The current residents of house number 155, on Rua Coronel Rodrigues, in Sapopemba, east zone of São Paulo, do not know for sure who Manoel Fiel Filho was. Not even 50 years ago, on a Saturday in January 1976, a taxi parked outside that house with two men who handed over a black bag with clothes and shoes and said: “Mr. Manoel committed suicide.”
One day earlier, on Friday, Manoel had left home early, like every day, to work at the Metal Arte factory, in the Mooca neighborhood, also in the east zone. At around 9am, two men arrived at the scene, identified themselves as agents from Dops, the Department of Political and Social Order, and asked to speak to him. They said the employee would have to accompany them for questioning and would return shortly.
From the factory, they went to the house where Manoel lived, on Rua Coronel Rodrigues, to search. They searched the whole house and only calmed down when they found two copies of the newspaper Voz Operária, published by the Brazilian Communist Party. Manoel was a member of the party, organizing its activities among Mooca workers.
It was enough for the regime to take him. His wife, Terezinha, burst into tears, and he tried to reassure her: “Don’t worry, deny it, I’ll be right back.”
Didn’t come back. And only now, 50 years later, will the family receive his amended death certificate, with the cause of death as “murder” and no longer “suicide”.
The ceremony, in charge of the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances, housed in the Ministry of Human Rights, is scheduled for June.
Now 70 years old, Manoel’s eldest daughter, Maria Aparecida Fiel, says that the document arrives late: “Unfortunately my mother is no longer here to see this. She died at the age of 92, with dementia, after a life of so much suffering.”
The premature death of worker Manoel, at the age of 49, changed the lives of his wife and two daughters. “We had to leave the house, me in one direction and my younger sister and mother in another”, says Maria Aparecida. “That’s because we were warned that, in addition to my father, the persecution could reach us too.”
At first, the three lived a period of isolation and complete misunderstanding of what was happening. “I was 20 years old, I was pregnant with my first child, we didn’t really know what was going on”, recalls the eldest daughter. “Some time later, we were approached by the Curia’s Justice and Peace Commission, and then we began to fight for Justice.”
It was a long and difficult fight. “It took 27 years for the courts to find the Brazilian State guilty and compensate my mother”, says Maria Aparecida. “But the culprits were never charged or faced any punishment, and this is devastating for the family.”
In 2015, the Court rejected the Federal Public Ministry’s complaint against seven agents of military repression accused of Manoel’s murder, recognizing the extinction of the punishability of the crime as a result of the 1979 Amnesty Law.
An action alleging non-compliance with a Fundamental Precept, presented in 2014 by the PSOL, against State agents for crimes against humanity during military service is being processed in the (Supreme Federal Court), under the report of Minister Dias Toffoli.
The biggest void for the family, in Maria Aparecida’s view, is due to the deprivation to which they were subjected. “My father wasn’t able to see his grandchildren,” he laments. “My children did not have the blessing of knowing my father, an extraordinary person, and our lives were taken away, we were not given permission to continue.”
The consolation for the family is in the historical role that Manoel Fiel Filho assumed: “My father’s death was a watershed”, says the eldest daughter. “We don’t have the physical presence, but he will always be a hero and we teach that to our children and our grandchildren.”
According to prosecutor Eugênia Gonzaga, president of the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances, the case of Manoel Fiel Filho was a milestone for the country’s redemocratization: “The dictatorship was already cornered with the previous deaths, which generated that immense commotion, but when they ‘got their hand’ again with Manoel’s death, that was the last straw.”
Eugênia recalls that, with the death of Manoel Fiel Filho, the then president Ernesto Geisel, who was already leading a slow and gradual process of opening, dismissed the commander of the 2nd Army, General Ednardo D’Ávila Mello, in a clear sign that things could no longer continue as they were.
According to historian Luiz Antônio Dias, from PUC-SP, who develops studies on dictatorships and democracies, there is a group of researchers who point to the death of Manoel Fiel Filho as a response from the more hardline wings to the opening that was being promoted by Geisel.
In his book “A Ditadura Encurralada” (Companhia das Letras), the journalist reported that the Manoel Fiel Filho case took on unusual contours because it represented Geisel’s first frontal and public clash with a military leader. “Geisel dismissed the general to reestablish the authority of the Presidency,” wrote Gaspari.
The Brazilian military government continued after this episode until March 15, 1985, when José Sarney assumed the Presidency, marking the beginning of the so-called New Republic.
The National Truth Commission (CNV) pointed out, in its final report in 2014, a total of 434 deaths and disappearances of victims of violence in Brazil. Manoel Fiel Filho is buried in block 101, grave 64, of the Quarta Parada Cemetery, in the east zone of São Paulo.
