Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil

Conclusion: Memory's Turns and Returns

122  Con­ clu­ sion Memory’s Turns and Re­ turns Nearly two ­ decades after Fer­ nando Ga­ beira pub­ lished his ­ best-selling tes­ ti­ mony of the armed strug­ gle, help­ ing to set off a cycle of cul­ tural mem­ ory, O que é isso, com­ pan­ heiro? (What’s Going On Here, Com­ rade?) in­ spired a film ad­ ap­ ta­ tion di­ rected by Bruno Bar­ reto. The ­ fast-paced po­ lit­ i­ cal ­ thriller, re­ leased in the ­ United ­ States as Four Days in Sep­ tem­ ber, in­ cludes a fic­ tional scene—not drawn from ­ Gabeira’s tes­ ti­ mony— in which a mil­ i­ tary tor­ turer con­ fesses to his wife the truth about what he does for a liv­ ing as well as the feel­ ings of an­ guish and re­ morse it pro­ vokes in him. The scene ig­ nited a fire­ storm of de­ bate, in which nu­ mer­ ous for­ mer guer­ ril­ las, human ­ rights ­ groups, and ac­ a­ dem­ ics crit­ i­ cized Bar­ reto for what they ­ viewed as a sym­ pa­ thetic por­ trait of a re­ pen­ tant tor­ turer. Some crit­ ics ac­ cused the di­ rec­ tor of “ab­ solv­ ing” the mil­ i­ tary re­ gime and its human ­ rights vi­ o­ la­ tors.1 Re­ spond­ ing to the con­ tro­ versy, Ga­ beira de­ clared, “The film is not a ver­ dict and the di­ rec­ tor is not a judge.”2 The re­ mark is a de­ fense of the film and its di­ rec­ tor—al­ beit a some­ what dis­ in­ gen­ u­ ous one, since the ­ choice to ren­ der his­ tor­ i­ cal ­ events (even in a fic­ tional mode) ­ brings with it an eth­ i­ cal ob­ li­ ga­ tion to por­ tray ­ rather than ­ betray what hap­ pened. Yet there are two ­ larger ­ points em­ bed­ ded in ­ Gabeira’s words. On one level, they are a re­ min­ der of the in­ her­ ent open­ ness of ar­ tis­ tic crea­ tion: great films, like other aes­ thetic works, are rife with am­ bi­ gu­ ities, and the task of the di­ rec­ tor (or any other art­ ist) is not to im­ pose a sin­ gle mean­ ing (the way a judge and jury do in a trial, ­ whether that mean­ ing be guilt or in­ no­ cence, con­ vic­ tion or ex­ on­ er­ a­ tion) but to in­ vite multi­ ple inter­ pre­ ta­ tions of his or her work. On an­ other level, the for­ mer guer­ rilla is stat­ ing a sim­ ple fact: cul­ tural works and in­ sti­ tu­ tional mech­ a­ nisms serve dif­ fer­ ent func­ tions, and these ­ should not be con­ fused. ­ Whether or not C o n c l u s i o n 123 one ap­ proves of the im­ pulse to de­ fend the film, ­ Gabeira’s re­ mark ­ raises im­ por­ tant ­ points about ­ artistic-cultural pro­ duc­ tion and how it re­ lates to in­ sti­ tu­ tional mech­ a­ nisms such as truth com­ mis­ sions and human ­ rights pros­ e­ cu­ tions. The re­ la­ tion­ ship ­ between ­ artistic-cultural pro­ duc­ tion and in­ sti­ tu­ tional mech­ a­ nisms is com­ plex, no less so in a coun­ try like Bra­ zil, which has taken an un­ usu­ ally pro­ tracted and cir­ cui­ tous path in reck­ on­ ing with its dic­ ta­ to­ rial past. With the pas­ sage of the 1979 Am­ nesty Law, the Bra­ zil­ ian state at­ tempted to im­ pose rec­ on­ cil­ i­ a­ tion (a rec­ on­ cil­ i­ a­ tion many Bra­ zil­ ians de­ sired) ­ through a form of in­ sti­ tu­ tion­ al­ ized for­ get­ ting de­ signed to pre­ clude truth com­ mis­ sions and es­ pe­ cially ­ trials, an of­ fi­ cial pol­ i­ tics that pre­ vailed for over ­ thirty years. In­ deed, the most sig­ nif­i­ cant tran­ si­ tional jus­ tice meas­ ure under­ taken dur­ ing the pe­ riod, the es­ tab­ lish­ ment of a fed­ eral rep­ ar­ a­ tions com­ mis­ sion to ad­ dress­ deaths and dis­ ap­ pear­ ances, was ­ framed in terms of the Am­ nesty Law. The 1995 Law of the Dis­ ap­ peared, which ­ created the rep­ ar­ a­ tions pro­ gram, con...