Abstract
During the worst years of repression (1970–3) the number of political prisoners in Brazil reached an estimated 1,400. While this is not high in comparison with other countries of the Southern Cone, it must be remembered that many thousands more have passed through the hands of the security forces and been subjected to Brazil's sophisticated torture techniques. And 321 other people have ‘disappeared’. Right-wing death squads continue to act with impunity, kidnapping and killing suspected leftist sympathisers and blowing up the offices of ‘suspect organisations’.
Alex Polari's prison poems were published in Brazil in 1978 by the Comité Brasileiro Pela Anistia. They have also appeared in Sweden, France, Italy, and Portugal. This is their first publication in English.