Violence, Trauma, and Frustration in Brazil and Argentina: The Role of the Historian

Fico, Carlos

doi:10.1590/2237-101X014027003

Abstracts

Violence is one the main analytical keys for the so called "traumatic events" in the 20^th century which include the extremely violent military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). From this premise, this article argues that although Brazil's military dictatorship was also very repressive, the notion of frustration, rather than violence, is the most adequate to understand the process. These questions necessarily evoke the difficulties historians experience regarding subjects that are taboo, sensitive or traumatic. The article concludes with a proposal on how to solve these difficulties.

traumatic events; military dictatorship; violence, frustration; Latin America.

Partindo do pressuposto de que a violência é uma das principais chaves analíticas dos chamados "eventos traumáticos" do século XX e do fato de que a ditadura militar argentina (1976-1983) foi extremamente violenta, o artigo sustenta que, embora a ditadura militar brasileira também tenha sido muito repressiva, a noção de frustração, antes que a de violência, é a mais adequada ao seu entendimento. Tais questões, inevitavelmente, remetem às dificuldades vivenciadas pelo historiador em sua relação com os temas tabu, sensíveis ou traumáticos, para as quais o artigo apresenta, ao final, uma proposta de equacionamento.

eventos traumáticos; ditadura militar; violência; frustração; América Latina.

Violence is one the main analytical keys for the so called "traumatic events" in the 20^th century which include the extremely violent military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). From this premise, this article argues that although Brazil's military dictatorship was also very repressive, the notion of frustration, rather than violence, is the most adequate to understand the process. These questions necessarily evoke the difficulties historians experience regarding subjects that are taboo, sensitive or traumatic. The article concludes with a proposal on how to solve these difficulties.

traumatic events; military dictatorship; violence, frustration; Latin America.

