However, from a historical standpoint, it is still a fact that the Brazilian dictatorship, however brutal, was less repressive than similar regimes in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, or than the left-wing Cuban dictatorship. The note we printed to accompany the letters by Professors Comparato and Benevides, on February 20, was a sharp-worded response to a sharp-worded rebuke: the claim that those responsible for the editorial should apologize 'on their knees'. In order to impeach the democratic credentials of others, those so-called democrats should first show their rejection, and with the same venom, of the methods adopted by left-wing dictatorships towards which they are partial".