Amnesty Commission redresses descendants of dictatorship victims
Fifty years after the 1964 coup, the Amnesty Commission held a hearing on Thursday (Feb. 6) to consider another batch of cases filed by children and grandchildren of persons persecuted by the military dictatorship. Emotion, pain, and anguish were some of the feelings shown by those who, from early childhood, endured the hardships of repression alongside their parents.
Among the 18 cases upheld during the session were those filed by Mariana Ribeiro Prestes, daughter of former Communist leader Luiz Carlos Prestes; Luis Claudio Arraes de Alencar , son of former Pernambuco governor Miguel Arraes, and Lutgardes Costa Freire, son of educator Paulo Freire. A champion of education in Brazil and renowned worldwide for his avant-garde method of literacy teaching, Freire was arrested in 1964 and later exiled to Bolivia and Chile.
As social scientist Lutgardes recalled, “I lived through the entire dictatorship period, in the 1960s, as a child. My father used to welcome Brazilian and foreign friends at home, when they would share numerous stories of torture and persecution. All of this left a strong impression and gradually led me into a psychotic state.”
The parents of architect Andrea Curtiss Alvarenga – Afonso Junqueira de Alvarenga and Mara Curtiss Alvarenga – were also arrested and banished from the country. She and her five siblings experienced similarly painful stories which, she says, have survived the Amnesty Act: “I keep saying that amnesty is not merely about returning to your country. It is a whole process of readapting and readjusting how you live, and a recognition,” she said overcome with emotion. “It really touches me to find that the State, the government, acknowledges you. They're really saying, 'We did something wrong to you.'”
As he officially apologized on behalf of the Brazilian State, the President of the Amnesty Commission, Paulo Abrão, said, “In acknowledgment of the misdeeds that it has committed against them, the State apologizes in order that people can be reconciled with the nation. A gesture of moral character that goes beyond the mostly economic dimension to mark a bolstered democracy,” and that it was “a gesture that shows the State recognition of the legitimate right to resist oppression.”
Translated by Mayra Borges
Fonte: mnesty Commission redresses descendants of dictatorship victims