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*
Translated by Jones de Freitas and revised by Phil Courneyeur.
1
¹ Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Brace & World, 1970), 3.
2
² Andreas Huyssen, En busca del futuro perdido: Cultura y memoria en tiempos de globalización (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001), 17.
3
³ Henry Rousso, "El duelo es imposible y necesario", Puentes (Diciembre 2000): 39.
4
⁴ Dominick LaCapra, History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 269.
5
⁵ Dominick LaCapra, "Trauma, Absence, Loss," Critical Inquiry, v. 25, n. 4 (Summer, 1999): 698.
6
⁶ Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado. Cultura de la memoria y giro subjetivo. Una discusión (México: Siglo XXI, 2006), 60-61.
7
⁷ See Guillermo O'Donnell's impressive article "La cosecha del miedo," published in Nexos en línea, Mexico, 4. Jan. 1983.
8
⁸ On this theme, see: Thomas L. Haskell, "Objectivity: Perspective as Problem and Solution", History and Theory, v. 43, n. 3 (Oct. 2004): 357, and Pieter Lagrou, "L'histoire du temps présent en Europe depuis 1945, ou comment se constitue et se développe un nouveau champ disciplinaire", La Revue pour l'Histoire du CNRS, n. 9 (Nov. 2003), accessed February 24, 2013, doi: 10.4000/histoire-cnrs.561.
9
⁹ Patricia Weiss Fagen. "Repression and State Security", in Fear at the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America, eds. Juan Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagen and Manuel Antonio Garreton. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 63. Joan Dassin. "Testimonial Literature and the Armed Struggle in Brazil," in Fear at the Edge, 174. Maria Helena Moreira Alves. "Cultures of Fear, Cultures of Resistance: The New Labor Movement in Brazil," in Fear at the Edge, 189.
10
¹⁰Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings. "Introducción: la violencia y el miedo en América Latina," in Las sociedades del miedo: el legado de la guerra civil, la violencia y el terror en América Latina, Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings, eds. (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2001), 37.
11
¹¹ Juan E. Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagen and Manuel Antonio Garretón, "Introduction. Fear: a Cultural and Political Construct," in Fear at the Edge, 2.
12
¹²Norbert Lechner, "Some People Die of Fear: Fear as a Political Problem," in Fear at the Edge, 28.
13
¹³ Manuel Antonio Garretón, "Fear in Military Regimes: An Overwiew. Fear: a Cultural and Political Construct," in Fear at the Edge, 13.
14
¹⁴ Patricia Weiss Fagen, "Repression and State Security," in Fear at the Edge, 41.
15
¹⁵ Two well-founded syntheses of the recent Argentinian history are found in Paula Canelo, El proceso en su laberinto: la interna militar de Videla a Bignone (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2008), and Marcos Novaro and Vicente Palermo, La dictadura militar (1976-1983): del golpe de Estado a la restauración democrática (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2003).
16
¹⁶ Emilio Dellasoppa, Ao inimigo, nem justiça: violência política na Argentina 1943-1983 (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1998), 30.
17
¹⁷ Guillermo O'Donnel, 1966-1973 El Estado burocrático autoritario: triunfos, derrotas y crisis (Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano, 1982), 266.
18
¹⁸ Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición: los campos de concentración en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Colihue, 2008), 153.
19
¹⁹ Carlos A. Floria and César A. Garcia Belsunce, "La cultura de la violencia," in Historia política de la Argentina contemporánea 1880-1983 (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988), 208.
20
²⁰ On those episodes, consult, among others, Oscar Anzorena, Tiempo de violencia y utopia, 1966-1976 (Buenos Aires: Contrapunto, 1988), Richard Gillespie, Soldier of Perón. Argentina's Montoneros (Buenos Aires: Fundación Arturo Illia, 1988), Andrew Graham-Yool, De Perón a Videla (Buenos Aires: Legasa, 1989), and Alejandro Lanusse, Mi testimonio (Buenos Aires: Lasserre, 1977).
21
²¹ I thank Maria Paula Araujo for kindly providing her text "Memória e debate sobre a luta armada no Brasil e Argentina" for consultation. Her text will soon be published in the collected works "História e memória das ditaduras do século XX" by Editora FGV, Rio de Janeiro.
22
²² "Mario Firmenich y Norma Arrostito cuentan como murió Aramburu," La Causa Peronista, 3 de setiembre de 1974, Año 1, n. 9, 25-30.
23
²³ Pillar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición, 20.
24
²⁴ XI Conference of Armies, Montevideo, Oct. 23, 1975. Clarín, Buenos Aires, 24 Oct. 1975.
25
²⁵La Nación, Buenos Aires, 22 Jan. 1976.
26
²⁶La Opinión, Buenos Aires, 25 Nov. 1976.
27
²⁷La Prensa, Buenos Aires, 16 Aug. 1977.
28
²⁸La Opinión, Buenos Aires, 29 May 1978.
29
²⁹ Julio E. Nosiglia, Botín de Guerra (Buenos Aires: Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 2007), 163.
30
³⁰ Pillar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición, 149-151.
31
³¹ For an overall picture of Brazil's recent history, consult Thomas Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-1985 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), and the four volumes by Elio Gaspari, A ditadura envergonhada, A ditadura escancarada, A ditadura encurralada, and A ditadura derrotada (Rio de Janeiro: Companhia das Letras, 2002-2003).
