Our dead and disappeared: reflections on the construction of the notion of political disappearance in brazil

Dossier “Gramáticas de la (¿post?) violencia: identidades, guerras, cuerpos y fronteras” • Vibrant, Virtual Braz. Anthr. 15 (3) • 2018 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412018v15n3d507 copy

Our dead and disappeared: reflections on the construction of the notion of political disappearance in brazil

Os nossos mortos e desaparecidos: reflexões sobre a construção da noção de desaparecimento político no brasil

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Abstract

Based on ethnographic and documentary material, this article analyzes the social construction of political disappearance in Brazil. It argues that less than a phenomenon to be captured from reality, it is a category produced in and a producer of a social field, a point of convergence of debates and actions of actors and institutions. The objective is to show the discourses that function as truths about the phenomenon in Brazil, as well as the methods, procedures, forums and disputes by which they are sanctioned as such. It also addresses the intrinsic relation of this process with the production of political communities by focusing on the discourse of the movement of families of the killed and disappeared political actors. In conclusion, it points to some social implications that result from delimiting what is politically relevant violence.

Keywords:
Disappearance; memory; human rights; victims

Authorship

Desirée de Lemos Azevedo

Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais, São Paulo/SP, BrasilUniversidade Federal de São PauloBrazilSão Paulo, SP, Brazil Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais, São Paulo/SP, Brasil

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0266-6258

E-mail: desireelazevedo@gmail.com

Desirée de Lemos Azevedo: PhD in Social Anthropology from PPGAS/UNICAMP, post-doctoral student at PPGS/Unifesp and associate researcher at the Centre for International Migration Studies (CEMI) of the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at UNICAMP.

SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Figures

Figures (3)

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Abílio Clemente Filho

Son of Maria Helena Correa and Abílio Clemente. Studied at the State School Fernão Dias Paes, in the city of São Paulo. When he disappeared, he was in the 4^th year of the social sciences course at the State University of São Paulo (UNESP) and was active in the student movement in Rio Claro, (SP). When he disappeared, he was with a friend on the beach of José Menino, in Santos (SP). That year, he was honored at the graduation ceremony of his college.

In the process analyzed by the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances (CEMDP) there is a report in attachment by Maria Amélia de Almeida Teles, of the Commission of Families of the Political Dead and Disappeared, informing that in the Public Archives of São Paulo State, among documents of the now extinct Department of Political and Social Order of São Paulo (DOPS/SP), they found school records of Abílio Clemente Filho from the time he was in high school. According to the police records, this file had been found at the residence of Ishiro Nagami, a militant of the Ação Libertadora Nacional [National Liberation Action] (ALN) who was killed with Sérgio Corrêa, on September 4, 1969, when the car exploded in which both were traveling on the Rua da Consolação, in the São Paulo capital. Joana D’Arc Contijo told Maria Amélia, both of whom were jailed in the Detachment of Operations and Information - Center of Operations for Domestic Defense of São Paulo (DOI-CODI/SP) at the time, who said that she had heard the screaming of a young man all night long, on the same day as Abílio’s arrest. Joana believes that the youth stopped screaming because he had died. She tried to find out the identity of the victim of that torture, but was not able to. Maria Amélia said that in the mid 1990’s she was approached by Abílio’s sister to report his disappearance before passage of laws for indemnification.

Abílio’s case was initially examined by the Commission for the Indemnification of Political Prisoners of São Paulo and was accepted. The commission found that based on the evidence presented and on the knowledge accumulated about the procedures of the organs of political repression, it was possible to conclude that Abílio Clemente Filho disappeared for political reasons. The rapporteur of the case for the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances (CEMDP), Belisário dos Santos Júnior, voted in favor of granting the request, adding: “In addition, in this federal entity, with all of the evidence collected well considered, I understand that Abílio, who was a political militant, whose documents were seized in the residence of a person linked to armed activities, who disappeared on a certain day and whose friends and family always claimed was another victim of the political police, can and must be recognized as a person who disappeared for political reasons. To demand more proof would be to ignore the history of repression in Brazil.” A São Paulo state deputy, Antônio Mentor, also made a statement to the Special Commission confirming his disappearance and his militancy in the clandestine organization during the dictatorship. The case was approved unanimously.

