Brasil: Nunca Mais

Brasil: Nunca Mais (Portuguese for Brazil: never again) is a book edited by Paulo Evaristo Arns, in which episodes of torture under the military dictatorship in Brazil between 1964 and 1979 are documented. With the assistance of the Presbyterian minister Jaime Wright, he photocopied the military government's records on torture, which were used as his source.[1][2] There is an English version of this book called Torture in Brazil: A Shocking Report on the Pervasive Use of Torture by Brazilian Military Governments, 1964-1979.[3][4] It can be viewed as the Brazilian version of Argentina's Nunca Más Report released one year before.

In total, the book documents 17,000 victims, provides details of 1,800 torture episodes and lists the names of the 353 victims who were killed by the regime. The book became later one of the biggest source of data for the Brazilian National Truth Commission, basically for financial reparation, as it is not possible to legally charge any state member in Brazil for human rights crimes occurred from 1961 until 1979 due to 1979 Amnesty law. The book was kept secret for five years under the dictatorship, and only published with the return to democracy. The book was a bestseller and provoked a widescale movement for change. After its release, a Non-governmental organization called Tortura nunca mais was founded and began to monitor and denounce the presence of torture in Brazil.[5][6][7]

The idea that the repression and economics were in fact a single unified project is reflected in only one major human rights report from this period: Brasil: Nunca Mais. Significantly, it is the only truth commission report published independently of both the state and foreign foundations. It is based on the military's court records, secretly photocopied over years by tremendously brave lawyers and Church activists while the country was still under dictatorship. After detailing some of the most horrific crimes, the authors pose that central question so studiously avoided by others: Why? They answer matter-of-factly: "Since the economic policy (Chicago economics) was extremely unpopular among the most numerous sectors of the population, it had to be implemented by force.