32
³² Carlos Fico, Como eles agiam: os subterrâneos da ditadura militar - espionagem e polícia política (Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2001).
33
³³ "Divisão de Segurança e Informações do Ministério da Justiça" Fund, Arquivo Nacional, Series "Movimentos Contestatórios à Ordem Política e Social", Censorship Report, file n. 50756, box 592/05132, pages 6-24.
34
³⁴ Carlos Fico, Reinventando o otimismo: ditadura, propaganda e imaginário social no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 1997).
35
³⁵ On the "Estado Novo", see Lucia Lippi Oliveira, Mônica Pimenta Velloso and Angela Maria de Castro Gomes, eds., Estado Novo: ideologia e poder (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1982), and Dulce Pandolfi, ed., Repensando o Estado Novo (Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 1999).
36
³⁶ See, among others, Fernando Gabeira, O que é isso, companheiro? (Rio de Janeiro: Codecri, 1979), and Alfredo Sirkis, Os carbonários: memórias da guerrilha perdida (São Paulo: Global, 1980).
37
³⁷ Heloisa Amélia Greco, "Dimensões fundacionais da luta pela anistia," PhD diss., Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2003, and Fabíola Brigante Del Porto, "A luta pela anistia no regime militar brasileiro: a constituição da sociedade civil no país e a construção da cidadania," PhD diss., Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2002.
38
³⁸ The military regime allowed the political parties to function during most of the period, although it imposed a series of restrictive measures to their action.
39
³⁹ Carlos Fico, "A negociação parlamentar da anistia de 1979 e o chamado 'perdão aos torturadores'," Revista Anistia Política e Justiça de Transição, n. 4 (Jul-Dec. 2010): 318-332.
40
⁴⁰ Ricardo Kotscho, Explode um novo Brasil: diário da Campanha das Diretas (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1984).
41
⁴¹ Douglas Attila Marcelino, "O corpo da Nova República: funerais de presidentes e memória de Tancredo Neves," PhD diss., Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2011.
42
⁴² Hans U. Gumbrecht, "After 1945: Latency as Origin of the Present". The manuscript was kindly provided by the author for consultation. Forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2013.
43
⁴³ In 2012, the movement Levante Popular da Juventude (Popular Youth Uprising) promoted in Brazil the "esculachos," inspired by the Argentinian escraches, where protesters publicly shamed alleged agents of repression with chants and graffiti on their current residence's wall.
44
⁴⁴ Symptomatically, the dossiers in Brazil's national archives concerning repression victims who were not left-wing militants (public servants, for example) are all but unpublished, unlike those related to the armed struggle. See Carlos Fico, "História do tempo presente, eventos traumáticos e documentos sensíveis: o caso brasileiro," Varia Historia, v. 28, n. 47 (Jan.-Jul. 2012): 43-59.
45
⁴⁵Márcio Seligmann-Silva, "Direito pós-fáustico: por um novo tribunal como espaço de rememoração e elaboração dos traumas sociais", in Carlos Fico, Maria Paula Araujo and Monica Grin (Eds.), Violência na história: memória, trauma e reparação (Rio de Janeiro: Ponteio, 2012), 107.
46
⁴⁶ Marina Franco and Florência Levín, "El passado cercano en clave historiográfica," in Marina Franco and Florência Levín, comps., Historia reciente: perspectivas y desafíos para un campo en construcción (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2007), 62.
47
⁴⁷ Roberto Pittaluga, "Miradas sobre el pasado reciente argentino: las escrituras en torno a la militancia setentista (1983-2005)," in Historia reciente, 148.
48
⁴⁸ Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado, 16.
49
⁴⁹ De Oratore, livro II, cap. 9, 36. "Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis, qua voce alia, nisi oratoris, immortalitati commendatur?"
50
⁵⁰ See, among many other works, Saul Friedlander, ed., Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).
51
⁵¹ Mark S. Phillips, "Relocating Inwardness: Historical Distance and the Transition from Enlightenment to Romantic Historiography", PMLA, v. 118, n. 3 (May, 2003): 442-443.
52
⁵² Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado, 23.
53
⁵³ Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado, 93.
54
⁵⁴Folha de S.Paulo, São Paulo, 8 May 2008.
55
⁵⁵ An exception was annotated by Pilar Calveiro: "Esto es lo desquiciante, los desaparecedores solían ser hombres comunes y corrientes que también podían ir a misa los domingos". Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición, 143.
56
⁵⁶ The classical example is the album "Auschwitz 21.6.1944", today at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with photographs of SS officers having a great time in that concentration camp during the summer and fall of 1944, when the gas chambers worked at full steam.
57
⁵⁷ Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 26 and 41.
58
⁵⁸ Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado, 83.
59
⁵⁹ Christopher R. Browning, "German Memory, Judicial Interrogation, and Historical Reconstruction: Writing Perpetrator History from Postwar Testimony", in Probing the Limits of Representation, 27.
