Encounters with the dictatorship in Brazil, 1975
I traveled to Brazil for the first time in 1975, blissfully unaware of the political situation. I had no idea that a coup d’etat in 1964 had transformed the country into a civilian-military dictatorship, and repression was rampant. Extrajudicial abuses were common, including retention, torture, and disappearances. I was more concerned with basic communication in Portuguese and the challenges of getting from point A to point B, knowing only a few words, and having a limited amount of money that needed to last at least a couple of months.
Because it sounded exciting and fun, my friend and I naively decided to fly into Manaus and travel down the Amazon by boat. Our destination was Belém, where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean. We had to travel third class and succeeded in buying hammocks and suspending them from the available hooks on the lower deck, among 300 other people. We made several friends on board, including a Brazilian from Rio who spoke some English, having lived in New York for a time. Our friends were normal twenty-somethings like us, the guys with long hair and unruly beards.
The first time the boat stopped to take on passengers, a couple of our Brazilian friends were eager to talk with the new arrivals. They spoke in a corner of the lower hammock deck, quietly and surreptitiously, looking around to see if they were being overheard. Between my Brazilian friend’s broken English and my rudimentary Portuguese, I came to understand that the trans-Amazon highway was being built over the objections of indigenous people, who were using poison tipped blow-darts to attack the heavy equipment operators, sometimes injuring them fatally. This all sounded to me like something out of a bad movie, but I kept my skepticism to myself.
When the boat docked at the next major river port, Santarém, I was leaning on the railing watching the activities when I noticed the captain observing my English-speaking Brazilian friend’s interactions with narrowed eyes and a menacing attitude. My Brazilian friend was aware, and I slowly began to understand that the boat captain was part of the military, that the military was in control of Brazil, and anyone who was politically opposed to the dictatorship put themselves at great risk. Thankfully, we made it to the mouth of the Amazon and safely continued our journey on land.
After many days of travel adventures through the drought-stricken North and Northeast of Brazil (to be further chronicled on this blog), my American friend and I found ourselves on an overnight bus to Salvador, Bahia. The route followed the main highway along the coast, and we were asleep when the bus braked abruptly and stopped. The driver turned the lights on and two big guys wearing jeans and casual shirts and holstered guns stepped onto the bus and walked down the aisle, looking left and right. A few seats in front of us on the other side they apparently found who they were looking for, grabbed the guy by the collar and pulled him out of his seat. The guy was quiet. He fought a little bit, but the plainclothes guys just dragged him away. The driver turned off the lights, and with a whoosh he disengaged the brakes and the bus drove off into the night. In the middle of nowhere. I was awake for a long time trying to make sense of what had happened.
Walking down the street on several occasions, I was stopped by plainclothes guys asking for my identification. I started to argue the first time, asking to see their identification and indignant that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, asking them why they were demanding my passport, but my Brazilian friends shushed me and reminded me that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, and I wasn’t making the rules. And it was better for me to just be quiet and smile and hand over my passport. It was beginning to dawn on me that there were sinister forces at play, and even as a foreigner I might be at risk.
I finally ended up in Bahia (my American traveling companion having fallen in love with a Brazilian and departed on a tramp steamer to somewhere in Africa) and found a place to stay with an American friend and former roommate who was working there. She lived in a small village north of the city of Salvador, and her house was in a small block populated by a great international mix of people. It was Carnaval season and there were lots of get-togethers and potluck dinners. There was a 20-something Brazilian guy who lived across the street and when he joined us for meals, he sat in the corner, his arms circling his plate, his eyes darting back and forth. I asked someone who knew him the reason for this odd behavior. The person just looked at me and said: “He was tortured.”