To reach the truth in a country with a continental dimension?” The State Commission for Memory and Truth D. Helder Camara and the Civil-Military Dictatorship in Pernambuco (2011 – 2018)
Truth Commission; civil-military dictatorship; Pernambuco.
The instrumentalization of the past through the narrative can be responsible for establishing a historical culture about a certain historical event. In this sense, this dissertation analyzes the debates about memory around the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship in the state of Pernambuco based on the works developed by the State Commission for Memory and Truth Dom Helder Camara. We understand this Commission as the pillar of what we understand as historical culture about the civil-military dictatorship in Pernambuco, and that the basic elements of the formulation process of what we understand as historical culture about the dictatorship in Pernambuco are: the particularity of the dictatorship in the state, the report organizers and their professional training. We used as main sources the interviews with members of the commission, the Final Report produced by the body and the Official Gazette of the State of Pernambuco. We built an analysis of how the process of formulating this historical culture was established and what was the path taken towards it. Based on the analysis of these documents, we concluded that efforts were made to place violence in the countryside and institutional violence at the center of the debate as basic elements of what we propose as the historical culture of the dictatorship in Pernambuco.