The Unsettling and Unsettled Monument Against Torture in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil by Ann M

The Unsettling and Unsettled Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by Ann M. Schneider

This article examines the history of the Torture Never Again monument, which was proposed by Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais (Torture Never Again Group) and designed by Oscar Niemeyer for the city of Rio de Janeiro in the months following the transition from military to civilian government in Brazil in 1985. The prospect of the installation of the monument, although intended to denounce the human rights violations committed by the military government, evoked unexpected challenges and criticisms. Nonetheless, it was approved for installation and a foundation was put in place. Yet, the monument has yet to be erected. As a case study, this article shows the ways in which memorial projects must answer to multiple and often conﬂicting demands. It argues that the formidable opposition was not directed toward a project to memorialize the victims of torture, but rather toward the speciﬁc project proposed. Discussed primarily in terms of propriety and taste, the critiques effectively directed debates about the monument away from a denunciation of the military regime and toward other concerns.

Oscar Niemeyer, the world-renowned Brazilian architect, agreed in 1985 to design a monument condemning torture for the city of Rio de Janeiro. His acceptance lent undeniable gravitas to the project, proposed by the recently founded activist group, Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais, during the ﬁrst months of civilian governance following twenty- one years of military dictatorship in Brazil (1964–1985). Niemeyer explained that ‘‘inspired by the theme of ‘Torture Never Again!,’’’ his Arco de Maldade (Arc of Malice) ‘‘would show in a clear way the climate of terror and death that surrounded our most revolutionary brothers and sisters…with the human ﬁgure pierced by the forces of evil, helpless in the face of organized hate.’’1 For the group, whose

PEACE & CHANGE, Vol. 37, No. 4, October 2012 2012 Peace History Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

489 490 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012 members were overwhelmingly torture victims themselves and ⁄ or family members of victims, the monument’s concrete and steel aptly evoked the shock and scandal of torture. Inscribed on the cityscape of Rio de Janeiro, they hoped it would bring public scrutiny to what had happened in secret detention centers during the dictatorship in Brazil.2 Yet, wanting it to stand as well as a symbol against torture every- where and throughout time, the group also endeavored to internation- alize the monument with an additional installation in Geneva, Switzerland.3 In spite of these plans, the monument has yet to be installed in Rio or elsewhere.4 Initially approved by all necessary bureaucratic ofﬁ- ces and passed by the city council in 1986, the monument project was twice vetoed by the newly elected mayor of Rio and was the object of stinging disapproval from a vocal sector of the artistic community. What appealed to Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais about the monument was precisely what most concerned its unlikely opponents. These critics—artists, journalists, city council representatives, and the mayor, among others—in principle supported the idea of just such a denunciation of the outgoing military regime but opposed either the proposed location or the particular monument itself. Nonetheless, two long years after its initial approval and in spite of the criticisms, the city council overrode the mayor’s vetoes thereby granting ﬁnal municipal approval to install the monument in 1988. Immediately, the foundation was laid. To date, however, no further progress has been made to install the monument on its foundation (Figure 1). Notably, there was no overt military opposition to the project. Such an absence stands out in light of the earliest canon of scholarship

Figure 1. Postcard announcing ‘‘Oscar Niemeyer’s First Sculpture, Tortura Nunca Mais.’’5 Reproduced with permission from Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais and the Oscar Niemeyer Foundation. Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 491 on the ‘‘third-wave’’ democratizations, which emphasized how the looming power of the militaries made those transitions especially frag- ile and precarious.6 Rather than risk provoking the military, the architects of these transitions, as a general rule, treaded cautiously in addressing the legacy of human rights abuses.7 Thus, official truth- telling largely replaced judicial accountability, and scholars and practi- tioners spoke in terms of ‘‘remembering’’ versus ‘‘forgetting.’’8 In Brazil, however, rigid constraints held throughout the transition. There would neither be trials nor an official truth-telling commission about the human rights abuses committed by state agents.9 This airtight impunity left the military’s laudatory narrative about its 1964 coup and subsequent dictatorship as ‘‘the revolution’’ largely unchallenged by the new civilian government, if no less jealously guarded by the military. Yet, the proposal to install a monument condemning torture in Rio did not raise in any obvious way the ire of the military. Instead, it faced friendlier fire. A far cry from what Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais and Niemeyer had hoped the monument would evoke in Rio and beyond, comments in newspaper editorials and city council meetings narrowed the contours of the debate to matters of the proper use of particular public spaces and the artistic merit of Niemeyer’s representational monument. There was little discussion of the historic legacy of the military regime or of the civic duty to memorialize its victims. In fact, there was not much conversation at all. The matter never resonated broadly in Rio, and the limited debate that did occur centered not on a dichot- omous choice of whether to remember or to forget, but rather on the finer-grained details about where and how to remember. While the proponents made a larger case for the monument in terms of account- ing for, or at least acknowledging, past human rights abuses in the new democracy, the detractors questioned the tastefulness of the project and the appropriateness of its designated location. The ambivalence shown by the erstwhile allies of the monument in Rio de Janeiro reflects the multiplicity of concerns and demands, many ostensibly unrelated to any position toward the outgoing military regime, which nonetheless weighed on the process and ultimately the outcome of the monument project. Although similar projects were later realized in other Brazilian cities, the history of the project in Rio de Janeiro—an early one in the industry of commemoration that has since developed—shows how long-standing norms and other social values created new and perhaps unexpected conflicts. In particular, 492 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012 notions about city life and leisure, as well as related narratives about local histories, provoked opposition that re-directed the debate about the monument away from a denunciation of the military regime to alternate considerations. In many ways, the case of this unrealized monument project brings to the fore the very real limits on capital and resources that human rights groups and other activists face when confronting not only larger institutional resistance but also more subtle and nuanced criticisms. Those opposed to Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais’s monument project did not say ‘‘no,’’ but rather ‘‘not this’’ and ‘‘not here.’’ Any costs incurred by the group to respond to such opposition are difficult to measure with precision. What is certain, however, is that even though the monument was ultimately approved for installation, Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais was unable to raise sufficient funds to pay for more than the foundation.

10 ‘‘WHO WOULD REMEMBER THE 70S?’’

Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais and Niemeyer had hoped that the monument would accomplish a number of aims and reach varying audiences over time. One of the key aims of the project was to expose aspects of the dark, hidden history of the dictatorship and thus to erode the tidy trope that had been propagated by the regime about the regime. Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais and Niemeyer also hoped that the monument would in some way console victims and their families and otherwise inspire and inform conversation about the recent history of Brazil for generations to come. In striking ways, Elizabeth Jelin frames such efforts to denounce and to memorialize in capitalist terms, categorizing them as ‘‘labor’’ and the architects as ‘‘memory entrepreneurs.’’ She describes how these entrepreneurs must vigilantly compete for social recognition and political legitimacy of their ‘‘memory enterprise.’’ Often, they compete not just with the political opposition but also with other entrepreneur- ial interests. She refers to market-minded memory projects that ‘‘com- bine the lucrative and the moral in different ways,’’ and explains that many have been an affront to victims.11 The tensions that arise often have to do with perceptions about the moral authority of victims and other survivors to dictate what, where, and how to memorialize. James Young’s analysis of Holocaust memorials in Europe likewise notes that competing interests are typically at play. He argues Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 493 that the designers of monuments and memorials have had to answer to the often-incongruent demands of ‘‘art and memory.’’ For example, Young explains that abstract memorials in Europe have generally been applauded by artists and curators but have been met with outrage by survivors, for whom ‘‘the searing reality of their experiences demands as literal a memorial expression as possible.’’12 His observations bring to the fore the ways in which monuments can be subject to a broad range of expectations, some of which may seem quite beside the point to victims and their families. Nonetheless, there are examples in Latin American cities, and even elsewhere in Rio, where the more privileged position of the vic- tim held some sway. Perhaps most famously, the Argentine Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have for decades protested in the central square in front of la Casa Rosada, the seat of executive power, in Buenos Aires. In neighboring Santiago, Chile, the one-time torture and detention center, Villa Grimaldi, was transformed into Parque por la Paz (Peace Park), a site of reflection and commemoration of those who had been tortured and disappeared there.13 In Rio, and simultaneously with the monument project, Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais also proposed and won municipal approval for two other major projects to appropriate public spaces to memorialize victims and condemn the human rights abuses of the military regime. The first, a project to rename streets and plazas in homage to those who had disappeared or been assassinated, was quickly, although not completely, implemented in Western sections of Rio. The second, a collaborative project with other human rights organizations and activists, proposed to convert the former police headquarters in Rio into a cultural center and state archive, envisioned as a ‘‘living monument against torture that would tell the history of resistance’’ and a provide a place to recover the ‘‘right to memory.’’14 Such appropriations or re-appropriations of spaces, however, are seldom, if ever, faits accomplis. The proposal for the ‘‘Museum of Democratic Resistance’’ in Rio achieved several key initial steps toward its realization, including acquiring the building, but for a number of reasons has not been able to move further. Although the project to rename streets and plazas was implemented, the aim to recover the names of individuals long sullied or silenced by the military regime has not been entirely achieved either. A 2007 documentary about Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais’s work Memo´ ria: para uso dia´rio (Mem- ory, For Everyday Use) includes the scenes of group members visiting 494 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012 some of these streets and plazas and shows how the passage of time can be an enemy. Some signs had become illegible, and others were simply missing. Moreover, residents who were asked about the name- sake of their streets admitted ignorance.15 W. James Booth warns that time can bring not just such forms of physical erosion, but ‘‘moral erosion’’ as well. Briefly put, the sign of moral erosion is the presence of injustice. Booth argues that memory can be an antidote for erosion because it works to ensure that ‘‘forgetting or other salves’’ do not serve as answers to the ‘‘wounds left by a gross violation against human beings.’’16 He explains that memory is ‘‘centered on an absence’’ and thus confronts the present with that absent past. The work of memory, he argues, is to create the sites of ‘‘exchange’’ between the past and the present and therefore to fulfill a ‘‘felt duty to remember.’’17 This work, he suggests, is perhaps best accomplished in monuments. Like Jelin and Young, however, Booth notes that any ‘‘transformation of a landscape into a memorial site is a political and contested act.’’18 Thus, history shows that some memories (or memory enterprises) resonate and become inscribed on the landscape while others do not. The popular contemporary Brazilian writer Luis Fernando Verissi- mo also considers erosion and memory with regard to state-sponsored abuses in his short novel, A Mancha (The Stain). The protagonist, a successful, if impulsive, real-estate developer named Rogerio, grapples with simultaneous demands to both remember and to forget. Rogerio is stunned when he stumbles upon a stain on the carpet in one room of a dilapidated apartment building that he may buy. When he sees the stain on the carpet, he looks for a water-stain likeness of Don Qui- xote high on one wall. Finding it there, deteriorated but still recogniz- able, he buys the building without negotiating—without even hearing—the price. He is sure that he had been taken there blind- folded a number of times years ago and that it was there that he was interrogated and beaten while tied to a chair.19 His nose bled from one of the blows; drops of blood stained the carpet beneath the chair. The discovery of that stain—his bloodstain—is a defining moment, or at least Rogerio thinks it should be. That fateful discovery, however, is not only unexpected, but also unexpectedly lonely. On many levels, A Mancha is about betrayal. Throughout, Roge- rio seeks allies—a community with whom to remember and to memorialize what happened to him and others in that room—but finds none. His former cell mate, one haunted by a ‘‘betrayal’’ of his own Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 495 under torture, refuses to assign any meaning to what happened in that room. He tells Rogerio, ‘‘nothing was gained, nothing was purged. They just broke us.’’20 His wife, irritated by the inertia that seems to have set in, admonishes him to ‘‘leave the past in the past, which is its rightful place,’’ and tells him to do what he does: tear down the building and put something more beautiful in its place.21 More bluntly still, a longtime neighbor of the property responds to Rogerio’s questioning about the building with a question of her own: ‘‘the 70s … who would remember the 70s?’’22 The more Rogerio tries to speak about the room and the past, the more he is confronted with conflicting demands. It is a complicated calculus, and he knows that it involves generations of his family. Similar arithmetic seemed to factor in the opposition to the installation of Niemeyer’s monument in Rio. For the critics, the stakes were also narrative; however, they just were not about the dictatorship and its legacy, or at least not exclusively. Conceptions about the right and duty to remember the victims of state-sponsored human rights abuses ran parallel to the conceptions about the sanctity of particular public spaces and, to some extent, about a right to leisure and a sense of tranquility.

