Democratizing memories of the Brazilian dictatorship? Permanent and temporary exhibitions in the Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo

Abstract

This article explores representations of political violence in the Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo, a former detention and torture centre that became Brazil’s first official museological space dedicated to preserving the memory of repression and resistance during the Estado Novo (1937–1945) and the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985). The Brazilian transitional process from the civil-military dictatorship to democracy has been characterized as fragile and ineffective regarding justice, truth, and memory. This situation led to a tendency to silence memories of subordinate groups, especially concerning the systematic violence committed against Afro-Brazilians and Indigenous people, which goes back to colonial times and continues amid democracy. Considering the contemporary Brazilian context, where the issue of racism has gained visibility within cultural institutions, our case study explores how the Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo responds to the present demands for redress. To this end, we analyze the institution’s permanent and the temporary exhibition called “Memories of the Future: Black Citizenship, Anti-Racism, and Resistance” (2022–2023), curated by writer and sociologist Mário Augusto Medeiros da Silva. We highlight that while the permanent exhibition sought to “preserve” the memory of repression and resistance during the dictatorship years, the temporary exhibition approaches the ongoing black movements’ demands for dignity and equality, aspects of its identity and cultural formation that shine a light on the powerful struggles over the right to memory and visibility within São Paulo’s public spaces.

Introduction

The Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo (henceforth: MR) was inaugurated at the former São Paulo State Department of Political and Social Order (DEOPS-SP) in 2009. During the periods of the Estado Novo (1937–1945) and the Brazilian civic-military dictatorship (1964–1985) the militaries used this place to imprison, torture and exterminate political persecutors – who lived together with ‘ordinary’ prisoners – and also to monitor individuals considered subversive (Gumieri 2012: 1). The MR is the first, and until now, the only in loco museum dedicated to the memory of the civil-military dictatorship in Brazil and receives approximately 80,000 visitors every year (Gumieri, 2019). As an iconic site of memory of repression and resistance, it has become a central reference to other initiatives in the country. One of the institution’s main innovations was the intense participation of former political prisoners in the curatorial work. The first museological project used to be primarily connected to the predominant image of the politically persecuted in Brazil: white, middle-class, intellectualized, activist men in direct opposition to the military regime. Since the release of the Brazilian National Truth Commission’s final report in 2014, however, the institution has developed numerous temporary exhibitions to broaden the guiding concept of repression and resistance.

As part of this attempt to build a more diverse narrative of the Brazilian dictatorship, the MR invited Mário Augusto Medeiros da Silva - writer, professor of sociology and Deputy Director of the Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth ¹ - to organize an exhibition dedicated to the manifold experiences of racial violence and resistance of Afro-Brazilians in São Paulo on show between 2022/23. Considering the MR’s mission to promote democratic values, Ana Pato, the museum’s current coordinator and curator, stated that the institution “deems it urgent that we as citizens ask ourselves about our responsibility in perpetuating racism and how we can engage in the anti-racist struggle” (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 2). This statement points to a structural problem, namely the institutional silencing of systematic violations of the rights of Black and Indigenous people in Brazil. As Mario Medeiros emphasizes: “to tell the story of citizenship and the return to democracy without addressing the activism and political resistance of different black movements is a serious error that incurs in the social practice of forgetfulness and invisibility motivated by the idea of one single story.” (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 16).

