Latin America & Caribbean

Remembering Brazil's decades of military repression

Inocencio Uchoa in detention in Brazil in 1970/71
Image caption Pablo Uchoa's father Inocencio was detained in 1968 and held in the infamous "dungeons" of the regime

On 31 March, Brazil marks the 50th anniversary of the coup which ushered in two decades of military rule. In the repression which followed, almost 500 people were disappeared or killed, and many more detained and tortured. BBC Brasil's Pablo Uchoa recalls the story of one of the detainees, his father Inocencio.

Growing up, I never saw my father as a superhero. But I knew he was a strong man.



Revolution on the mind



A year earlier, he had watched as army tanks occupied the streets of Brazilian cities and deposed the leftist government of President Joao Goulart - an event which had left a lasting impression on him.

Image copyright Getty Images

"We entered university as students, but over the course of the years we were hardly concerned with finishing our studies anymore," my father recounted in a recent documentary about political prisoners, A Mesa Vermelha (The Red Table).

"I was not (interested) in the slightest, I wanted to make revolution."

Torturous nights

Upon seizing power in 1964, the military regime - fully supported by the US - promised swift action to bring "order" back to a country it perceived as slipping towards communism.

Image copyright AP
Image caption Joao Goulart was deposed in a coup in 1964




Among them was the vocal president of the students' union at the Federal University in north-eastern Ceara state: my father.


It is this period of my father's life which remained murky to me for many years.

Painful memories



There, they were lined up and subjected to a mock execution, his life flashing before his mind's eye as armed men cocked their weapons, aimed... and were told to stop.

Opponents of the regime were subjected to harsh physical ordeals.

One of the infamous torture methods consisted of leaving prisoners hanging upside down from a pole for hours, heels and wrists tied together in a position known as the "parrot's perch".




Clandestine life


Image caption Inocencio Uchoa and his wife Angela during their honeymoon, before his sentence was extended
Image caption Pablo Uchoa's older brother Marcelo was born while his parents were living in hiding

There they lived in hiding for almost a decade.

My brother and I were born during this clandestine time. My brother was named Marcelo, which was also my father's alias while in hiding.

In 1979, Brazil's military government passed an amnesty law which made it possible for my family to return to Fortaleza.



Hope amidst repression

They taught us to pin our hopes to the political struggle.

Image caption Pablo Uchoa (in his father's arms) on his birthday

Like many of his generation, my father is still reluctant to describe in detail what happened in the regime's dark chambers.

It is painful, he tells me, and "society needs some time to digest it".

After the return to democracy in 1985, "our logic was to help strengthen the unions, civil organisations, fight for the Constituent Assembly, for the vote," he explains.

"There was a sequence of events that didn't allow us to talk about torture too much," he adds.

There were practical reasons, too.

A recent search through declassified documents held in the National Archives shows that the secret services continued to keep an eye on him at least until 1989 - a full decade after the amnesty law was passed.


He has also been sharing his experiences with a recently created truth commission. Unlike some similar commissions elsewhere in the world, Brazil's truth commission does not have the power to seek prosecutions.


Looking back at the decades which have passed since the coup, my father says that "everything has its moment".

"In 1984, we were still coming out of the dictatorship. Ten years later, we didn't want to talk about it. We talked about it a little in 2004."

"Now, Brazil is facing its truths for the first time."

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