In Brazil, a New Nostalgia for Military Dictatorship

In Brazil, a New Nostalgia for Military Dictatorship
Vanessa Barbara MAY 1, 2016

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — “They lost in 1964, and now they have lost in 2016,” Jair Bolsonaro, a conservative congressman, said during the April 17 session when the lower house voted to move ahead with the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. With these words he sided with the “winners” of a military coup that overthrew a democratically elected government in 1964 and set the stage for 21 years of brutal military dictatorship.

Mr. Bolsonaro, a former army parachutist and a possible presidential candidate, dedicated his vote that day to the memory of Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who headed the DOI-CODI, the intelligence agency responsible for suppressing critics during military rule. The congressman lauded Ustra as “the dread of Dilma Rousseff.”

He’s right about that. For three years in the early 1970s, the president, a former Marxist guerrilla fighter, was subjected to electric shocks on different parts of her body and suspended upside down from a rod by her wrists and ankles. She suffered internal bleeding and one of her teeth was knocked out by a punch from an interrogator.

Ms. Rousseff was only one of the estimated thousands of people tortured by the Brazilian military regime. The dictatorship was responsible for countless human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests, sexual violence and hiding dead bodies. According to a report from the National Truth Commission, at least 434 people were killed or disappeared during this period: journalists, students, teachers, doctors, farmers, trade unionists, lawyers, former politicians from the opposition, even a housewife, a diplomat and three Catholic priests.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/opinion/in-brazil-a-new-nostalgia-for-military-dictatorship.html?_r=0