Brazil is marked by a specific system of racism, which was not explicitly segregationist as in the United States or South Africa but characterized by policies of whitening, of miscegenation (Munanga, 2022). The denial of a structural racism was supported by the “myth of racial democracy”: the idea propagated by an elite mainly in the first part of the 20th century, claiming that the Brazilian population was ‘naturally’ diverse and therefore there was no racism in Brazil (Lopes dos Santos, 2022; Schwarcz, 2022). The military regime appropriated this narrative along with the myth of the so-called ‘Brazilian economic miracle’ during the dictatorship period (Pamplona et al., 2024: 5). Several critical Brazilian scholars and activists such as Lelia Gonzalez (1982) highlighted that one of the fundamental struggles of the black movement in the early years of the re-democratization was exactly the deconstruction of this myth (Gonzalez and Hasenbald, 2022). Abdas Nascimento wrote about the genocide of Afro-Brazilians in his 1978 book. In this line Mario Medeiros argues that the “biological death does not end the violent process of eliminating Black lives. […] there is also a death of memory of Black and subalternized people in general” (Medeiros da Silva, 2024: 14). Here, Medeiros refers to the “constant elimination of narratives, records, historical archives, with permanent violation of the right to the dignity of social memory and its public narrative” (Medeiros da Silva, 2024: 13). Brazilian black movements, historically articulated in a transnational agenda, respond to this “double death” (Medeiros da Silva, 2024: 14) that is still ongoing to present-day. As Medeiros emphasizes, racist violence is not history but everyday life reality: “The fight against Brazilian authoritarianism is a daily struggle of different aspects of the black experience” (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 21). Therefore, more than 234 groups formed the Black Coalition for Rights in 2019. Their powerful claim is: “While there is racism, there will be no democracy”. ²

In this article, considering these broader political-historical processes and the urban dynamics of the (re)construction of the MR, we trace back which histories were (not) meant to be inside the museum and how advocacy groups sought to gain public recognition of their collective memories. Based on our analysis of the permanent and temporary exhibition, we show that the spatial and narrative division echoes the current state of Brazilian politics of memory. At the same time as these politics are advancing towards a more democratic approach, they still reflect structural discrimination as the black experience.

We emphasize the plurality of memories because of the myriad experiences resulting from a structural organization producing differentiated outcomes. It is this that makes the memory of the dictatorship and the longstanding history of Brazilian racism a different experience for various social groups. We seek to strengthen a critical intersectional perspective, sensitive to the plurality of memories of repression and resistance and their erasures and silences.3 As Mario Medeiros (2024: 14) states: “The experience of a hegemonic view (male, white, bourgeois, Western, heteronormative, ableist) also shapes social memory and has an impact on the double death of the subalternized, here seen partially as Black people and Indigenous people.”

Collective memory (Halbwachs, 1990) is constantly (re)constructed in the present time and spaces by what Elizabeth Jelin calls “memory entrepreneurs” (2003), groups who energetically advance initiatives from an ethical, political, or human principle. Between and inside these groups, there are always struggles because they seek social recognition and political legitimacy for and from their particular experiences (Jelin: 2003). Collective memory is a form of the hegemonic power of certain social groups over others, as elites even determine who has the right to public remembrance and who will be excluded and ‘forgotten’. In this regard, we consider that sites of memory (Nora, 1989) are dynamic social-historical constructions, results, and agents of disputes over the past that reflect and build the temporary outcomes of dominant politics, achievements and desires of certain activists. Focusing on permanent versus temporary exhibitions, we highlight that museum spaces are constantly under (re)construction and thus reflect and build current discourses and social hierarchies of power (Demaria et al., 2022). Our research is based on fieldwork in São Paulo in 2022/2023, interviews with the people involved in the memorial’s construction, and conversations with museum staff, local memory activists, and scholars. It is informed by a guided tour with the curator, Mario Medeiros in January 2023. By translating some of the Brazilian scholarly literature for an Anglophone audience, we aim to foster transnational dialogue on memory and political violence and enable new alliances in the struggle for racial justice.

Silenced memories of the Brazilian civic-military dictatorship

The collective memory of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship has been contested and characterized by a tendency to silence and downscale the state-sponsored violence. ⁴ For decades, Brazil was one of the only post-authoritarian countries in South America that had neither established a truth commission nor tried state criminals for their actions to the present day (Schneider, 2019). Argentina and Chile tried at least some of the guilty parties and developed more expressive memory policies, which included archives, memorials and museums (Cabral, 2019). In these countries that pursued justice for victims, former places of detention, torture, and extermination, (like the former DEOPS, where many of the disappeared individuals were last seen) were treated by human rights movements as material evidence of the crimes committed within their physical limits.

