I am Still Here (2024, directed by Walter Salles)
Attention: This is not an analysis of the film, but memories and personal reflections on the dictatorship he lives in.
THE ONLY OPTION IS TO RESIST, TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING AND ALL THE VICTIMS
THE ONLY OPTION IS TO RESIST, TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING AND ALL THE VICTIMS
Trailer: https://youtu.be/gDunV808Yf4
SYNOPSIS
This film is the adaptation of Marcelo Rubens Paiva's homonymous autobiography focuses on Rio de Janeiro, in January 1971, where former federal deputy Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) returned to live in Brazil a few months earlier with his wife, Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres - from 1971 to 1996 / Fernanda Montenegro - in 2014), and their five children after his self-exile in 1964 due to the revocation of his mandate by Institutional Act No. 1.
Through this act, the political rights of all citizens seen as opponents of the dictatorial military regime, including congresspeople, military, and governors, were suspended for ten years. During this period, the threat of dismissals, imprisonment, classification as subversives and eventual expulsion from the country arose.
The National Security Law, which would be published on March 3, 1967, had its embryo in AI-1.
An indirect election was determined for the positions of president and vice-president of the Republic, with the winners having to exercise them until January 31, 1966, and be succeeded by those elected in a direct election, already foreseen, in 1965.
Rubens Paiva, despite having returned to engineering and taking care of his business without leaving aside his moments with his family and friends, for continuing to provide support to exiles without commenting practically anything on his political activities with his wife and children, had his house invaded, occupied and searched by six men (who, in the truth of the facts, declared that they belonged to the Brazilian Air Force), and soon after, he was taken into custody never to return.
A day later, when her personal life and that of her children is raided by members of the Armed Forces, Eunice is taken prisoner with one of her four daughters with Rubens, Eliana (Luiza Kosovski - in 1971 / Marjorie Estiano - in 2014), and her life is changed forever.
In prison, Eunice is separated from her daughter, a minor, and hears many episodes of torture that took place behind the doors. She is subjected to interrogations for twelve days, imprisoned in solitary confinement, without any conditions of hygiene and comfort, as well as no charges.
THE MILITARY DICTATORSHIP IN BRAZIL [1]
The film I am Still Here shows the horrors of the military dictatorship and the disappearance of political prisoners. It portrays the real life of a Brazilian family, and, therefore, will receive special treatment, because the subject of the analysis is not the members of the family of Eunice and Rubens Paiva, but the usurpation of democratic rights in the most sordid period of our political history, a shameful stain on our democracy, which is around us again, in a sneaky and hideous way.
What happened to Rubens Paiva's family happened to countless families, who had their homes invaded, overturned, and with some of their members taken to testify, without any search warrant, without any information on where these people were taken. Lawyers could not file Habeas Corpus, because the whereabouts of the victims of the military dictatorship were simply not known.
Some were returned to their families, relieved to have survived, but forever scarred by the horrors, often only heard, discreetly visualized, but enough to know the horrors that were being practiced.
Eliana, the daughter of Rubens and Eunice, still under 18 years old, spent a day and a night subjected to interrogations, listening to the signs of torture from the next rooms.
The reports of cruel torture, in search of confessions of crimes against the military regime (regime illicitly established, through a coup d'état) is already configured as the first incoherence, because the military regime was a dictatorship that defied all the laws in force in the Democratic State of Law, placing the entire population under the perspective of an unprecedented paranoia in our country.
THE TORTURE
"The tactic of political disappearance is the cruelest of all, because the victim remains alive on a daily basis. The victim is killed and the whole family is condemned to eternal psychological torture. We put on strong faces, we say that life goes on, but we cannot stop living with this feeling of injustice." Eunice Paiva
I grew up during the military dictatorship, and the only good thing left of that time was the exuberance of Brazilian popular music, which to circumvent censorship and censors, used poetic and symbolic language of an unparalleled quality.
The narrow-minded, limited, and concrete reasoning of the usurpers of power at the time, the military, did not reach the genius of a Chico Buarque or a Caetano Veloso, among others.
Any attitude considered suspicious by them was liable for the subject of the suspicion to have his house invaded and one or some of its members taken for clarification, always to a dubious destination, because it was not said to which police station, and, most of the time, people in São Paulo were taken to the DEIC (State Department of Criminal Investigations). where they were tortured psychologically, physically, suffering threats of all kinds, including to their families.
The macaw's stick (Here in a artistic representation) was one of the popular torture methods of that time.
Another department whose name caused panic was the SNI (National Intelligence Service), which promoted a real witch hunt, in this case the witches were the citizens who fought for their rights, and therefore considered communists.
