PRAISING DICTATORSHIP AND DISRESPECTING MEMORY

President Jair Bolsonaro, servants of his Administration and his supporters act against national and international recommendations about the Brazilian dictatorship by constantly praising the regime and disregarding the memory of those directly affected by the oppressive State of that period.  

During the first year of his term, in 2019, Bolsonaro determined the date that marks the military coup to be celebrated. In extremely revisionist speeches, he has affirmed that there was no dictatorship in the country, an idea that was later reproduced by, at least, two of the Ministers that were part of his government at that time, Ernesto Araújo and Ricardo Vélez Rodríguez. In 2020, Bolsonaro welcomed a lieutenant colonel that took part in the dictatorship repression apparatus, while his Vice-President, Hamilton Mourão, complimented another military officer that was admittedly involved in torture and enforced disappearance cases, Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra.

Moreover, Federal Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s son, and the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, have declared their support to the legal measures taken by the dictatorship which have allowed the expansion of the political persecution, such as the Institutional Act No. 5, responsible for suspending political rights and other harsh violations on human rights. Their speeches suggest that those legal changes could still be implemented up to the present days.

Violations and rights

In March 1964, the democratically elected government of João Goulart was deposed by a military coup headed by the Armed Forces, a moment that gave rise to the Brazilian civic-military dictatorship that lasted until 1985. The Brazilian National Truth Commission (Comissão Nacional da Verdade, in Portuguese, or CNV) concluded that this historical period was marked by systematic human rights violations perpetrated by the State, which implemented a silencing and persecution institutional policy against political opponents. The CNV confirmed, at least, 434 deaths or enforced disappearances that have been carried out by government agents and registered several situations of censorship, torture and arbitrary imprisonments. 

In 2010, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognized that the dictatorship disrespected the commitments with regard to the protection and guarantee of human rights provided by the American Convention on Human Rights. The Court also declared that the Amnesty Law – that, in 1979, granted amnesty to all persons that have ‘committed political crimes or others related to these ones’ during the dictatorship – could not prevent the investigation of the violations perpetrated by the dictatorial regime and the accountability for the actions of the agents involved.

The CVN has deliberated a series of recommendations in this same sense since 2011. The Commision determined the Armed Forces to publicly recognize their responsibility in several rights violations and that the public agents involved should be investigated and juridically held responsible for the actions. Finally, it also suggested that any official ‘celebration’ events to the military coup should be forbidden, and that the memory of the committed violations should be preserved at an institutional level. This last recommendation is especially relevant in the current context since different narratives appear to describe what happened during the Brazilian dictatorship, a scenario that got worse in the last years. 

Read below a selection of cases that demonstrate the constant praising by government members to a period recognized as violent and antidemocratic in the history of Brazil.