The Brazilian transition from dictatorship to democracy is considered endogenous and an extorted reconciliation (Teles and Safatle, 2010). The dictatorship’s human rights violations were taken up by the Feminist Movement for Amnesty (MFA) and the Brazilian committees for Amnesty in the 1970s, which sparked debates about granting amnesty to political prisoners (Pedretti, 2020: 314). The newly created Unified Black Movement Against Racial Discrimination (MNUCDR) joined these debates. At the First National Amnesty Congress in 1978, the group proposed the creation of a commission to address issues affecting black people, in particular. Questioning the political character of what was understood as common violence, the MNUCDR positioned the amnesty debates within a broader historical context of anti-racist struggles in other historical periods, equating the state-led violence against opponents of the dictatorship with the violence against black people, the poor, and residents of the periphery, which were structurally perpetrated by the same repressive apparatus. The proposal was eventually defeated, which contributed to the idea that the target of the civil-military dictatorship was mainly the imprisoned, exiled, dead, and the disappeared because of direct opposition to the military regime (Pedretti, 2020: 315–323).

In June 1979, the dictatorship’s last “president,” João Batista Figueiredo, sent a project for an Amnesty Law to the National Congress, which promoted the idea of reciprocal impunity: the supposed need for forgiveness both to the political prisoners who were accused of crimes by the military regime and to the State agents who committed crimes against humanity (Teles, 2010). Many of the politically persecuted, prisoners, exiles, and their families considered the Amnesty Law an achievement. However, the unrestricted amnesty prevented the perpetrators from being held accountable, and many of those in power maintained their positions (Pedretti, 2020: 314).

In the 1980s, the Brazilian political opening process had two other milestones. From 1983 to 1984, civil society protests called “Diretas já” (Direct Elections Now) fought for a direct vote for president through the ballot box and the return of the rule of law. However, the election of presidents via the electoral college prevailed after they had been chosen from the armed forces. One year after the “democratic” opening, in 1986, the Constituent Congress involved a significant mobilization of different social movements. These efforts resulted in the drafting of a democratic constitution in 1988, which for the first time provided for specific rights for marginalized groups including women, black and, quilombola people, children and adolescents (Teles and Quinalha 2020: 34). However, it “maintained not only the repressive structure, whose conception is internal combat but also sophisticated the militarization of everyday life with legitimizing the armed forces as guarantors of power.” (Teles and Quinalha 2020: 35). In this regard, the Brazilian re-democratization process formed a post-authoritarian society that is still marked by systematic violence and great social inequalities.

Responding to the pressure of relatives and former political prisoners in the 1990s the Federal Government established two commissions: the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances (1995) was created to recognize the resposability of the State for individuals killed or disappeared due to political activities, locate their bodies, and assess compensation claims from their families, and the Amnesty Commission (2001), which extended the finacial compensation to survivors. Some memory initiatives were built by former political prisoners and families with money from economic reparations – such as the Núcleo Memoria, which gave rise to São Paulo’s Resistance Memorial. Nonetheless, the state-led violence of the dictatorship continued to be taboo, and the survivors with their trauma were omitted from the public discourse (Lissovsky and Leite e Aguiar, 2015: 25).

This situation began to change with the creation of the Comissão Nacional da Verdade (CNV) in 2012. The CNV pursued the objective of clarifying the facts and circumstances of cases of serious human rights violations, promoting the detailed clarification of cases of torture, death, forced disappearance, concealment of corpses and their authorship, even if they occurred abroad (Presidência da República ⁵ 2011) between 1964 and 1988, focusing on the civil-military dictatorship period (1964–1985). Its final report, made publicly available in three volumes on 10 December 2014, claims that the “repression” counted an estimated 20,000 cases of torture (2014a: 350) and 434 fatal victims (2014a: 500). The CNV concluded that illegal and arbitrary detentions, torture, sexual violence, executions, enforced disappearances, and the concealment of bodies resulted from State policy carried out extensively against the civilian population. In short: the final report characterised these actions as crimes against humanity. It also indicated 29 recommendations of action, one explicitly dedicated to preserving memory and creating spaces of memory (Pamplona et al., 2024; Torelly, 2018). However, the truth commission did not have judicial power to overrule the Amnesty Law; its function was to investigate the crimes and make recommendations to the State that might compensate the victims and reform institutions.

