On March 22, 1971, after two months with no answers about the military dictatorship, Eunice Paiva asked the then president, Emílio Médici, justice for her husband.
Rubens Paiva was taken by Air Force agents on January 20, 2021 and died under torture in prison.
When he wrote to Medici, Eunice had been waiting for a month for a response to the letter sent to the then Minister of Justice, Alfredo Buzaid, who presided over the Council for the Defense of the Rights of the Human Person.
Until then, Eunice believed the former deputy was alive. The appeal was made in the name of the mother -in -law and the second daughter, Eliana.
“We ask the head of the nation, the justice that must result from the obedience of the laws. To my husband, who is an honorable Brazilian, cannot be refused, in a country like ours, Christian and civilized, the fundamental right of defense,” wrote Eunice.
“We are certain that you will not allow you to be denied, under penalty of the collapse of all public order, the elementary right to be arrested according to the laws in force in the country,” he followed in his letter.
The letter is between the approximately 150 documents gathered by the Sheet In the National Archives and the US embassy that allow the timeline to redo since the disappearance.
The record was not contemplated, and in the book of Marcelo Rubens Paiva, which based the cinematic work.
In the book, Marcelo says that the mother learned of the death of her father by journalist Fritz Utzeri, of Jornal do Brasil. Utzeri said he heard from Medici the phrase: “Died at war.”
The appeal to Médici appears as an annex of the process opened by Eunice to the Council for the Defense of the Rights of the Human Person, which would eventually filed in August 1971.
The correspondence is cited by journalist and researcher Juliana Dal Piva in the book.
Eunice Letter to Emílio Medici
Honorable President of the Republic
Marshal Emílio Garrastazu Medici
For more than a month I sent to the Minister of Justice of his government, who is also president of the Council of Defense of the Rights of the Human Person, the complaint letter whose copy here for the direct knowledge of you.
It is the letter of an distressed woman, who has seen a torrent of arbitrariness and unnatpable arbitrary, and that she is still a victim of her husband, engineer Rubens Beyrodt Paiva, arrested by Air Force security agents on January 20, kept so far uncommunicated, without knowing the reason for the arrest, who effectively determined her, and where she is.
We are second today, my mother -in -law and I, the mother and wife, the feelings of my daughter Eliana, a 15 -year -old girl, who went to you, after being released, when I myself was detained incommunicado in the Army Police Barracks, at Rua Barão de Mesquita, in this city, simply because she is the wife of Rubens.
We ask the head of the nation, the justice that must result from the obedience of the laws. To my husband, who is an honorable Brazilian, cannot be refused, in a country like ours, Christian and civilized, the fundamental right of defense. We are certain that you will not allow you to be denied, under penalty of the collapse of all public order, the elementary right to be arrested according to the laws in force in the country.
Rubens was arrested in my presence and that of our five children; It was seen by witnesses throughout January 20 in the 3rd air zone from which it was transported late in the afternoon to the Army Police Barracks in Baron de Mesquita; His photograph in the prisoner registration book in the aforementioned head of PE I saw, alongside my own and my daughter Eliana; His presence in this barracks was affirmed by the Armed Forces officers who questioned me over the 12 days I was arrested, that is until February 2nd; His own car, in which he was driven prisoner, saw him in the courtyard of the aforementioned barracks and was returned to me as proved the attached receipt.
It is not possible that, more than 60 days after, there is a disappeared a human person!
We refused to believe in the worst.
We trust the action of your excellence and in the midst of the huge restlessness and anguish we are living, we believe that you will prevail the authority of the laws of your government and respect for justice that ennobles nations.
Respectfully,
Maria Eunice Paiva
Rio de Janeiro, March 22, 1971
The report was produced. THE Sheet Collected documents that are now organized and available to consultation in the Pinpoint tool. See here all the collections.
