In contemporary Brazil, efforts continue to conceal liabilities of crimes committed during the years of dictatorship and to alter or weaken the testimony of victims who have spoken out against their perpetrators. This article explores how the short story "Jewish mother, 1964" by Moacyr Scliar, under the guise of a coming-of-age story and a monologue of a mentally ill patient, sheds light on violent practices that, without leaving visible marks on the body, have incurred serious and longstanding wounds within Brazilian society. Readers are made to see how persuasion, trivialization, and silencing are complicit in the "normalizing" of recent and traumatic histories. If made recognizable, this silencing practice could directly be challenged.
Moacyr Scliar; dictatorship; manipulation; concealment