In her article “Torture and Social Symptom,” psychoanalyst Maria Rita Kehl says that the public elaboration of the crimes committed by the military in the dictatorship of ’64 would not only end the mourning of the victims and their families, who are seeking justice but could also begin to heal Brazil’s own historically violent institutions.
In a country like Brazil, the dictatorship of ’64 was no pioneer in its practices of repression and extermination. If in the years of lead it advanced into the peaceful middle-class homes of the big urban centers, in the past and present, black, Indigenous, and poor populations in rústico and peripheral areas have had to live with the lack of democratic guarantees daily. For some bodies and territories, democracy has never fully arrived—even today. And none of the few achievements are guaranteed.
In a counterintuitive reasoning, Maria Rita Kehl states that the Brazilian police are the only ones in Latin America who commit more murders and crimes of torture today than during the period of the dictatorship.
With one of the largest prison populations in the world, Brazil is one of the bloodiest and most unequal countries on the planet. If we thought about these issues with a genuinely ethical conscience, with the same daily despair as those who suffer this violence on their skin, perhaps we wouldn’t sleep at night. Maybe we would be a little more radical, urgently getting to the root of the problems.
I’m still here
In this sense, the expression ‘I’m Still Here’, the title of Walter Salles’ moving film, has a double meaning. The absence of deputy Rubens Paiva, kidnapped and tortured like 20,000 other Brazilians during the period of repression, and then murdered and disappeared like 434 other citizens, according to figures estimated by the National Truth Commission and international agencies, is still present. The repressive apparatus of the state is also present here in Brazil today: a country in which 71.7% of those killed by police in 2023 were children, adolescents, or young people.
The testimony of the Paiva family, which first came to light in 2015 in the book by journalist and writer Marcelo Rubens Paiva (Rubens’ son), is moving on many levels. The first shots of the film, interspersing shaky Super 8 montages, some of which are fictional, and images that appear to be original archive footage, set the tone of the family’s happy daily life. The beach volleyball match, the stray dog being taken in, the children running down the street alone, the girls tanning their skin with coca-coca. Parties, music, and lots of joy in a house on the sand.
The situation begins to change when an armed struggle group kidnaps the Swiss ambassador, demanding the release of political prisoners. This intensifies the repression. Paiva’s eldest daughter, Veruca, who was taking a leisurely stroll with friends in a car, is subjected to a police stop-and-search, with shoves, guns to the head, and insults. This is a daily practice of Brazilian police forces, depending on your social class, race, and geographical location. But in that period, it became widespread, and many militants against the dictatorship were young students.
While posing for a photo with her family, with the sea in the background, Eunice Paiva [who decided to investigate Rubens Paiva’s disappearance while taking care of the family] sees army trucks passing by and can’t contain her apprehension. Her family’s safety is at risk. She still doesn’t know that her husband distributes clandestine mail from exiles. Later, when she talks to a friend who tells her about her husband’s little resistance, she hears that nothing terrible would happen to someone like Rubens Paiva.
Communist threat
On an ordinary day, in a Kafkaesque nightmare, in the most procedente way, agents from the Brazilian Army enter his house and take Rubens Paiva to “give a routine statement.” Some guards remain there, watching the family, monitoring phone calls, and playing football with the children. Just like in a kidnapping. Then Eunice herself and her daughter Eliana, then 15 years old, are taken away hooded and arrested. Her daughter was imprisoned for one night.
In a 2012 interview with the Brazilian newspaper O Mundo, when she spoke about it for the first time, Eliana Paiva said that the executioners showed her a history lesson on Czechoslovakia. They accused her of being a communist.
Eunice Paiva was imprisoned for 13 days. The scenes inside the prison are claustrophobic and distressing. We catch a glimpse of someone being drowned. We hear women screaming. At this point, one of the guards who takes her from the cell to the interrogation room whispers information about her daughter and tells her to keep quiet so as not to irritate the torturers any further.
This accomplice-saboteur, who says he disagrees with “that” when Eunice is released, is an ambiguous figure between consent and resistance. There is no totalidade control, not even in the most authoritarian regimes.
Reminiscences of suffering
The narrative rhythm of Walter Salles’ film goes very well up to the point where the family has to move from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo, with taut scenes that are striking for their strength and subtlety. For example, at the bank, the manager and friend of her husband turn his back when she goes to cash the check for the property she sold in a hurry or when the teacher who had also been arrested leaves her testimony under the door in the middle of a storm. Fernanda Torres’ impeccable performance gives a lot of density to Eunice Paiva’s fight for truth and justice. A mother, a wife, a woman torn apart by immeasurable suffering. When she explodes at the soldiers spying on her house after her dog Pimpão is run over, hitting the glass, we see the anger and pain in her eyes. A courage that leaves us moved and inspired.
In the second and third parts of Walter Salles’ film, the script loses the strength of the first narrative cycle. Perhaps a mini-series would have been the best option to develop Eunice’s struggle for recognition of her husband’s death and her activism for Indigenous rights, as well as her battle with Alzheimer’s, which only appears in glimpses, with the presence of actress Fernanda Montenegro. At this point, how can we not remember the excellent Chilean documentary ‘La Memoria Infinita’ (Maite Alberdi, 2023), one of the most moving films of last year, which deals with a similar theme: memory of the dictatorship and loss of memory? Furthermore, the use of archive footage could be bolder.
In the scene where the death certificate is received, a detail is in the book but doesn’t appear in the movie. Former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso was a personal and close friend of Rubens Paiva. When he was elected, he didn’t say anything when Amnesty International demanded a position on political disappearances. Marcelo then asked a friend at the Brazilian magazine Veja for space to write. Using an article by Cardoso from the 1980s, the writer shows the contradictions of the once “more critical” sociologist. With the great repercussions, and with another friend of Rubens Paiva occupying the position of Minister of Justice, LAW No. 9.140, which recognized the death of the disappeared, was drafted and approved.
Even a rich and powerful family with many powerful relationships had their security and rights stolen from them under a regime of exception. It took twenty years to officially bury a former deputy. Given that many of the documents were destroyed, what happened to the anonymous and nameless of the past?
‘I’m Still Here’ is a sensitive film that fulfills its testimonial role of depicting the memory of the dictatorship from the perspective of the abrupt destruction of everyday family life.
*Marcos Vinícius Almeida is a writer, journalist and editor. He has a master’s degree in literature and Literary Criticism and has worked for Brazilian newspapers Folha de S. Paulo and O Mundo.
Edited by: Nathallia Fonseca