60
⁶⁰Folha de S.Paulo. 5 Feb. 2012.
61
⁶¹ See, among others, Dori Laub, "Truth and Testimony: the Process and the Struggle," in Cathy Caruth, ed., Trauma. Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 61-75.
62
⁶² "Apud veteres enim nemo conscribebat historiam, nisi is qui interfuisset, et ea quae conscribenda essent vidisset." For an accessible version in English: Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, trans. Priscilla Throop (Charlotte: MedievalMS, 2005), vol. 1, 1, 41, 1.
63
⁶³ Leopold von Ranke, "Burnet's History of His Own Times." in Leopold von Ranke, A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, 1859-1869 (New York: AMS Press, 1966), vol. 6, 46.
64
⁶⁴ Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 36.
65
⁶⁵ Eric Hobsbawm, "Un historien et son temps présent." in: Institut d'histoire du Temps Présent, Ecrire l'histoire du temps présent. En hommage à François Bédarida (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1993), 102.
66
⁶⁶ Leonard Krieger, Ranke: The Meaning of History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 271.
67
⁶⁷ F. R. Ankersmit, Sublime Historical Experience (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2005).
68
⁶⁸ The proposal intends to overcome the historicist and narrativist understanding of the problem. Jaap Den Hollander, "Contemporary History and the Art of Self-Distancing", History and Theory, , v. 50, n. 4 (December 2011): 51-67.
69
⁶⁹ Hayden White, "Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth," in Probing the Limits of Representation, 37.
70
⁷⁰ Karl Popper, "The Rationality of Scientific Revolution," in Karl Popper, Problems of Scientific Revolution: Progress and Obstacles to Progress in the Sciences (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 85.
71
⁷¹ Hayden White, "The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-Sublimation," Critical Inquiry, v. 9, n. 1 (Sept. 1982): 131.
72
⁷² Hayden White, "Historical Emplotment," 52.
73
⁷³ Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 26 and 41.
74
⁷⁴ Emile Benveniste, "Ativo e médio no verbo", in Problemas de linguística geral (São Paulo: USP, 1976). Also, see Roberto Gomes Camacho, "Em defesa da categoria de voz média no português", D.E.L.T.A., v. 19, n. 1 (2003): 91-122.
75
⁷⁵ Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 35.
76
⁷⁶ Daniel Lvovich, "Historia reciente de pasados traumáticos," in Historia reciente, 111 and 115-117.
77
⁷⁷ Martin Jay, "Of Plots, Witnesses, and Judgments," in Probing the Limits of Representation, 105. Underlined in the original.
78
⁷⁸ "If the judgment is valid for everyone, provided only he is in possession of reason, its ground is objectively sufficient." Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, The Transcendental Doctrine of Method (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1933), 645.
79
⁷⁹ Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Routledge Classics, 2002), 22.
80
⁸⁰ Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," Critical Inquiry, v. 7, n. 1 (Autumn, 1980): 23-24.
81
⁸¹ Thomas Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule, 125.
82
⁸² On this theme, see Denise Rollemberg, "Esquerdas revolucionárias e luta armada," in O Brasil republicano. O tempo da ditadura: regime militar e movimentos sociais em fins do século XX, ed. Jorge Ferreira and Lucilia de Almeida Neves Delgado (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2003), 43-92.
83
⁸³ Maria Paula Araujo discusses the self-criticisms of the armed struggle in Argentina, more advanced than in Brazil, in an unpublished text already mentioned entitled "Memória e debate sobre a luta armada no Brasil e Argentina."
84
⁸⁴ Carlo Ginzburg, "Ekphrasis and quotation." Tijdschrift voor filosofie, v. 50 (1988): 3-19. I use the modified version published in Carlo Ginzburg, A micro-história e outros ensaios (Lisbon: Difel, 1991), 224.
85
⁸⁵ The document was located by reporter Lucas Ferraz. Folha de S.Paulo, 5 Feb. 2012.
86
⁸⁶ LaCapra distinguishes empathy from identification, and defines it as "an opening to the other that is related to transferential implication," saying that its adoption does not exclude "the attempt to take critical distance." Dominick LaCapra, History and its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 198-199.
87
⁸⁷ For Jörn Rüsen, historical narrative "has to express its distraction within the methodical procedures of interpretation as well as in the narrative procedures of representation." Jörn Rüsen, "How to Make Sense of the Past: Salient Issues of Metahistory," The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, v. 3, n. 1 (July 2007): 211.
88
⁸⁸ Carlo Ginzburg, "Micro-história: duas ou três coisas que sei a respeito," in O fio e os rastros: verdadeiro, falso, fictício (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006), 265.
89
⁸⁹ Alessandro Manzoni, "Del romanzo e, in genere, de' componimenti misti di storia e d'invenzione," in Alessandro Manzoni, Opere Varie (Milano: Fratelli Rechiedei, 1870), 462.
90
⁹⁰ Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 142.
91
⁹¹ To understand contextualization as a complex process that includes the readers, see Dominick LaCapra, History and its Limits, 192.
92
⁹² Dominick LaCapra, History and its Limits, 198.