Recent critical studies have pointed out that the investigation of the CNV was limited in scope, reproducing silences and blind spots regarding different victim groups in its report. According to Furtado “the CNV was accused of producing a hierarchy of victims” (2017: 329), as it mainly focused on well educated, male members of the radical left, at the cost of other marginalised populations – such as peasants, blue-collar workers, LGBTQIA + persons, and Indigenous people.

The Brazilian civic-military dictatorship produced differentiated outcomes for several marginalized groups, including black and Indigenous communities, to the point that they had to mobilise and organise their collective resistance. However, while the work of the CNV enabled the memories of hundreds of people to counter the supportive narrative of the dictatorship with a critical perspective, visibility was given, above all, to the repression and political activism of white middle-class subjects. According to Julia Gumieri (2022), the final report of the CNV delivered in December 2014 raised new questions regarding understanding the category of the victim, as it pointed to the specific violence committed against women, Indigenous people, and field peasants. For example, Part 2 of Volume 1 estimated that 8350 Indigenous people were murdered during the dictatorship period, emphasising that this is a partial number (Comissão Nacional da Verdade, 2014b). Notably, and crucial for our discussion, there is a striking lack regarding the structural violence against black people and movements, in particular (Paixão 2021: 13; Pamplona et al., 2024). Besides, the CNV report has also been disappointing to “[t]hose who expected the commission to follow recent trends of investigation by focusing on economic complicity and conflicting structural causes” (Torelly, 2018: 413). Notwithstanding, the violence committed against Afro-Brazilians and Indigenous people, is by far not limited to the period of the dictatorship years, as investigated by the CNV. As Telles and Quinalha point out (2020:19) the Brazilian state even intensified the violence against black and Indigenous people during democracy. ⁶

The (re-)construction of the Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo

The history of the MR illustrates the complex and contested processes of (re)constructing the memory of the dictatorship through the city. This process, which involved civil society groups, state representatives and foreign agents, among other actors, is an outstanding example of the interplay of space and power in the neoliberal city (Youngs, 2016); it demonstrates the struggles and achievements of the human rights movement. In this light, the MR stands as a “space of opportunity”, in a positive sense (Cabral and Corrêa, 2022: 300): a place built by actors and groups who, amid adverse situations, have found ways to get their agendas recognised and develop projects aimed at building fairer societies through places of historical importance.

The MR is part of the “Pinacoteca Station” near the former railway station Luz in downtown São Paulo. Due to its location, distinct history and monumental architecture, the building has undergone multiple changes. Built in 1914 to house the offices of a railway company, from 1940 to 1983, during the Estado Novo (1937–1945) and the civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985), the site served as the headquarters of the DEOPS-SP, the political police, which was responsible for vigilance and control of demonstrations against the authoritarian regimes. It was an institutionalised prison where the military carried out extra-legal practices, including torture. During the Cold War, the DEOPS became known as “one of the most iconic torture chambers of São Paulo” (Furtado, 2020:4). Notably, the DEOPS, linked to the civil police, was part of a more extensive repression apparatus that included the most offensive institution, the Internal Defense Operations Center, linked to the Brazilian Army. As in other countries that suffered from totalitarian regimes, this violence transcended DEOPS’s boundaries and included censorship, political persecution, use of the judiciary to legitimize abuses, disappearance practices, deportation, surveillance, sexual violence, repression of social movements and the enslavement of native peoples, among other crimes against humanity.

The public recognition of the MR as a site-specific place for the memory of the dictatorship began in the second half of the 1990s. At that time the building was included in the cultural heritage list; however, not because of its history, but because of its remarkable architecture (Cabral and Corrêa, 2022). In 1997, the transformation of DEOPS-SP into a memorial was announced in the São Paulo State Human Rights Program. Partially to respond to the demands of an urban renewal project called Monumenta, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank the São Paulo State Department of Culture foresaw the installation of the Universidade Livre de Música (Free University of Music, ULM) in the building, and only a small part would be designated for a Prison Museum (Neves, 2014: 165). The former headquarters underwent a renovation, which involved the removal of the plaster on the wall of the old cells, erasing the inscriptions of prisoners, and fundamental evidence of the violent history of the place. This process was embargoed due to objections from the heritage agencies, opening debates about how to represent the memory of the military dictatorship within that space.

