The impossible is becoming a reality in Brazil, the unthinkable has become a fact. Methodical violence, unjustifiable repression, systematic use of denunciation and torture are emerging in a country where they were least likely to do so. Nothing is so opposed to Brazilian culture. Yesterday, speech was still circulating freely in the streets as the light and blood of communication. Today, blood is flowing in police cellars where so many men and women have fallen without knowing why: torture and corpses impose fear and silence everywhere, and dumb and terrifying rumours. Tongues fall silent, censorship and suspicion are rife.
Yesterday, the intelligence, subtlety and the manifold resources of human relationships were enough to solve or cope with all problems. Today, relationships are shattered by the suppression of all discussion; violence breaks age-old links, the brutality of a military order tends to multiply withdrawals, retirements and breaks, except between those who profit from the rCgime. The liberal tradition which inaugurated the first Brazilian Constitution in 1824 is thrown out as so much refuse.
This brutality takes the Brazilians by surprise, in the way in which horror suddenly strikes out of a morning sky which seemed to be dawning like any other. ‘Que cosa!’ Brutality strikes them before they have time to realize that it was possible. And the military may be maiming for a very long time a sort of national Brazilian genius in the way in which they are maiming so many victims of torture.