This same Secretary, in a tone of complaint, expresses the process of creating Brazilian political memory over the conflict-ridden years of the dictatorship:
"The responsibility for turning this page of history falls to the Brazilians who are more balanced. However, there is always somebody poking at these things. And this is a way of freezing, in the minds of Brazilian, a condemnation of facts that were indeed traumatic, but that we can also see - if we compare them with what happened in Uruguay and Argentina - were not as widespread. It was a distortion, an open war. But, is there a more serious distortion than the kidnapping of two ambassadors?(17) [...] The nation indeed had to turn this page".
In other words, statements such as these confirm that the military lost the battle over the memory of the period, but they insist on the convenience of social amnesia. As if forgetting was superior to remembering, as if it were a collective good. The struggle to keep memory alive is being evaluated as a form of revenge, even of injustice. We can also see that, despite limitations, the Brazilian State has had an agenda of reconciling past and present, recognizing the existence of crimes and abuses committed by political authorities in relation to political opponents.
In terms of civil rights, Brazil is only beginning to adopt a public safety policy based on the principles of human rights. The horrors of the dictatorship gave legitimacy to political rights before the same happened with civil rights. But this is a matter for another investigation.
Text prepared for the XIIth International Oral History Conference
(Sub-theme Trauma, memory and reconciliation)
Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, June, 24-27, 2002