In 2002, when the Brazilian national government established the Amnesty Commission, the Secretariat for Culture of the State of São Paulo became the main administrator of the five-storey building. Two years later, they decided to turn it into a public art museum, the “Estação Pinacoteca”, and to open a museum celebrating the successes of the Brazilian transition (Gumieri, 2012) named “Memorial de Liberdade” (Freedom Memorial). Arguing that the DEOPS was not a space of freedom, a group organised within the Forum of Former Political Prisoners of the State of São Paulo requested a new name and treatment for the space. The Pinacoteca de São Paulo then launched a project to remodel the memorial in line with the demands and with the active involvement of a small group of former political prisoners, initiating an unprecedented participatory process between managers, professionals and direct victims of the dictatorship. On 1 May 2008, the former DEOPS-SP was renamed “Memorial da Resistência” – the same year the Brazilian bar council officially questioned the constitutionality of the blanket amnesty (Schneider, 2011). After one year, Paulo Vannuchi, a survivor who became head of the Special Secretariat for Human Rights, inaugurated the MR. Three months later, on 22 September 2009, he announced a plan to establish a truth commission (Furtado, 2020).

The permanent exhibition

The MR currently occupies part of the Pinacoteca building, also used for art exhibitions unrelated to the civil-military dictatorship. The 5-floor building that houses the MR comprises 1.140 m² operational space, while the space dedicated to the art exhibitions of the Pinacoteca consists of 1705 m² (Memorial da Resistência, Plano museológico, 2019: 5). The permanent exhibition is on the ground floor, occupying 200 m² of the space. On the third floor, a space of 769,40 m² is reserved for temporary exhibitions curated by the MR. The first floor hosts the Reference Centre, a space used for preserving, collecting and producing documentary and testimonial sources about the dictatorship; on the fifth floor, there is an auditorium. The size of these exhibition floors and the MR’s occupied spaces gives an idea of the proportion of the permanent and temporary exhibitions organised by the MR, compared to the art exhibitions organised by the Pinacoteca and the overall space.

Grounded in the idea of creating a “site of memory” (Nora, 1989), the permanent exhibition highlights the MR’s particular location and materiality. The basic museological goals are to “preserve” the memory of the dictatorship, shed light on the history of political repression and human rights violations, and recognise the courage and determination of those who opposed the authoritarian regime. The emphasis of the permanent exhibition relies on the memory of resistance. The museum team and the former small political prisoners conducted a conservationist intervention. Based on their memories the intervation sought to rebuild the space of the cells. Although the intention was to make it easier for the visitor to understand that space, this led to debates between the former political prisoners who had lived in different configurations of these cells. The exhibition is organised into two main spaces contextualising the site, four remaining cells, a main corridor and the so-called ‘sunbathing corridor’. The rooms contextualising DEOPS carry different symbolic values and museological treatments to the remaining prison space. One of these rooms covers the spatial spread of the military dictatorship in São Paulo. One panel provides a map of sites of memory related to repression and resistance in São Paulo during the period of the Estado Novo and the military dictatorship, situating the former headquarters as part of a broader repression system.

Figure 1.

The timeline spread over two walls in the permanent exhibition space of the Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo.

The next room displays a timeline of the building’s occupation from its construction to the present day, and a video presenting the history and structure of DEOPS-SP. This timeline encompasses different categories of legislature, political organisations, suppression and resistance, as well as different resistance events such as the suppression of workers’ strikes, and other social movements from the beginning of the Brazilian Republic in 1889 till 2008 (the end of installation, one year before the MR was opened, see Figure 1). ⁷ The presence of documentary and iconographic sources demonstrates the intention to “preserve” the memory and reinforce the “truth” value of the space. While this part of the MR is based mainly on historical ‘facts’, the permanent exhibition space adapts a more symbolic and affective language.

