Brasília bridge renamed to honor student killed by dictatorship

Costa e Silva bridge, one of the monuments of Brasília that still honored actors of the military dictatorship, has been renamed. Effective yesterday (Aug. 27), it is now called Honestino Guimarães bridge, in honor of a student leader at the University of Brasília (UnB) who went missing during the dictatorship. The bill changing the name was signed into law by the governor of the Federal District, Rodrigo Rollemberg.

The bridge links Asa Sul, a central district in Brasília, to the upper-class neighborhood Lago Sul, and was named after the second president in the dictatorship period, General Arthur da Costa e Silva.

Former leader of the National Students' Union and an activist at the Ação Popular, a leftist anti-dictatorship group, Honestino was arrested in Rio de Janeiro in 1973, at age 26, and disappeared without a trace. Last year, the government gave him political amnesty and ordered an amendment in his death certificate to change his death cause to “acts of violence committed by the State.”

His nephew, Mateus Guimarães, 29, said the name change is an important step in memorializing the struggles of democracy, equality, and social justice. “It's the first step in a set of actions to raise awareness for what the dictatorship actually meant,” he said.

For him, Honestino was a symbol of a generation that stood up “to the dictatorship, but also for social justice, equality, against discrimination and intolerance, and for an end to poverty. This struggle is not over and we must be aware that it is for all of us,” he added.

According to Vicente Faleiros, Professor Emeritus at the University of Brasília, efforts to rename places named after dictatorship icons help educate the population to a standard of a society that respect human rights.

“We're removing a symbol of oppression and replacing it with a symbol of the struggle for democracy, equality, and a fairer Brazil. The dictatorship and the names associated with it are symbols of a dark past in our society when people's rights were violated,” he said.

General Arthur da Costa e Silva was president between 1967 and 1969, indirectly elected by Congress as the only candidate. He signed the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5), a decree that suppressed civil rights and gave full powers to the military government, whose effects lasted for more than ten years as the hardest period of Brazil's dictatorship.

Honestino Guimarães

Born in Itaberaí, Goiás, Honestino Guimarães passed the admission examinations into the University of Brasília with top marks in 1965. Because of his student activism, he faced persecution by the agents of political repression. He was expelled from the university in 1968 as a punishment for leading a movement demanding the dismissal of a fake professor at UnB who was actually a dictatorship informer. He married Isaura Botelho that year.

When AI-5 came into force, Honestino Guimarães hid out with his wife in São Paulo. On October 10, 1973, he was arrested in Rio de Janeiro by agents of the Navy Information Center (CENIMAR) where he was probably killed. His body was never returned to his family.

Translated by Mayra Borges