Fiona Feng
On January 20th, 1971, Rubens Paiva, a former Congressman, was arrested under Brazil’s military dictatorship.[1] His wife, Eunice, never saw her husband again.[2] She later that discovered that he had been tortured and killed shortly after his arrest.[3] Following these events, Eunice pursued a law degree and joined human rights movements advocating justice for her husband and other victims of the dictatorship.[4] The film I’m Still Here is based on the 2015 memoir by Marcel Rubens Paiva, Rubens and Eunice’s son.[5] The climax of the movie arrives when Eunice, after 25 years of Rubens’s disappearance, acquired an official government death certificate for her husband. In both the film and in reality, she held his death certificate, and smiled.
This breakthrough was premised on the ending of Brazilian dictatorship in 1985 and the election of Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1994.[8] Acting on the demands of families of those who “disappeared” during the dictatorship, Cardoso supported the passage of Law 9.140.[9] The legislation officially recognized the “disappeared” as dead for having participated or having been accused of participating in political activities between September 2nd, 1961 and August 15th, 1979.[10] In addition, it recognized Brazilian state’s responsibility in the crimes perpetrated by state agents under the military dictatorship, which resulted in deaths, disappearances, and other human rights violations.[11] Article 4 of the law created a Special Committee on Political Deaths and Disappearances to identify those who died “from non-natural causes, on police premises or the like” as a result of participation or charges of participation in political activities.[12] The committee also sought to find their bodies and offered reparations to the families of the victims.[13] The death certificate received by Eunice, aside from its justice value, has significant practical purpose – without receiving a death certificate, the victim’s families were unable to perform basic civil acts such as executing a will or applying for a pension as a surviving spouse.[14]
Despite the government’s efforts to recognize the state’s responsibility in Rubens’ s death, this recognition of accountability remains largely abstract – no single individual has been held accountable for his death.[15] This result is due to Brazil’s 1979 Amnesty Law, which has granted military officers immunity from prosecutions for crimes committed during the military dictatorship.[16] According to André Carneiro Leão, a former president of the National Human Rights Council, “since it was passed, the amnesty law has been a legal barrier to holding torturers and human rights violators accountable.”[17] The law was allegedly passed by the military dictatorship to benefit both the ‘torturers’ and the ‘tortured’.[18] However, this idea of “bilateral amnesty” is not supported by the reality.[19] Although the law granted the exiled to return and the political prisoners to be freed, the redress received by the ‘tortured’ appeared limited compared to the blanket amnesty enjoyed by the ‘torturers’ within the state apparatus.[20] For instance, the purged academics and civil servants were only allowed to regain their previous positions after being approved by a special investigation committee.[21] Nevertheless, in 2010, the Brazilian Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the amnesty law.[22] The majority of the ministers relied on the illusory notion of “bilateral amnesty” to justify their decision.[23]
However, recent developments have provided new hope for the possibility of revoking the Amnesty Law. On September 21st, 2011, the National Truth Commission was created to investigate the human rights violations committed during the dictatorship.[24] In 2014, it released a 976-page report, which identified 377 individuals who were involved in human rights violations.[25] It recommended prosecution of the 196 living perpetrators, and as a necessary step for their prosecutions, the revocation of blanket amnesty granted to those individuals.[26] In the same year, federal prosecutors brought charges against five military officials for the murder of Rubens and the concealment of his body.[27] Stalled at the Supreme Court in 2018 after years of appeals, the case has gained new momentum following the release of I’m Still Here.[28] Notably, in January 2025, in responding to the request for an opinion made by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, Deputy Attorney General Maria Caetana Cintra Santos stated that “the appellant’s argument is plausible, particularly in light of recent international court rulings deeming the application of amnesty laws to serious human rights violations inappropriate.”[29]
[1]Justin Chang, The Political Drama of “I’m Still Here” Is Moving but Airbrushed, N.Y. Times, Jan. 30, 2025, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-current-cinema/the-political-drama-of-im-still-here-is-moving-but-airbrushed [https://web.archive.org/web/20250303211416/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-current-cinema/the-political-drama-of-im-still-here-is-moving-but-airbrushed] [https://perma.cc/HEX7-8FQN].
[2]Id.
[3]Id.
[4]Id.
[5]Id.
[6]Sofia Ferreira Santos, ‘I Fought for Years to Correct My Dad’s Death Certificate – But Still Haven’t Buried Him’, BBC News, Jan.11, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8npx2r8y8o [https://web.archive.org/web/20250303212517/https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8npx2r8y8o] [https://perma.cc/M9NE-9578]
[7]Luísa Netto, We Are Still Here: Eunice Paiva and the Rule of Law, Vefassungsblog (Feb. 11, 2025), https://verfassungsblog.de/eunice-paiva/ [https://web.archive.org/web/20250303212813/https://verfassungsblog.de/eunice-paiva/] [https://perma.cc/Q4GP-QE68].
[8]Andre Pagliarini, What the Paiva Family Means To Brazil, The Nation, Feb. 19, 2025, https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/im-still-here-brazil-review/ [https://web.archive.org/web/20250303215618/https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/im-still-here-brazil-review/] [https://perma.cc/N6YC-9NMJ].
[9]Id.
[10]Iasmin Goes, Between Truth and Amnesia: State Terrorism, Human Rights Violations and Transitional Justice in Brazil, 94 Eur. Rev. of Latin American and Caribbean Stud., 83, 90 (2013).
[11]Pagliarini, supra note 8.
[12]Brazil, Asociación Almendrón (Aug. 2017), https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/brazil.pdf [https://web.archive.org/web/20240520165418/https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/brazil.pdf] [https://perma.cc/47EH-NTF3].
[13]Pagliarini, supra note 8.
[14]Id.
[15]Marília Marasciulo, Oscar-nominated Film Reignites Debate over Brazil’s Amnesty Law, Courthouse News Service (Feb. 3, 2025), https://www.courthousenews.com/oscar-nominated-film-reignites-debate-over-brazils-amnesty-law/ [wayback machine link] [perma link].
[16]Id.
[17]Id.
[18]Nina Schneider, Impunity in Post-authoritarian Brazil: The Supreme Court’s Recent Verdict on the Amnesty Law, 90 Eur. Rev. of Latin American and Caribbean Stud., 39, 43 (2011).
[19]Id.
[20]Id.
[21]Id.
[22]Id. at 39.
[23]Id. at 49.
[24]Supra note 10 at 91-92.
[25]Supra note 15.
[26]Id.
[27]Id.
[28]Id.
[29]Id.