Lobotomy: Did Dirty Warriors Burn the Archives in Brazil?

Gen. Geisel (l.) and Gen. (Reserve) Golbery  (r.)

Guess I’ll have to break the news
That I’ve got no mind to lose
– The Ramones

What did you do in the dirty wars, Daddy?

No one will ever know.

Termômetro da democracia (Carta Capital): The Brazilian newsweekly does not have an online edition, so I am going to have to have Neuza buy it each week, then have a reading — with barbecue and nova bossa nova — marathon when I get back to São Paulo.

CartaCapital faz nesta edição uma revelação importante. Em dezembro de 2005, a ministra Dilma Rousseff, da Casa Civil, solicitou oficialmente aos comandos militares informações sobre os arquivos dos serviços de inteligência referentes àquele período. A ministra mirava o Ceiex (Exército), o Cenimar (Marinha) e o Ecisa (Aeronáutica). Poucos meses depois recebeu a informação de que os documentos desapareceram. Provavelmente foram queimados.

CartaCapital makes an important revelation in this issue. In December 2005, Minister Dilma Rousseff of the Casa Civil official requested information from the military leadership on the archives of the intelligence services from the period of the military dictatorship. The minister addressed her request to CEIEX (Army), CENIMAR (Navy) and ECISA (Air Force). A few months later she was informed that the documents had disappeared. There were probably burned.

Queima de arquivo is, of course, also a euphemism for assassinations and disappearances. The assassination of Inspector Tostes in Rio has been evaluated as a possible queima de arquivo, for example.

A ministra Dilma encaminhou a informação ao ministro da Defesa, Waldir Pires, que promete investigar essa ação criminosa contra a democracia. Esse é um crime premeditado.

Dilma forwarded the information to Defense Minister Pires, who promises to investigate this criminal offense against democracy.

Existe uma relação íntima entre a qualidade das democracias e a qualidade da memória histórica produzida nos países a partir do acesso ao acervo documental.

There is an intimate relationship between the quality of democracy and the quality of historical memory based on access to document archives.

E que ninguém esqueça. A apuração desse crime será uma ação importante para avaliar o grau do nosso desenvolvimento político. Aguardemos.

Let no one forget. The investigation of this crime will be an important litmus test for our political development. Let us wait and see.

It is interesting to read Lewis Lapham’s meditation on the same general topic in this week’s Harper’s — an obituary for Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who I believe once wrote a hagiography of Carlos Lacerda.

As Portuguese journalist Batista Bastos of the Lusitanian Jornal de Negócios wrote recently — see “The Adjective Kills”: A Sonnet From the Portuguese — indifference to institutional memory is a hallmark of Journalism 2.0 as well:

A few days ago, one of these “managers” who earn their living laying people off in order to “enable to the company to compete,” came out in one of the “papers of record” against “this thing they call [institutional] memory.” Huffing and puffing, he wrote: “Newspapers have absolutely need of memory.” With that attitude and style, the man is obviously nothing but a two-legged jackass. But the truth of it is as that it was the senior editors who, through their notorious subservience, gave rise to the origin of this species.

See also Victors, Spoils, Wikis, Hagiographies, Shills and GVO’s Innovation In Journalism: Edit the Ethics and Public Mission Out.