THE PROPOSED SITE: PRAC¸ A PARIS IN FLAMENGO PARK

Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais proposed to install Niemeyer’s monument condemning torture in Praça Paris, a tree-lined square incorporated in the Aterro do Flamengo section of Rio. The long coastal stretch of the Aterro (aterrar means to fill in with earth) reached from downtown Rio to the affluent southern zone neighborhoods. Part of a larger urban modernization project dating back to the early years of the twentieth century, the present-day Aterro do Flamengo was built from demolished morros (hills) nearby. The demolition of the Morro do Castelo in 1921, for example, provided earth to construct an area, including Praça Paris and what is now the Santos Dumont airport, for the commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Brazilian independence in 1922. It also displaced the poor, including many former slaves, who lived in makeshift housing on the hill, ostensibly making way for an uncluttered vision of a modern city. A generation later in the 1950s, the Morro do Santo Antonio was demolished to stretch the artificial shoreline for the length of Flamengo Beach along the Guanabara Bay to the neighborhood of Botafogo.23 This area became 496 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012 home to the Museum of Modern Art in 1958 and to the Monumento aos Pracinhas in 1960, a decidedly modern monument to the Brazilian soldiers killed in the Second World War.24 In the 1960s, a vast stretch of the Aterro was transformed into Flamengo Park, the largest area for leisure in Rio, comprising 1,200,000 square meters. The landscape architect for the park, Roberto Burle Marx, who is perhaps most famous for the iconic black and white stone promenades he designed for Copacabana Beach and elsewhere in Rio, moved away from the fashionable European style gardens and instead filled Flamengo Park with hundreds of varieties of native Brazilian trees and plants.25 The park incorporated Praça Paris, the Santos Dumont Airport, and then later made way for an upscale Brazilian churrasco (barbecue) restaurant, a museum devoted to Car- men Miranda and other monuments.26 If it had been installed, Niemeyer’s project would have joined, albeit not harmoniously, more classic and much older monuments in Praça Paris. The four existing sculptures there paid homage to formidable nineteenth-century figures: Manoel Deodoro da Fonseca, the unlikely revolutionary who toppled the monarchy in 1889; Clovis Bevilaqua, the founder of the Brazilian Academy of Letters; Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, a historian and diplomat, and Augusto Teixeira de Freitas, a key jurist of the monarchy.27 If these monuments fit squarely in the tradition of what Andreas Huyssen has called ‘‘legiti- mizing, identity-nurturing monument[s],’’ Niemeyer’s work ran counter.28 Rather than elevate and celebrate the state, Niemeyer’s project aimed precisely to delegitimize the regime and, like other ‘‘labors’’ of memory, to project a counter-narrative to the one constructed by the regime itself. In fact, Niemeyer’s reference to his ‘‘revolutionary brothers and sisters’’ in his description of the monument may rightly be understood as a reclaiming of the very word revolutionary from the military regime. But it was Representative Eliomar Coelho who best distilled this vision of the project as a counter-narrative to the ‘‘Offi- cial History’’ in his passionate plea on behalf of the monument in a 1987 city council debate. He decried the refusal of the regime to ‘‘reg- ister’’ what ‘‘had been written in blood and tears’’ by those who ‘‘dared to think contrary to the official line.’’29 Yet, in the larger debate about the monument, still other narratives weighed in. One in particular had to do with the longer history of and other futures envisioned for Flamengo Park. Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 497

THE END OF DICTATORSHIP AND THE FOUNDING OF GRUPO TORTURA NUNCA MAIS

Nonetheless, at first glance, everything seemed in place to bring Niemeyer’s project to fruition. In the waning months of the military regime, an expanding civil society in Brazil—including an ever-broad- ening sector of religious leaders, intellectuals, artists, journalists, and even famous athletics—had roundly criticized the dictatorship in human rights and democratic terms. With civilian government in place in 1985, the Archbishop of Saõ Paulo, Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, together with Presbyterian Reverend Jaime Wright, published a damn- ing report about torture committed by the military regime. The find- ings of the report reverberated in Rio when torture victims identified torturers among holders of public office in the new civilian municipal and state governments. In the face of such impunity, the monument project gave rise for many to a certain expectation of acknowledge- ment and thus a modicum of historical justice. Indeed, the moment seemed ripe for memorialization-in-lieu-of-accountability, but the win- dow of opportunity proved fleeting. The first democratic regime to fall to a military coup in the southern cone of Latin America in 1964, Brazil was also the first to begin what would be a protracted transition back to civilian government. The granting of a general amnesty in 1979 signaled the regime’s inten- tion to move toward a controlled return to civilian governance. The exiles allowed to return under the amnesty, including many political figures that had been immediately banished by the regime in 1964, further animated the political scene and the expectations regarding the transition to civilian government. Following the amnesty, the regime moved steadily toward direct elections of executive offices, reinstating such elections for state governors in 1982 and for mayors of state cap- itals in 1985. The issue of direct elections for the highest office spurred a mass movement during the final years of the dictatorship, Diretas, ja! (Direct elections, now!). The movement grew from burgeoning support of a proposed con- stitutional amendment in March of 1983 to hold direct elections for the presidency. Support came first from leaders in the Catholic Church, then from the national directorates of opposition political parties, key political figures, the Brazilian Bar Association and the central media, as well as a wellspring of cultural figures, ranging from the beloved singer, composer, and former exile, Chico Buarque de Holanda, to 498 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012 soccer star, Socrates, who enlivened public rallies across Brazil. In the final week before the April 25, 1984 vote on the amendment, a half million people participated in a public demonstration for Diretas, ja´! in Rio de Janeiro; in Saõ Paulo, the numbers reached a million, mark- ing the largest political rally in Brazilian history. Put to Congressional vote, the amendment lost by a narrow margin of twenty-two votes. Direct elections for president would not be held until 1989.30 Although Diretas ja! came up short, a daring project to expose the human rights abuses of the military regime surprised even its organizers. The organizers, Cardinal Arns and Reverend Wright, exploited an opportunity afforded by the 1979 amnesty to review military court documents. The documents included testimonies describing torture, forced confessions, and details about the murder and disappearances of political prisoners. The secret project resulted in the report, Brasil: Nunca Mais, which was published in the weeks following the transition to civilian government in 1985.31 Among the data compiled by Arns and Wright and passed to the new administration was a list of 440 individuals who had been identified in the testimonies as torturers. The book was deemed threatening enough to motivate a pointed response from an ardent defender of the military, who subverted the ‘‘Never Again’’ mantra of human rights groups by entitling his work, Brasil, Sempre! (Brazil, Always!).32 Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais in Rio de Janeiro formed in reaction to the nomination of one such accused torturer as commander of the Fire Department for the state of Rio de Janeiro. The nominee, Colonel Walter Jacaranda´, was accused of committing torture by Brandaõ Monteiro, a former political prisoner and at that time the Rio de Janeiro State Secretary of Transportation.33 Others also accused Jaca- randa´ and pressed for his dismissal from the post.34 Under increasing pressure, Jacaranda´ withdrew his name. The issue of impunity, however, remained. Jacaranda´ had been nominated by Coronel Jose´ Hal- fed Filho, who was serving as the State Secretary for Civil Defense but who, according to former political prisoners, had been part of the repressive apparatus. Many identified Halfed Filho as the officer appointed by the special police forces to the trusted position as guard of the political prisoners.35 Former political prisoners and their families joined together to decry the fact that his new government position placed him on the State ‘‘Justice, Public Security and Human Rights Committee.’’ Together with the Defense of Human Rights Organiza- tion, they formally demanded the removal of Halfed Filho from the Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 499