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Luiz Eurico Tejera Lisbôa

Born on January 19, 1948, in Porto União, Santa Catarina. Son of Eurico Siqueira Lisbôa and Clélia Tejera Lisbôa. Disappeared on Sept. 2, 1972. Luiz Eurico began his militancy in the student movement. He was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), a student activist and also participated in the ALN [Action for National Liberation]. In the student demonstrations of 1967 and 1968, he was arrested a number of times. In 1969, he was condemned to six months in prison in a military police inquest, and began to live clandestinely. After spending time in Cuba, he returned to Brazil in 1971. In 1972, he traveled to São Paulo and the family received no more news about him. From 1978, his wife Suzana Lisbôa, also a militant of the ALN, living clandestinely, began to denounce his disappearance as the probable result of political repression. At this time, she was approached by an acquaintance, who said he had a relationship with the head of the National Information Service (SNI), who reported that Luiz Eurico had married again, and was living in Montevideo, [Uruguay]. Suzana joined the Commission of the Families of the Political Dead and Disappeared of the Brazilian Committee for Amnesty. In April 1979, at the Encounter for Amnesty, other family members shared the information that disappeared people may have been buried with false names, possibly those that were used clandestinely in public cemeteries. In the records of the Dom Bosco Cemetery, in São Paulo, Suzana and other family members found the names they were looking for. This included that of Nelson Bueno, buried on September 3, 1972. Nelson Bueno was a name used by the militant while he was in hiding. Informed that his body had been removed from a boarding house after committing suicide, Suzana took a photograph to the location, where she gained a positive identification from the residents. The location of Luiz Eurico was denounced in the National Congress during the vote for the Amnesty Law.

Suzana found the police report on the investigation into the death and filed suit to change the name on the death certificate. At this time, the courts determined exhumation of the body for examination. The analysis revealed that the characteristics of the bones buried in the indicated location failed to match the information in the report that accompanied the cadaver. For this reason, the court also required re-opening the investigation and exhumation of other bodies until they found the corresponding body. The bones returned to the family were shipped to Rio Grande do Sul for burial, in 1982. The re-opened investigation did not bring new elements about the cause of death. But a new version arose, in 1990, when the journalist Caco Barcelos was informed by the cemetery administrator of the existence of a secret common grave, where political prisoners were buried. The movement of families already had this information, but it was the journalist’s report that created the public commotion necessary to open the grave. At that time, Barcelos presented a report on the [leading national television news show] Globo Reporter, prompting Suzana to return to the boarding house. While filming interviews for the show, a resident said that Luiz Eurico’s room had been invaded in the early morning by two men who killed him, and who told the residents to repeat the version that it had been a suicide. Still in 1990, the movement of family members gained access to the files of the Instituto Médico Legal/SP [São Paulo coroner’s office] where it found the request for the examination of the body of Luiz Eurico marked with a letter ‘T’, which was also found in other requests as a reference to ‘terrorista.’ In 1995, the name of Luiz Eurico was placed in the attachment to Law Nº 9.140. Suzana became a representative of the movement of families in the CEMDP. More recently, a new analysis of the documentation on the case concluded that the evidence is inconsistent with the version of suicide.

Thumbnail

Denis Casemiro

Born in Votuporanga, in the interior of São Paulo state, on December 9, 1942. Son of Antônio Casemiro and Maria Casemiro. In his native city he was a construction worker and farmhand. He participated in the Votuporanga Farmworkers Union. In 1967, he went to São Bernardo do Campo to work at Volkswagen. At this time he met Devanir José de Carvalho, who was also assassinated by the repressive apparatus, and Devanir’s brothers Jairo and Daniel. The latter is on the list of political disappearances. Denis began to participate in the opposition to the dictatorship when he joined the Ala Vermelha [The Red Flank] and later the Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária [Popular Revolutionary Vanguard] (VPR). He moved to Southern Pará where he began to care for a small farm close to Imperatriz, in Maranhão state. From there he considered undertaking political and military action in the rural region.

In April 1971, he was found and arrested by police officer Sérgio Paranhos Fleury, who took him to the DOPS/SP, where he was tortured for nearly a month and then killed. During this incarceration he was always moved through the corridors of the police agency with a hood covering his face to make it impossible for other prisoners to identify him. One of these prisoners, Waldemar Andreu, who came from the same region as Denis, had spoken with him for a few minutes. He was sure that the removal of the hood was a sign that the torture was over and that the danger of assassination had passed. However, Denis was shot on May 18, 1971 by officer Fleury. In a report found in the DOPS archives there is a version by the officer, according to which Denis had tried to escape during a stop on the road, when he was being taken from Rio de Janeiro, where he was taken for questioning by the police, and then back to São Paulo. After rolling down a river bank the police officer had to shoot him and was arrested once again nine hours later. Taken by the officer to the hospital, he later died from his wounds. The request for an autopsy made to the coroner confirmed the police version without any mention of the state of the body, although it described wounds to his hand, which indicated a gesture of defense. Denis was buried by the state as an indigent person, and his data were altered to make identification impossible. No official communication was made about his death. In the registration book at the cemetery, he was identified as 40, when in reality he was 28. The clarification of his arrest, torture and death began in 1979, during the Amnesty campaign, with the discovery of the register of his death by the Commission of Families of the Political Dead and Disappeared. His remains had been deposited in the secret grave at the Dom Bosco Cemetery, in the neighborhood of Perus, in São Paulo (SP). The identification was only possible because Mayor Luiza Erundina called for an investigation into the grave, which was opened in September 1990. In 1991, Denis was identified by Unicamp among the bodies in the grave and taken to the city of his birth. His name is found in the list of political disappearances in attachment 1, of Law 9.140/95.

