In recent months, art has brought us back to the worst and best that happened during the dark 20 years of the military dictatorship. Guided by the sensitivity and intelligence of , we entered the basements of tyranny, where opponents were arrested, tortured and, often, killed. The film “” —one — tells the story of Eunice, widow of , former PTB deputy, arrested and tortured to death by agents of repression.
In a show seen by crowds, the still powerful voices of and recall the explosion of rebellion and creativity of the Brazilian popular movement of the 1970s and which the authoritarian regime tried to silence — in vain.
Film and spectacle help to form an affective memory, shared by those we live and remember; for those who lived without realizing what was happening; and for all those who were not born when the military ruled by force.
Now, at the end of the year, an economic historian and a political scientist come to tell the stories of the return of civilians to power and the painful — and successful — construction of democracy in the country. and , professors at FGV-SP, have just published “Negotiated Democracy: Party Politics in Brazil of the New Republic”, a competent reconstruction of Brazilian politics in the 44 years between the transition to the Rule of Law, which began in 1974, and the Temer government ( 2016-2018). The authors’ declared purpose is to remedy the lack of memory of the recent past that is present in everyday classrooms and public debate.
The story told there is a rollercoaster of twists and turns. In the end, democracy was established because the institutions enshrined in 1988 prevented the formation of clear majorities, requiring continuous negotiation between pragmatic political parties. And, above all, because significant political leaders understood the game and were willing to negotiate and moderate in the search for consensus solutions. In addition to committing to the golden rule that establishes respect for the results of free, clean and periodic electoral competition.
In this process, the party of those left behind by the dictatorship — the PFL — and the party that had opposed it — the / — were important, as well as its dissent grouped in . But it was also essential that the left converged on , a non-revolutionary social-democratic group, which invested exclusively in representative democracy, planting its roots in the electoral arena.
Furthermore, the history reconstructed by Weller and Limongi makes it clear that denunciations have always been fuel for political crises: in Collor’s case; in the crisis of; and, in the biggest of them, the scandal of what fueled the .
Finally, the book is enjoyable to read because it reminds us that, in the day-to-day disputes that forged democracy, the actors’ intentions often produced unexpected results. This confirms the astute observation of the Scottish philosopher (1732-1816), according to which history is the result of the actions of men and not of their designs.
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