|
Seminar Hugo Studart, Doctoral Student: University of Brasília – CES May 11th, 2010, 17:00, CES Seminar Room, 2nd Floor, Coimbra Within the Comparative Cultural Studies Research Group (NECC) Free Entrance Known as the Araguaia Guerrilla movement, the Brazilian rural guerrilla was the most significant internal insurgency since the Canudos Movement, during the nineteenth century, and which saw the largest mobilization of the armed forces since World War II, in Italy. It is also one of the darkest episodes. The conflict began in March 1972, when the first soldiers arrived in the region of southern Pará, Amazonia, and only expired in September 1974, when the last rebels were slaughtered. According to the Brazilian Communist Party, the PC do B, which organized the guerrillas, 75 people had fallen, including 58 guerrillas and 17 peasants. The military has other accounts. They killed 85, ten more. Together with the military and the Army guides, the movement claimed 95 lives. Only two bodies of guerrillas have been found till this date. There are still 80 missing, on the three sides of the struggle. Nearly four decades later, both the Army and the PC do B remain silent, refusing to open their own files. Why? There are many skeletons to dig up - on both sides. The military violated Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions. They made arbitrary arrests, torture prisoners, left unburied corpses behind. More than 20 rebels were allegedly executed after their imprisonment. The guerrillas also have to hide. The main skeleton is the practice of "justice", a euphemism used to justify the summary execution of "enemies of the revolution." The PC do B committed at least four “justices”, one on a companion and on three peasants. After the war, there was the express order of the commanding generals, including President Ernesto Geisel, to destroy the documents that could give clues regarding the location of bodies - and even about the very existence of the guerrillas. Brazil lived at the apex of a regime that practiced "secrecy" as a rule, a phenomenon defined by Political Science as arcana imperii. Meanwhile, thousands of pages of secret documents remained, either scattered in official archives, or in the drawers of military personal who fought in the jungle. What especially remained were the memories of survivors. In Coimbra, I am organizing the remaining secret documents in partnership with the April 25 Documentation Centre. This workshop will address these facts, documents and memories. Hugo Studart (studart@studart.blog.br) is a Brazilian journalist, columnist and historian. Was a reporter, editor, writer or director in the newspapers O Estado de S. Paulo and Folha de S. Paulo and in the journals Veja, Dinheiro and IstoÉ. He collaborated with columns or articles in magazines such as Exame, Playboy, República, Brasil História and, presently in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo. He has won several awards in journalism, as the Esso Award. He was a professor at the Catholic University of Brasilia and is a researcher at the University of Brasília, UnB, where he attends a doctoral programme in History. He has chosen the field of Cultural History and the Studies of the Imaginary, in researches on the guerrilla and the military dictatorship in Brazil. He represents the UnB as Ombudsman and Independent Observer in the Working Group of the Presidency / Ministry of Defence that searches the missing bodies of the guerrillas. He has published three books; the latest, " A Lei da Selva: Estratégias e Imaginário dos Militares sobre a Guerrilha do Araguaia" (Geração, 2006), was granted the Herzog Human Rights and Amnesty Award and was a finalist for the Jabuti Award 2007, which chooses the best books of the year in Brazil. The notes of the book reagarding the deaths of the guerrillas are quoted in the book " Direito à Memória e à Verdade ", by the Presidency Secretariat for Human Rights, the official report on the politicaly missing of the dictatorship |