Brazil
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The AI-5 was an instrument intended to intimidate people. There was no stipulation as to how long it was to remain in effect. It allowed the dictatorship to repress all opposition and dissent. However, it was by no means the first emergency measure created by the armed forces, nor did it represent a ‘coup within a coup’ carried out by a radical faction of officers to increase their powers of political repression. The AI-5 was part of a whole range of emergency measures that were, in fact, legal. The military had spent a great deal of time and energy creating a legal framework for their arbitrary measures – the ‘legality of a state of emergency’.60 These measures imposed severe limitations on the freedom of action of the other powers. They legalized the punishment of dissidents, prevented the opposition from organizing, and restricted any kind of political participation. The first Institutional Act had been drawn up in secret and promulgated eight days after the coup d’état. It was signed by the self-proclaimed Supreme Command of the Revolution – formed by General Costa e Silva, Admiral Rademaker and Brigadier Correia de Mello – and contained eleven articles. It transferred part of the powers of the Legislature to the Executive, limited the powers of the Judiciary, suspended individual guarantees, and allowed the president to annul mandates – and deny political rights to those whose mandates had been cancelled for a period of ten years – and to dismiss civil servants and members of the armed forces. In order for this measure to have some sort of legal basis, the military granted themselves constitutional powers and included the manipulation of the Judiciary in the ‘Introduction’ of the First Institutional Act: ‘The victorious Revolution […] is the most radical form of expression of the Constituent Power.’61
To this day, the armed forces employ the term ‘revolution’ to refer to the coup d’état. This is due to the first Institutional Act, which guaranteed the legitimacy of the system and institutionalized repression. Because of the number of other Institutional Acts that were to follow, it became known as the Institutional Act no. 1 and gave General Castello Branco the legal means to imprison thousands of people, as well as to create detention centres out of football stadiums, such as Caio Martins stadium in Niterói, and to transform merchant ships and warships into prisons.62 The AI-1 also allowed the military police to arrest people en masse, close off streets, conduct individual and house-to-house searches, all of which occurred in 1964 – in Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, São Paulo and Pernambuco – when around 50,000 people were detained in a deployment that the police baptized ‘Operation Cleanup’.
The AI-1 also provided the government with the legal means to purge the civil service. There were two main procedures. In the first, the military set up Special Inquiry Commissions at all levels of government administration, including ministries, government bodies and state-owned companies. In the second, they set up Military Police Inquiries (IPMs) to investigate the activities of civil servants in the public administration.63 The Military Police Inquiries were usually conducted by army colonels, chosen for their ideological radicalism. Being appointed to the post was a sign of prestige. The colonels were invested with police powers of a new type: they were not required to submit proof, and, above all, they were encouraged to hand down arbitrary punishments. In the first weeks after the coup d’état, 763 inquiries were established. In one year 10,000 defendants and 40,000 witnesses were submitted to inquiries that showed complete contempt for the rules of justice.
Between 1964 and 1973 thousands of Brazilians were victims of the purges. It is estimated that 4,841 people lost their political rights, had their mandates annulled, were forced into retirement or lost their jobs under the dictatorship – 2,990 of these under the AI-1 alone. In the army, navy and air force, 1,313 soldiers were transferred to the reserves. These included 43 generals, 532 officers of all ranks, 708 subaltern officers and sergeants, and 30 soldiers and sailors.64 These people were treated with particular cruelty: they were declared ‘dead’. They thus lost everything acquired during a long career – promotion, retirement, health care and benefits. Their wives received a widow’s pension. The AI-1 was applied for a limited period, until 1 April 1964, the last day of President João Goulart’s mandate. However, in October 1965, President Castello Branco laid to rest any doubts over whether or not the dictatorship was temporary. He prolonged his mandate and imposed the AI-2 by decree. Apart from measures to strengthen the Executive, the AI-2 changed the rules for elections. Direct presidential elections by popular vote were abolished and all political parties were forbidden.
After the AI-2, Carlos Lacerda returned to the opposition, and in great style. In October 1966 he launched the Broad Front, an implausible opposition group that, in addition to Mr Lacerda, included Juscelino Kubitschek and João Goulart.65 The idea of an understanding between the three political enemies was Mr Lacerda’s. The Broad Front united almost all the political forces that had been active before 1964 – including the communists. There were, however, two exceptions. Leonel Brizola, exiled in Uruguay, refused to meet with Carlos Lacerda; and Miguel Arraes – the main leader of the left in the northeast – wanted nothing to do with the Broad Front. Mr Arraes was one of two governors who had been arrested by the dictatorship (Governor Seixas Dória, of Sergipe, was the other).
