1989/2009 Shaping Freedom

Interview with Marcelo Araujo, Director of the “Estação Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo” and head of the “Memorial da Resistência São Paulo” museum project.

The twentieth anniversary of the Fall of the Wall in Germany and the celebrations to commemorate the renaming of the “Resistance Memorial” to Estação Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the first and only memorial site for the military dictatorship in Brazil, marked the occasion upon which experts gathered to exchange views on diverse memorial concepts for both countries.

Ulrike Prinz: What considerations were behind the renaming of the Memorial and what differences are they trying to make in doing this?

Marcelo Araujo: It was former political prisoners who called for the renaming, who didn’t want to accept the name “Memorial of Freedom” for a site where so many atrocities had been committed: there was practically everything here – except freedom. On top of that it was primarily a place of resistance, so that the staff supported this suggestion as well. That’s why it was renamed.

The Memorial works on three key themes: control, suppression and resistance – not only under authoritarian regimes but also in times of democracy. We aim to bring these questions into a contemporary context through systematic educational and cultural work and in doing so to contribute towards the education of citizens, making them aware and critical. It’s essential to think about our time; about how we can help people’s fundamental rights to be respected, and how values like respecting people who are different, exercising democracy and practising solidarity can help to prevent atrocities by authoritarian regimes from being repeated.

The rooms of the Estação Pinacoteca housed prison cells during the Vargas era (1930¬–1954) and during the military dictatorship (1964¬–1985). That makes this place highly charged, not only in a symbolic sense, and means that visitors can experience the past in an immediate way. Does this immediateness, this past-in-present, help to keep the collective memory alive?

In my opinion: yes and that’s why it’s particularly important to preserve such sites of remembrance. Again and again we have seen on the one hand that the people who have fought and continue to fight feel their values confirmed; on the other hand its history becomes more tangible for younger people, and even those who are not quite so young who didn’t experience this period at first hand, or suffer the immediate consequences – especially of the military dictatorship.

“Only the truth sets us free”, says Joachim Gauck, a former officer for Stasi paperwork in Germany. For this you would need free access to the secret archives; but in Brazil they continue to be under lock and key. How specifically is your museum work developing with regard to reconstructing the past and the as yet unresolved search for truth and justice?

We are mainly working with documents and artefacts from the archive of the Department of Political and Social Order for the Federal State of São Paulo (Deops/SP), which is in the custody of the Public Archive of the Federal State of São Paulo, with whom the Memorial cooperates. These documents form the basis for the long-term exhibition in the reference centre showcase and for special exhibitions. The Memorial’s education service also makes use of these materials for school class tours or groups that congregate spontaneously, and has developed teaching materials to serve as a basis for tackling the subject in lessons. These teaching hand-outs are based on the material in the documents that cover the three concepts mentioned previously. All these approaches contribute towards establishing an awareness of the need to make all the archives fully accessible, so that the truth comes to light and justice can be done. Entries in the visitors’ book, comments in the questionnaires and our chats with visitors have shown this.

What new approaches are there in Brazil where processing the past through art is concerned?

I think that the most important contributions come from the visual arts, from the film world, theatre and above all literature. There are intensive efforts on the part of researchers and people who were persecuted by the military regime, many of whom were former political prisoners. And the Memorial puts on a variety of events using all the material mentioned, for instance scenic readings, film showings, book launches and seminars, always followed by a discussion. In this context I particularly want to highlight the partnership with the working group for the preservation of political ideology from the Fórum Permanente of former political prisoners and those persecuted by the Federal State of São Paulo, which has been working with us right from the start, since the Memorial was erected.