Committee meetings ‘‘until his participation in the repression, or lack thereof, is duly clarified.’’36 Following the efforts in the Halfed Filho matter, Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais officially formed on September 26, 1985, as a ‘‘civil entity whose primary aims are the denunciation and clarification of any and all crimes against the human person—yesterday, today, and tomorrow—and a firm and conscious posture against impunity.’’37 The group held an inaugural seminar in October 1985 that brought together many illustrious figures. One of the first such events in the new democracy, the seminar featured panels on the topics of ‘‘A Regime that Tortures,’’ ‘‘A Regime that Silences,’’ and ‘‘A Regime that Destroys.’’ Panelists included the president of the Brazilian Bar Association, a representative from the Brazilian Press Association, Chico Buarque de Holanda, and Jaime Wright, as a representative of Cardinal Arns. The driving forces behind the monument project were also founding members of Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais. Flora Abreu, the first president of the group, had fled Brazil in 1972 with her husband following two instances of his imprisonment and torture. They lived in exile until the 1979 amnesty.38 Joaõ Luiz de Moraes, the group’s first treasurer and later president, was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve, a chemical engineer and professor. He lost his daughter, Soˆ nia Moraes Angel, to the violence of the regime. Her death in 1973 was reported as the result of a conflict with security forces on the streets of Saõ Paulo. Five years later, Moraes learned that the details of her death had been fabricated and that, in fact, Soˆ nia had been bru- tally tortured in police custody in Rio and Saõ Paulo before being exe- cuted.39

OSCAR NIEMEYER: ‘‘TO DATE, I HAVE DONE ONLY PROTEST SCULPTURES’’40

The group’s selection of Niemeyer’s project for its monument against torture was a symbolic choice, laying claim to one of the intellectuals ⁄ artists most closely associated with modern national patrimony and with resistance to authoritarianism. In the late 1950s, Niemeyer, together with the urban planner, Lu´ cio Costas, and the landscape architect, Roberto Burle Marx, collaborated with then President Juscelino Kubitschek (1956–1960) to design and build the new capital city of Brası´lia in the interior state of Goia´s. Inaugurated on April 21, 1960, 500 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012 the city was soon usurped by the military in the March 31, 1964 coup.41 A longtime member of the Communist Party in Brazil, Niemey- er later lamented that the political capital had been used as a military headquarters and ‘‘an arena for orders rather than debate.’’42 Born in 1907 in Rio, Niemeyer has long been recognized as the preeminent national architect and an ardent political opponent of authoritarian regimes in Brazil. His name synonymous in Brazil with modernism, Niemeyer studied at the National School of Fine Arts, which at that time was directed by his future Brası´lia collaborator, the city planner Lu´ cio Costas. He entered the national stage definitely in the late 1930s when invited by Getulio Vargas’s Minister of Educa- tion, Gustavo Capanema, to design the ministry headquarters in downtown Rio. The master of modern architecture, Le Corbusier, consulted on the project, beginning what Kenneth Frampton has dubbed the ‘‘influence and counterinfluence’’ between Niemeyer and Le Corbusier.43 In the 1940s, Niemeyer both worked for the state and opposed it. Most strikingly, he collaborated with two key political figures: Kubit- schek, then Governor of the state of Minas Gerais, and Luis Carlos Prestes, the leader of the Brazilian Communist Party. With Kubitschek, his collaboration extended nearly two decades, beginning with an urban project for the neighborhood of Pampulha in the state capital of Belo Horizonte while Kubitschek was governor and culminating in the project of Brası´lia during Kubitschek’s administration as President. The meeting of Niemeyer and Prestes began another lengthy collaboration. Impressed by Prestes, Niemeyer offered him the house he used as an office near downtown Rio, stating that the work of the leader of the Communist Party was more important than his own. The house became the headquarters for the Metropolitan Committee of the Com- munist Party and Niemeyer became one its members.44 Following World War II, Niemeyer’s membership in the Brazilian Communist Party complicated, but did not prevent his inclusion on the 1946 committee to design the United Nations headquarters in New York.45 His collaboration on the UN project marked his definitive entrance on the international stage. Niemeyer’s international acclaim grew under the military regime, owed in no small part to the fact that during one of the worst periods of repression, under the 1967–1969 rule of Artur da Costa e Silva, Niemeyer was forbidden to work in Brazil. He moved to Europe, settling in Paris, where in 1971 he opened an office on the Champs Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 501

Elyseé and designed the headquarters for the French Communist Party. By 1979, the Centre Georges Pompidou exhibited a retrospective on Niemeyer’s work. With the political opening in the 1980s in Brazil, Niemeyer returned to develop further projects for Brası´lia, including a monument honoring Kubitschek.46 Installed during the final year of the dictatorship, the monument consisted of a sculpture of Kubitschek designed by Hono´ rio Peçanha and a tall shaft with a curved top designed by Niemeyer that ‘‘simultaneously shelter[ed] and highlight[ed]’’ the sculpture. Niemeyer explained in his memoir that his ‘‘objective was to defy the dictatorship and its reactionary supporters, forcing them to look at Kubit- schek’s statue every day—Kubitschek triumphantly smiling down at the city that Lu´ cio Costa had designed and built.’’47 The monument sparked an intense controversy. Opponents viewed the work as a poorly veiled communist emblem, with the shaft curving like a sickle around Kubitschek’s raised arm. Niemeyer paid little heed to the charges. The same accusations, in fact, had followed him throughout his career. Critics of the 1942 Ministry of Education and Culture building argued that the design took the form of a hammer and sickle. A few years later, the same was said about Niemeyer’s Saõ Francisco de Assis Church in Pampulha.48 In defense of his Kubitschek monument in Brası´lia, Niemeyer simply stated that he ‘‘could not have left [Kubitschek’s] statue standing loose on a pedestal, lost against the immense sky of Brazil’s new capital. The ‘sickle’ provided an indis- pensable frame for my creation.’’49 In spite of the controversy of the Kubitschek monument, the military regime nonetheless authorized it to be installed according to Niemeyer’s original design. Given the reactions to the Kubitschek monument, the polemic sur- rounding his monument designed for Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais did not surprise Niemeyer. Intended ‘‘to keep alive the memory of that long and gloomy 20-year period when political prisoners were tortured in Brazil,’’ Niemeyer ‘‘anticipated’’ that the sculpture would ‘‘divide public opinion.’’ He remembered that, ‘‘while some people criticized it as unnecessary provocation, others found it too poignant.’’ (Niemeyer, 132) His later works were likewise taken as provocations. Most strikingly, a memorial commissioned by the Metalworkers Union to honor three workers killed by the military during a strike in 1988 in Volta Redonda was blown up on the day of its inauguration. In spite of ‘‘direct threats and letters of protest,’’ Niemeyer reinstalled the monument ‘‘with its exposed fractures.’’ He inscribed on it the 502 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012 statement: ‘‘Nothing, not even the bomb that destroyed this monument, is capable of deterring those who struggle for justice and lib- erty.’’50 That monument is still standing.

IN GOOD TASTE?