If the idea behind the Broad Front was to choose a candidate for the presidency, then the main beneficiary was Carlos Lacerda himself: João Goulart was in exile and Juscelino Kubitschek, despite his lack of hostility towards the military, had been the subject of a parliamentary inquiry regarding his misappropriation of public funds. Despite the fact that there was no proof, his mandate was annulled and his political rights were suspended for ten years. But the Broad Front represented a genuine alternative to the military. It brought together three of the most important national leaders, and provided an opportunity for political participation by organizing rallies, public meetings and street protests. Furthermore, they developed a plan to defeat the dictatorship through the vote. Their goal was to obtain the restoration of civilian power, general amnesty, the creation of political parties, the right to strike, a Constituent Assembly and direct elections. It was too good to last. In April 1968, President Costa e Silva declared the Broad Front illegal and forbade its activities. The military never forgave Carlos Lacerda, whom they considered a traitor. In December 1968 his name headed the list of politicians whose mandates had been annulled under the AI-5 and he was arrested. He was never to return to political life.
The Institutional Act no. 3 had been signed by General Castello Branco in February 1966 to directly eliminate elections for state governor. A complementary act changed the correlation of political forces in Congress and the State Assemblies by founding just two political parties: one that supported the government, the National Renewal Alliance (Arena), and the other that represented the opposition, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). Thus, the period of multiple political parties that began in 1946 came to an end. At the same time, the Brazilian people lost their democratic rights. For the next seventeen years there were no elections for governors, and elections for president had to wait for another twenty-three years. Those who wanted to stay in politics, and had not been arrested or had their mandates annulled, had to choose a party. It was not easy to create the Brazilian Democratic Movement – most politicians who had remained active ran to take shelter in the National Renewal Alliance (Arena). The government party united the conservative elite. Virtually all the National Democratic Union (UDN) deputies joined, as did a good many from the Social Democratic Party (PSD), and even a few from the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB).66 The National Renewal Alliance (Aliança Renovadara Nacional, or ARENA) was incapable of acting as a real political party would, nor did it produce alternative policies. Members were incurably subservient to the military, approving virtually every project the Executive sent to Congress. The party had offices throughout Brazil and was rapidly established as a broad-based political party, sustained by an extensive network of politicians, sympathizers, militants and voters. It guaranteed
civilian support for the government and was a source for generating consent.
The National Renewal Alliance entered history as the ‘yes, sir’ party, and the military likewise expected the Brazilian Democratic Movement to be docile, to at least feign agreement. After all, had they not gone along with the idea of playing the role of opposition? In fact, between 1966 and 1970, when real opposition to the dictatorship began to consolidate, those activists saw no reason to trust the Brazilian Democratic Movement.67 Many doubted the sincerity of a weak party that was playing the dictatorship’s game. When the time came for parliamentary elections, the revolutionary left led a campaign to abstain from voting, or to leave one’s vote blank, which was highly successful.68 In 1966 the combination of annulled and blank votes accounted for 21 per cent of the total; in 1970 they reached 30 per cent, in an evident sign that the electors rejected the puppet two-party system that had been imposed by the military.
Members of the Brazilian Democratic Movement now realized they had been backed into a corner. Nevertheless, between dissolving the party and continuing to operate despite the annulment of mandates and the suspension of political rights, the party leadership chose the latter. This leadership was composed of politicians from the Brazilian Labour Party and the Social Democratic Party, and they brought the party together around a single issue – the return to democracy. Eventually, they took the risk of becoming a true opposition. Between 1967 and 1968 deputies and senators from the Brazilian Democratic Movement took part in protest marches and strikes and began to denounce the government’s arbitrary measures, the removal of political rights and the predominance of foreign capital in Congress. They paid a high price: the AI-5 devastated the party – out of 139 representatives, 60 had their mandates annulled. By 1970 the party had been reduced to 89 deputies.
THE MACHINE FOR KILLING PEOPLE
In the first days of June 1964, General Golbery do Couto e Silva left the offices of the Research and Social Studies Institute, and walked a few blocks to his new office on the twelfth floor of the Finance Ministry in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The general had a budget the equivalent of $260,000 – of which half of the funds were secret – and, with his new appointment, he had the status of a government minister. He had access to data on 400,000 Brazilians compiled by the Situation Analysis Group,69 a secret department of the Research and Social Studies Institute of which he was the director. General Couta e Silva then used this data as the foundation for the National Information Service, yet another agency. The general’s idea was to put this intelligence-gathering agency at the disposition of the Executive and – more importantly – to use it for obtaining information at all levels of public administration, as well as in society as a whole.70 General Couta e Silva had a true vocation for political conspiracy.71 He was extremely reserved, which only added to the mythology surrounding him. He never spoke in public, never gave interviews, always acted behind the scenes, and was the éminence grise behind the dictatorship. Behind his back he was called ‘The satanic Dr Go’, an allusion to the villain of the James Bond film The Satanic Dr No.72 General Golbery do Couto e Silva’s notoriety was well deserved. Within ten years of the National Information Service being created, it had become the centre for the collection and analysis of information that was to feed the repression apparatus created by the military.