The ‘heart’ of the MR is the remaining prison space, which seeks to reconstruct the everyday life of the prisoners of the DEOPS/SP. It consists of four cells: The first cell represents the work-in-progress of the implementation of the MR. The second cell bears witness to the thousands detained, disappeared, and murdered during the actions of the DEOPS-SP. On a wooden table, there is a small vase with a red carnation flower, an international symbol of resistance. The third cell is a reconstruction of the former setting and presents descriptions of the routines in the prison, displaying phrases on the walls (Figure 2). The fourth cell offers a reading of the solidarity between those who were detained in this location, and whose resistance actions collaborated for daily survival (Araújo and Bruno, 2009: 81).

Figure 2.

Reconstruction of the former prison setting in cell 3.

Therefore, the museology team and former prisoners chose to reconstruct the uncharacterised cells. Throughout 2008, the museological team coordinated “memory workshops”, in which a small group of former prisoners, most of whom had led the call for the transformation of the space, acted as advisors and provided their testimonies to the reconstruction project. This collaborative project led to a program for the regular collection of testimonies. However, former prisoners narrate different cell configurations at the DEOPS-SP, demonstrating that the reconstruction covers a specific period, the years 1969–1971, when the first group of prisoners who acted as councillors of the project were imprisoned, not covering the different configurations of space over time. In addition, former political prisoners were invited to redo the erased inscriptions, which raised criticism for tending to forge history. However, this choice was based on the didactic possibilities offered by the space and its power to generate a connection with the public. As former political prisoner Maurice Politti highlights, even if the inscriptions were fake, at least it shows the names of those who stayed there including prominent individuals like Monteiro Lobato and President Dilma Roussef (Memorial da Resistência 2018: 96ff.).

Further significant discussions, among others, about gendered representation also took place. Amélia Teles, a former DEOPS-SP prisoner, family member of a disappeared person, and an important feminist activist, stated that, in Brazil, memory work has always followed a patriarchal logic, and for her, this logic is reflected in the MR project: women are so little remembered that in the Resistance memorial cell, three is the women’s cell and always has been. The dictatorship did that. Because we were much smaller in number than men, as is still the case cell three became the women’s cell. And where are the women’s cells? I will always claim that place. (ANPOF Oficial, 2023, translated by the authors)

Since 2015, after the publication of the CNV report, the MR has undergone critical institutional changes to broaden its agenda beyond the crystallised image of political persecution. As stated by Marilia Bonas (2021), the director of the MR at the time, there was an internal negotiation between the professionals and the former political prisoners, to include the specificities and agenda of subordinated groups affected by the dictatorship, such as the LGBTQIA + community, Indigenous groups, and marginalised Black people. Bonas saw the need to problematise “what history of the dictatorship the memorial tells, of which groups and to illuminate where women, gays, workers and blacks are in the history of the military dictatorship” (Bonas, 2021, translated by the authors).

Memories of the future: black citizenship, anti-racism and resistance

The exhibition titled “Memórias do Futuro: Cidadania Negra, Antiracismo e Resistência“ occupied ample space on the fourth floor (Figure 3). ⁸ Challenging the striking ignorance towards black lives and deaths in Brazil’s public discourse – as well as in the MR permanent spaces – the exhibition encompasses a historical panorama from the abolition of enslavement in 1888 to the present day. It poses critical questions on the racialization of black lives and the misrecognition of anti-racist struggles. As Medeiros points out:

We should also reflect on the historical erasure and invisibility against which those black experiences had to fight. Why do we ignore them? Why have we never heard of certain stories, places, people, and groups? Why do we know nothing about their exemplary lives and extraordinary actions? (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 3)

Figure 3.

Wall installation with the title of the temporary exhibition “Memorias do Futuro”.

The exhibition was based on Medeiros’ research, assisted by historian, Pâmela de Almeida Resende, and MR researcher, Carolina Junqueira Faustini, in partnership with the archives and collections of the AEL, the public archive of the State of São Paulo, the Museum of Image and Sound, the Pinacoteca, the Council for the Defense of Historical, Archaeological, Artistic and Tourist Heritage (CONDEPHAAT), and in collaboration with invited cultural-political collectives such as the Black Coalition for Rights, the project Afro-Memória ⁹ and many others. Through these collaborations, the curatorial team gathered over 450 items, including historical photographs, posters, pamphlets, documents, journals and newspaper articles. They also invited several artists to participate, resulting in a space with colourful painted walls displaying pop-culture paintings resembling street arts and installations. With its pop-aesthetic language, the exhibition contrasts with the conservationist aesthetic of the MR permanent exhibition, as well as to the classic and monumental European-style architecture of the building. It showcases different collective experiences connected by the anti-racist struggle for rights and the affirmation of black lives. As part of the MR’s permanent exhibition installed in the cells, ‘The Everyday Life at DEOPS’, the focus is on forms of everyday resistance.

