Truth Commission launches book listing 233 torturers

The State Commission of Truth of São Paulo have published a book called Bagulhão: A Voz dos Presos Políticos contra os Torturadores (“Bagulhão – The Voice of Political Prisoners against Torturers”), a valuable insight into the military dictatorship in Brazil. The book, which was released on Monday (June 16), is based on a letter written by political prisoners at the Romão Gomes penitentiary in São Paulo in 1975, which mentioned the names and aliases of 233 torturers acting under the military rule in the country.

The letter was sent to the President of the Federal Council of the Bar Association of Brazil (OAB) at the time. It was the first time political prisoners spoke out publicly about torture and torturers in the country, although other documents have been produced later and circulated covertly.

Reinaldo Morano Filho, a former political prisoner, explained that the name “Bagulhão” is a reference to the fact that the document was increasing over time (“-ão” is the Portuguese suffix for “big”); moreover, “bagulho” (“stuff”) was prisoners' language for something that they “greatly feared”. The prisoners began drafting the document in 1969, on a collaborative and confidential basis. The first name on the list of torturers is Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who headed the former Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODI) in São Paulo, the Brazilian intelligence and repression agency during the military government.

The document, Morano Filho explained, was a 28-page volume signed by 35 prisoners. Besides naming the torturers, the document described the prison conditions and the main torture methods and devices used by the agents of repression. The final draft was completed on October 23, 1975, but was appended a postscript two days later to include news of the death of Vladimir Herzog, a journalist killed by torturers in prison.

Morano Filho is one of the signers of the letter. “We witnessed killings and political persecution which took place back then,” he said. In order to ensure that the document would be delivered to OAB without being intercepted by the military, prisoners hid the pages inside a thermos flask used to store coffee for the visiting lawyers.

“I didn't know it”

The reason the letter was sent to OAB is that in August that year, the president of OAB, Caio Mário da Silva Pereira, gave a statement to newspaper Folha de S. Paulo saying that he was not aware of specific allegations of illegal arrests and arbitrary police action and that he needed more information on what was going on in the country.

“We, the undersigned political prisoners gathered in a federal military prison in São Paulo, have heard news of statements given by you regretting that you have not received 'objective reports' from victims of unlawful arrest and police arbitrariness. (...) (So...) we felt compelled as victims, survivors and witnesses of very serious human rights violations in Brazil, to send you an objective and detailed account of all that we have been exposed to in the past six years, as well as what we have witnessed or personally experienced in the country's recent history,” the letter began.

According to Morano Filho, when the document was made public in 1975, “no legal or court lawsuit challenged it. And no challenges have come up so far,” he said.

Another former political prisoner who also signed and helped draft the letter is a past Minister of the Human Rights Secretariat and current member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Paulo Vannuchi. He said the document provides “compelling evidence” that torture and violations took place at the time. “This is just one more proof to dispel any outstanding doubts that there were excesses and dozens of sadistic torturers, and that the regime has created – and supported – a structure [of violation]. It is a short, easy to read document, which must be replicated for all the people to see,” he said.

According to Vannuchi, reports of truth commissions around the country should deal with the accountability of the State for the violations that took place in the period. “The few dictatorship agents who do admit to torture – Ustra, for one, denies it flatly – do so representing instances as exceptions. These exceptions are something we must deal with... we must show them they were way beyond excesses of half a dozen [torturers]. These 233 or 400 names must be clearly identified. The high ranks knew what was going on here,” he said.

Translated by Mayra Borges