The Brazilian Military Dictatorship through Literature, Music, and Cinema,1964-1985 (IAH 207-026): Getting Started

Unlike a conventional war waged against a standing army, a "dirty war" is waged against individuals, groups, or ideas considered subversive. Originally associated with Argentina's military regime from 1976-1983, the term has since been applied to neighboring dictatorships during the period. Indeed, it has become a byword for state-sponsored repression anywhere in the world.

Christopher Dunn's history of authoritarian Brazil exposes the inventive cultural production and intense social transformations that emerged during the rule of an iron-fisted military regime during the sixties and seventies.

Brazil has the tragic distinction of having endured the longest military-authoritarian regime in South America. Yet the country is distinctive for another reason: In the 1970s and 1980s it witnessed the emergence and development of perhaps the largest, most diverse, most radical, and most successful women's movement in contemporary Latin America.

"The largest and most comprehensive documentation of suspected death-squad victims ever undertaken, The Unpast is an expose of practices and attitudes toward the poor in Latin America's largest country."--Jacket.

Introduction: the turn to memory in Brazilian culture and politics -- Testimonies and the amnesty law -- A prime-time miniseries and impeachment -- Literary and official truth-telling -- From torture center to stage and site of memory -- Conclusion: memory's turns and returns.

This book uses the case study of Brazil's military government from 1964 to 1985 to provide a rare inside look at how propaganda is successfully created and distributed.

Of the twenty-three Brazilian policemen interviewed in depth for this landmark study, fourteen were direct perpetrators of torture and murder during the three decades that included the 1964-1985 military regime.

In May 1970, Marcos P. S. Arruda, a young political activist, was seized in São Paulo, imprisoned, and tortured. A Mother’s Cry is the harrowing story of Marcos’s incarceration and his family’s efforts to locate him and obtain his release.

Sarah Sarzynski's cultural history of Cold War-era Brazil examines the influence of revolutionary social movements in Northeastern Brazil during the lead-up to the 1964 coup that would bring the military to power for 21 years.