{"id":55647,"date":"2015-03-23T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=55647"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:56","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:56","slug":"brazil-the-dictatorships-perfect-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/brazil-the-dictatorships-perfect-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil: The Dictatorship\u2019s Perfect Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

11 Mar 2015 – <\/em>\u201cMy father was killed by the dictatorship and was buried in Perus.\u201d This deposition from Grenaldo da Silva Mesut, a physical education professor, is just one of many from the family members of 42 disappeared political activists who could be buried in Dom Bosco Cemetery located northwest of S\u00e3o Paulo in the Perus neighborhood, used to bury victims of state repression.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Yghor Boy from CartaCapital<\/p><\/div>\n

Discovered in 1990 during mayor Luiza Erundina\u2019s administration, the clandestine grave contained 1,049 remains, all unidentified. Among the unidentified skeletons are disappeared political activists, victims of the Esquadr\u00e3o da Morte\u2014the infamous Death Squad of rogue police active in the 1960s and 1970s\u2014, and children who died after an outbreak of meningitis struck S\u00e3o Paulo in the early 1970s, an epidemic suppressed by the dictatorship.<\/p>\n

\u201cIdentifying the bones of my father and of the others is a chance for us to demonstrate the crimes of the dictatorship and to recover the truth and the memory of the victims,\u201d affirms Mesut, son of Grenaldo de Jesus Silva, killed by a gunshot to the chest in 1972 at the Congonhas Airport while sequestering a Varig aircraft in a plot against the regime. According to the military government, the activist released the crew and committed suicide with a gunshot to the head. \u201cMy father did not commit suicide; he was killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The search for the whole story behind the cadavers in the Perus grave is threatened. After decades of abandonment, the bones and the sacks that they are wrapped in are moldy and in a very poor state of conservation. If the government does not speed up the material analysis, the slow progress of the fungi will end up devouring the last genetic remnants in the collagen of the bones, which would make DNA tests impossible.<\/p>\n

Despite the feeling of urgency among the victims\u2019 families, they are confronted with government claims of a lack of resources. For 23 years, from 1990 to 2013, the remains circulated between public agencies. Under the watch of the University of Campinas in the 1990s, the skeletons were kept in open sacks, scattered around a room without climate control and exposed to flooding. In 2001, custody passed to the University of S\u00e3o Paulo, and the bones were sent to the General Ossuary of Ara\u00e7\u00e1 Cemetery, where they were also at risk of being contaminated and degraded. Renovations were made, but the ossuary continued to have insufficient climate control.<\/p>\n

Until today, only three remains have been identified: the former political prisoners D\u00eanis Casemiro and Frederico Eduardo Mayr, at the beginning of the 1990s, and Fl\u00e1vio de Carvalho Molina, in 2005, after his mother Maria Helena Molina filed legal proceedings against the federal government and the Federal Public Ministry completed a DNA test.<\/p>\n

Video: Bones from Mass Grave in Perus Rotting Due to Negligence<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Only in September of 2013, when an accord was reached between the Secretary of Human Rights of the Presidency, the Municipal Secretary of Human Rights in S\u00e3o Paulo and the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (UNIFESP), did systematic analyses begin to be conducted.<\/p>\n

With funds from the Ministry of Education, a house in the southern zone of S\u00e3o Paulo was converted into a forensic anthropology laboratory at UNIFESP. The government contracted Brazilian and Peruvian professionals, and 433 boxes with the material were transferred to the laboratory. Of these, 112 were analyzed between October and December of 2014. Six remains were found with blunt wounds and three with firearm wounds, but they still lack DNA identification. The remaining 638 boxes wait at the Ara\u00e7\u00e1 Cemetery.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe boxes are moldy because only the lower level of the house was renovated and adapted,\u201d denounced Maria Am\u00e9lia Teles, founder of the Commission for Families of the Killed and Disappeared and founder of the State Truth Commission of S\u00e3o Paulo. \u201cWhat is more, the number of professionals is few and we have urgent need of the bones\u2019 identification. For too long, family members have been dying, making it even more difficult to identify the disappeared.\u201d Amelinha, as she is known, also fears the budget cuts announced by the government.<\/p>\n

The human rights minister, Ideli Salvatti, assured CartaCapital that the cuts would not hamper the work. \u201cJust like last year, when the Secretary of Human Rights budget lacked a rubric for experts and we found a solution, I have no doubt that we will fulfill our commitment to the families,\u201d she guaranteed. \u201cNow we have to await congressional approval of the 2015 budget to continue with our planning.\u201d According to the minister, the renovation of the upstairs of the house is a priority.<\/p>\n

In the race against time, 17 employees work to analyze the material. DNA will be extracted from the remains with the greatest probability of being disappeared political activists, but only after the verification of the 1,049 skeletons.<\/p>\n

Though the operation prioritizes the identification of disappeared political activists, the families of victims of extermination groups or whose children died as a result of sanitation failures by the dictatorship could also solicit tests on the bones.<\/p>\n

For Amelinha, there is a lack of political will. \u201cThe difficulty in finding money for the investigations and the absence of the Perus grave in the Truth Commission\u2019s report are evidence that the government doesn\u2019t want to confront the crimes of the dictatorship.\u201d<\/p>\n

The minister of Human Rights counters this accusation. She reminds people that her administration was the only one to send the remains for analysis and foresees the final phase of bone identification yet this year. \u201cThe DNA tests will be done all at once. Until then, if a bone has strong indications of being from one of the disappeared political activists, the Federal Police will conduct an exam.\u201d<\/p>\n

With so many former political prisoners in their midst, it would be inexcusable for a Workers\u2019 Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores\u2014PT) administration to be responsible for the total and definitive loss of a crucial part of the memory of the regime\u2019s atrocities.<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Marcelo Pellegrini is a reporter at <\/em>CartaCapital.<\/p>\n

Translated by Holly Holmes,<\/em> a translator, ethnomusicologist and vocalist who is passionate about sharing stories from Brazil on everything from politics and ecology to music and education<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source (in Portuguese)<\/em> CartaCapital<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 upsidedownworld.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11 Mar 2015 – Discovered in 1990, the clandestine grave contained 1,049 remains, all unidentified. Among the unidentified skeletons are disappeared political activists, victims of the Esquadr\u00e3o da Morte\u2014the infamous Death Squad of rogue police active in the 1960s and 1970s\u2014, and children who died from an outbreak of meningitis in the early 1970s, suppressed by the dictatorship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}