Abstract
On 5 December 1995, one of Brazil’s leading daily newspapers, the Folha de S. Paulo reported, in an inconspicuous six-line paragraph in the bottom left corner of its front cover, a declaration from the Brazilian President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The detailed coverage of this event only appeared on page 12: ‘In a closed ceremony in his Cabinet, without any speeches, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso yesterday sanctioned the law which recognises the death of 136 disappeared persons.’2 The word ‘apology’ is not even used. Almost covertly, the Brazilian government issued a law by which the state, for the first time, acknowledged the assassination of political opponents by the military regime that had ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985. This timid gesture may have been purely for the record, but nonetheless the Brazilian state had formally ‘apologised’. The so-called Law of the Disappeared constituted democratic Brazil’s first step in addressing past human rights crimes after a decade of silence.
The author wishes to express her special thanks to the interviewees referred to in this chapter: Paulo Abrão, Sueli Aparecida Bellato, Marlon Weichert, Eugênia Barbosa Gonzaga and five anonymous survivors. This piece of research was kindly supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the EU FP7 Marie Curie Zukunftskolleg Incoming Fellowship Programme, University of Konstanz (grant no. 291784).
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Notes
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This chapter does not assess the best means of ‘transitional justice’; many studies ponder the advantages and disadvantages of punishment including Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (eds.), Truth versus Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 22, and
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Leonardo Avritzer describes this phenomenon as ‘coexisting political cultures’: ‘Democratization and Changes in the Pattern of Association in Brazil’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 42, no. 3 (2000): 60, 66. For a discussion of his suggested concept see Schneider, ‘Waiting’, forthcoming.
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Schneider, N. (2014). What Makes a State Apology Authoritative? Lessons from Post-Authoritarian Brazil. In: Mihai, M., Thaler, M. (eds) On the Uses and Abuses of Political Apologies. Rhetoric, Politics and Society Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137343727_9
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