A Mother's Cry: A Memoir of Politics, Prison, and Torture under the Brazilian Military Dictatorship

by Lina Sattamini

Overview

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Brazil's dictatorship arrested, tortured, and interrogated many people it suspected of subversion; hundreds of those arrested were killed in prison. In May 1970, Marcos P. S. Arruda, a young political activist, was seized in São Paulo, imprisoned, and tortured. A Mother's Cry is the harrowing story of Marcos's incarceration and his family's efforts to locate him and obtain his release. Marcos's mother, Lina Penna Sattamini, was living in the United States and working for the U.S. State Department when her son was captured. After learning of his arrest, she and her family mobilized every resource and contact to discover where he was being held, and then they launched an equally intense effort to have him released. Marcos was freed from prison in 1971. Fearing that he would be arrested again, he left the country, beginning eight years of exile. Lina Penna Sattamini describes her son's tribulations through letters exchanged among family members, including Marcos, during and after the year that he was imprisoned. Her narrative is enhanced by Marcos's account of his arrest, imprisonment, and torture. James N. Green's introduction provides an overview of the political situation in Brazil, and Latin America more broadly, during that tumultuous era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822347361
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	06/09/2010
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Lina Penna Sattamini, a former freelance interpreter with the U.S. State Department, lives in Rio de Janeiro.

James N. Green is Professor of Brazilian History and Culture at Brown University.

Read an Excerpt

A MOTHER'S CRY

A Memoir of Politics, Prison, and Torture under the Brazilian Military Dictatorship

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By LINA PENNA SATTAMINI

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2010 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4736-1

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Chapter One

THE BEGINNING

New York, May 20, 1970

I had just come back to the Statler Hilton in New York and asked for the key when I found the letter from my mother. My heart stopped. Marcos had been arrested! What else could this letter addressed to my hotel mean?

I had been working in the United States since 1958 as an interpreter for USAID (Agency for International Development). Technically I was called an escort-interpreter since I accompanied people for the organization wherever it was carrying out its projects.

Immediately, I called my mother in Rio de Janeiro who confirmed, "It's true. Marcos has been missing since the beginning of May. They say he was on his way to meet someone when they picked him up. We've just found out through a note from the General."

The source of our information, the General, was the father-in-law of my nephew, who is also my godson.

That's how it began, the true Via Dolorosa (Way of Suffering) of our lives, a time of pain, desperation, and anger.

Someone provided him with the false information that Marcos had not yet been interrogated. That lie hid a terrible truth. My son had been tortured so badly that he had been taken to a hospital, where they thought he was going to die.

Marcos Penna Sattamini de Arruda was kidnapped in the middle of a street in São Paulo, on May 11, 1970, on his way to meet a woman for lunch. There wasn't the slightest record of his imprisonment anywhere. Marcos simply disappeared for twenty-four days.

Even before the note from the General reached our family, a friend of my daughter Martinha had telephoned. She told Martinha about Marcos's arrest and asked her to come to São Paulo.

Without telling anyone for fear of unnecessarily worrying her family, Martinha went to the home of Marcos's ex-wife in São Paulo looking for news of her brother. My ex-daughter-in-law would only open the door a crack. In a dismissive voice, she whispered, "Go back to Rio, Martinha. Forget Marcos."

Martinha insisted, "But he's been arrested. We have to try to find him."

Marcos's ex-wife simply closed the door.

Shocked and upset, my daughter stayed with a friend of her boyfriend's, saying that she was in town on business. The next day Martinha met with the friend who had phoned her about Marcos. She gave Martinha some advice about what the family should do to keep Marcos from being killed.

Meanwhile, my mother and others in Rio began to contact each and every member of the military that they or their friends knew. They eventually met with the minister of the army, who promised Marcos wouldn't be touched ... a lie.

During the twenty-four days he was missing, my mother and Marcos's father, my ex-husband, went to every governmental agency they thought might be involved: DOPS [the Department of Social and Political Order], OBAN [Operation Bandeirantes], and the Tiradentes Prison in São Paulo. They consistently heard the same denials and lies. In the end, we learned that Marcos had been taken by the OBAN.

The OBAN or Operation Bandeirantes was formed by the armed forces and financially supported by private businessmen. Its purpose was to "interrogate" individuals suspected of terrorist or subversive activities. A report published by Amnesty International in 1973 stated, "The Operação Bandeirantes is a type of advanced school of torture. It can be said that there are few people in São Paulo, and probably throughout Brazil, who have not read of Operação Bandeirantes, or OBAN or OB, in the Brazilian press." Indeed, an article from the Brazilian magazine Veja, dated November 12, 1969, gave the following description:

In São Paulo, the OBAN, an organization created by the Commander of the Second Army with the exclusive aim of arresting terrorists and subversive elements, has a relatively autonomous character. However, it received and continues to receive an extensive amount of information from the Secret Service of the Army, Centro de Informações do Exército (CIE) [Army Intelligence Center], and of the Navy, Centro de Informações da Marinha (CENIMAR) [Navy Intelligence Center], all located in Guanabara [state of Rio de Janeiro], the central headquarters for anti-terrorist activities. It recently changed its name to DOI (Departamento de Operações Internas do Exercito) [Department of Internal Operations of the Army].

