“Only at the mouth of the river can one hear the murmurs of all the sources,” wrote Guimarães Rosa. Journalist, writer and researcher, Aluízio Palmar decided not to simply go with the calm flow, but, on the contrary, to decipher the source, the origin of the whispers and contradictions that can give voice or silence what needs to be said.
In an attempt to clarify his own history as an activist against arbitrary rule, he began to search through archives, digging up records and inscriptions of the institutional violence that became the norm during the 21-year civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985). He went through a ream of documents about the dead, the disappeared, the tortured, the imprisoned, the censored, the banned and the wronged.
What was rescued and collected are more than 80 thousand documents gathered in Revealed Documents portal, free and public access, much of the collection relating to the history of Foz do Iguaçu. The content is selected, accompanied by reproductions of documentary pieces and images, and explanatory texts that help contextualization.
Released in 2009, Documentos Revelados is now 15 years old, with over ten million hits. It is a compass that helps us understand the formation of the city and its people. The extensive documentation on Foz do Iguaçu includes the military colony and the existence of the Federal Territory of Iguaçu, spanning the 1940s, from the Estado Novo, covering the entire military regime, until 1985.
“I looked for lawyers looking for the cases, I went to private archives and later I researched in public archives. The result was the accumulation of a large quantity of documents”, explains Aluízio. “That was when the idea of creating a website with the aim of making my personal collection public.”
There were about 300 pieces at the beginning. While I was digitizing the paperwork, I researched the archives of the political police of Paraná and other states, the Federal Police stations and the Regional Coordination of the National Archives, in Brasília (DF). The portal grew with the help of many donations of private collections.
A city “without a past”
It was the late 1960s when Aluízio Palmar arrived in Foz do Iguaçu. His wealth was a “huge leather suitcase,” he recalls, only bigger than the ideals he carried. He aspired to help overthrow the dictatorship, restore democracy and move towards a society based on equality.
Born in May 1943, in São Fidélis (RJ), he was arrested for his political activism against the dictatorship and banished from the country, exchanged for the Swiss ambassador to Brazil, along with 69 other political prisoners. After exile and hiding, Aluízio was one of the editors of the newspaper Nosso Tempo, printed in Foz do Iguaçu, from 1980 to 1994. He is the author of the book “Where Did You Bury Our Dead?” and organizer of the recently released “Voices of Resistance, Memories of the Struggle against the Military Dictatorship in Paraná”, with 60 co-authors.
The journalist maintains the website Documents Revealed through his own efforts, in fits and starts, he says, “driven by the desire to fight against the erasure of historical memory”. The archaeologist against oblivion criticizes the inaction of the public authorities in rescuing, safeguarding and promoting the history of Foz do Iguaçu in its entirety, particularly that of the popular bias.
“Here in Foz do Iguaçu, there is a movement to erase memory, to not talk about issues,” criticizes the octogenarian. “To build a democratic city, we need to know its past, its history, its characters. Not repeating mistakes is closely related to knowledge,” he teaches.
And he gives an example: “I just gave a lecture at the university about the Prestes Column. Few people know about this important episode in our history,” he emphasizes. “The column, liberating and undefeated, was born here in Foz do Iguaçu in April 1925. The formation of the municipality goes through all these periods, economic cycles, urban expansions, the formation of political groups and their contradictions and submissions,” he reflects.
Memories of Foz do Iguaçu
In addition to the rich content of Foz do Iguaçu published on the Documentos Revelados portal, according to Aluízio Palmar, there is a data storage device that holds a terabyte of specific documents from the military colony and the police station of the time. The colony, it is recalled, is a landmark of the official occupation of the city by the central government.
Documentos Revelados reports that the expedition of Lieutenant-Engineer José Joaquim Firmino reached the border in November 1889, finding a region under the control of companies that were concessionaires for the exploitation of yerba mate and hardwood. In works, the workers – mensus – were subjected to a system of semi-slavery.
This regime continued, even with the presence of the military. “The mensus, a derivation of Spanish monthly, were the almost absolute workforce employed in the extraction work”, he cites. “Their regimentation was done by force, and they owed unrestricted obedience to the workers and their foremen, with the power of life and death over the workers,” we read in website.
The portal reports that when Bonifácio Palma came to live in Foz do Iguaçu, he decided to open a bar and restaurant on Avenida Brasil. It was 1955, and the Border Strip Law was in force, so he needed to apply for special authorization to move forward with the venture.
Arabs, Communist Party, indigenous people and execrated mayor
The large Arab colony in Foz do Iguaçu was the target of espionage by security agencies between 1964 and 1985, with “exhaustive monitoring,” according to Documentos Revelados. The sources gathered and published in website demonstrate that there was ethnic, ideological and political persecution of Lebanese people and people of other nationalities in the Arab world.
A pioneer, Tarquínio Santos, father of the former mayor of Foz do Iguaçu Ozires Santos, was subjected to misfortune and persecution simply because of his political affiliation with the Communist Party. He was a pharmacist and lived in Cascavel, then a district of Iguaçu.
Between 1975 and 1976, there were expulsions, arrests and torture of Avá-Guarani indigenous people, who were dispossessed of their ancestral historic land for the construction of Itaipu Binacional. The portal brings together correspondence, complaints and other documents, such as those written by the lawyer from Iguaçu, Antônio Vanderli Moreira, who defended the Guarani cause.
Long before Reni Pereira, Foz do Iguaçu had a mayor who was execrated by the Palácio das Cataratas on charges of corruption. Documentos Revelados reproduces a bulletin from the National Intelligence Service (SNI) that reports on fraud attributed to then-lieutenant colonel José Carlos Toledo, the mayoral interventor appointed by the regime.
“During the military dictatorship, the mayors of border cities were appointed,” the portal’s note explains. The SNI bulletin published points out irregularities such as excessive spending on the inauguration ceremony and the charging of “15% commission on purchases and contracts made by the city government,” it states.
Documents Revealed
Created to facilitate and popularize historical documents
Curator: Aluizio Palmar documentsrevealed.com.br
I really enjoyed the article. Congratulations Paulo. As a film teacher, I would like to hear from you for future topics. Thank you.