Brazil & Southern Cone - 26 October 2004

A strange episode in October has revealed that there are still within the Brazilian army, in influential positions, elements who remain unrepentant of the criminal activities they engaged in during the period of military rule that followed the 1964 coup. This forced Lula and the army high command to dissociate the government from them. After the event, hints have emerged that the incident was staged for this purpose.

On 17 October the newspaper Correio Braziliense published a photograph purportedly showing the journalist Vladimir Herzog, naked and bearing signs of ill treatment, shortly before he was reportedly found, in October 1975 hanging from his neck in his cell. At the time his death was ruled to have been suicide. That same day the army's information office, the Centro de Comunicação Social do Exército (CCSE), issued a communiqué which started out by justifying the methods used at the time by the security forces as 'a legitimate response to the violence of those who eschewed dialogue, opted for radicalism and illegality and took the initiative of rising in arms and unleashing criminal actions'.

This included the 'structure created to support, in operations and intelligence, the activities needed to de-structure the radical and illegal movements.' The communiqué goes on to say that the action of the military, 'the fruit of public clamour, undoubtedly created the conditions for the construction of a new Brazil, in an atmosphere of peace and security' - and that this rendered the repressive apparatus 'obsolete'. As to the deaths that resulted, it adds, the defence ministry has repeatedly noted that there is no documentary evidence, since all operational and intelligence records were - quite legally - destroyed. 'Any testimony disseminated by the media, third parties or documents perhaps stored in personal archives,' it says, 'is not the responsibility of the armed forces.'

An irate Lula summoned defence minister and the commander of the army, General Francisco Roberto de Albuquerque, for explanations. Even before the meeting, the offending communiqué was removed from the CCSE's website; after it, Albuquerque issued a new one. He said the publication of the first 'inappropriate' document had been the result of 'the absence of a deep enough internal discussion on the subject'. He expressed regret, on behalf of the army, for Herzog's death, noting that even at the time it had led to the dismissal of the commander of the second army, General Eduardo Dávila Mello. 'For the good of democracy and committed to the laws of the land, the army does not wish to revive events of a tragic past that Brazil underwent,' he added.

Twist in the tale
This did not suffice to stifle calls already circulating in congress for a full inquiry into the circumstances of Herzog's death. But an unexpected twist in the tale surfaced on 21 October, when human rights secretary Nilmário Miranda announced that the photo published by Correio had been in the public domain since 1997, when an army corporal handed over to congress three boxes of documents proving the extent of the military's illegal domestic intelligence operations. This had been reported to Miranda by the Agência Brasileira de Inteligência (Abin), which had had no trouble tracking the photo back to the archives of the lower chamber's human rights committee. The photo appears to date back to a 1974 investigation conducted by the SNI, Abin's predecessor. It was the only one that showed a naked person, and the only one not carried by the media in 1997. While all other photos were identified, this one was not linked by anyone to Herzog at the time. So was it all a setup?