The project site in Rio suffered no vandalism, but there was no lack of vitriol in discussions about it. The debate, to the extent that one occurred, focused not on whether to denounce the regime and memorialize its victims, but rather where and how to do so. Tropes in the critiques about the project show that other competing values were at stake. Chief among them were concerns about preserving the integ- rity of Flamengo Park as a place of leisure and not one for the sort of contemplation (or confrontation) evoked by the monument. Others reflected a deeper aesthetic concern about Niemeyer’s design. Still others derided the work by comparing it to a roasting spit in a traditional Brazilian churrasco (barbecue; see Figure 1). Whether done with reverence or not, all these comments maligned the monument as bad art and in bad taste. Although many critics took pains to profess their shared commitment to denouncing torture, the sum of the critiques effectively diverted the public conversation about the monument away from the thorny problems faced in confronting past state-sponsored abuses to those related to propriety and artistic merit. In many ways, Burle Marx led the charge against the installation of Niemeyer’s project in Flamengo Park. His opposition was public and vehement. As the artistic designer of the park, he complained, perhaps rightly so, that he had not been consulted in the decision to install the monument in Praça Paris. He also charged ‘‘favoritism’’ toward Niemeyer, stating that ‘‘someone needs to tell Niemeyer, whether he likes it or not, that Flamengo Park … is a public space, with its uses already defined.’’51 The uses he referenced included leisure and the related enjoyment and contemplation of nature in the heart of a bustling city. The lushness of his design and his focus on native plants and trees glorified the natural world of Rio in particular and of Brazil more generally. The park, therefore, was the appropriate place to contemplate Brazilian beauty and not Brazilian atrocities. Others responded with similar preservationist concerns. Rio’s mayor, Saturnino Braga, vetoed the project on two occasions because of his misgivings about its installment in Praça Paris. Likewise, a 1987 editorial defended the park, or perhaps more precisely, the values Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 503 associated with the park, from the disruptions represented by the monument. Evoking rights language, the piece declared the Aterro do Flamengo as an ‘‘inviolable’’ space. And in a clear display, not of opposition per se, but rather of priorities, the editorial concluded with the declaration: ‘‘Torture never again, yes. But, the Aterro do Flam- engo—this must remain forever.’’52 Burle Marx, however, not only argued that Niemeyer’s monument did not dignify the park; he also argued that it did not dignify the memory of the ‘‘victims of such monstrosities.’’ Stating that ‘‘there are more dignified constructions, even more appropriate ones,’’ Burle Marx echoed other assessments that focused not on the aim of the monument but rather on the monument as an object of art.53 A decidedly less reverent line of commentary likened the arc to a roasting spit and then devolved further to likening the human figure pierced by the arc to a delicacy traditionally grilled at a Brazilian barbecue. Zo´ zimo Barrozo do Amaral, the popular Jornal do Brasil jour- nalist, was perhaps the first to draw this comparison in his October 1986 editorial and cartoon. Zo´ zimo quickly rendered the work absurd in remarking that it ‘‘reminds us much less of the holocaust of victims of violence and much more a roasting spit with chicken hearts that are customarily served as an appetizer.’’54 The accompanying cartoon showed a person gleefully swinging from one arm on the point of the arc. A sketch of Brasilia served as the background and sets up for Zo´ zimo’s commentary on the misfit—or at least the miss—of Niemey- er’s more signature style to a monument dedicated to torture victims. While conceding that Niemeyer is ‘‘recognized internationally as a genius of monumentality …, with proportions that dwarf the human figure,’’ Zo´ zimo maintained that Niemeyer ‘‘took this preoccupation to the extreme, reducing the human figure to the diminutive dimen- sions of a chicken heart.’’55 He added, in a final jab, that the Aterro do Flamengo ‘‘does not deserve, sincerely, to be skewered by that monstrosity.’’56 The comparison of the arc to a roasting spit took hold and resulted in rather base ‘‘nicknames’’ for Niemeyer’s design. In city council debates in early 1988, one representative—who, notably, had voted in favor of the monument—twice referenced a supposed nick- name: ‘‘churrasquinho da gente’’ (skewer of people). Another men- tioned that it had been dubbed the ‘‘espeto de gente’’ (people roasting spit). Like others who had criticized the work, the representative emphasized that he wanted ‘‘that critical moment in Brazilian life [to] 504 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012 forever be in the memory of the city,’’ but nonetheless lamented the placement of ‘‘that horrible monument, already nicknamed the churrasquinho da gente’’ in Praça Paris.57 Less dismissive assessments were no less harsh. Fayga Ostrower, artist and professor at the Museum of Modern Art, ‘‘recommended that the project be rethought.’’ Bearing out what James Young had observed in debates about Holocaust memorials in Europe discussed above, she argued that the human figure weakened the work, because ‘‘a cadaver skewered on the point of a branch is absolutely banal.’’ In her final analysis, she criticized the lack of ‘‘expressive force in terms of sculpture, of volume,’’ and drew a distinction between the project, which she placed ‘‘at the level of a pamphlet,’’ and art.58 In spite of such pointed critiques, Niemeyer and the monument had support, albeit qualified. Bruno Giorgi, a Brazilian sculptor, at once defended Niemeyer’s project and its censorship. He argued that the work was dignified and like everything that Niemeyer does, ‘‘genius.’’ The detractors, he maintained, were raising issues of personal taste, not questions of culture. Yet, his final remarks echoed the concerns raised by Burle Marx, Saturnino Braga, Zo´ zimo, and others about its location in the Aterro do Flamengo. As the park was a ‘‘place of diversion and relaxation,’’ he argued that it would be ‘‘inap- propriate’’ to place there ‘‘such a sad monument.’’ Extending the defense of the park to a defense of childhood innocence, he wondered how one would explain to a child why there was a monument against torture.59 His question, of course, was not an invitation to discuss developmentally appropriate ways to explain atrocities. Rather, it was, at least to some extent, a defense of censorship. In her reflections on censorship of war photography, Susan Sontag notes that apologists, in particular of self-censorship, are both numerous and influential. She argues that the justification of editorial deci- sions on the basis of ‘‘good taste,’’ only make sense when understood as obscuring concerns or anxieties or (and perhaps more to the point) as reflecting the inability to either ‘‘formulate or defend traditional conventions of how to mourn.’’60 The very controlled political transition to civilian governance in Brazil certainly did not contribute to the formulation of any ways to acknowledge, much less to grieve, the victims of torture. In the lack of any broader social scripts for remembering and memorializing these victims, the critiques based on ‘‘good taste’’ were arguably less difficult to make and more readily considered legitimate. To be sure, irreverence toward the monument Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 505 and its subject went largely unquestioned. In June 1989, while Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais was diligently working to raise funds to install the monument, a letter to the editor, signed by nearly fifty people, appealed insensitively to the group not to ‘‘torture us’’ any longer with Niemeyer’s monument.61

