Random Thoughts/Observations

I need to know more about Brasil´s recent history. I don´t think I´ve ever made a trip here, even one of only two weeks, in which I didn´t here some reference to the military dictatorship that only ended in the mid 1980s.


Yesterday there was a story in the leading São Paulo newspaper about a lawsuit which was dismissed yesterday on procedural technicalities. A Brasilean couple were suing a leading official from the dictatorship for the torture and murder of their son, a São Paulo journalist, in the 1970´s. Of course, I couldn´t read it myself, but Heitor summarized it for me, and he was pissed. My sense is that nobody has ever been held accountable for numerous human rights abuses that occured during those years, and it is a very sore spot for Brasilians with a social conscious and a desire for justice. Those with the most to lose of course argue that the national interest is best served by letting some things lie undisturbed, by not opening up old wounds, looking forward and not backward and all that crap... apparently with a great deal of success.

What doesn´t seem to be disputed is that in 1964 the Brasilean military overthrew a legally elected government and that Lyndon Johnson´s was one of, if not the, first governments to recognize the new dictatorship, and was probably (no surprise) involved in the planning and execution of the coup. Apparently the U.S. ambassador has admitted as much, and acknowledged the presence of the U.S. navy off shore at the time of the coup, in case it was needed. This shouldn´t surprise anyone, because it should be pretty well known by now that the prism of anti-communism, through which we viewed everything that went on in the world at that time, caused a few, shall we say, distortions. Any concern for social justice and addresing the issue of economic inequities was, ipso facto (or ipso fatso as Archie Bunker put it), evidence of support from Moscow (or Peking, or Havana etc.) What I read on the internet (yes, I know,...) is that all the evidence now says that the only outside government involved in Brasilean politics at the time was Washington.

Under the umbrella of the dictatorship, the fabric of democracy was maintained and political parties were apparently still allowed to operate. The two principal parties were known at the time as the ``Yes´´ party and the ``Yes, Sir´´ party.

According to Wikipedia, ``a government-sponsored truth and reconciliation commission in 2007, by the end of the dictatorship there were at least 339 documented cases of government-sponsored political assassinations or disappearances. Countless more were questioned, tortured, and jailed.´´ I want to know more about this, but haven´t been able to find much about it on line...other than the admission that no country, other than South Africa, has really made truth and reconciliation commissions work well enough to satisfy the majority of people.

Heitor has several books to recommend about that period, but I don´t know if any of them have been translated into English. And I let him leave for 10 days of work in Rio without remembering to get the titles from him. Long term, if I stay in Brasil, I need to have a better understanding of its politics and history...can´t help it, just need to. And then, of course, I will expect you to consider me the expert and defer to me in all matters Brasilean.

The newspaper article I mentioned about the dismissal of a lawsuit is not the only reason this is on my mind at the moment. Heitor´s sister, Sueli, is recently returned from a vacation in Europe and she was showing me pictures and telling me of her time in Barcelona, which whe loved. I mentioned that I had been in Barcelona once, but that it was so long ago that Franco was still in power. I said that I enjoyed my time in the city, but one of my most enduring memories is the omnipresence of Franco´s military....how so many buildings had military guards stationed in their front. Aside from the communication issues caused by my crappy Português and her crappier English, it was clear that Sueli just didn´t understand what I was talking about, why this was an issue, and we went on to other things. It only occurred to me a few days later that the reason she couldn´t understand what I was trying to say is because São Paulo, too, has military police stationed everywhere, maybe even more so than in Franco´s Spain. I had always noticed them; why I had never questioned them is hard to say. But, frankly, they look more like ``Police´´ than ``Military´´ so I know that is part of the reason. Heitor, my resource for all things Brasilean, understands my north american distinctions between civil and military police, and he says they are a remnant from the days of the dictatorship...that they were an institution nobody quite knew how to deal with. So now, instead of torturing people, they´re directing traffic.
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And now for something entirely different: I finally found the cachaça Heitor has been recommending for the last month. A 600 ml bottle, which looks like an over-sized beer bottle, costs $R18.00 and I have to admit it is better than the other brands I´ve tried so far. But it also has a cap like a beer bottle (at least it isn´t a twist off), which makes me wonder if anybody actually pops off the cap and drinks a whole bottle of this stuff. Heitor says it is bottled by a small operation which has never spent a dime on marketing and is only known because of word of mouth (unlike, shall we say, Bombay Blue Sapphire?). He went on to say it was a ``hand job,´´ by which we ascertained he meant it was made by hand. He will kill me if he ever reads this.