Never were heroes! The dispute over the imposition of meanings around the use of violence in the Brazilian dictatorship, through a reading of Orvil Project

Abstract

This paper covers the process of creation, implementation, and dissemination of Project ORVIL, from the perspective of one of its main performers; the then Lieutenant Colonel “N2”. The project was thought in early 1984, and proposed the establishment of a "History Writing" that shifted from the perspective that was being used by left-wing militants about torture in Brazil, mainly from the Amnesty, and disseminated through interviews and an extensive memorial bibliography. Permeated by the speeches concerning to memory and disputes held around their imposition, this paper looks from the individual perspective and how this construction was transplanted to an institutional setting. We seek to a) understand how a given military group, markedly ultra-conservatives, saw the scenario of the military coup and the implementation of repression; b) realize what strategies were and still are used to tell and reminds us that past, and finally; c) identify which factors have the capability to intervene in this construction, both from a endogenous perspective, in terms of institution, as in a exogenous perspective.