By PAULO VANNUCHI*
President Lula cannot allow his third term to end without new advances in the field of human rights in relation to the violence committed by the military against the country and its people.
The one who came out ahead this time was the old USP, that university always considered elitist and conservative. Excellent progress, very welcome.
In the same week, in Psychology, student Aurora Maria do Nascimento Furtado, who was killed under torture in Rio de Janeiro in November 1972, was symbolically awarded a diploma. Two days later, at FAU, Antonio Benetazzo, the unforgettable professor of my first Marxism course, received the same honorary ceremony, all sitting on the cushions of his apartment in the Copan Building, 1968, when I was 17 and he was 26.
About Aurora, Renato Tapajós wrote in slow motion, while Alípio Vianna Freire composed beautiful verses of combat: “There must be some poetry left. There must be at least the emblematic poetic certainty that the fight continues. And there must be acceptance of this certainty. Because I cannot alone dynamite the island of Manhattan and build a new Aurora”
At Benetazzo’s graduation from FAU, Ermínia Maricato donated to the college’s collection the painting that she had displayed for decades in her living room, where this guerrilla fighter and notable artist wrote some verses by Fernando Pessoa in a corner of the work: “Oh, what a pleasure it is not to fulfill a duty, to have a book to read and not do it! Reading is boring, studying is nothing.” (Benetazzo’s artistic production can be seen by visiting the digital collection of the Vladimir Herzog Institute).
Lawyer Eny Raimundo Moreira, recently honored by our mayor Margarida Salomão, in Juiz de Fora, managed to see Aurora's body, noting a 1-centimeter cranial depression, the result of the tourniquet that the torturers nicknamed “Crown of Christ”.
Regarding Benetazzo, a torturer who decided to speak anonymously reported that, after days of torture without giving up a single piece of information, his superiors gave the order for his execution, which was carried out with numerous shots.
Still rolling on the ground, Benê's almost-body was hit in the skull by a cobblestone, thrown as a gesture of mercy. The killer reported that, for a long time, whenever he opened a wardrobe in his house, he was always haunted by the guerrilla's face.
A year before Aurora and Benetazzo's graduation, the first step had been taken in Geology, with the graduation of students Ronaldo Queiroz and Alexandre Vannucchi Leme, murdered by Doi-Codi in 1973, the latter being the name that has baptized the DCE of USP since 1976, which also had as president Rui Falcão, federal deputy and former national president of the PT.
Regarding Queiroz, it is known that Doi-Codi agents jumped out of a police car at a bus stop on Avenida Angélica, asked another individual if he was that person and shot him in the face. He was the last president of the DCE before its reorganization a few years later.
There are many publications about Alexandre, the most impactful being I only said my name, by Camilo Vannuchi, which was accompanied by an educational podcast and a video-jogral recorded by artists from the anti-fascist field, such as Daniela Mercury, Dira Paes, Wagner Moura, Pauto Betti, Antonio Pitanga, Bete Mendes, Osmar Prado, Celso Frateschi, Petra Costa and others of the same brilliance.
Each of these gestures of recognition adds up to build a new momentum in defense of so-called Transitional Justice, which is essential to consolidate a democracy every time a country emerges from tyrannical periods.
The momentum has been growing. At the same USP, doctors Antonio Carlos Nogueira Cabral and Gelson Reicher, my colleagues at the Oswaldo Cruz Academic Center (CAOC) in 1969 and 1970, have already graduated. Arno Preis and João Leonardo da Silva Rocha were remembered at the Arcadas. Poli has scheduled graduation ceremonies for the coming months. Among the 15 graduates from FFLCH, the guerrilla Helenira Resende, who disappeared during the Araguaia Guerrilla War, was included. On December 9, a monument was reinaugurated at Praça do Relógio with the names of all the members of the USP community murdered by the dictatorship.
UnB has already graduated the late politician Honestino Guimarães, the last president of UNE before its reconstruction. Actions along the same lines have followed or are still planned by UFRJ, UFMG, UFPE, UFRN, UFBA, and many others.
The brutality with which these militants were executed at that moment of heroic resistance needed to be summarized in this text, uniting denunciation and memory in the search for a Brazil where the empire of torture never exists again. Never again.
However, it is important not to speak only of the terrible side of these stories. Instead, we must evoke the vital force and revolutionary energy that emanated from these fighters. So powerful that they cannot die.
Everything that these students represented in their time survived in the form of multiple avatars. With other faces and assuming other bodies, there they were confronting Erasmo Dias at PUC in 1977; their cries echoed in Praça Charles Miller, in Boca Maldita, in Anhangabaú, in Cinelândia and throughout the entire country of Diretas Já; they demanded the overthrow of Collor in 1992, with indigenous paintings on their faces; they joined the workers' strikes in Vila Euclides.
If they had survived, it is likely that they would have joined the construction of the PT, as did Zé Dirceu, Travassos, Genoíno, Vladimir Palmeira and many of our founders.
At the end of 2024, with everything we already know about the municipal elections, Trump's victory, the Gaza massacre and the murderous plot of the terrorist far-right, evoking those who fell is remembering, here in the PT and in the left (which has not died and will never die, my dear Safatle) the strength of this immortal energy of those who fight for justice, equality and freedom.
The trajectory of those who pursue these historical horizons has always been marked by victories and defeats, cycles of enthusiasm or discouragement. These opposites coexist in today's context, and are difficult to decipher. Ignoring current advances contributes to demotivation. Exaggerating them only serves to incur new defeats.
