“Only the historian who has grasped this will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past: not even the dead will be safe if the enemy wins”.
The sentence above, written by the philosopher Walter Benjamin in his text “On the Concept of History”, has been haunting my reflections since March 24th, when the likely perpetrators of Marielle Franco’s murder were arrested. Written under the terror of Nazi-fascism, the statement awakens not only the eternal question of “how could it have been?”, but also a reflection on what was and what is.
The news about the murder of councilor Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes barely reached the media on March 14, 2018, and a storm of lies began to flood Social Media. Ex-wife of drug dealer Marcinho VP, elected by Comando Vermelho (which would have killed her for treason), defender of bandits were (and are) some of the lies that circulated (and are circulating) driven mainly by groups linked to the Brazilian extreme right .
All these lies fell one by one, as the figure of Marielle Franco became better known throughout the world. In addition to her political assassination, Marielle became a symbol of the fight for Human Rights at a time when Brazil was experiencing the official denial of Human Rights agendas. An uncomfortable symbol for those who sought to impose on the country the entire political-military model that currently dominates the State of Rio de Janeiro.
Marielle Franco represents an affronting paradigm to status quo territorial controls, the use of public functions and parastate violence for illicit enrichment and the perpetuation of political-militia clans. Not surprisingly, those arrested were a deputy, Chiquinho Brazão, a member of the judiciary, Domingos Brazão, and a police chief, Rivaldo Barbosa. Rivaldo even consoled the family shortly after the crime. A demonstration of the degree of comfort that state criminals have when they are sure of their control over power.
The acceleration of investigations, since the change of government last year, has revealed the monstrous underbelly of the alliances that involve the corrupt structures of the State, the manipulated use of faith and the use of force in a single power project. The slow “investigation” of the case, over a long five years, was part of this project. The destruction of Marielle Franco’s image as well.
“Not even the dead will be safe if the enemy wins” is not just a reflection written at a time when terror imposed despair. It is the revelation of a dangerous political method. A method used by agents of the Civil Military Dictatorship that was established in Brazil sixty years ago. Wladimir Herzog, Carlos Lamarca, Carlos Marighella, João Goulart, Juscelino Kubitschek were some of the victims of this method.
It is no mere coincidence that those who defend the 1964 Civil-Military Coup today are the same ones who propagate the lies about the investigations and political assassination of Marielle Franco and Anderson Gomes. They need the lie. The lie is the only way out for criminals who fear the memory of the dead when it is transformed into hope in the struggles of those who dare to keep the flame of justice alive.
Leonardo da Rocha Botega
, who writes regularly on the site, has a degree in History and a master’s degree in Latin American Integration from UFSM, a PhD in History from UFRGS and Professor at the UFSM Polytechnic College. He is also the author of the book “When independence makes unity: Brazil, Argentina and the Cuban Question (1959-1964).
The article is in Portuguese