A FOUNDATION ALONE

The precise toll that the critiques based on issues of taste and propriety took on the project is impossible to measure with precision. What remains certain, however, is that even with well-organized and concerted efforts, the group failed to raise even half of the necessary money for the monument. Numerous domestic and international rights groups sent messages of support for the monument to the mayor and city council throughout the two years of debate. Nonetheless, once the city council overrode the mayor’s veto and approved the monument for installation in Praça Paris in 1988, Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais only had funds sufficient to lay the foundation. Furthermore, any momentum gained with this legislative success proved to be fleeting. As stipulated, the group had 180 days to install the monument after its approval. With prior consent, that deadline could be extended for unforeseeable difficulties; by such consent Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais gained more than two years of time.62 During those months, they con- tinued in earnest with fundraising efforts. (Niemeyer had donated his design, but there were material and labor expenses to cover.) Yet, as the final deadline approached, the group had raised little beyond the cost incurred in laying the foundation. Spearheaded by Joaõ Moraes, the group attempted an array of thoughtful and far-reaching strategies, targeting the wider public as well as selected individuals and institutions, both in Rio and beyond in the international community. Some general appeals for donations appeared in newspaper articles about the monument. Large private contributions of 1,000 U.S. dollars or more were selectively solicited. In recognition of such contributions, the donors received one of just one hundred numbered scale models of the monument in bronze on a granite base. These models were donated by Niemeyer and included a certificate signed by him.63 In a personal appeal to a potential donor in 1989, Moraes explained that the group needed to raise an additional 50,000 U.S. dollars to install and inaugurate the monument. He confessed that, 506 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012

‘‘the difficulties have been great in collecting funds, and very slow. It has not allowed us to move beyond the foundations.’’ He did not request a donation in the letter, but rather expressed hope that he could pay a personal visit. He relayed his connection to the victims of torture, stating that in discovering that his daughter Sonia had been tortured, ‘‘it was as though she had died again.’’ During the visit, he hoped that they could watch a 45-minute video about his daughter, ‘‘Sonia in Death and Life: the Trajectory of a Generation,’’ then discuss further the work of Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais.64 It is not known whether this particular appeal resulted in a donation. The sum of such appeals, however, did not reach even the most modest goals of the group. Failing to capture broad attention and support in Rio for the monument, the group appealed for funding internationally. In 1990, Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais formally asked Amnesty International to sponsor the installment in Rio of the first of what would hopefully become an ‘‘internationally recognized symbol against violence.’’ The group had raised 10,000 U.S. dollars, some of which had already paid for the foundation and requested the remaining (tallied at this time at 30,000 U.S. dollars), which would allow the sculpture to be installed and inaugurated within 60–90 days. The group assured Amnesty International that its financial sponsorship of the first monument did not oblige the organization to likewise fund future installations. Plans and funding contacts were reportedly already underway to raise the 60,000–80,000 U.S. dollars in Geneva, based primarily on contributions of the local municipality and human rights groups.65 This eleventh-hour international appeal, however, did not pan out. Having exhausted resources and capital of the group, the project was then indefinitely sidelined.

CONCLUSIONS

In a climate of impunity, Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais’s proposed monument condemning torture joined other efforts throughout the southern cone of Latin America to discredit the recently exited military regimes. In no small part, the stakes in the project were narrative. If it had been installed, the monument would have inscribed on the cityscape of Rio de Janeiro an image that ostensibly would have rendered the victims of torture ever-present and therefore ever-denouncing the crime of the torturer. Thus re-cast as protagonist—both of the recent past and the present—the human figure in Niemeyer’s work Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 507 would expose the falsities in the narrative put forth by the Brazilian military dictatorship about its place and the place of its enemies in national political history. In turn, such a public denouncement of the regime’s widespread and systematic use of torture would serve as a constant reminder so that such abuses would ‘‘never again’’ transpire. In the uphill battle to gain approval, however, the monument seemed not to challenge the military’s narrative of its place in history as much as it challenged other narratives about the city and related conceptions about leisure and taste. Its proposed location in Praça Paris in downtown Rio turned potential allies of just such a denouncement of the military regime into critics of the specific project. The issue of propriety arose in other forms, taking on not just the problem of the proper use of the designated space, but also the aesthetic merits of the monument itself, and by extension of Niemeyer as a sculptor. The debates that transpired in Rio reinforce Andreas Huyssen and James Young’s observations about artistic and public reception of monuments elsewhere. They argued that critiques that focus on monuments as objects fail to recognize their ‘‘public dimension’’ or the ‘‘dialogical quality of memorial space.’’’66 Yet, dialog was not entirely lacking. Most critics of the monument simply asked different questions than Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais did. While the group made a case for the necessity—for the victims, their families and society-writ-large—of a monument in Rio condemning torture, critics asked: Was it ‘‘good art’’ and did it ‘‘fit’’ in the proposed place? And, while the group spoke of the urgency to build a society in which torture would never again be inflicted on anyone, the critics worried about the sanctity of spaces of leisure and the symbolic power (or its lack thereof) of the proposed monument. Furthermore, some questions that perhaps we hoped had been asked were not. The issue of gender, for example, was never raised in the discussion (nor was it provoked by the nondescript human figure in the monument design). Such an omission glosses over the gen- dered forms that torture took in Brazil and elsewhere.67 Although the critics shaped the terms of the debate about the monument, in the end it was the failure to raise sufficient funds to pay for the project that ultimately sidelined it. While clear links between the precise contours of the debate and the outcome of the fundraising effort are difficult to draw, the particularities of the Brazilian democratic transition may go some distance in explaining the monument’s fate. In his analysis of collective memory of atrocities, Mark Osiel makes a strong case about the importance of criminal trials. He argues 508 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012 that without such official condemnations, other denunciations are harder to make.68 Thus, arguably the absence of any larger, official challenge to the legacy of the military in Brazil gave more space to critiques and challenges of the narrative put forth by the monument, including—perhaps especially—those related to values beyond denouncing torture. Yet, unlike the case in Rio, similar monument projects were completed elsewhere in Brazil, including in the city of Recife. The Recife Tortura Nunca Mais monument, approved in 1988 and completed in 1993, shows a male figure on the infamous ‘‘parrot’s perch’’ (hanging by knees and elbows from a pole), an utterly vulnerable position in which political prisoners were often tortured in Brazil.69 Despite the different outcomes, both the completion of the monument project in Recife and the incompletion in Rio seem to speak less to the macro processes of negotiating whether ‘‘to remember’’ or ‘‘to forget’’ and more to very local dynamics. Ostensibly, it was the details of the project, not the project itself that provoked opposition. Perhaps unexpectedly, that opposition redirected the debate away from the abuses of the dictatorship and arguably prolonged the approval process. The sum of which exhausted resources and capital that were needed to see the project through to completion. In spite of the failure to install Niemeyer’s monument, the monument nonetheless has a certain presence in Rio and beyond. A sketch of it serves as the letterhead and emblem for Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais, which has maintained a high profile and remains synonymous with denunciation of the military regime. It is the backdrop for all the group’s official activities. And, although decades have passed since the group won initial municipal approval and since the project was indefinitely put on hold, efforts to install the monument continue. Niemeyer, 104 years old as of this writing, continues to work and has recently been involved in talks about installing this monument in Niteroi, the city across Guanabara Bay from Rio and the home to Niemeyer’s contemporary art museum. The former President of the City Council in Belo Horizonte, Bet- inho Duarte, has also been campaigning to install the monument in his city. In 2004, he bestowed on Niemeyer the title of ‘‘Honorary Citizen of Belo Horizonte’’ and made mention of the monument. In 2009, he publicly suggested that the monument be installed as part of the larger ‘‘Memorial of Political Amnesty in Brazil’’ project in Belo Horizonte. The project, a collaboration between the Amnesty Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 509

