TRF-4 understood that Maria Thereza Goulart and her family suffered serious harm due to persecution during the military dictatorship
Maria Thereza Goulart, widow of former president João Goulart, had her compensation increased to R$500,000 in a decision by the 3rd Panel of the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region. The amount, referring to damages caused by the persecution suffered by her and her family during the period of the military dictatorship in Brazil, between 1964 and 1985, at R$79,200 in January this year.
To justify the increase in compensation, the case’s rapporteur, federal judge Cândido Alfredo Silva Leal Júnior, argued that Maria Thereza suffered serious political damage during 16 years of persecution. Here is the full text (PDF – 271kB).
Generally, in cases of compensation for political persecution, the maximum amount is R$100,000. Leal Júnior, however, understood that there are aggravating factors in Maria Thereza’s case. He stated that the suspension of João Goulart’s political rights “transcended the limits of his own sphere of rights, directly impacting his wife and mother of his 2 children”.
The rapporteur recalls that Maria Thereza also experienced persecution and was even arrested by the Uruguayan police, while she was in exile there with her children. Furthermore, she mentioned that her son was detained as a teenager and that she was prevented by the military from attending her mother’s wake when she went to Brazil.
Leal Júnior also points out the fact that Maria Thereza suffered more abuse because she was a woman.
“She also suffered as a woman, she suffered as a mother, being exposed in front of her children. She suffered as a wife, because she was being arrested and led away because she was the wife of a President of the Republic. She was made, as a woman, almost a “thing”, being forced to be naked, in an unjustified way, with the intention precisely of being coerced, embarrassed, reduced as a person, as a mother, as a wife, as a woman.”, said the rapporteur.
Maria Thereza registered the action against the Union in 2021, alleging that she, her husband and their 2 children had to leave Brasília in a hurry in April 1964, due to the coup by the Armed Forces. During her escape, the former first lady claims that she left most of her belongings behind, such as jewelry, branded clothes and even a herd of cattle, all of which were looted.
In her request, the widow also reports on the escapes that followed in Uruguay, where she stayed until 1973, and in Argentina, the country where she lived until 1975. Both nations were going through militarization processes similar to Brazil. Maria Thereza recalls that tensions increased with the discovery of a plan to kidnap her children. That was when he decided to move to London, shortly after the former president’s death in 1976.
“The former president’s family group, as a whole, had to bear the damage resulting from such an exceptional act, which began with the flight from national territory and unfolded throughout more than a decade and a half of political persecution, as well as recognized in the administrative process that was processed by the Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Justice”, stated judge Bruno Risch Fagundes de Oliveira, in the determination made in January this year.