The SNI could incriminate any citizen, creating dossiers, inventing, or misrepresenting any information about any citizen, attributing a narrative that justified the absurdities committed by its representatives.
"We wouldn't make a fool of coming out sad in the photos. Our enemy was not going to knock us down. Rubens Paiva family does not cry in front of the cameras, does not make a poor face, does not play the victim and is not a revanchist. He changed the command, he is still standing and fighting. The Rubens Paiva family is not a victim of the dictatorship, the country that is." Eunice Paiva
All of this was watered with the clichés of The Petrol is Ours (O Petróleo é Nosso), or that the Trans-Amazonian would be the definitive solution for the country! It seems that the only possible headlines in magazines and newspapers of the time, as everything else was censored.
Everything revolved around the divulgation of the values of the dictatorship as the solution to the problems of a communism that never existed.
An interesting fact that I came across, at the time when the company where I worked had retired colonels as managers, among them a proud torturer of the SNI, retired!!! that he decided to implement his paranoid methods of investigation, as well as his usual methods of interrogation, in the Department of Human Resources. These citizens had a special fondness for the Human Resources area, as they believed that confidential information about employees could unmask communist plots, which, in their fantasies, put the company and the country at risk.
It is worth mentioning that these individuals longed for validation, it was not enough to strike terror, they wanted everyone to agree with them. All were suspects, especially the employees who studied at USP, because, according to them, USP was a breeding ground for communists. Students of History and Philosophy were the most targeted, as they were irreversible communists!
As for me, a Psychology student at the time, I heard a wonderful digression about why the military government encouraged the expansion of Psychology courses across the country, after all, they would be training good wives and mothers, and if there was a surplus, we could be used in massage parlors, aka brothels, after all, psychologists and whores should be understanding and affectionate with the perverse clientele of the brothel.
I clearly remember a situation in which one of the Directors, from the same gang as the retired dictators and torturers, demanded the hiring of a cleaning assistant. The psychological evaluation of the candidates consisted of an infinite battery of tests and interviews, and this young man was one of the most serious I could observe, his psychological profile said that he was a troublemaker, with traces of psychopathy.
HR rejected the hiring, I was called to the board where I was coerced to recommend hiring the boy, with the allegation that he would be a simple cleaner. I must point out that a simple cleaner would have access to all the facilities of the building, crammed with confidential information. I refused to sign the report in favor of hiring, but advised that he could do it himself, if he assumed responsibility for the employee's permanence within the company.
Long story short, the boy was fired at lunchtime on the first day of work, for being drunk and molesting a 17-year-old girl on the steps of the building. But the young woman was also fired, a first-year student of history at USP, breadwinner, with an invalid father, small brother, the family's only salary, who worked two 6-hour shifts to support the family, studied at night.
The one who was the former SNI (The more or less equivalent to the CIA in Brazil, But not respectful at all at this time, with tendentious inclinations to considerer anyone as enemy of the Dictatorship Regime) technician, emphasizing that an ex-torturer does not exist, came to HR saying that the incident had served to prove that he was right to pick on the girl. Doing everything to convince us that his methods were impeccable and ethically praiseworthy.
I just listened to everything he said, without interruption, when he was tired of justifying his methods I told him that the girl was a minor, her father was disabled due to a work accident, etc., and that now her family would be in a delicate situation, because if she was fired for just cause, it would be difficult for her to get another job. At that moment, that old man in front of me dropped a tear. I do not think it was out of remorse or empathy for the girl, but because her sadistic and paranoid narrative did not find support in a representative of Human Resources.
When one observes the same methods of persuasion, psychological torture and oppression used by the dictatorship, transposed into a company and its employees, the vast majority of whom are young people, one knows very well what kind of absolute evil with which we are dealing.
Dictatorship, NEVER AGAIN!
Pau de arara: A Violência Militar no Brasil
Bernardo Kucinski and Ítalo Tronca | 2013
248 pages
Publisher: Perseu Abramo Foundation
ISBN: 978-85-7643-153-4
[1] I recommend Reading Pau de arara: A violência militar no Brasil
Bernardo Kucinski and Ítalo Tronca pdf available at the link https://fpabramo.org.br/publicacoes/estante/pau-de-arara-a-violencia-militar-no-brasil/
Texto mais que necessário! A arte sempre acha um caminho... Chico, Caetano citados, e tantos outros, nos trouxeram esse " grito de resistência " de maneira brilhante. É de fundamental importância lembrar também que foi no período de Dilma Rousseff, com a " Comissão da Verdade" , é que se fez possível olhar e endereçar essa barbárie, trazer a tona essa sombra que pairava em tantas famílias como a de Eunice.