Commission in the Ministry of Justice and the Federal University of Minas Gerais, includes plans to build an exposition space and house an archive of materials related to political repression in Brazil.70 Duarte’s discussions of the monument, however, have been met with somewhat familiar reactions. Ivan Lessa, one of the founders of O Pasquim, the leading oppositional newsmagazine from the period of the military dictatorship in Brazil, stated ﬂatly that there is a deception in Niemeyer’s then decades-old remarks about the monument. In his tribute in 1985, Niemeyer spoke in the past tense about the violence that weighed on Brazilian society during the dictatorship. Lessa wrote that he learned about the monument and Duarte’s efforts the same week he heard the chilling statistic that 600,000 Brazilians were murdered between 1980 and 2000. The only ‘‘monuments’’ that Brazil lacked, he argued, were homes, schools, and hospitals. If there must be a monument, Lessa asked that it be to those six hundred thousand.71

NOTES

1. Statement by Oscar Niemeyer about his Arco de Maldade, as quoted on the website of Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais. See: http://www.torturanuncamais-rj. org.br/. Accessed on July 26, 2012. 2. A proposed second phase in Rio included plans to add a visitors’ center underground that would list the names of the individuals murdered or disappeared during the dictatorship. See: Leila Magalha˜es, ‘‘Obra de Niemeyer provoca poleˆmica,’’ O Globo, December 30, 1986. The text of the article, however, is somewhat imprecise. While the group planned to include the names of victims, it did not intend, as the article states, to also include the list of names of individuals identiﬁed as torturers by the Tortura Nunca Mais project, which is discussed later in this article. 3. Arquivo Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais, Rio de Janeiro, binder: Monumento, (AGTNM), Letter to Amnesty International, July 17, 1990. 4. A sketch of the proposed monument is included in a section entitled ‘‘works not-realized’’ in Lionello Puppi, A Arquitetura de Oscar Niemeyer, trans. Luiz Mario Gazzaneo (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Revan, 1988), 153. 5. This is a photograph of an original card held at AGTNM. Although the card states that this monument is his ﬁrst sculpture, Niemeyer himself lists it as his second, following the monument to Juscelino Kubitschek in Brası´lia, which is discussed later in this article. See: Oscar Niemeyer, The Curves of Times: The Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer, trans. Izabel Murat Barbridge (London: Phaidon, 2000), 132. 510 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012

6. See, for example (in chronological order): Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspective (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O’Donnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela, Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992); Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); and Laurance Whitehead, Democratization: Theory and Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 7. In a striking move in 1983 in Argentina, for example, the new democratic regime commissioned an ‘‘investigation on the disappearance of persons.’’ The report, entitled Nunca Ma´s, would come to be the prototype truth commission. A year later, high-ranking military officials were criminally tried and held accountable, although all trials were soon halted and a general pardon was granted. New democracies in the other southern cone nations closely followed the events in Argentina. No other nation attempted trials, but Chile followed suit with an officially mandated truth commission. For a provocative reflection on the attempts for ‘‘transitional justice’’ in Argentina, see: Jaime Malamud-Goti, Game without End: State Terror and the Politics of Justice (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008). For the Chilean case, see, among others: Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Human Rights and Democratization in Latin America: Uruguay and Chile (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 8. See, for example, Priscella B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenge of Truth Commissions (New York: Routledge, 2001; second edition, 2011). 9. On November 18, 2011, President Dilma Rousseff signed a law to institute a truth commission in Brazil, more than 25 years after the end of the dictatorship. See: ‘‘Dilma Rousseff sanciona lei que institui Comissao da Verdade,’’ O Globo, (November 18, 2011). 10. Luis Fernando Verissimo, A Mancha (Saõ Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2004), 23. 11. Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory, trans. Judy Rein and Marcial Godoy-Anativia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 34. The degree of social recognition and political legitimacy achieved by such memory entrepreneurs may best be measured in the Halbwachsian concept of ‘‘collective memory,’’ which references the interpretation or perspective that is enshrined in monuments and museums, Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 511 but also in discourse and even myth. See: Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 12. James E. Young, ‘‘The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History,’’ in The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History (New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), 35 and 24. 13. For a discussion of the re-appropriation of space, see: Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory, trans. Judy Rein and Marcial Godoy-Anativia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 26–45. For an analysis of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, see: Marguerite Bouvard Guzman, Revolutionary Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1994). On Peace Park, see: Elizabeth Jelin ‘‘The Minefields of Memory,’’ NACLA: Report on the Americas Vol. 32, No. 2 (2008): 23–29; and Michael J. Lazzara, ‘‘Tres recorridos de Villa Grimaldi,’’ in Monumentos, Memoriales y Marcas Territoriales, eds. Elizabeth Jelin and Victoria Langland (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 2003), 127–147. 14. AGTNM, Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais, proposal submitted to the Government of Rio de Janeiro State, ‘‘Rua da Relaçaõ: Arquivo Pu´ blico do Estado e Centro Cultural,’’ undated. The thrust of the proposal reiterated an idea of restoration in both material and more symbolic terms. In her introduction, Jessie Jane Vieira de Sousa, a former political prisoner and current head of the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, argued that to transform the old jail into a public archive attempts to give a democratic function to the building, where citizens can recover rights otherwise denied, including the ‘‘right to memory.’’ See also, Regina Barreiros, ‘‘Embora tombado, pre´dio do Dops naõ esta na rota da historia,’’ Jornal do Brasil (August 9, 1987): 1, 16. 15. See: Beth Formaggini, Memo´ ria: para uso dia´rio, (Rio de Janeiro: 4 Ventos, 2007). See also Joana D’Arc Fernandes Ferraz and Carolina Dellamore Batista Scarpelli, ‘‘Ditadura Militar no Brasil: Desafios da Memo´ ria e do Patrimoˆ nio,’’ XIII Encontro de Histo´ ria Anpuh-Rio (2008). 16. James W. Booth, Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice (New York: Cornell University, 2006), 122–123. 17. Ibid., 114 and 107. 18. Ibid., 105. 19. Luis Fernando Verissimo, A Mancha (Saõ Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2004), 23. 20. Ibid., 32. 21. Ibid., 24. 512 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012

