became the titular president of Brazil, as the constitution declared. However, Mazzilli was simply a front for an emerging military junta, led by Artur Costa e Silva. Costa e Silva wanted to have power to himself, but the rest of the military made it clear that they wanted Marshal Humberto Castelo Branco, one of the highest-ranking generals and a World War II veteran, to lead the country. Lyndon Johnson, who had begun sending ships covertly to the coast of Brazil "just in case," was satisfied when Marshal Humberto Castelo Branco, one of the highest-ranking leaders in the military, officially became president on April 8th, and called the ships back.


A majority of Brazilians were extremely satisfied and even relieved with the results. Political conservatives had genuinely feared the "godless" and "Communist" path they felt Goulart was leading them down, even marching by the hundreds of thousands in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in demonstrations against Goulart "for love of God and liberty." Many of the poor were tired of struggling to find basic foodstuffs and combatting the inflation that was disproportionately affecting them. What is more, Brazilians overwhelmingly and firmly believed that the military intervention was justified as a temporary measure to "restore order," and Brazil would soon return to democracy.


And so began Brazil's military dictatorship, which would last twenty-one years, five presidents and one junta, and oversee the torture of thousands and the disappearance of hundreds of people before it finally peacefully stepped down, as it eventually planned, in 1985.

The Wiretapping Scandal in Brazil

Some pretty ugly news came out of Brazil yesterday. Apparently, high-ranking officials of Brazil's intelligence service have been tapping the phones of high-level politicians, including Lula's chief of staff, the president of the Senate, and the head of the Supreme Court.

Although Boz and Greg both beat me to it, there are a couple things I still want to highlight here. Although the opposition is immediately attacking Lula as abusing his powers and deserving of impeachment (even if he was unaware of the tapping), I find it extremely difficult to believe Lula knew of the tapping. Wiretapping is relatively easy as it is in Brazil from a strictly legal standpoint. What is more, wiretapping and spying have a rich history in Brazil's military and intelligence units dating back to the extensive use of wiretapping during the military dictatorship and even beforehand. The culture of spying within the military was never really dealt with after the dictatorship's end in 1985, and I have little doubt that that culture still exists today; no government in Brazil has tackled the military's continued impunity on this issue, leaving the military and intelligence organizations little incentive to stop unsolicited wiretapping or tapping for political purposes. As for the demand that Lula be impeached even if he was unaware of the tapping (and again, I really, really doubt he would be so dumb as to order these kinds of things), that is nothing but pure political posturing on the opposition's part.

It's important that Lula moved quickly to "suspend" those involved, and if there's anything he's proven, it's that people who abuse their power during his administration, be they friend or foe, will not be tolerated. However, his quick response, while good, is not enough; he really needs to use his position, combined with his popular support, to crack down on these practices. It's really time that a president in Brazil put an end to the last vestiges of the military dictatorship within the intelligence community. The 1988 constitution reduced and redefined the military's role in the Brazilian state; it's time that the intelligence community also see some heavy-duty reforms that make their operations less opaque and things like spying more difficult.

The Most Inexcusable Indemnity Request. Ever.

This week, 175 former military members filed a case in Brazil's Supreme Court asking for 500,000 reais (roughly $300,000) each for "moral, physical, and psychological damages suffered." They claim they suffered these damages over 30 years ago, while fighting in the guerrilla war in Araguaia. In that struggle, fought between 1971 and 1974 (as Brazil's dictatorship entered its most repressive phase of its 21 years of rule), members of Brazil's Maoist Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCdoB) tried to launch a revolution against the military dictatorship in the Araguaia river basin in northern Brazil. After early attempts to quietly quash the revolt, the military dictatorship in the 1970s began torturing the individuals it captured. While some made it out alive in the early phases, the dictatorship quickly turned to torturing the revolutionaries for information on their colleagues and then murdering or "disappearing" the prisoners. While the battle only claimed 7 "combat deaths" among the PC do B and 18 soldier deaths, official reports put the number of disappeared revolutionaries in Araguaia at 60. Even so, the true number, as usual, is probably much higher, and the military has refused to open the archives dealing with Araguaia, leaving much about the battle unclear. Indeed, nobody outside of the military even knows what the military did with the bodies of the victims, leaving the victims' families with an ongoing sense of uncertainty and lack of closure over the deaths of their loved ones. Yet, in what can only be characterized as an absolutely filthy, vulgar, and completely unprincipled money grab, the members of the military who participated in the torture, murder, disappearing, and "cleansing" (the military's term for hiding and/or destroying the bodies in the 1970s) are the ones who are suffering and need financial assistance to compensate for their suffering. Please.

I suspect that at least some of these former soldiers who are now filing for indemnities were generally low-level grunts forced to complete the orders of the higher-ups. Still, this is one of the most ridiculous and disgusting things I've heard of in a long time. But that doesn't excuse anything in terms of their request. First, the fact that they've waited 33 years to file this request is absurd, and I don't really buy their justification that the events of Araguaia still cause "psychological distress" now. If it were the case, why not try to file years ago? If you've been going through 33 years of distress, why wait until 2008? This would be like one of the people at Abu Ghraib suing the U.S. government for money, citing damage he/she suffered torturing Iraqis "under orders." It's bad enough that the Brazilian ex-militaries escaped any possibility of prosecution (see Item 57 here); asking for reparations? That's just obscene, despicable, unforgiveable, unconsciable, and abusive, both towards the government and the families.