Abílio Clemente Filho

Son of Maria Helena Correa and Abílio Clemente. Studied at the State School Fernão Dias Paes, in the city of São Paulo. When he disappeared, he was in the 4^th year of the social sciences course at the State University of São Paulo (UNESP) and was active in the student movement in Rio Claro, (SP). When he disappeared, he was with a friend on the beach of José Menino, in Santos (SP). That year, he was honored at the graduation ceremony of his college.

In the process analyzed by the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances (CEMDP) there is a report in attachment by Maria Amélia de Almeida Teles, of the Commission of Families of the Political Dead and Disappeared, informing that in the Public Archives of São Paulo State, among documents of the now extinct Department of Political and Social Order of São Paulo (DOPS/SP), they found school records of Abílio Clemente Filho from the time he was in high school. According to the police records, this file had been found at the residence of Ishiro Nagami, a militant of the Ação Libertadora Nacional [National Liberation Action] (ALN) who was killed with Sérgio Corrêa, on September 4, 1969, when the car exploded in which both were traveling on the Rua da Consolação, in the São Paulo capital. Joana D’Arc Contijo told Maria Amélia, both of whom were jailed in the Detachment of Operations and Information - Center of Operations for Domestic Defense of São Paulo (DOI-CODI/SP) at the time, who said that she had heard the screaming of a young man all night long, on the same day as Abílio’s arrest. Joana believes that the youth stopped screaming because he had died. She tried to find out the identity of the victim of that torture, but was not able to. Maria Amélia said that in the mid 1990’s she was approached by Abílio’s sister to report his disappearance before passage of laws for indemnification.

Abílio’s case was initially examined by the Commission for the Indemnification of Political Prisoners of São Paulo and was accepted. The commission found that based on the evidence presented and on the knowledge accumulated about the procedures of the organs of political repression, it was possible to conclude that Abílio Clemente Filho disappeared for political reasons. The rapporteur of the case for the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances (CEMDP), Belisário dos Santos Júnior, voted in favor of granting the request, adding: “In addition, in this federal entity, with all of the evidence collected well considered, I understand that Abílio, who was a political militant, whose documents were seized in the residence of a person linked to armed activities, who disappeared on a certain day and whose friends and family always claimed was another victim of the political police, can and must be recognized as a person who disappeared for political reasons. To demand more proof would be to ignore the history of repression in Brazil.” A São Paulo state deputy, Antônio Mentor, also made a statement to the Special Commission confirming his disappearance and his militancy in the clandestine organization during the dictatorship. The case was approved unanimously.

Source: Dossiê Ditadura: Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos no Brasil 1964-1985.

Luiz Eurico Tejera Lisbôa

Born on January 19, 1948, in Porto União, Santa Catarina. Son of Eurico Siqueira Lisbôa and Clélia Tejera Lisbôa. Disappeared on Sept. 2, 1972. Luiz Eurico began his militancy in the student movement. He was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), a student activist and also participated in the ALN [Action for National Liberation]. In the student demonstrations of 1967 and 1968, he was arrested a number of times. In 1969, he was condemned to six months in prison in a military police inquest, and began to live clandestinely. After spending time in Cuba, he returned to Brazil in 1971. In 1972, he traveled to São Paulo and the family received no more news about him. From 1978, his wife Suzana Lisbôa, also a militant of the ALN, living clandestinely, began to denounce his disappearance as the probable result of political repression. At this time, she was approached by an acquaintance, who said he had a relationship with the head of the National Information Service (SNI), who reported that Luiz Eurico had married again, and was living in Montevideo, [Uruguay]. Suzana joined the Commission of the Families of the Political Dead and Disappeared of the Brazilian Committee for Amnesty. In April 1979, at the Encounter for Amnesty, other family members shared the information that disappeared people may have been buried with false names, possibly those that were used clandestinely in public cemeteries. In the records of the Dom Bosco Cemetery, in São Paulo, Suzana and other family members found the names they were looking for. This included that of Nelson Bueno, buried on September 3, 1972. Nelson Bueno was a name used by the militant while he was in hiding. Informed that his body had been removed from a boarding house after committing suicide, Suzana took a photograph to the location, where she gained a positive identification from the residents. The location of Luiz Eurico was denounced in the National Congress during the vote for the Amnesty Law.

