Amnesty in Brazil: Recompense after Repression, 1895–2010

Abstract

After 15 years of dictatorship, the Brazilian military leaders issued Law No. 6683, an amnesty law that started a slow process of democratic transition in the country. The law granted an official pardon to individuals accused of political crimes and to those who had their political rights suspended between September 1961 and August 1979. Ann Schneider's Amnesty in Brazil: Recompense after Repression, 1895–2010 examines this amnesty law, contextualizing it as part of a long history of amnesty laws in Brazil. Schneider shows that to understand how Law No. 6683 was interpreted and contested after the 1980s, we need to study the history of how Brazilian politicians, lawyers, writers, and other members of civil society developed a tradition of demanding and creating amnesty policies to resolve conflicts and crises since the First Republic—in 1891, when the first amnesty decree was issued. She demonstrates that throughout the twentieth century amnesty became an “institution to secure rights” in Brazil (p. 24).Schneider shows that the Brazilian state resorted to amnesty laws since the First Republic as a political solution to reconcile civil and human rights violations and that the first one, enacted by President Prudente de Morais, set a precedent for the use of amnesty in Brazil. Throughout the twentieth century, politicians and activists deployed the arguments that jurist Rui Barbosa first drafted in 1895 as a key part to settling civil and political conflicts. Amnesty became a government tool to both secure peace and turn toward new political regimes in Brazil.One of the book's main contributions is to illustrate that while amnesty laws and decrees of the post-1979 era in various countries often granted amnesty to the perpetrators of human rights violations, shielding them from accountability, in Brazil they also provided mechanisms for possible restitution to victims. Chapter 8 shows that because perpetrators were amnestied, the families of disappeared members of the Araguaia guerrilla movement never got justice. One example that the author discusses is the case of Major Curió, accused of the aggravated kidnapping of five guerrillas who were last seen in 1974. The judge assigned to his case rejected the complaint against him, suggesting that it would not be in the public's interest to rule against the amnesty law. Nonetheless, Schneider shows that while the law worked for state agents, it also benefited victims of the dictatorship. In 2001, for example, the Brazilian state created an amnesty commission that formally acknowledged state repression and offered monetary restitution and an official apology to the victims of the 1964–85 dictatorship. With this, amnesty in Brazil became associated not only with the pardoning of crimes and accusations but also with reparation and compensation. Schneider examines how amnesty laws in the late twentieth and early twentieth-first centuries came to incorporate the civil justice principle that quem causa dano repara (the one who harms must repair).In addition to discussing the amnesty laws, this book examines the crises and conflicts that led to their creation—over public health, racial relations, and class difference. One of the many valuable aspects of Schneider's analysis is the focus on the perspectives of victims—such as João Cândido, a Black sailor who rebelled against the navy's punitive methods, and Victória Grabois, whose husband, father, and brother, members of the Araguaia movement, disappeared during the 1970s. Schneider differentiates the anistiados (amnestied) from the anistiandos (those in the process of seeking amnesty). One important consequence of highlighting this difference is to show that the history of amnesty is ongoing. Those who got amnesty only considered themselves amnestied after they received reparations for the violence that the state subjected them to. Those who did not continued fighting for restitutions.While claiming amnesty became associated with restitution in Brazil, Schneider understands the limits of this legal framework. She disagrees with the idea that amnesty was triumphal or that it ended in the recognition and restitution of all rights in Brazil. Yet her argument that these laws and decrees represented an important legal basis for how people framed their access to rights is still valid and important. She provides a careful examination on the multiple groups who participated in the processes leading to the creation and application of amnesty laws. Even though amnesty did not benefit all groups who claimed to have a right to it, the groups who demanded amnesty influenced a tradition in which these laws were created and used this legal framework to their advantage. Schneider's analysis, therefore, provides a novel perspective for understanding how different groups in Brazil negotiated their rights in the public sphere.Lastly, Schneider's writing is accessible, and her narrative style is easy to follow. All students interested in human rights and transitional justice across disciplines will benefit from reading this well-researched and carefully organized book.