Mercifully, while the government (under the dictatorship itself and afterwards) may have guaranteed that the military criminals could never be punished, it also guaranteed they could never be rewarded indemnities, as the AGU (the government's legal apparatus, not entirely unlike the solicitor general) "does not recognize the rights of ex-militaries to ask for indemnity," and I doubt any of these soulless individuals will win anything. Still, the fact that they could even ask for a financial reward 33 years after the fact, even while their victims' families still suffer in not knowing the fate of their loved ones, is as offensive a display of chutzpah as I've ever heard of in my life.

The Amazon, Indigenous Rights, and A Brazilian General's Complete Failure to Understand the Constitution

Randy points us to this story about Brazil's Amazon policy and brewing tensions. To summarize: a little-known (to the rest of the world) part of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 states that ancestral indigenous lands, including in the Amazon, were to be returned to the indigenous groups within 5 years. While that hasn't happened, Brazil has been making efforts, slowly but surely, to see this happen. However, in the Amazonian region in particular, there has been escalating violence as the government tries to evict people living on lands that are owed, as the constitution declared, to indigenous groups. In order to complete these efforts, the military has been brought in, but apparently, at least one member of the Army in the region is less than pleased with the government's efforts:

"At a raucous seminar on national sovereignty at Rio de Janeiro's Military Club, the head of Army's Amazon command, Gen. Augusto Heleno Pereira, attacked the federal government's indigenous policy as ''regretful and chaotic.'' He even suggested that the army would refuse to remove the settlers."

''The Brazilian army does not serve the government but rather the Brazilian state,'' Pereira said.

Um, no.

Randy is exactly right in explaining how flawed this logic is:

Brazil's constitution calls for all ancestral indigenous lands to be demarcated and turned over to their respective tribes. Pereira serves the Brazilian state and the state is defined by the constitution. A military man who doesn't understand that has no business being in the military.

And it doesn't stop there: when democratically-elected Brazilian jurists wrote a new constitution in 1988 (3 years after the end of the dictatorship), they were especially careful to be explicit and detailed in outlining the military's role within the state, and how the military's role is to defend the functioning of all branches of the state, especially the presidency, regardless of political party. In short: constitutionally speaking, in Brazil, the military can never again (as long as this Constitution survives) overthrow a "government" to save the "state"; any time the office of the presidency, regardless of what party represents it, is threatened, the military's job is to protect the functioning of the executive branch and the state, and not to overthrow it the president and assume control itself.

It's disturbing enough that a high-ranking officer doesn't seem to get the constitutional role of the Brazilian military. But really, this is only one reason Pereira's statements are so disturbing. Back in 1964, when the military overthrew Joao Goulart, they used a similar logic. At the time, as Brazil's economy was struggle and the cold-war ideologies led right-wing forces to believe that anything from the left was "communist," the military decided to overthrow the leftist Goulart and take control of the country. Their logic at the time was that Goulart was leading the country to a civil war (the same phrase that the author uses at the beginning of this Amazonian article, I'd poinit out), and that the only way to "save" Brazil was for the military to "overthrow the government to save the state." Of course, the military then went on to entrench itself in power through 5 presidencies, authorizing torture and the murder of "subversives" and rewriting the constitution not once but twice, all in the name of "defending the state."

Of course, it's unclear if Pereira's opinions and comments reflect any broader military brass beliefs he could be a lone voice within the higher ranks of the armed forces. And I'm certainly not saying that Brazil is on the cusp of another military overthrow of the elected leader and/or a dictatorship simply because the military used similar reasoning to justify its 1964 coup of Joao Goulart and its 21-year-long dictatorship. Any time a military official anywhere in the world says the things Pereira said is disturbing, but given the history of this line of thinking and Brazil's recent history (the dictatorship only ended 23 years ago), Pereira's "logic" is really, really disturbing. I'm fully with Randy on this - Pereira should be kicked out. This won't happen, and he very well may have been privately censured already within the armed forces, simply because many do not want to ever see the military involved in politics again.

More Revelations from Military Archives in Brazil?

Today's Akron Beacon-Journal (yes, the Akron newspaper) has a quick blurb in its global reporting that reads the following:
"Files to be Opened
Brazil's Supreme Court has ordered the armed forces to open secret files and reveal what happened to the remains of Brazilians who died or disappeared in a guerrilla uprising against a 1964-85 military dictatorship."

My guess is, the "guerilla uprising" it references is the maoist Partido Comunista do Brasil's efforts to create focos in the Araguaia River region in an effort to overthrow the military government in the early 1970s. Although the military originally simply arrested the combatants it caught, it soon began simply executing and disposing of the bodies of the combatants. Unfortunately, I can't find any news on this story anywhere online - the English media is consumed with Fujimori (an important story in its own right that could lead to the settling of human rights issues in Peru), and the Brazilian media is still harping on Renan Calheiros. Still, if the court has ruled this, and has the means to enforce this decision, this could really open up some important material on exactly what the military did to combatants in Araguaia in the early 1970s. Here's hoping this will go through.