A report puts business complicity with the dictatorship in Brazil under the magnifying glass | The Federal University of Sao Paulo investigated giants such as Volkswagen, Fiat and Petrobras

2023-06-11 00:47:26

What do companies like Fiat, Volkswagen, Petrobras or Newspaper in Brazil? An investigation conducted by the Federal University of Sao Paulo, through the Center for Forensic Anthropology and Archeology (CAAF/Unifesp), notes that these and six other companies had an “intimate relationship” with the dictatorship (1964-1985). The 327-page report was presented at the “IV International Meeting of the Network of Repressive Processes, Companies, Workers and Unions of Latin America” ​​held between June 5 and 7 at the University of São Paulo.

“The interests of enrichment and illicit benefits of the companies were one side of the coin whose second part was the repression and the systematic attack on the workers’ organizations and their struggles”, he asserted in dialogue with Page 12 Edson Teles, CAAF research coordinator. A philosophy professor at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Teles highlights that the violation of rights is not just a thing of the past: “All the forms of typification of the violations of the period of the dictatorship are observable at present. Thus, looking to the past can allow an investment in the acts of justice of the present”.

Organic relationship with the regime

From the report, which included ten public and private companies for analysis, it is clear that the factories in the urban area acted under the command of state agents, with repressive actions against the workers in line with the illegal activities in prisons and torture centers. . In research on the National Steel Companythe largest fully integrated steel producer in Brazil and one of the largest in Latin America, it was shown that several workers who organized strikes against the coup were firedand dozens were arrested in the following months.

In the case of the giant Fiatthe report maintains that the company “He maintained an organic relationship with the regime”. There are reports about the existence of a space, called the “fire brigade room”, in which the workers were forced to speak under threats and direct attacks. In addition, the worker Guido Leão Santos was killed by a car when he was fleeing from police repression at the behest of the company.

In rural areas, the invasion of the territories of Afro-descendant communities and indigenous peoples was carried out with the support of the military forces or with the complicity of paramilitary groups. It is the case of the company Aracruzcurrently the largest pulp mill in the world, his business expanded with government incentives, thus affecting the territories occupied by indigenous and ‘quilombola’ communities (Afro-descendants who fled from slavery). “After the invasions, the State tried to legalize the ownership of the land by the companies. In addition to the repressive processes, successive laws, decrees and loans were created for the benefit of the companies,” Teles remarks.

Regarding the newspaper Newspaper, expanded during the dictatorship to become a large conglomerate in the journalistic sector, the investigation highlights that the company maintained repressive agents, military and police, among its employees. After Institutional Act No. 5 drafted in 1968, which gave extraordinary powers to the president and suspended several constitutional guarantees, Sheet he adopted explicit editorial support for the regime. The company came to giveaccording to testimonies mentioned in the report, their vehicles to carry out Operation Bandeirantes actionsan information center that coordinated military actions against guerrilla organizations.

Another witness case is that of Petrobras, one of the largest state-owned companies in Brazil. A large number of workers were detained during the dictatorship, and some arrests took place on company premises. The arrests were often not communicated to the families of the workers, and the detainees were subjected to torture. Several employees were fired and their names blacklisted. The report also highlights the persecution against lawyers who represented employees or former employees in lawsuits against the oil company.

According to the investigation coordinated by the CAAF, Latin America was a global leader in giving visibility to the issue of corporate responsibility for human rights violations during authoritarian regimes, and in promoting the concept of business complicity. The authors observe that the processes tending to the rendering of accounts of economic actors commonly take place at the local level, without any pressure or greater interest in this regard from international human rights organizations.

The justice that does not arrive

The case of the car manufacturer Volkswagen marked the beginning of the approach to corporate responsibility in the Brazilian justice process. The Federal Public Ministry conducted a civil investigation against Volkswagen that ran for five years and led to the production and collection of evidence of the company’s active collaboration with the dictatorship, the surveillance of workers, and the transfer of information to repressive bodies. .

In June 2022, the labor prosecutor Rafael García Rodrigues, in charge of the case against the German multinational, denounced that “workers subjected to slavery came to be tied to trees to accept the conditions.” Through the celebration of a TAC, Conduct Adjustment Term, Volkswagen agreed to a series of commitments such as publishing a statement on the subject in the newspapers, donating 16.8 million reais to the Volkswagen Workers Association, and donating 10.5 million reais to projects for the promotion of memory and truth and entities authorized to carry out investigations into civil-business complicity with the coup.

At the moment Volkswagen is the only company that had to answer to justice for its links with the dictatorship. “A major impediment for criminal justice acts of those responsible for such violations is the interpretation that the 1979 Amnesty Law pardons state agents who committed serious human rights violations. This interpretation was confirmed by the Brazilian Supreme Court in 2010,” remarks Teles.

In 2014, a Truth Commission created by President Dilma Rousseff denounced the country’s main business group, the São Paulo Federation of Industries, for having collaborated with the coup through a clandestine agreement to manufacture weapons for internal repression. This commission played an important role when it came to investigating civil-business complicity, but “all the commissions and working groups on the period of the dictatorship were deactivated, either by extinction or by emptying their functions” during the government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023), according to Teles.

The return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to power brought hope in the reopening of the demands of the human rights movements. “However, we know that the coalition that elected him is conservative and that the changes only occurred after the mobilization of public opinion and popular movements. In any case, at least there is a dialogue and understanding about the violations that occurred during the dictatorship,” says Teles, a university professor and survivor of the years of lead.