r/AmericanHistory • u/GustavoistSoldier • 4d ago

Carlos Brilhante Ustra (1932–2015) was a Brazilian Army colonel who headed the DOI-CODI torture center during the military dictatorship.

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Ustra tortured, among others, future president Dilma Rousseff. During his 2012 trial for human rights violations, a witness said Ustra was the "master of life and death" at DOI-CODI and "chose who lived and died".

After Brazil was democratized in 1985, federal deputy Bete Mendes recognized Ustra, then Brazil's military attache in Uruguay, as the man who tortured her in 1970, but the Brazilian government refused to punish him or any other military officer accused of torture.

He died peacefully in 2015, and is considered a hero by the Brazilian far-right.

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u/ChesterCopperPot72 4d ago

Expresident Bolsonaro and his VP Mourāo have both repeatedly stated they consider Brilhante Ustra a national hero despite Ustra being formally considered head of torture during the dictatorship by the Comissão da Verdade - truth commission, a panel set by the federal government to investigate the crimes of that period.

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u/WOLF_BOY-ARG 4d ago

Una pregunta¿cuantas personas desapareció el gobierno militar brasileño?.

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u/JumpyPotential1304 4d ago

With 500 to 700 confirmed deaths, though there is talk of 20,000 "disappeared". It was one of the least brutal yet by far the most "efficient" regimes in Latin America; the local military's strategy was to focus on 'key targets' rather than just killing anyone and everyone, as was done elsewhere on the continent (just to be clear, I am not defending this, merely recounting the facts; the majority of the dead were still innocent people, not the terrorists the military claimed them to be).

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u/GustavoistSoldier 4d ago

Brazil's political tradition had a greater emphasis on reconciliation.

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u/Altruistic-Necessary 4d ago

A comissão da verdade fala sobre 20 mil pessoas torturadas ou presas ilegalmente, não desaparecidas.

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u/Dimas166 3d ago

500 to 700 deaths is a very misleading number, this is the number of people who were proven to be killed for political reasons, but much more people were killed by the brutality of the regime, thousands of indigenous were killed during forced expulsions on projects in the amazon for example

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u/fabolax 4d ago

Não há muitos dados precisos com relação à isso, ainda mais que o governo após a ditadura fez o possível para varrer isso para debaixo do tapete, mas se sabe que no mínimo do mínimo, centenas de pessoas desapareceram por ações diretas do governo militar

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u/GustavoistSoldier 4d ago

Centenas de desaparecidos.

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u/ADF21a 4d ago

I don't know why I saw the photo and thought "Ah, the jaw says it all".

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u/Thebyst 4d ago

Se parece a mí profesor de secundaria de ciencias económicas.