The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-1985 by Skidmore Thomas E.;

Author:Skidmore, Thomas E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2015-03-15T10:11:03+00:00

The Amnesty Issue

Although economic problems were pressing, one of the Figueiredo government’s most important early decisions was political. It concerned anmesty, a vital question if Brazil was to leave behind authoritarian rule and reintegrate into Brazilian society and politics the thousands of political exiles who had fled or been pursued abroad since 1964.22 This was an issue on which the opposition had been able to mobilize wide support. Amnesty enthusiasts showed up wherever there was a crowd. At the soccer matches their banners (Anistia ampla, geral e irrestrita) were hung where the TV cameras would catch them. Wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters were especially active, which made it more difficult for hard-line military to discredit the movement. Cardinal Arns later called the amnesty struggle “our greatest battle.”23

Geisel’s December 1978 reversal of most of the earlier banishment orders was now followed by Justice Minister Petronio Portella’s amnesty bill, approved by Congress in August 1979. Given amnesty were all those imprisoned or exiled for political crimes since September 2, 1961 (the date of the last amnesty—there had been 47 in Brazilian history.) Excluded were those guilty of “acts of terrorism” and of armed resistance to the government, who turned out to be few, as the law was applied. The law also restored political rights to politicians who had lost them under the institutional acts.24

The new law brought back a flood of exiles, including Leonel Brizola and Luis Carlos Prestes, who had been excluded under Geisel’s earlier order. Back in Brazil now were also such additional bêtes noires of the military as Miguel Arraes, Márcio Moreira Alves, and Francisco Julião, along with key figures in the PCB and the PC do B (neither was legal).25 The amnesty was a powerful tonic in the political atmosphere, giving an immediate boost to the President’s popularity. It also showed that Figueiredo was confident he could withstand hardliner objections to having so many “subversives” back in politics. With the old-line Communists and Trotskyists now back in Brazil, and with the press virtually uncensored (although subject to pressures, threats, and even occasional violence), Brazil was looking more like an open political system than at any time since 1968.26

The amnesty movement was not content with the new law, however. It demanded also an accounting for the 197 Brazilians believed to have died at the hands of the security forces since 1964. For many there were detailed dossiers, including eyewitness accounts by other prisoners. Here the opposition was pressing on a very sensitive nerve—the military fear that a judicial investigation might someday attempt to fix responsibility for the torture and murder of prisoners. A good example of the hardliner reaction (perhaps shared by “moderates” whose records might not turn out to be so clean) came in March 1979 when the military took steps to close Veja magazine because it had published an expose on alleged torture camps, complete with photographs.27 Police also seized copies of Em Tempo, a leftist biweekly that in mid-March published a list of 442 alleged torturers.28

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