Publication Dates

Publication in this collection
Jul-Dec 2013

History

Received
24 Oct 2013
Accepted
26 Nov 2013

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License

[1] *
Translated by Jones de Freitas and revised by Phil Courneyeur.

[2] 1
¹ Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Brace & World, 1970), 3.

[3] 2
² Andreas Huyssen, En busca del futuro perdido: Cultura y memoria en tiempos de globalización (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001), 17.

[4] 3
³ Henry Rousso, "El duelo es imposible y necesario", Puentes (Diciembre 2000): 39.

[5] 4
⁴ Dominick LaCapra, History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 269.

[6] 5
⁵ Dominick LaCapra, "Trauma, Absence, Loss," Critical Inquiry, v. 25, n. 4 (Summer, 1999): 698.

[7] 6
⁶ Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado. Cultura de la memoria y giro subjetivo. Una discusión (México: Siglo XXI, 2006), 60-61.

[8] 7
⁷ See Guillermo O'Donnell's impressive article "La cosecha del miedo," published in Nexos en línea, Mexico, 4. Jan. 1983.

[9] 8
⁸ On this theme, see: Thomas L. Haskell, "Objectivity: Perspective as Problem and Solution", History and Theory, v. 43, n. 3 (Oct. 2004): 357, and Pieter Lagrou, "L'histoire du temps présent en Europe depuis 1945, ou comment se constitue et se développe un nouveau champ disciplinaire", La Revue pour l'Histoire du CNRS, n. 9 (Nov. 2003), accessed February 24, 2013, doi: 10.4000/histoire-cnrs.561.

[10] 9
⁹ Patricia Weiss Fagen. "Repression and State Security", in Fear at the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America, eds. Juan Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagen and Manuel Antonio Garreton. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 63. Joan Dassin. "Testimonial Literature and the Armed Struggle in Brazil," in Fear at the Edge, 174. Maria Helena Moreira Alves. "Cultures of Fear, Cultures of Resistance: The New Labor Movement in Brazil," in Fear at the Edge, 189.

[11] 10
¹⁰Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings. "Introducción: la violencia y el miedo en América Latina," in Las sociedades del miedo: el legado de la guerra civil, la violencia y el terror en América Latina, Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings, eds. (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2001), 37.

[12] 11
¹¹ Juan E. Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagen and Manuel Antonio Garretón, "Introduction. Fear: a Cultural and Political Construct," in Fear at the Edge, 2.

[13] 12
¹²Norbert Lechner, "Some People Die of Fear: Fear as a Political Problem," in Fear at the Edge, 28.

[14] 13
¹³ Manuel Antonio Garretón, "Fear in Military Regimes: An Overwiew. Fear: a Cultural and Political Construct," in Fear at the Edge, 13.

[15] 14
¹⁴ Patricia Weiss Fagen, "Repression and State Security," in Fear at the Edge, 41.

[16] 15
¹⁵ Two well-founded syntheses of the recent Argentinian history are found in Paula Canelo, El proceso en su laberinto: la interna militar de Videla a Bignone (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2008), and Marcos Novaro and Vicente Palermo, La dictadura militar (1976-1983): del golpe de Estado a la restauración democrática (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2003).

[17] 16
¹⁶ Emilio Dellasoppa, Ao inimigo, nem justiça: violência política na Argentina 1943-1983 (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1998), 30.

[18] 17
¹⁷ Guillermo O'Donnel, 1966-1973 El Estado burocrático autoritario: triunfos, derrotas y crisis (Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano, 1982), 266.

[19] 18
¹⁸ Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición: los campos de concentración en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Colihue, 2008), 153.

[20] 19
¹⁹ Carlos A. Floria and César A. Garcia Belsunce, "La cultura de la violencia," in Historia política de la Argentina contemporánea 1880-1983 (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988), 208.

