Cultural and political repression of Nelson Werneck Sodré

Abstract

This paper tracks down the political career of the historian Nelson Werneck Sodré during the years of military dictatorship in Brazil. It Analyzes the Dossiers prepared by the DOPS (São Paulo-Brazil) and Processes in Military Justice (NMB Project). By confronting the dictatorship, Sodré experienced, in his way, the hardships imposed by national security policy applied to those ones considered "internal enemies" of the nation. He had responded to lengthy interrogations in DOPS and was imprisoned for two months. His books were banned. Furthermore he couldn’t grant interviews to newspapers and magazines. The repression affected not only the militant cadres of the PCBs and their most significant theoretical, but also the families, friends and supporters of the historian, who suffered from the institutionalization of torture in the country. So to think the role of Nelson Werneck Sodré in the fight against the military dictatorship is to understand the broader issues about the insertion of the left in intellectual circles and in the bases of society.