Subject: Eunice Paiva. The “confidential” stamp marks the two -page report on a lecture by Rubens Paiva’s wife sent on July 17, 1979 to the then Minister of Justice. Eight years after the former deputy, she was a voice of the amnesty movement monitored by the military.
The lecture took place on May 13 of that year, during an act that brought together about 150 people in Londrina (PR). The event was registered before, on June 12, by the arm of Curitiba do SNI, the intelligence service of .
In the speech, he demanded clarification on her husband’s disappearance on January 20, 1971, questioned the army’s version that Rubens had been kidnapped by terrorists, showed disbelief about the punishment of those involved and cited a promise that he would be released.
Such a promise, according to the report, was made by the then Minister of Justice, Alfredo Buzaid. He would have said he had talked to Rubens Paiva. This would be alive, but injured in the 1st Army. “He also told me that, for him to get out of there, it was a matter of time, it was missing certain formalities,” said Eunice.
Then Buzaid denied the meeting with the widow and said that Rubens Paiva had fled.
About 150 documents gathered by Sheet In the National Archives and the US embassy allow the timeline since the disappearance.
The report organized and translated files through the Google Notebooklm Artificial Intelligence tool. After that, each document was checked individually.
The collection brings records not contemplated in the movie “”, nominated for, and even in the book of Marcelo Rubens Paiva, which based the cinematic work.
Eunice Paiva and her second daughter, Eliana, were arrested on January 21, while Rubens was still alive. While the girl, at the time 15, was released the next day, her mother would only be released on February 2. That’s when she started searching for answers that would arrive months, years later or never.
Report of Sheet From 1981 says that the confirmation of death arrived in Eunice for then deputy Pedroso Horta (MDB-SP). In the book, Marcelo says his mother was informed by a journalist. She did not divide the news with her family and provided the move to Santos – not to Sao Paulo, as in the movie.
While Eunice took six months to learn about her husband’s death, a memo from the US embassy recorded the fact 22 days after the kidnapping.
“Paiva died under interrogation from heart attack or other causes,” says the American embassy document. The employee wrote that the case was “another example of the strong irresponsibility of Brazil’s security forces,” with the potential to become a problem in Nixon management.
Days earlier, on February 8, another embassy member described Eunice’s report about the arrest.
“Mrs. Paiva was interrogated at all times, and often awake at night for interrogation. In one of the rooms where her interrogation occurred, she saw the macaw stick and electric shock equipment. She also heard shouts often at the site,” he says.
“Her little cell contained a straw mat and an open shower. She did not get a change of clothes and, after several days, managed to take a shower and dry with her dress, while, discreetly, the guards looked in the other direction. After five days, her family managed to send some clothes.”
Attached, documents include a copy of a New York Times report with Eliana Paiva’s account of her parents’ arrest. The publications were pointed out as the reason why a correspondent of that newspaper would eventually be arrested in September of the same year.
In addition to triggering the international press, in February 1971 Eunice also wrote to Alfredo Buzaid, which presided over the Council for the Defense of the Rights of the Human Person. A month later, asking “the head of the nation the justice that must result from the obedience of laws.”
“It is the letter of an distressed woman, who has seen a torrent of unnameable arbitrariness over her family, 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 the reason for the arrest, who effectively determined her and the place where she finds himself,” says Eunice to Médici.
“It is not possible that, more than 60 days after, a human person is missing missing! We refuse to believe the worst,” writes Eunice on March 22, 1971.
The correspondence is quoted by journalist and researcher Juliana Dal Piva in the book “Crime Without Punishment: how the military killed Rubens Paiva,”.
Despite the appeals, the case was filed by the board in August 1971. In his opinion, the rapporteur, at the time Senator Eurico Rezende (Arena-ES), welcomed the thesis of the military that Rubens had fled.
Eunice is cited as a subversive in reports on politicians and other activists monitored by the dictatorship. A report of the Air Force about an act by amnesty on July 23, 1979 reveals that Paiva’s widow criticized the regime and called the government “street vendor because she is in the mood to advertise.”
However, the dictatorship avoided retaliating family members of victims in the period, says lawyer Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh, who chaired the Brazilian committee for amnesty. “It was a matter of which repression flew like the devil runs away from the cross.”
In the 1980s, Eunice was still monitored by the military, who record her PT affiliation in 1981 in an act with the presence of Lula. In 1983, when Eunice tried to sell a property, the bank ordered a power of attorney from her husband. She questioned the requirement in court and only then was the case Rubens Paiva reopened.
After the inauguration of the presidency in 1995, Eunice began to charge the state’s reparation to the family members of missing political missing. Cutings for newspapers of the period show then federal deputy Jair Bolsonaro as one of the opponents of the agenda.
In 1996, Eunice is the first representative of civil society to be nominated by FHC for the Special Commission of Missing Politicals. At that time, she contributed for a few months with analysis so that other victims of repression were recognized and their families compensated.
The opinions made by Eunice were cited in 2014 in the reports produced by the National Truth Commission. In his book, Marcelo says that that year his mother was already in the third stage of Alzheimer’s, inert in the wheelchair, when he saw a report about Rubens Paiva on TV.
She reacted, repeating “Look, look, look” and “poor, poor thing, poor thing”.
Rubens Paiva Case Chronology
Seizure
In 20.Jan.1971, Rubens Paiva is taken by armed men to give testimony
Mother and Daughter
In 21.Jan.1971, Eunice and Eliana are taken to testify. The teenager is loose the next day
Death
Rubens Paiva dies on the night of 21.Jan.1971 After being tortured
Report
On 02.FEV.1971, Eunice is loose, and The New York Times publishes report on the case
Embassy
On 11.FEV.1971, memo from the US embassy records that Rubens Paiva died
News
In Jul.1971, Eunice is informed about her husband’s death
File
In Aug.1971, the Council for the Defense of the Rights of the Human Person Files Case about Rubens Paiva
The report was produced in. Folha has collected documents that are now organized and. See all collections.
