São Paulo forgets the marks of the military dictatorship – 03/31/2024 – Power

Brazilian memory has failed when it comes to recording in history the violence committed by the State during the military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985. The city of São Paulo is a good example of this neglect.

Although the capital of São Paulo witnessed a significant part of the 434 disappearances and deaths identified by the National Truth Commission (CNV), there are few places in the city where there is any memory of the period.

One of them is the Resistance Memorial. Located next to the Sala São Paulo, the museum operates in the building where the Department of Political and Social Order (Dops) was located, one of the main repressive bodies of that period.

Also in the Luz region, there is the Portal de Pedra, the only remnant of what used to be the Tiradentes Prison, another symbol of the dictatorship. In this prison, former president Dilma Rousseff was arrested and tortured in 1970.

At number 800 of Alameda Casa Branca, there is a monolith. The small stone embedded in the Jardins sidewalk remembers the guerrilla fighter Carlos Marighella, killed in 1969 there after being hit by four shots, in an operation commanded by the then Dops delegate Sérgio Paranhos Fleury.

With the exception of rare cases like those mentioned, the city’s social memory surrounding the dictatorship survives only among relatives and friends of the victims and organized groups that still seek justice.

The spaces that we can associate with “non-memory” are those where opponents of the military regime were murdered or last seen before disappearing into the cellars of repression.

Meet nine of them, photographed in recent days by Sheet.

Rua Albuquerque Lins, 850, Santa Cecília

New buildings were built on the site, and the exact spot no longer exists. According to the official version at the time, the militant Hiroaki Torigoe reacted to the arrest and shot at the agents of the repression bodies on Albuquerque Lins Street, in Santa Cecília, on January 5, 1972.

After being arrested, tortured and killed at DOI-Codi, he was buried under a false identity in the Perus cemetery.

Rua Martins Fontes, 268, center

Even after leaving armed struggle and militancy, Edgard de Aquino Duarte, a former soldier, was denounced by Corporal Anselmo. His arrest confirmed Anselmo as an undercover agent.

Under the name Ivan Melo and working at the Stock Exchange, Edgard was captured in his apartment on Rua Martins Fontes, in the central region of São Paulo, and taken to Dops, where he was last seen alive on June 22, 1973. .

Rua Heitor Peixoto, Cambuci

According to the official version, Gastone Lúcia Carvalho Beltrão was killed on January 22, 1972 during an exchange of gunfire with repression agents on Heitor Peixoto Street, on the corner of Ingles de Souza, in Cambuci.

In 1996, the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances (CEMDP) proved the dictatorship’s version false. Gastone was killed after being arrested by law enforcement agents.

Rua da Consolação, corner of Rua Maria Antônia, Vila Buarque

According to the military’s version, a Beetle exploded on the corner of Consolação and Maria Antônia in the early hours of September 4, 1969. In the car, there were Ishiro Nagami and Sérgio Roberto Corrêa, supposedly killed by the detonation of the explosives they were carrying.

Ishiro’s name appears in the Dossier of the Dead and Missing, but the State’s accountability process was rejected. Sérgio’s identification has not been proven.

Rua Caiubi, 164, Perdizes

The convent of Dominican friars in Perdizes became a place of resistance to the military dictatorship. The friars Tito, Betto, Oswaldo, Fernando and Ivo began to support the guerrilla group Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN), commanded by Carlos Marighella. Their story was brought to the screen in “Batismo de Sangue” (2006), by director Helvécio Ratton.

Frei Tito de Alencar Lima helped organize the congress held clandestinely by UNE in Ibiúna (SP) in 1968. Arrested and tortured, he was released and banned from the country after the kidnapping of Swiss ambassador Giovanni Bucher. Shaken by the torture suffered in prison, he hanged himself in France in 1974. He was recognized as a victim of the dictatorship by the CEMDP.

Rua Pio XI, 767, Lapa

On the morning of December 16, 1976, at least 10 Army vehicles and 40 police and military agents — armed with revolvers, rifles and machine guns — surrounded the house at number 767 on Rua Pio XI, in Lapa. In the episode that became known as the “Lapa Massacre”, Ângelo Arroyo and Pedro Pomar were killed in the house that served as the Communist Party’s apparatus.

The official version at the time said that they were killed after exchanging gunfire with security agents. In 1996, CEMDP proved this information false.

Rua Siqueira Bueno, 668, Belenzinho

On the walls, only the marks of what was once Metal Art in Belenzinho remained. At this metallurgical plant, on January 16, 1976, worker Manoel Fiel Filho was approached by two men who identified themselves as city hall employees. Dops agents were after the press operator because a colleague had denounced him for taking the newspaper A Voz Operária with him.

He was last seen by his family when he was taken to his home for search and seizure. An official note released the following day said that he had hanged himself in his cell with his own socks. However, co-workers stated that when detained, he was wearing flip-flops without socks. The worker’s death provoked a crisis in the military government, which led to the dismissal of the commander of the 2nd Army, Ednardo D’Ávila Mello.

Rua Caquito, 247, Penha

On March 15, 1973, Arnaldo Cardoso da Rocha, Francisco Emanoel Penteado and Francisco Seiko Okama were reportedly killed during a siege mounted by security agents on Caquito Street, close to the Penha cemetery, after allegedly reacting to the arrest. This was the dictatorship’s version.

But they were seen still alive by other prisoners on the DOI-Codi premises after the incident. The regime’s narrative was dismantled by the Commission on the Dead and Missing in 1997.

Rua Serra de Botucatu, 849, Tatuapé

According to the official version, on February 19, 1972, Alexander José Ibsen Voerões and Lauriberto José Reyes were killed on Rua Serra de Botucatu after an intense shootout with the police, which also killed retired civil servant Napoleão Felipe Biscaldi, a resident of Tatuapé. The regime’s version also reported that the two boys were responsible for the shot that hit Napoleon.

The CEMDP welcomed the investigations by the Family Commission, which they pointed to as a case of “execution” by the security forces, also exempting the victims of Napoleon’s death.