Amnesty, Memory, and Reconciliation in Brazil: Dilemmas of an Unfinished Political Transition
Amnesty, Memory, and Reconciliation in Brazil: Dilemmas of an Unfinished Political Transition Bruno Konder Comparato1 and Cynthia Sarti2 Paper presented at the International Studies Association Annual Convention San Diego, 1-4 April, 2012 “One of the more cruel exercises of oppression is the spoliation of memories” (Eclea Bosi) « La nécessité de la police politique et de la magistrature politique, dans un pays où le gouvernement est en lutte avec la nation, nécessité qui déshonore la magistrature et la police, console les malfaiteurs et décourage les honnêtes gens. », (Louis-Auguste Rogeard), In November 2011, it was officially created the Brazilian Truth Commission, in a ceremony attended by the President of the Republic, Dilma Rousseff – the first women elected President in the country and an ex-opponent to the Brazilian military dictatorship who was, herself, captured, imprisoned and tortured when she was a 22 year old student, in 1970 -, the minister of Human Rights, also a woman, other ministers, members of parliament, generals and the family members of the dead and disappeared persons during the dictatorship. The act of creation of the commission made evident its difficulties. The daughter of one of the disappeared, Rubens Paiva, an ex-Member of Parliament, had been chosen to speak on behalf of the political prisoners and the families of the disappeared, but her discourse was canceled under the allegation that it would constrain the military officers present to the act. In her discourse, she mentioned the president's past and recalled the first public act, realized in 1973, after the hardening of military rule in Brazil which started 1 PhD in political science and professor at the Social Science Department of the Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences of the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP).
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