[21] 20
²⁰ On those episodes, consult, among others, Oscar Anzorena, Tiempo de violencia y utopia, 1966-1976 (Buenos Aires: Contrapunto, 1988), Richard Gillespie, Soldier of Perón. Argentina's Montoneros (Buenos Aires: Fundación Arturo Illia, 1988), Andrew Graham-Yool, De Perón a Videla (Buenos Aires: Legasa, 1989), and Alejandro Lanusse, Mi testimonio (Buenos Aires: Lasserre, 1977).

[22] 21
²¹ I thank Maria Paula Araujo for kindly providing her text "Memória e debate sobre a luta armada no Brasil e Argentina" for consultation. Her text will soon be published in the collected works "História e memória das ditaduras do século XX" by Editora FGV, Rio de Janeiro.

[23] 22
²² "Mario Firmenich y Norma Arrostito cuentan como murió Aramburu," La Causa Peronista, 3 de setiembre de 1974, Año 1, n. 9, 25-30.

[24] 23
²³ Pillar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición, 20.

[25] 24
²⁴ XI Conference of Armies, Montevideo, Oct. 23, 1975. Clarín, Buenos Aires, 24 Oct. 1975.

[26] 25
²⁵La Nación, Buenos Aires, 22 Jan. 1976.

[27] 26
²⁶La Opinión, Buenos Aires, 25 Nov. 1976.

[28] 27
²⁷La Prensa, Buenos Aires, 16 Aug. 1977.

[29] 28
²⁸La Opinión, Buenos Aires, 29 May 1978.

[30] 29
²⁹ Julio E. Nosiglia, Botín de Guerra (Buenos Aires: Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 2007), 163.

[31] 30
³⁰ Pillar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición, 149-151.

[32] 31
³¹ For an overall picture of Brazil's recent history, consult Thomas Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-1985 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), and the four volumes by Elio Gaspari, A ditadura envergonhada, A ditadura escancarada, A ditadura encurralada, and A ditadura derrotada (Rio de Janeiro: Companhia das Letras, 2002-2003).

[33] 32
³² Carlos Fico, Como eles agiam: os subterrâneos da ditadura militar - espionagem e polícia política (Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2001).

[34] 33
³³ "Divisão de Segurança e Informações do Ministério da Justiça" Fund, Arquivo Nacional, Series "Movimentos Contestatórios à Ordem Política e Social", Censorship Report, file n. 50756, box 592/05132, pages 6-24.

[35] 34
³⁴ Carlos Fico, Reinventando o otimismo: ditadura, propaganda e imaginário social no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 1997).

[36] 35
³⁵ On the "Estado Novo", see Lucia Lippi Oliveira, Mônica Pimenta Velloso and Angela Maria de Castro Gomes, eds., Estado Novo: ideologia e poder (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1982), and Dulce Pandolfi, ed., Repensando o Estado Novo (Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 1999).

[37] 36
³⁶ See, among others, Fernando Gabeira, O que é isso, companheiro? (Rio de Janeiro: Codecri, 1979), and Alfredo Sirkis, Os carbonários: memórias da guerrilha perdida (São Paulo: Global, 1980).

[38] 37
³⁷ Heloisa Amélia Greco, "Dimensões fundacionais da luta pela anistia," PhD diss., Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2003, and Fabíola Brigante Del Porto, "A luta pela anistia no regime militar brasileiro: a constituição da sociedade civil no país e a construção da cidadania," PhD diss., Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2002.

[39] 38
³⁸ The military regime allowed the political parties to function during most of the period, although it imposed a series of restrictive measures to their action.

[40] 39
³⁹ Carlos Fico, "A negociação parlamentar da anistia de 1979 e o chamado 'perdão aos torturadores'," Revista Anistia Política e Justiça de Transição, n. 4 (Jul-Dec. 2010): 318-332.

[41] 40
⁴⁰ Ricardo Kotscho, Explode um novo Brasil: diário da Campanha das Diretas (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1984).

[42] 41
⁴¹ Douglas Attila Marcelino, "O corpo da Nova República: funerais de presidentes e memória de Tancredo Neves," PhD diss., Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2011.

[43] 42
⁴² Hans U. Gumbrecht, "After 1945: Latency as Origin of the Present". The manuscript was kindly provided by the author for consultation. Forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2013.

