In an emotional ceremony, the University of Brasília (UnB) awarded a geology degree on Friday (26) to student Honestino Guimarães, a political disappearance persecuted during the military dictatorship and whose body was never found. A student leader, Honestino was arrested in 1965 and lived in hiding for the following years. He was kidnapped in 1973 and was never seen again. Public confirmation of his death occurred in 1996. 
The recognition, granted port-of-mortem, took place in the auditorium of the UnB Teachers’ Association and was attended by professors, students, Honestino’s family and local and national authorities.
At the ceremony, the decision of the University Council of UnB was announced, which overturned the decision to dismiss Honestino from the educational institution. He had been expelled in 1968, before completing his degree.
The university’s rector and president of the University Council, Márcia Abrahão, announced the awarding of the title and explained that, for this moment to occur, a lot of research was done in the archives of the University of Brasília and in Honestino Guimarães’ academic record.
“We have analyzed the proposal academically. So this diploma is truly a geologist’s diploma. In addition to the diploma itself, this act shows this university’s commitment to democracy, not only during the military dictatorship,” said the rector. “UnB is a territory of resistance. We will continue to be a territory of resistance. UnB apologizes to the family of Honestino Guimarães,” added Márcia Abrahão.
The event was attended by members of the UnB Central Student Directory – named after the leader – and representatives of the federal government, including the president of the Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship, Eneá Almeida, who is a professor at the university. On more than one occasion, Honestino Guimarães’ family members were applauded enthusiastically by the audience that attended the event.
Present on stage, Sebastião Lopes Neto, Honestino’s cousin, gave a history of his humble origins, coming from the interior of Goiás, and the student’s political activism, working in communist movements and in the fight for democracy, as a leader and activist.
Former university president José Geraldo de Souza Júnior was in charge of delivering the awardee’s presentation speech. “The decision did justice to one of Brazil’s most important figures in the fight against the military dictatorship and in the fight for democracy, student rights and university autonomy,” said José Geraldo, a full professor of Law who headed UnB between 2008 and 2012.
“The awarding of the diploma is not just a celebration. It is an act of justice, of reparation,” he said, referring to the analyses that were made of the academic process. According to the speaker, the act sends “an unequivocal message to society, to make explicit UnB’s commitment to justice, democracy and history, despite those who insist on contesting the facts of a dark period in our country, a denialism that needs to be fought with all our strength, above all with respect for each direct or indirect victim of the dictatorship.”
“The university is a plural space, of democracy, of doubt, of contradiction, of research, study, extension, of construction and defense of democracy. And that is why it was so attacked, and UnB, in the 1960s, was violently attacked. And recently, again, the Brazilian public university was also attacked”, said Alexandre Brasil, Secretary of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education.
