Speaking of Flowers: Student Movements and the Making and Remembering of 1968 in Military Brazil

Epilogue

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Epilogue Forty-seven years after supporters of the Brazilian military regime set fire to the une building, a democratically elected Brazilian president and former regime opponent joined current and former student activists at 132 Praia de Flamengo Street in Rio de Janeiro for an important rite of remembrance and renewal. As one of his last acts before leaving o≈ce, thenPresident Luiz Inácio ‘‘Lula’’ da Silva stood at the famous address to speak about the history of the former une building and to lay a cornerstone for its reconstruction. As we have seen, the building was burned in April 1964 by celebrants of the coup d’état that ushered in the dictatorship, transferred in its charred state in 1966 to the music and drama schools of a metropolitan university, and then razed in 1980 as a dubiously declared safety hazard. The structure’s symbolic presence endured, however, and for thirty years the beachfront lot in the prominent Flamengo neighborhood sat mostly empty as students first struggled to reclaim rights to the space and then lobbied to secure funds for a reconstruction. At President Lula’s historic visit one particularly poignant image of 1968 predominated. On an enormous poster, spreading across the length of the empty lot and reaching several feet over the participants’ heads, was an enormous black-and-white photograph of a smoky street protest filled with exuberant young people, fists in the air. One bearded young man is closer to the camera than the others, apparently leaping for joy, a rock in his right fist. It is a striking image, snapped at one of the many student demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro in 1968 and capturing in a flash the exuberance of youth, of popular political participation, of the potential strength in collective action. Most important, the leaping figure is widely believed to be Honestino Guimarães, and his towering presence at the site suggested the parallels between the martyrdom and militancy of une’s 246 epilogue disappeared president and that of its disappeared building.∞ Emphasizing still further present-day understandings of the power of that disappeared building, the sign alongside Guimarães’s enlarged photo read, ‘‘It has been known as the ‘House of Youth Power,’ and the ‘House of Democratic Resistance.’ It was burned and demolished by the military dictatorship. From students’ struggles and Oscar Niemeyer’s drawing board, the dream of reconstruction is born. With an eye to the future we return to this space. Thank you Rio de Janeiro. For une, it will be an honor to return home.’’≤ Students’ long-standing e√orts to recuperate their building and, by extension , the union’s material authority finally paid o√ when, a few days before this ceremony in 2010, the Lula government deposited into une’s coffers the first installment of a R$4.6-million (US$ 26.7-million) indemnity payment, reparations for the students’ loss during the dictatorship. Subsequent installments were to be made by the incoming president, Dilma Rousse√. In explaining the government’s decision, Paulo Abrão, the president of the Amnesty Commission that authorized the indemnity, labeled it a ‘‘moral reparation,’’ explaining that the current government ‘‘recognizes student politics as one of the central mechanisms of civic democratic life.’’≥ It was just the kind of o≈cial and symbolic recognition students had long sought. The political transformation in Brazil between 1964 and 2010 has been remarkable, especially the ascendancy of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (pt), a party that was born out of the labor union movement of the late 1970s and that quickly came to count on a sizable portion of the intellectual sectors as its supporters. Both Presidents da Silva and Rousse√ hail from the pt, and their administrations as well as the leadership of the pt more generally have been filled with important figures from the student movement of 1968, including some of the figures discussed here, such as Vladimir Palmeira, José Dirceu, Franklin Martins, and José Genoino. But the pt does not have a monopoly on student activists or on claims to 1968. Former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso has asserted that ‘‘more of 1968 remained’’ in his presidency than in Lula’s, and the presidential candidate who has most often run against the pt, José Serra, was the president of une at the time of the coup in 1964.∂ Indeed, memories of 1968 continued to impact the Brazilian political scene long after the return to democracy. By 1998, the thirty-year anniversary of 1968, yet another...