To tell what had not yet been told. With this objective in mind, journalist and writer Camilo Vannuchi revisited the behind-the-scenes story of the "Brazil: Never Again" project, which resulted in the book of the same name published in 1985 and became a landmark in the end of the period of military repression, which began in 1964. In the investigative report "Never Again: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Biggest Denunciation of Torture Ever Made in Brazil" (Discurso Direto publishing house), launched during... event's audience This Wednesday, the 8th, at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp, Vannuchi lists 444 torturers and 242 torture centers, in addition to revealing how, in an almost improvised way, anonymous heroes managed to sustain the largest denunciation against torture ever carried out in the country.
“Who were the people who, far from the spotlight and under constant risk, worked to prevent the memory of torture and state violence from disappearing with the end of the military dictatorship? Who copied, microfilmed, organized, and hid the documents?” asks Vannuchi, son of Paulo de Tarso Vannuchi, a political prisoner incarcerated for five years during the military dictatorship, and cousin of Alexandre Vannucchi Leme, a student tortured and killed in 1973, whose tragic story he recounts in the book “I Only Said My Name,” published in 2024.
The meeting, titled Memory and DemocracyThe event, promoted by IFCH and the Edgard Leuenroth Archive (AEL) at Unicamp, where a fundamental part of this collection is preserved, brought together Vannuchi, the archive's director, Mário Medeiros, who moderated the event, researcher Magali Cunha from the Institute of Religious Studies (ISER), and IFCH professor Marcelo Ridenti. In opening the discussion, the author emphasized the symbolism of discussing the topic at the AEL, "guardian of this memory."
Tip of the iceberg
Vannuchi points out that the book "Brazil: Never Again" summarized, in just over 300 pages, a report of approximately 6 pages based on the analysis of more than 1 million pages of military court records. "It was produced in the last ten months of a six-year project. The book 'Brazil: Never Again' is just the tip of the iceberg."
In revisiting the topic, first in a podcast and now in a book, both titled "Never Again," the author reconstructed the human network that sustained the operation: lawyers, religious figures, archivists, microfilm technicians, activists, and employees who worked in absolute secrecy between 1979 and 1985. This investigation brought to light lesser-known figures who acted far from the public eye and whose participation was crucial to preserving the memory.
With 236 pages, the book reconstructs the secretive work conducted by a team of about 30 people over five years. Among them are Abel de Alencar, responsible for photocopying thousands of pages of the files, and José do Egito Sombra, in charge of microfilming, page by page, a fundamental part of the collection. Vannuchi also highlighted the role of Alê Corazza, responsible for the treasury and financial logistics of the clandestine operation, as well as Anivaldo Padilha (father of the Minister of Health, Alexandre Padilha), whose interaction with the World Council of Churches in Geneva (Switzerland) was crucial in obtaining international resources that kept the project running.
Alongside the public actions of key figures in the "Brazil: Never Again" project, such as Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, Reverend Jaime Wright, and lawyer Eny Raimundo Moreira, who secretly worked to advance the undertaking, a group took on the mission of saving the political files before they were destroyed. One of the most emblematic episodes revealed by the journalist concerns how the funds sent from Switzerland arrived in Brazil. To preserve the secrecy of the operation, the team used a code to announce the arrival of the money: "The chocolates have arrived."
According to the author, the money was brought in discreetly by members of the international network, often hidden in clothing and personal belongings. "It was unaccounted-for money," he recounts. The writer also discovered how the microfilms were smuggled to Geneva, where a backup copy of the collection was created. "They were hidden in shoes, bags, underwear. If everything disappeared here, there would be a preserved copy."
Vannuchi emphasizes that the technical scope of the operation was enormous: 707 cases analyzed, thousands of questionnaires filled out manually, and a database built before the digital age. “It was this work that allowed us to identify 444 agents involved in torture, dismantling the narrative that the violence was episodic or the result of individual excesses. These were not isolated cases. It was an institutionalized structure,” he states.
By bringing the discussion into the present, the author emphasizes that memory cannot be treated as an exclusively historical matter. "It's not about talking about the past. It's about talking about the present and the future." Mentioning recent allegations of torture in the prison system and episodes of police violence, he states: "Yesterday's impunity is the safe conduct for today's violence."
Vannuchi confirms that the story of the "Brazil: Never Again" project will be adapted for the cinema. "There's a film being made. Before my project, they had already been working on the script for six years and they contacted me. I'm helping with research consulting to avoid historical inaccuracies," he says. According to him, the adaptation should emphasize the suspense and espionage aspects of the clandestine operation that gave rise to the collection. "This story was born as a thriller, as an espionage film," he points out.
The truth, nothing but the truth.
During the event at IFCH, researcher Magali Cunha broadened the discussion by highlighting a little-known aspect of the project's history: the decisive role of evangelical sectors in the democratic resistance and in making "Brazil: Never Again" a reality. According to her, the project was "our first Truth Commission."
According to her, the contemporary prominence of churches and religious leaders has intensified the erasure of a fundamental historical memory. “Many people don't know that evangelical churches made the collection possible. The participation of Presbyterian pastor Jaime Wright, who was searching for his missing brother, Paulo Stuart Wright, was crucial.”
Cunha points out that, in coordination with the World Council of Churches in Geneva and with Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, then Cardinal Archbishop of São Paulo, Wright helped structure the network that brought resources to Brazil and enabled the clandestine operation.
Professor Marcelo Ridenti, from the Department of Sociology at IFCH, recalled his pioneering relationship with the collection and how he used the documentation from the "Brazil: Never Again" project back in the 1980s, before its widespread public availability. According to him, the work was fundamental to the thesis that would result in his book "The Ghost of the Brazilian Revolution".
Ridenti emphasizes that the project allowed not only a qualitative reading of the testimonies, but also the construction of an unprecedented statistical database on those persecuted by the regime. With support from the IT department of the State University of Londrina (UEL), where he was a professor, he organized tables and quantitative charts on the age, sex, occupation, and political affiliation of those prosecuted. "It was a monumental undertaking."
Among the findings, the strong presence of youth among those prosecuted stands out. "Most of those persecuted were very young, up to 25 years old," she says. Another relevant piece of data was the possibility of identifying women's participation in political organizations and comparatively analyzing different social profiles. These surveys, she affirms, allowed for an understanding of the social bases of political opposition to the regime and became a reference for subsequent studies on repression and resistance. "The 'Brazil: Never Again' project did a fabulous job: preserving the memory so that these stories remain alive."
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