The OB was created in September 1969 by a group of 78 to 80 rightwing individuals from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and police force. Their aim was to create and equip a specialized police force to crush guerrilla groups and to "work over" any suspects.

According to the journalist A. J. Langguth, who wrote about OBAN in his book Hidden Terrors:

Henning Albert Boilesen, the president of a liquid gas company, ... had [originally] come to Brazil from Denmark as an official of the Firestone Rubber Company. Seventeen years later, he became a naturalized Brazilian citizen. He moved easily through São Paulo's prosperous society, picking up a host of influential friends: former minister Hélio Beltrão; Ernesto Geisel, the president of Petrobras; General Siseno Sarmento. He occupied a house on Rua Estados Unidos, and for years it was believed that this was not the only sense in which Boilesen lived on the United States.

The suspicion that Boilesen was a CIA agent grew when he began soliciting money for a new organization to be called Operação Bandeirantes (OBAN), in honor of the bandeirantes, the explorers and treasure hunters who had once trekked across Latin America. OBAN united the various military and police intelligence services in a crusade that went beyond normal jurisdictions.

Amnesty International affirmed: "Torture is applied at the Operação Bandeirantes in a very precise manner, it does not vary and is routinely applied in a standardized fashion to all of the victims: torture plays an integral role within the system according to which the employees of the Operação Bandeirantes work, and this system is generally adhered to."

The testimony of those tortured, however, speaks for itself.

THE "PARROT'S PERCH"

The parrot's perch consists of an iron bar wedged behind the victim's knees and to which his wrists are tied; the bar is then placed between two tables, causing the victim's body to hang some 20 or 30 centimeters from the ground. This method is hardly ever used by itself: its normal "complements" are electric shocks, the palmatória [a length of thick rubber attached to a wooden paddle], and [near] drowning ... [Augusto César Salles Galvão, student, 21, Belo Horizonte, 1970.]

... the parrot's perch was a collapsible metal structure ... which consisted of two triangles of galvanized tubing, of which one of the corners had two half-moons cut out, on which the victims were hung: the tubing was placed beneath their knees and between their hands, which were tied and brought up to their knees ... [José Milton Ferreira de Almeida, 31, engineer, Rio, 1976.]

ELECTRIC SHOCK

Electric shocks are given by an Army field telephone that has two long wires that are connected to the body, normally to the sexual organs, in addition to ears, teeth, tongue and fingers. [Augusto César Salles Galvão.]

The last resort is to try to get one prisoner to convince another to talk, as corroborated by a letter by Marlene de Sousa Soccas, a thirty-five-year-old dentist, written in 1972 to the judge of the military court in São Paulo:

Two months after my arrest, when I was in Tiradentes prison, I was brought back to OBAN again. My torturers believed that I was in contact with the geologist Marcos Pena Sattamini de Arruda, who had been tortured for the last month. I was carried into the torture room and one of the torturers, an army captain, said to me, "Get ready to see Frankenstein come in." I saw a man come into the room, walking slowly and hesitantly, leaning on a stick, one eyelid half closed, his mouth twisted, his stomach muscles twitching continuously, unable to form words. He had been hospitalized between life and death after traumatic experiences undergone during violent torture. They said to me, "Encourage him to talk, if not the 'Gestapo' will have no more patience and if one of you doesn't speak we will kill him and the responsibility for his death will lie with you." We did not speak, not because we were heroic, but simply because we had nothing to say.

According to Article Fifty of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified by Brazil, "No one will be submitted to torture or cruel, humiliating treatment or punishment."

It is difficult to describe what it was like during the twenty-four days that Marcos disappeared. My mother gives her own account in a letter dated May 9, 1970:

The name of Octávio Medeiros, our friend and secretary to President Médici, opened doors for me. I was treated with the greatest courtesy and respect. My appearance as a grieving grandmother said everything.... Everywhere I went I spoke about the darkness we were living through and how Marcos had never been involved in "subversive" activities. I recounted his entire life story beginning when he was a little boy. I spoke about the fact that he had gone to Catholic schools, been in the Boy Scouts, received a scholarship to go to the United States, attended a Jesuit seminary, and received a degree in geology. I spoke about his marriage and his work in Petrópolis. Then I spoke about his divorce, which saddened us, because he had been very fond of his wife.