Suzana found the police report on the investigation into the death and filed suit to change the name on the death certificate. At this time, the courts determined exhumation of the body for examination. The analysis revealed that the characteristics of the bones buried in the indicated location failed to match the information in the report that accompanied the cadaver. For this reason, the court also required re-opening the investigation and exhumation of other bodies until they found the corresponding body. The bones returned to the family were shipped to Rio Grande do Sul for burial, in 1982. The re-opened investigation did not bring new elements about the cause of death. But a new version arose, in 1990, when the journalist Caco Barcelos was informed by the cemetery administrator of the existence of a secret common grave, where political prisoners were buried. The movement of families already had this information, but it was the journalist’s report that created the public commotion necessary to open the grave. At that time, Barcelos presented a report on the [leading national television news show] Globo Reporter, prompting Suzana to return to the boarding house. While filming interviews for the show, a resident said that Luiz Eurico’s room had been invaded in the early morning by two men who killed him, and who told the residents to repeat the version that it had been a suicide. Still in 1990, the movement of family members gained access to the files of the Instituto Médico Legal/SP [São Paulo coroner’s office] where it found the request for the examination of the body of Luiz Eurico marked with a letter ‘T’, which was also found in other requests as a reference to ‘terrorista.’ In 1995, the name of Luiz Eurico was placed in the attachment to Law Nº 9.140. Suzana became a representative of the movement of families in the CEMDP. More recently, a new analysis of the documentation on the case concluded that the evidence is inconsistent with the version of suicide.

Source: Dossiê Ditadura: Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos no Brasil 1964-1985.

Denis Casemiro

Born in Votuporanga, in the interior of São Paulo state, on December 9, 1942. Son of Antônio Casemiro and Maria Casemiro. In his native city he was a construction worker and farmhand. He participated in the Votuporanga Farmworkers Union. In 1967, he went to São Bernardo do Campo to work at Volkswagen. At this time he met Devanir José de Carvalho, who was also assassinated by the repressive apparatus, and Devanir’s brothers Jairo and Daniel. The latter is on the list of political disappearances. Denis began to participate in the opposition to the dictatorship when he joined the Ala Vermelha [The Red Flank] and later the Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária [Popular Revolutionary Vanguard] (VPR). He moved to Southern Pará where he began to care for a small farm close to Imperatriz, in Maranhão state. From there he considered undertaking political and military action in the rural region.

In April 1971, he was found and arrested by police officer Sérgio Paranhos Fleury, who took him to the DOPS/SP, where he was tortured for nearly a month and then killed. During this incarceration he was always moved through the corridors of the police agency with a hood covering his face to make it impossible for other prisoners to identify him. One of these prisoners, Waldemar Andreu, who came from the same region as Denis, had spoken with him for a few minutes. He was sure that the removal of the hood was a sign that the torture was over and that the danger of assassination had passed. However, Denis was shot on May 18, 1971 by officer Fleury. In a report found in the DOPS archives there is a version by the officer, according to which Denis had tried to escape during a stop on the road, when he was being taken from Rio de Janeiro, where he was taken for questioning by the police, and then back to São Paulo. After rolling down a river bank the police officer had to shoot him and was arrested once again nine hours later. Taken by the officer to the hospital, he later died from his wounds. The request for an autopsy made to the coroner confirmed the police version without any mention of the state of the body, although it described wounds to his hand, which indicated a gesture of defense. Denis was buried by the state as an indigent person, and his data were altered to make identification impossible. No official communication was made about his death. In the registration book at the cemetery, he was identified as 40, when in reality he was 28. The clarification of his arrest, torture and death began in 1979, during the Amnesty campaign, with the discovery of the register of his death by the Commission of Families of the Political Dead and Disappeared. His remains had been deposited in the secret grave at the Dom Bosco Cemetery, in the neighborhood of Perus, in São Paulo (SP). The identification was only possible because Mayor Luiza Erundina called for an investigation into the grave, which was opened in September 1990. In 1991, Denis was identified by Unicamp among the bodies in the grave and taken to the city of his birth. His name is found in the list of political disappearances in attachment 1, of Law 9.140/95.

Source: Dossiê Ditadura: Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos no Brasil 1964-1985.

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Our dead and disappeared: reflections on the construction of the notion of political disappearance in brazil

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[1] E-mail: desireelazevedo@gmail.com