The exhibition was organised along eight interconnected thematic axes with programmatic titles. The first section on “black territories” emphasises the importance of occupying public space, illustrating the struggles over these spaces of memory in the city. It provides many signs and marks of the presence of black lives in São Paulo since the colonial period that are still graspable reminders despite the many attempts of erasure. The second part highlights the role of black associations, clubs and brotherhoods, as spaces of collective strength, sociality and resistance in the streets. With regards to a wall dedicated to the memory of São Paulo’s carnival groups and Samba schools, as well as the “black dances” in the 1970s and hip-hop scene in the 1980s, the exhibitions emphasise that music and dancing are intrinsically political because occupying either public spaces or established spotlights, are forms of insubordination and affirmation of historically separated rights to existence (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 13). The political struggle for citizens’ rights and the memory of repression, surveillance and resistance are addressed in sections four and six, which presents primarily historical photographs, documents, and pamphlets. This part of the exhibition explicitly addresses the period of the dictatorship, highlighting the role of São Paulo’s political police and its repressive structurally racist actions which, between 1924 and 1983, targeted black people and activists against racism, in particular (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 21). The exhibition provides evidence for traumatic key events such as the assassination of Carlos Marighella, one of the main figures in the armed struggle against the military dictatorship. ¹⁰ It also points to the role of “Death Squads” in São Paulo, commanded by the notorious DEOPS-SP Chief Sérgio Fleury (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 22-23). The exhibition highlights racialized discrimination, recalling that the military repression during the civil-military dictatorship also targeted Afro-Brazilian cultural and religious practices.

The show is guided by the idea of a future-oriented memory that mobilised black action in the past and present, emphasizing “the affirmation of life and a quest for rights that should rightfully belong to all” (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 3). This temporal concept is explicitly “not a rectilinear kind of time”, because “the time of the imagination is circular and folds over itself, mirroring itself and inviting us to look attentively at the markings or signs of permanence, continuity and change in the black lives that have crafted it” (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 3). The exhibition demonstrates that, from a black Brazilian perspective, the dictatorship period is not the only or most significant “interruption” in the history of Brazil, but merely one episode (of only 21 years) in the circuit of its longstanding history of political violence, that includes the repressed memory of enslavement, colonisation and ongoing forms of discrimination. The focus is not solely about exposing the violence, and individuals, but on black collective strength, including some emblematic figures that allow for positive self-identification for present-day Afro-Brazilians. Creating a vision for the present struggles and a hopeful future, the exhibition seeks to (re-)unite different black collectives and movements – including the black feminist and literary movements – to confront the triple oppression in the 21st century. In this regard, the giant 21 m × 4.60 m art panel, created by the multi-artist Soberana Ziza and installed outside of the MR formulated the present challenge. Inspired by the strength of the words of the women of the journal Geledés (1997), it states: “The 21st century is black, female, and ours. All we have to do is to take it into our hands.” (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 4)

The exhibition’s outstanding achievement is that it explicitly addresses the persistence of racism and social segregation of black lives and deaths that runs far beyond the period of the military dictatorship years, highlighting collective resistance in its dynamic plurality in São Paulo, calling for anti-racist action and solidarity. This approach and archival work stress the many gaps in the post-dictatorship memory and challenges the dominant narrative. As curator Mario Medeiros said, he was invited by the MR to curate this exhibition in the wake of the global Black Lives Matter movement. Knowing that the exhibition would be displayed only for a limited time, he decided to produce a comprehensive catalogue with images of the documents mobilized in the exhibition accompanied by insightful texts. The texts produced for the exhibition were made available online and translated into English. Together with the MR’s web archive of the temporary exhibitions, the materials and documents are available to a broader audience than those who visit the memorial in person.