My mother tried to prove that Marcos was a kind and gentle person. The military only suggested that we go to the hospital to get more information about Marcos.

My mother, who was then seventy-five years old, suffered deeply over Marcos's situation and tirelessly tried to make contact with military officials at the highest levels, until, as she related in a letter, she was able to meet with the General who had sent us word of Marcos. Seeing her anguish, he sent a letter of introduction to the General Commander of the Second Army. Only in this way were we able to meet with the authorities, who could give us permission to visit the hospital where Marcos was confined.

My mother and Marcos's father repeatedly went to the Second Army hospital, but they were never allowed to see Marcos. By chance, during one of these visits they met a sympathetic nun, Sister Catarina, who was assigned to take care of my son. Through this Sister, they began to learn the truth about the state of his health.

They learned that Marcos was lying in the same hospital bed where Brother Tito, another victim of the military's brutal treatment of political prisoners, had been detained. Brother Tito was a Dominican friar who had been barbarously tortured and who had tried to commit suicide with the hope of calling the public's attention to what the military was doing. He knew the people would wonder why a priest would commit suicide. But it was all covered up, and the public didn't hear his story until much later. He had been tortured so badly that he was never the same. Later, when he was released from prison, he went to a monastery in France, where he hung himself in a tree in the garden.

It was through Sister Catarina that our family sent Marcos candy, pajamas, and letters, hoping that they would lift his spirits. Only the letters were delivered, though, and even then only after they had been censored.

Tearful and humble, my mother asked someone in the public relations office of the Military Hospital to tell Marcos that she and his father were there to help him and that they were doing everything possible to get him released.

We eventually discovered from other ex-prisoners that the OBAN had sent Marcos to the hospital on a stretcher and in desperate condition. They said his face was so deformed that he was recognizable only by his clothing.

The first word he was finally able to utter was "Padre" ...

A chaplain, who was also a captain, was called to the hospital. He came to hear Marcos's confession but was accompanied by four police agents. The priest refused to hear Marcos's confession under such circumstances and insisted the police officers leave. Marcos used the privacy of the confession to recount how he had been tortured and nearly killed. He asked the priest to inform his family about where he was being held. The priest administered to Marcos his last rites and absolved him but did not do what Marcos had asked.

Later we learned that other political prisoners who had seen Marcos testified that he had been brutally tortured. When he couldn't take any more, his body had lapsed into violent convulsions. In addition, they said he had been forced to witness the torture of other prisoners, though Marcos never remembered this experience.

My mother and Marcos's father continued to go to the hospital daily, sometimes together and sometimes alone, but they were never allowed to enter or to see Marcos. Despite the fact that the law stipulated a prisoner could remain incommunicado for only ten days, they refused him any outside contact. The family would bring food and letters, which were delivered by Sister Catarina.

During one of my mother's visits to the hospital, she was told that if Marcos were pardoned and released, it would be wise for him to leave the country so that he might "be forgotten."

I still remained in the United States, where I lived and worked. I received many letters from my mother and children telling me that it wouldn't make any difference if I came to Brazil because I wouldn't be able to do anything more for Marcos. He still had to go before a judge before he could be released. He was now imprisoned in the hospital, where the beatings and torture continued, without the slightest notion of when or if he would ever see us again. Meanwhile, we had to live with our own fears and anxieties, the eternal "should I?" or "shouldn't I?" "will it be better?" or "will it be worse?" Only those who have experienced this-and they were many-can feel and comprehend what it means to be powerless for fear of doing something that will aggravate the situation.

Phone calls and letters from Rio sustained me during this period. Here are selections from some of them:

Letter from my daughter Mônica to me:

Rio, April 6, 1970

Things are going much better. I think that from here on out we won't have to worry as much. He's been found and can already receive visitors. [Unfortunately, this was not true-LPS]. Today Dad and Grandma are going to São Paulo to take care of things. So the first stage is over now, and we just have to be patient and work hard and wait for the rest, which could be six months or more ...

We had a hard time while we were waiting for this news.

Grandma nearly lost hope. We had to insist that she not despair, that she had to be strong so that she could help him. We had to motivate her. In the beginning it was hard! She even threatened to commit suicide, can you imagine! But now she's much better and more calm.

Letter from my daughter Martinha to me:

Rio, June 8, 1970

I can well imagine how you're feeling at this moment. We are trying hard not to give in to the sorrow and pain. To the contrary, for each of us there is a lot of work ahead.

Sadly, it wouldn't do any good if you were to come here, leaving your work and everything. If there were really anything you could do, I would be the first to call you.