[44] 43
⁴³ In 2012, the movement Levante Popular da Juventude (Popular Youth Uprising) promoted in Brazil the "esculachos," inspired by the Argentinian escraches, where protesters publicly shamed alleged agents of repression with chants and graffiti on their current residence's wall.

[45] 44
⁴⁴ Symptomatically, the dossiers in Brazil's national archives concerning repression victims who were not left-wing militants (public servants, for example) are all but unpublished, unlike those related to the armed struggle. See Carlos Fico, "História do tempo presente, eventos traumáticos e documentos sensíveis: o caso brasileiro," Varia Historia, v. 28, n. 47 (Jan.-Jul. 2012): 43-59.

[46] 45
⁴⁵Márcio Seligmann-Silva, "Direito pós-fáustico: por um novo tribunal como espaço de rememoração e elaboração dos traumas sociais", in Carlos Fico, Maria Paula Araujo and Monica Grin (Eds.), Violência na história: memória, trauma e reparação (Rio de Janeiro: Ponteio, 2012), 107.

[47] 46
⁴⁶ Marina Franco and Florência Levín, "El passado cercano en clave historiográfica," in Marina Franco and Florência Levín, comps., Historia reciente: perspectivas y desafíos para un campo en construcción (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2007), 62.

[48] 47
⁴⁷ Roberto Pittaluga, "Miradas sobre el pasado reciente argentino: las escrituras en torno a la militancia setentista (1983-2005)," in Historia reciente, 148.

[49] 48
⁴⁸ Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado, 16.

[50] 49
⁴⁹ De Oratore, livro II, cap. 9, 36. "Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis, qua voce alia, nisi oratoris, immortalitati commendatur?"

[51] 50
⁵⁰ See, among many other works, Saul Friedlander, ed., Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

[52] 51
⁵¹ Mark S. Phillips, "Relocating Inwardness: Historical Distance and the Transition from Enlightenment to Romantic Historiography", PMLA, v. 118, n. 3 (May, 2003): 442-443.

[53] 52
⁵² Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado, 23.

[54] 53
⁵³ Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado, 93.

[55] 54
⁵⁴Folha de S.Paulo, São Paulo, 8 May 2008.

[56] 55
⁵⁵ An exception was annotated by Pilar Calveiro: "Esto es lo desquiciante, los desaparecedores solían ser hombres comunes y corrientes que también podían ir a misa los domingos". Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición, 143.

[57] 56
⁵⁶ The classical example is the album "Auschwitz 21.6.1944", today at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with photographs of SS officers having a great time in that concentration camp during the summer and fall of 1944, when the gas chambers worked at full steam.

[58] 57
⁵⁷ Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 26 and 41.

[59] 58
⁵⁸ Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo pasado, 83.

[60] 59
⁵⁹ Christopher R. Browning, "German Memory, Judicial Interrogation, and Historical Reconstruction: Writing Perpetrator History from Postwar Testimony", in Probing the Limits of Representation, 27.

[61] 60
⁶⁰Folha de S.Paulo. 5 Feb. 2012.

[62] 61
⁶¹ See, among others, Dori Laub, "Truth and Testimony: the Process and the Struggle," in Cathy Caruth, ed., Trauma. Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 61-75.

[63] 62
⁶² "Apud veteres enim nemo conscribebat historiam, nisi is qui interfuisset, et ea quae conscribenda essent vidisset." For an accessible version in English: Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, trans. Priscilla Throop (Charlotte: MedievalMS, 2005), vol. 1, 1, 41, 1.

[64] 63
⁶³ Leopold von Ranke, "Burnet's History of His Own Times." in Leopold von Ranke, A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, 1859-1869 (New York: AMS Press, 1966), vol. 6, 46.

[65] 64
⁶⁴ Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 36.

[66] 65
⁶⁵ Eric Hobsbawm, "Un historien et son temps présent." in: Institut d'histoire du Temps Présent, Ecrire l'histoire du temps présent. En hommage à François Bédarida (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1993), 102.

[67] 66
⁶⁶ Leonard Krieger, Ranke: The Meaning of History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 271.

[68] 67
⁶⁷ F. R. Ankersmit, Sublime Historical Experience (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2005).