In 1966 the most secret department of the dictatorship’s intelligence services was created under the auspices of the National Information Service and linked to the Ministry of Foreign Relations. It was called the Centre of Information from Abroad (CIEx).73 The centre’s agents worked in foreign countries. They were employed as staff at the Brazilian embassies and their task was to collect as much information as possible on the activities of Brazilian exiles. The apparatus set up by the military to identify and liquidate their opponents was highly complex, the National Information Service was in charge of the entire system, and the CIEx was just a part of the picture.
Until May 1967 the dictatorship simply used the repression structure that already existed in Brazilian states. This included the Departments of Political and Social Order (Dops), which were subordinated to the state Secretaries of Public Security, and the civil police. The latter worked in police stations designated to investigate theft (Delegacias de Furtos e Roubos), which were notorious for their corruption and use of violence. But in 1967 there was a new addition: the Army Information Centre (CIE). The Army Information Centre was involved both in the collection of information and in direct repression. Actually, it was probably the most lethal of the repression mechanisms. Equally dreaded was the Navy Information Centre (Cenimar), which had been formed in 1957, and the Air Force Information Centre, which was created later, in 1970.74
Starting in 1969, the military regime’s repression mechanisms became even more sophisticated with the creation in São Paulo of the Operação Bandeirante (Oban – Operation Bandeirante), made up of officers from the three armed forces and the civil and military police. Their mission was to collect information, interrogate suspects, and organize military deployments to combat armed opposition forces. Operation Bandeirante was financed by Paulista businessmen as well as executives from multinational companies – Ultragaz, Ford, Volkswagen, Supergel and Copersucar. At a meeting with the then minister Delfim Netto, organized by the owner of the Banco Mercantil, Gastão Vidigal, a system of fixed contributions to the organization was negotiated.75 The details of this system are among the dictatorship’s most well-kept secrets. Operation Bandeirante was also the model for Operation Centres for Internal Defence (Codi), created in 1970, and the Internal Operation Detachments (DOI). These two organizations were under the direct command of the Army Minister, Orlando Geisel (President Geisel’s older brother). They were responsible for most of the repression operations in the cities and always acted together as planning and coordination units. The Internal Operation Detachments was the operational wing of the Operation Centres for Internal Defence.76 But even before these various departments the dictatorship regularly engaged in illegal emergency measures and acts of repression. These occurred in at least three circumstances. The first circumstance, beginning in 1969, was in the cases of ‘disappearances’. The vast majority of these so-called disappearances involved cover-ups, either of the murder of a prisoner, or of the destiny of the individual concerned, which increased uncertainty among the opposition. The second circumstance, beginning in 1970, was when evidence was destroyed that could have identified the bodies of individuals tortured at the army’s clandestine centres. This was done by removing fingerprints and teeth, then cutting up the bodies and burning them in piles. The third circumstance, which began in 1964, was when torture was used systematically as an interrogation technique.77
The army used torture from the beginning of General Castello Branco’s government. The practice spread like a virus, thanks to the silent collusion of those in power – both civilians and military. Between 1964 and 1978 the use of torture was state policy. Torturers became ‘untouchable’ and the practice moved far beyond the walls of the barracks. For a systematic policy of torture to work, there must be judges who overlook obviously fraudulent prosecutions and accept forced or unreliable confessions and falsified technical findings. Staff in hospitals have to be willing to collude, by forging death certificates and records of the circumstances of death. They also have to treat prisoners who have been the victims of physical violence. A government that relies on torture must also be able to count on people in business who are prepared to make unofficial donations so that the political repression machine can operate efficiently. In Brazil the practice of political torture was not the result of the actions of a few sadistic individuals, and this is precisely what makes the situation so scandalous and painful. It was a killing machine conceived according to the logic of combat: liquidate the enemy before it acquires the capacity to fight. Torture and physical repression were undertaken in a methodical and coordinated way, with various degrees of intensity, in different environments and locatio
ns. In the first years of the dictatorship, the priority targets were left-wing activists who had fought for social change during the Goulart government. But from 1966 on, when the students returned to the streets and led the great protest marches of 1967 and 1968, they too became targets of the military government.78
It had never been so dangerous to be a student in Brazil. In 1968 news that the police had shot high-school student Edson Luís de Lima Souto at point-blank range during a protest in his high-school canteen (the Calabouço) in Rio de Janeiro affected people all over the country. His death marked the transformation of student protests into a mass social movement. More than six hundred people attended the seventh-day Mass, which was celebrated in Rio de Janeiro by Dom José de Castro Pinto, the vicar general of the diocese. With the Candelária church surrounded by hundreds of Marines and mounted police, the priests held hands and formed a corridor to allow the congregation to leave in safety. As he left, the literary critic Otto Maria Carpeaux79 murmured emotionally, ‘Unforgettable, Fathers.’80