22. Ibid., 23. 23. On the modernizing reforms of Rio de Janeiro, see: Teresa Meade, ‘‘Civilizing’’ Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City, 1889–1930 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). On the demolition of the Morro do Santo Antonio, see: Brodwyn Fischer, A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 83–86. 24. On the history of the events related to the sending of Brazilian troops to fight in World War II, see: Peter M. Beattie, The Tribute of Blood: Army, Honor, Race, and Nation in Brazil, 1864–1945 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2001). 25. See Paulo e Lucia Victoria Peltier de Queiroz and Leonardo Boff, O.F.M., Roberto Burle Marx: Homenagem a` naturaza (Petro´ polis, R.J.: Editora Vozes, 1979). 26. Fla´vio L. Motta, Roberto Burle Marx e a nova visaõ da paisagem, photographs by Marcel Gautherot (Saõ Paulo: Livraria Nobel, S.A., 1984), 20. 27. Affonso Fontainha, Historica dos Monumentos do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, 1963), 79–84. 28. Andreas Huyssen, ‘‘Monument and Memory in a Postmodern Age,’’ in The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History, ed. James E. Young (New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), 15. Also on ‘‘counter-monuments,’’ see: James E. Young, At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 90–119. 29. AGTNM, Caˆmara Municipal do Rio de Janeiro, INDICAÇA˜ O, August 10, 1987. 30. Thomas E. Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964– 1985 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 240–244. 31. Archdiocese of Saõ Paulo, Brasil: Nunca Mais (Petro´ polis: Editora Vozes, 1987). For an account of the process of compiling the work, see: Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, a Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 7–79. 32. Marco Pollo Giordani, Brasil, Sempre (Porto Alegre, RS: Tcheˆ!, 1986). 33. Branca Eloysa, org., I Semina´rio do Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais: Depoimentos e Debates (Petro´ polis: Vozes, 1987), 18. 34. Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais, ‘‘Dossie de Walter da Costa Jacaranda´.’’ http://www.torturanuncamais-rj.org.br/denuncias.asp?Coddenuncia= 103&ecg=. Accessed January 28, 2012. Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 513

35. Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais, ‘‘Dossie de Jose´ Halfed Filho.’’ http:// www.torturanuncamais-rj.org.br/denuncias.asp?Coddenuncia=93&ecg=. Accessed January 28, 2012. 36. Eloysa, 18. 37. Ibid., 19. Emphasis in original text. 38. Bruno de Andre´, ‘‘Niemeyer desenha monumento contra tortura polı´tica,’’ Folha de Saõ Paulo (October 18, 1986): Cidades, 73. 39. AGTNM, Letter from Moraes to Sr. Mindlin, dated May 2, 1989. Two years before her death, Soˆ nia’s husband, Stuart Angel Jones, had also been assassinated by the regime. His death had received a great deal of attention both in Brazil and abroad because of the indefatigable efforts of his mother, Zuzu Angel. See: Skidmore, 349, ct 58. 40. Niemeyer, 131. 41. Niemeyer designed the official residence of the president, the National Congress, the Planalto, the cathedral, and the Federal Supreme Court. For an analysis of Brası´lia, see: James Holston, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brası´lia (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). 42. Alan Riding, ‘‘The Talk of Brası´lia: Brazil’s Capital: Old-Age Pains at 25,’’ The New York Times (August 3, 1985): 1, 2. 43. Kenneth Frampton, ‘‘Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer: Influence and Counter-Influence, 1929–1965,’’ in Latin American Architecture, 1929– 1960: Contemporary Reflections, ed. Carlos Brillembourg (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2004), 34–49. 44. In 1990, together with Luis Carlos Prestes, Niemeyer left the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). Alan Carneiro, ‘‘Niemeyer, Oscar,’’ in Diciona´rio Histo´ rico-Biogra´fico Brasileiro, Po´ s-1930, Vol. IV, 2nd Edition, eds. Alzira Alves de Abreu, Israel Beloch, Fernando Lattman-Weltman and Se´rgio Tadeu de Niemeyer Lamaraõ (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Fundaçaõ Getu´ lio Vargas, 2001), 4081–4083. 45. See, for example, the scathing report in the communist newspaper, Tribuna Popular, in 1948, which stated that Niemeyer was prohibited from entering the U.S. because he was an ‘‘‘avowed communist’ … a fascist move typical of the reactionary character of the Truman government.’’ Arquivo do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (APERJ), Oscar Niemeyer, DPS Dossieˆ 1545. 46. Carneiro, 4081–4083. 47. Niemeyer, 131. 48. Holston, 97. 49. Niemeyer, 131. 50. Ibid., 132, 133. 514 PEACE & CHANGE / October 2012

51. Leila Magalha˜es, ‘‘Obra de Niemeyer provoca poleˆmica,’’ O Globo (December 30, 1986). 52. ‘‘Espaço Inviola´vel,’’ Jornal do Brasil (August 11, 1987): Cidade, 2. 53. ‘‘Obra de Niemeyer provoca poleˆmica,’’ O Globo (December 30, 1986). 54. Zo´ zimo Barrozo do Amaral, ‘‘Nunca Mais!,’’ Jornal do Brasil (October 24, 1986): Cidade, 2. Emphasis mine. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. Dia´rio da Caˆmara Municipal do Rio de Janeiro (DCM), Ano XII (31) (March 23, 1988). 58. Regina Barreiros, ‘‘Monumento sobre tortura continua causando polemica,’’ Jornal do Brasil (August 9, 1987): 1, 16. 59. Ibid. 60. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003), 68–69. 61. Letter to the editor from Rafael Cardoso and ‘‘45 other signatories,’’ ‘‘Arquiteto official,’’ Jornal do Brasil (June 4, 1989): 1, 8. 62. Lei n. 1111, Dia´rio da Caˆmara Municipal do Rio de Janeiro (DCM), Ano XII (42), (April 13, 1988). 63. AGTNM, Advertisement for contributions for the construction of the moment, with a photograph of the scale model that would be given in appreciation of donations of 1,000 U.S. dollars. See also a note in ‘‘Oscar Niemeyer,’’ Veja SP (December 7, 1988) about a special exhibit of these models in the Skultura Galeria de Arte. 64. AGTNM, Letter from Moraes to Sr. Mindlin, May 2, 1989. 45 minute Video: ‘‘Soˆ nia Morta e Viva, a trajeto´ ria de uma geraçaõ.’’ 65. AGTNM, Letter to Amnesty International, July 17, 1990. 66. As cited in Andreas Huyssen, ‘‘Monuments and Memory in a Postmodern Age,’’ in The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History, ed. James E. Young (New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), 15. 67. See ‘‘Engendered Memories’’ in Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory, 76–88. 68. Mark Osiel, ‘‘Making Public Memory, Publicly,’’ in Atrocity, Collective Memory, and the Law (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1997), 240–292. 69. Faldenia Brito, ‘‘El Monumento Para No Olividar: Tortura Nunca Mais en Recife,’’ in Monumentos, Memoriales y Marcas Territoriales, eds. Elizabeth Jelin and Victoria Langland (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 2003), 113–125. Monument against Torture in Rio de Janeiro 515

70. ‘‘Assunto: Escultura de Oscar Niemeyer,’’ Letter from Betinho Duarte to the Minister of Justice, Dr. Tarso Genro, September 24, 2009. http://betinhoduarte.blogspot.com/2010/01/memorial-da-anistia-politica- ao_6994.html. Accessed January 31, 2012. 71. Ivan Lessa, ‘‘Arco da Incompreensa˜o,’’ BBCBrasil.com, April 19, 2004. http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticias/story/2004/04/040419_ivanlessa. shtml. Accessed January 31, 2012. Copyright of Peace & Change is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.