Letter from Martinha to me:

Rio, June 13, 1970

Today we received bad news: he's been hospitalized [again] with orders that he not be released. Nor may he be moved anywhere. Grandma goes there every day, but she hasn't been allowed to see him. The doctors say that he shouldn't be excited by having visitors. But we know this isn't the reason; they just don't want him to be seen by anyone.

They say that his status is one of slow recuperation, but we've received no diagnosis explaining exactly what it is he's recovering from.

With regard to your sending money, twenty or thirty dollars would help a lot to pay for the plane trips to São Paulo. I know you'll be upset with this news, but it's important to remember that this is better than nothing. Now we can act, we have concrete facts, we've received confirmation, etc.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A MOTHER'S CRY by LINA PENNA SATTAMINI Copyright © 2010 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

A Political Chronology of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964-85) xiii

Introduction: The Personal and the Political under the Brazilian Military Regime James N. Green 1

We Must Never Forget: A Memoir Lina Penna Sattamini 19

1 The Beginning 21

2 Operation Bandeirantes 23

3 The Military Hospital 26

4 Incommunicado 32

5 Our First Visit 36

6 Still Imprisoned 40

7 Transferred To Rio 48

8 Solitude 62

9 Support In The United States 68

10 My Return to Brazil 71

11 The Saga Continues 77

12 Anguish 85

13 Despair 92

14 Freedom 95

15 Exile 100

16 Protest 104

17 Recovery 108

18 Continuing The Struggle 112

19 Another Martyr of the Dictatorship 120

20 In Search of a Permanent Visa 122

21 Returning Home 128

22 Never Forgetting 133

No Path for the Righteous Traveler: Epilogue Marcos P. S. Arruda 137

Editor's Postscript James N. Green 175

Bibliography 177

Index 181

Editorial Reviews

"... this tale of mother and son brings to light a never to be forgotten break in Brazil's long-standing history of democracy."--Linda S. Maier "Bulletin of Latin American Research"

"A Mother's Cry should rank among the foremost publications of the testimonial genre and is suitable for a broad, interdisciplinary audience interested in human rights, resistance, and social justice."--Cathy Marie Ouellette "History"

"This work provides ample detail of the tortures inflicted by the OBAN secret police...This book is a memorable and highly readable human story and source that has gained a new relevancy since its publication." --Philip Evanson "The Americas"

"A Mother's Cry is the story of a Brazilian mother who, while living in the United States in the 1960s, learns by mail of her son's kidnapping by agents of Brazil's military regime. Without immediate means to locate her son, there is 'only' his grandmother in Brazil to initially confront the dictatorship's atrocity establishment. The stuff of a great film, A Mother's Cry juxtaposes their efforts to secure the young man's release with his strategies for surviving brutalizing physical and potentially spirit-breaking torture. This great book joins the yet unconnected literatures on human agency, big and small, that run from the Holocaust, to Argentina's mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, to Cambodian survivors of S-21 prison, to recent accounts of CIA rendition victims. This impressive book is must reading."--Martha K. Huggins, Tulane University

"A family's chance descent into the indignities of Brazil's military dictatorship is uncompromisingly recorded in nearly a decade of letters penned across continents; so too is the inextinguishable hope to set free a son, grandson, and brother. Arbitrarily imprisoned, brutally tortured, and subsequently whisked abroad to safety, Marcos P. S. Arruda would then face years of difficult rehabilitation. His is the tale of many a political prisoner; but, fortunate to escape with his life, he has ever since borne witness against the oppression, corruption, and brutality of authoritarian regimes, their supporters, and their protectors the world over."--Ralph Della Cava, Columbia University

From the Publisher

“The military dictatorship in Brazil lasted from 1964 to 1985. Lina Sattamini’s A Mother’s Crysuggests that the memory of dictatorship lasted a lot longer. The book describes the mobilization of a family in their desperate attempt to find Marcos Arruda, a young student who was imprisoned by the military police in 1970. ... In the process of describing how she and her mother managed to free Marcos Arruda, Lina Sattamini unearthed important evidence of the abuses of the institutional pawns of the dictatorial government. But A Mother’s Cry also unearthed something else, an aspect of dictatorial governments which is often glossed over: the strength and power of the opposition to the military.

Isabel DiVanna

... this tale of mother and son brings to light a never to be forgotten break in Brazil’s long-standing history of democracy.

Bulletin of Latin American Research - Linda S. Maier

This work provides ample detail of the tortures inflicted by the OBAN secret police…This book is a memorable and highly readable human story and source that has gained a new relevancy since its publication.” 

The Americas - Philip Evanson

A Mother’s Cry should rank among the foremost publications of the testimonial genre and is suitable for a broad, interdisciplinary audience interested in human rights, resistance, and social justice.

History - Cathy Marie Ouellette