USP, for example, which once had dictatorship leaders such as Alfredo Buzaid, Gama e Silva and Delfim Netto in important positions, should be applauded today for this pioneering gesture. It is a sign that it can make much more progress. The institution, which was born with the surnames Mesquita and Salles Oliveira, created a Truth Commission in 2013 that produced a merciless x-ray of the persecution and repression that befell it.
Among his 14 recommendations, he proposed the graduation of students and tributes to teachers, who have been murdered by almost fifty people, many of whose bodies have not yet been located so that the age-old rite of a farewell funeral could be carried out.
It has proven that hundreds and hundreds of prisoners, including students, teachers and staff, have been subjected to physical or psychological torture as a general rule. Persecution of all kinds. An incalculable number of people affected by the prevailing atmosphere of terror. Countless occupations of its main campus by military and police forces. And it is known that a similar scenario was reproduced in university life throughout the country.
The Truth Commission at USP was one of many – more than 100 – that spread across union and student organizations, universities, state governments, legislatures and the capital of São Paulo itself. They were born as a result of the historic rupture that was the achievement of the National Truth Commission (CNV), conceived during the Lula government based on the controversial PNDH-3 and implemented during the Dilma government. Its Final Report was released on December 10, 2014, including 29 recommendations.
This gigantic inventory of the massive violation of human rights during the military regime, a sum of thousands and thousands of documents and testimonies that name names, with precise dates and numbers, must be considered a true starting point for changes that recent years have shown to be of dramatic urgency.
The creators of the CNV were based on a central thesis: if the systematic violations promoted by the repressive military apparatus were not examined, individualized and processed in every way, building a containment wall so that they would never be repeated, they would inevitably return.
This thesis was tragically proven by the advent of Bolsonarism and the threat to democracy that it continues to represent today. In short: without implementing the CNV recommendations, military academies will once again produce other Bolsonaros, Helenos, Villas-Boas and Bragas Netos.
Human rights defenders, jurists, intellectuals, artists, family members and victims of that brutal cycle of repression demand justice and a settling of accounts that will hardly be comparable to the imprisonment of generals and torturers that occurred in Argentina, for example.
The two historical contexts of transition were very different and models should never be copied. But it is important to recognize that the failure to implement the 29 recommendations mentioned above is related to the fascist advance over democratic institutions. It is related to Dilma's impeachment, voted on in the Chamber of Deputies with praise for the greatest torturer. It is related to the crimes committed against Lula by Lava Jato. It is related to the January 8th attempt. It is related to the murderous conspiracy described in the 884 pages of a report with robust evidence.
If, in this 2024-2025 turnaround, Brazil is going through alarming difficulties generated by the most reactionary Legislature in our history, if Faria Lima continues trying to impose his rentier interests against the acute social demands of our people, it is also true that the favorable scenario for unblocking the Transitional Justice agenda becomes more promising every day, even on the screens of the rogue Rede Globo.
The film's explosive success helps a lot. I'm still here, which reveals the tortured murder and disappearance of Rubens Paiva, a PTB parliamentarian who was impeached in 1964, with a masterful performance by Fernanda Torres as the heroine Eunice Paiva, who continued to fight for the upbringing of her many children and taking up all the great democratic causes.
More than 2,5 million Brazilians have already left the movie theaters, overcome with emotion at discovering a truth that the Armed Forces are stubbornly stubborn in denying.
Under emotion, they manage to connect this lie with the flood of other lies that have taken over conservative legislatures, electoral campaigns, courts of different types, many churches, media outlets and social networks. These lies were instrumental in enabling Bolsonaro's victory and the assault on civil institutions by hordes of military personnel.
The poisoning of the National Security Doctrine, still taught today in military and police training, continues to live on. This doctrine points to the ghost of communism hidden in the wardrobes of the guilty consciences of those who ordered, were complicit in or connived at the torture and disappearances. The ghost of communism that they see in every classroom, in every play, in every book, in every workers' union.
Our President Lula cannot allow his third term – which Brazil would prefer to be followed by a fourth – to end without new progress in this field.
His predilection for the so-called middle path is well known. I myself, his advisor for many years and coming from another cycle of struggles, had the privilege of learning a lot from him about this. Remember that the concept of the middle path is already present in philosophers such as Aristotle and Descartes.
But what middle path would be possible in this case?
The one that the correlation of forces makes possible, but necessarily including public recognition of violations by the Armed Forces and police commands.
For citizens to once again respect the Brazilian military and even be proud of their role in National Defense, so that the poor stop fearing police action in the outskirts of cities, it is urgent to restructure all their training curricula.
Without mincing words or euphemisms, the military owes Brazil a formal and solemn declaration that they will not tolerate torture under any circumstances, that human rights will be taught and assimilated in all units, that high-ranking officers will receive classes in Constitutional Law so that they never again fail to recognize the subordination of all armed forces to the civil authorities emanating from popular vote.
Starting with the approval of laws that categorically prohibit the participation of military personnel and police officers still on active duty in any electoral mandate dispute.
* Paulo Vannuchi, journalist, was minister of the Special Secretariat for Human Rights in the Lula government (2006-2010). He is currently a member of the Arns Commission. Author, among other books, of Youth and Society – Work, Education, Culture and Participation (Perseus Abram). [https://amzn.to/41AZX4f]
Originally published in the magazine Theory and Debate.
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