“If the state has been able to keep so many places to torture that it is also able to maintain so many spaces to educate human rights.” Thus the prosecutor Eduardo Valério defended today (15) the creation of the DOI-Codi Memorial, the target of dispute between the São Paulo government, responsible for the place, the Public Prosecution Service and the civil society entities, which cry out for its construction.
The demonstration was made during Worshop Held at the Sesc São Paulo Research and Training Center in São Paulo, to discuss the importance of building a memorial in the old dependencies of what was the largest torture center in the country.
Subordinate to the Army, the Detachment of Information Operations-Internal Defense Operations Center (DOI-Codi operated between 1969 and 1982 at Rua Tutóia, in the Paraíso region, in São Paulo. From the country during the dictatorship, a place of torture, murders and human rights violations. Murdered journalist Vladimir Herzog.
In this place, a police station currently operates. “This is a derision,” said Adriano Diogo, who chaired the State Commission of Truth of the São Paulo Legislative Assembly and was arrested in DOI-Codi for 90 days during the military dictatorship. “It’s the same as you keep a police unit within a concentration camp,” he added in an interview today (15) Brazil agency.
For years movements call for the place to become a memorial dedicated to promoting reflections on dictatorship in the country. In 2014, the commission obtained that the buildings that make up the DOI-CODI complex would be listed by the Council for Defense of Historical, Archaeological, Artistic and Tourist Heritage (Condephaat). Nevertheless, his creation has not realized to this day. “The memorial would serve that, at least, if it mitigated or if it gave a civilizing process to such a cruel period in the history of Brazil,” said Adriano Diogo.
“The basic idea is to transform the space that was the violation of human rights into a space of memory, the praise of democracy and the confrontation of torture. It would be a prevention space so that this is not repeated and also of human rights education, ”said Valério.
In 2021, the São Paulo Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Public Prosecution Service filed a civil action asking the São Paulo government to transfer the building, which currently belongs to the Public Security Bureau, to the Secretariat of Culture. It was a great attempt to achieve the memorial. But it hasn’t happened yet.
The public civil action, said Valério during the event, is currently suspended, seeking agreement of the entities with the government of São Paulo. “We are looking for an agreement from the perspective that a court decision, apart from its uncertain character, would transfer to the judiciary a decision on a very sensitive issue and that, surely, does not integrate the agenda of the Brazilian judiciary,” he said. “The idea is to invest as much as possible in an extrajudicial agreement and that would end the action and would prevent it from being sent to other instances of the judiciary,” he said.
However, according to the prosecutor, the São Paulo government has not been favorable to the agreement on the subject. In 2023, in an interview with the Valor Econômico newspaper, the current state secretary of Culture, Economics and Creative Industry, Marília Marton, said it was against the construction of the memorial.
According to the secretary, this would generate spending on the government, and claimed that there is already a memorial against the dictatorship in operation in the state capital, the Resistance Memorial. “We are talking about public appeal. You need to ask the Paulistas who pay state taxes if, besides the resistance memorial, there is a historical interest in taking their appeal – which is not from the State Secretariat, not from the State Government, but from all Paulistas, ”, He said at the time.
For Eduardo Valério, however, if the government was able to create the centers of torture in the past, it should also be able to create the memory centers in the present. “If the Brazilian state was able to make so many centers of torture and forced disappearance that it is also able to make so many centers for memory recovery, memory preservation and education and human rights,” he said.
“There [no DOI-Codi]the tests were done. There, the experimentation not only of the torture itself were done, but also of the functioning of the promiscuity between company and state and paramilitary groups. So, it is very important to understand that this memorial does not belong to the Government of the State of São Paulo or the Federal Government, it belongs to the Brazilian people. It is a heritage of humanity and as such must be seen, ”said Flávio de Leão Bastos Pereira, representative of the Memory Center of the Brazilian Lawyers Human Rights Commission (OAB).
While the memorial is not created, the core of preservation of political memory has developed guided and mediated tours to the place. In addition, every year, since 2013, they make a cultural manifestation In front of Doi-Codi to honor the people who died in this place. “If the state decides to do nothing, we will give visibility to the place,” said Maurice Politi, founder and director of the political memory preservation core.
“Today we have three visits per month on site. We estimate that we are receiving the visit of about 600 or 700 people each year, ”he said during the event. “The purpose of the Memory Center, in doing so, is to tell about the period, with the aid of surviving witnesses and also to form more conscious and critical people, who reflect on the abuses of power, persecution and murders occurred during this period.” , emphasized.
Sought by Brazil agencythe Secretariat of Culture reported that the former DOI-Codi building belongs to the Civil Police, which is responsible for its maintenance and preservation. “As for space to become a museum, the Secretariat of Culture, Economics and Industry Creative already has equipment dedicated to the preservation of the memory of this period, with ample collection, which is the memorial of resistance,” said the folder.
