Transitional Justice in Brazil, 1970s–2010s

Abstract

The struggle for transitional justice in Brazil has faced various roadblocks since the country’s return to democracy in the mid-1980s. The military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985 employed brutal political repression against civilians deemed “subversives.” For years, however, the state had persistently disregarded claims to hold perpetrators accountable. This was mostly the result of an extremely negotiated and military-controlled transition to democracy, marked by political continuities and legal impunity to human rights violators. Effective campaigns by civil society organizations and families of the dictatorship’s victims finally led the Brazilian state to implement constrained policies of transitional justice. Between 1995 and 2010, the state officially recognized the dictatorship’s practices of torture and forced disappearance, as well as offered reparations to the victims. A national truth commission was ultimately established in 2012, culminating in an extensive final report that illuminated the dictatorship’s systemic repression and recommended holding its key perpetrators accountable. Yet the Brazilian armed forces strongly repudiated the commission’s work and actively curbed attempts to prosecute human rights violators. Frustrated by the state’s protracted implementation of transitional justice, human rights advocates sought alternative routes to accountability and truth-seeking. Some pressured professional organizations to discipline members complicit in the dictatorship’s repression. Others formed local truth commissions in municipalities, universities, unions, and corporations across the country to broaden and enhance the work of the national commission. Brazil thus experienced a particularly gradual and decentralized trajectory of transitional justice.