Amending wrongs: notes on the politics of reparation in Brazil: an attempt to come to terms with its past human rights abuses

Abstract

Concentrating on different levels of acknowledgment of past wrongdoings being adopted by Brazilian politics through the transition to democracy, it is aimed to ponder the discussions regarding how Brazilian strategies have confronted the inheritance of its past human rights abuses. For that goal, it will be considered as a theoretical background the sense of reparation on the processes of coming to terms with past injustices. Through the projects developed by the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances and by the Amnesty Commission, it is proposed to consider how the Brazilian State acknowledges the injustices perpetrated during its military dictatorship, focusing on what role can reparations play on the possibility of building positive approaches, constructing a theory of reparation relationships and attitudes which, without historical understanding informed by consistency and sensitivity, there is no past to come to terms with.