[69] 68
⁶⁸ The proposal intends to overcome the historicist and narrativist understanding of the problem. Jaap Den Hollander, "Contemporary History and the Art of Self-Distancing", History and Theory, , v. 50, n. 4 (December 2011): 51-67.

[70] 69
⁶⁹ Hayden White, "Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth," in Probing the Limits of Representation, 37.

[71] 70
⁷⁰ Karl Popper, "The Rationality of Scientific Revolution," in Karl Popper, Problems of Scientific Revolution: Progress and Obstacles to Progress in the Sciences (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 85.

[72] 71
⁷¹ Hayden White, "The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-Sublimation," Critical Inquiry, v. 9, n. 1 (Sept. 1982): 131.

[73] 72
⁷² Hayden White, "Historical Emplotment," 52.

[74] 73
⁷³ Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 26 and 41.

[75] 74
⁷⁴ Emile Benveniste, "Ativo e médio no verbo", in Problemas de linguística geral (São Paulo: USP, 1976). Also, see Roberto Gomes Camacho, "Em defesa da categoria de voz média no português", D.E.L.T.A., v. 19, n. 1 (2003): 91-122.

[76] 75
⁷⁵ Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 35.

[77] 76
⁷⁶ Daniel Lvovich, "Historia reciente de pasados traumáticos," in Historia reciente, 111 and 115-117.

[78] 77
⁷⁷ Martin Jay, "Of Plots, Witnesses, and Judgments," in Probing the Limits of Representation, 105. Underlined in the original.

[79] 78
⁷⁸ "If the judgment is valid for everyone, provided only he is in possession of reason, its ground is objectively sufficient." Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, The Transcendental Doctrine of Method (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1933), 645.

[80] 79
⁷⁹ Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Routledge Classics, 2002), 22.

[81] 80
⁸⁰ Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," Critical Inquiry, v. 7, n. 1 (Autumn, 1980): 23-24.

[82] 81
⁸¹ Thomas Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule, 125.

[83] 82
⁸² On this theme, see Denise Rollemberg, "Esquerdas revolucionárias e luta armada," in O Brasil republicano. O tempo da ditadura: regime militar e movimentos sociais em fins do século XX, ed. Jorge Ferreira and Lucilia de Almeida Neves Delgado (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2003), 43-92.

[84] 83
⁸³ Maria Paula Araujo discusses the self-criticisms of the armed struggle in Argentina, more advanced than in Brazil, in an unpublished text already mentioned entitled "Memória e debate sobre a luta armada no Brasil e Argentina."

[85] 84
⁸⁴ Carlo Ginzburg, "Ekphrasis and quotation." Tijdschrift voor filosofie, v. 50 (1988): 3-19. I use the modified version published in Carlo Ginzburg, A micro-história e outros ensaios (Lisbon: Difel, 1991), 224.

[86] 85
⁸⁵ The document was located by reporter Lucas Ferraz. Folha de S.Paulo, 5 Feb. 2012.

[87] 86
⁸⁶ LaCapra distinguishes empathy from identification, and defines it as "an opening to the other that is related to transferential implication," saying that its adoption does not exclude "the attempt to take critical distance." Dominick LaCapra, History and its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 198-199.

[88] 87
⁸⁷ For Jörn Rüsen, historical narrative "has to express its distraction within the methodical procedures of interpretation as well as in the narrative procedures of representation." Jörn Rüsen, "How to Make Sense of the Past: Salient Issues of Metahistory," The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, v. 3, n. 1 (July 2007): 211.

[89] 88
⁸⁸ Carlo Ginzburg, "Micro-história: duas ou três coisas que sei a respeito," in O fio e os rastros: verdadeiro, falso, fictício (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006), 265.

[90] 89
⁸⁹ Alessandro Manzoni, "Del romanzo e, in genere, de' componimenti misti di storia e d'invenzione," in Alessandro Manzoni, Opere Varie (Milano: Fratelli Rechiedei, 1870), 462.

[91] 90
⁹⁰ Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 142.

[92] 91
⁹¹ To understand contextualization as a complex process that includes the readers, see Dominick LaCapra, History and its Limits, 192.

[93] 92
⁹² Dominick LaCapra, History and its Limits, 198.

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Violence, Trauma, and Frustration in Brazil and Argentina: The Role of the Historian

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