Final considerations

The “Memories of the Future” exhibition is a significant example of the MR’s commitment to addressing the concerns of new generations. Specifically, it illustrates how museums can systematically approach issues related to race, racism, and racial justice within similar institutions. The exhibition extends beyond the period of military dictatorship, broadening the concept of democracy by framing it as part of the ongoing struggle against racism. This perspective encourages the remembering, revealing, and reimagining the roles that racism and resistance play in representations of political violence within the specific context of São Paulo. Moreover, this case study demonstrates how memorial spaces function at various scales, linking Brazil’s broader anti-racist struggle to global movements. Collectively, the exhibition showcases the efforts of black Brazilians, who have historically been a crucial force in contesting repression and defending human rights in the country. It emphasizes that black communities were foundational to the city of São Paulo, and their resistance has been manifested not only through political means but also through rich cultural and artistic expressions. Bringing the voices of these marginalized groups into a prominent public institution in the city center can be seen as an act of resistance in the ongoing anti-racist struggle. However, the temporary nature of the “Memories of the Future” exhibition raises concerns about the potential for lasting institutional change. Audre Lorde (2018: 19) noted: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Contemporary contests over sites of memory are part of the ongoing struggle against a system that operates through the category of ‘race’ and, consequently, reinforces structural racism. The MRs efforts to highlight local Black history challenge these preexisting memory spaces. Instead of merely associating Blackness with a racial struggle, it is crucial to highlight its other radical aspects. The issue we face is hegemonic whiteness and the pervasive institutional racism that exists throughout Brazil and beyond. As Mario Medeiros emphasizes, there must be a collective commitment to racial justice: “It is not enough to be non-racist; one must be anti-racist. The present and the future call for that courage in all of us.” (Memorial da Resistência, 2022: 4; also see Dabiri, 2021).

Nurtured by the formation of a new right-wing government in Brazil and tragic events such as the assassination of Marielle Franco in 2018 and the murder of George Floyd in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted social inequalities, Black movements have gained global momentum. In this context, racial violence has become an urgent matter to address also for Brazilian cultural institutions. Historically focused on a specific group of politically persecuted left-wing activists from the 1960s–70s, the MR aimed to broaden the idea of democracy, resistance and victimhood by highlighting the longstanding history and the persistence of racism, sexism and social inequality through temporary exhibitions. However, just like in the Brazilian Truth Commissions’ final report, the violence against subordinated groups is still represented in the museological project as an appendix; they are not part of the main exhibition. The visitor can easily pass by the temporary exhibitions unnoticed or miss their limited display time.

Museums are dynamic spaces, and the specific history of the MR exemplifies how they are always under (re)construction. In this case study, we analyzed the institution’s efforts to re-inscribe itself in contemporary debates in Brazil, where the issue of structural racism has gained growing visibility, especially in the cultural field, which is an achievement of the work of black artists, scholars, activists, writers including curator Mario Medeiros who have brought these issues to the fore. What comes to the fore in this case study is that racist violence in Brazil has been systematically operated since the foundation of the country with its colonial past and massive abuse of enslavement. However, this history features within the museum only as a temporary exhibition. Although the MR is an outstanding achievement, most parts of the building host art exhibitions unrelated to the dictatorship's memory. As we have outlined, the central part of the museum space, the cells, still relate the category of “victim” almost exclusively to white and male political prisoners. This is because when the dominant group tells history from a white perspective, it tends to singularize its experience at the expense of others. ¹¹ The bitter irony is that the systematic violation of Black people’s lives cannot easily be classified between two dates like the narrow dictatorship period and will be represented only for a short time. We need to shift our point of view here. The issue is not black people or even amnesia. Rather we might be facing a structural whiteness that proves reluctant when it comes to the more significant history and presence of racial violence. This institutional attention deficit forms part of what Cida Bento termed the Brazilian “pact of whiteness” (Bento, 2022). Finally, we might think of public remembrance in museums as a right which is not necessarily articulated by the oppressed but is rather an allowance of the system, an idea of symbolic justice. The pressing question then is: when and where will the elites allow a permanent space for the history of the anti-racist struggle within the MR or elsewhere in São Paulo?