SAO PAULO — government on Monday apologized to families of victims of the country’s military dictatorship whose remains could be among those found in a clandestine mass grave 35 years ago.
Dozens of families are still waiting to know whether their parents, children, siblings and friends are in one of more than 1,000 blue bags discovered in 1990 in a ditch in a São Paulo cemetery in the isolated district of Perus. That was the first of many mass graves uncovered by Brazil’s authorities after the end of the 21-year military rule in 1985.
The clandestine grave at the Dom Bosco cemetery also contained remains of several unidentified people who were not linked to the fight against Brazil’s dictatorship.
The official apology is part of a deal between prosecutors, family members and the State. It took place during Right to Truth Day, which is also celebrated in other countries.
Human Rights Minister Macaé Evaristo said the Brazilian State was neglectful in the identification process of the bags and bones found in Perus. For almost 25 years, the remains were held by three state universities and laboratories outside Brazil, but only a handful of families finally had their loved ones identified.
Evaristo said Brazil’s government has invested about 200,000 Brazilian reais ($35,000) each year for the identification of bags from Perus, but agreed that is not enough to give peace to families of victims.
“What the Brazilian government has been doing is continuing the process of seeking investigation and accountability. We need to remember that our ministry was dismantled,” Evaristo said, in a reference to the 2019-22 presidency of , an advocate of the country’s military dictatorship. “Families have the right to the truth. Brazilian society has the right to the truth.”
Families uncertain if their loved ones’ remains were in the Perus mass grave attended the ceremony.
Gilberto Molina, who represented them, had his brother Flávio’s remains finally identified in one of the bags in 2005. The Brazilian State only recognized it was responsible for the crime in his brother’s third death certificate, early in 2019.
“It was a funeral of almost 50 years. For some other families it still is an even longer one,” Molina said. “I hope that every family here still has perseverance in their quest for justice.”
Brazil’s truth commission in 2014 reported that at least 434 people were killed and more than 100 disappeared completely during the country’s military dictatorship. The disappearance of former lawmaker Rubens Paiva, as portrayed in the Academy Award-winning film renewed public interest in the dictatorship’s abuses, attracting an audience of more than 6 million in Brazil.
Nilmário Miranda, a former government minister and long-time human rights activist, said uncovering a mass grave with victims of the dictatorship in 1990 — only a few years after redemocratization — was a major affair led by then Sao Paulo Mayor Luiza Erundina. Faced with anonymous death threats, she put City Hall officers to oversee the searches.
“It was all under the rug of society, it was all hidden and you couldn’t speak about it. That put the deal that ended the dictatorship in check, the one that spared torturers and executioners,” Miranda said, in a reference to Brazil’s 1979 amnesty law that didn’t punish crimes of the military during the regime.
That law could soon be partially reversed by Brazil’s Supreme Court in cases of people who were killed then by state agents and had their remains vanished.
Antonio Pires Eustáquio, who became a manager at the Dom Bosco cemetery in 1976 and helped families in their quest for justice for decades, celebrated the apology.
“This can only happen in a democracy. Dictators don’t apologize for their mistakes,” Eustáquio said. “I remember that at that time people always wondered whether I was going to be killed for I knew where the illegal ditch was. My being here means democracy won.”
But Crimeia Almeida, whose husband, her father-in-law and a brother-in-law went missing as guerrilla men about 50 years ago, said the state’s apology is not enough.
“The apology is not enough. It is nice, we get emotional, but it doesn’t solve the criminal act,” she said.
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