“Legacies of Authoritarianism: Brazilian Torturers’ and Murderers’ Reformulation of Memory” by Martha K. Huggins

This article is based on interviews conducted with fourteen members of the Brazilian police force who were active during the military rule in Brazil lasting from 1964 to 1985. During this time, members of the police force used notoriously violent torture and murder tactics. The interviewees were asked about their lives and jobs during the military rule, and thus were eased into talking about their crimes. The fourteen interviewees were established as having been part of the police brutality through either being mentioned on human rights lists of known perpetrators, being identified by associates as having participated in police violence, being connected to other known perpetrators, or through their own confession. Criminologist Huggins establishes four discursive strategies used by the interviewees for explanations their use of violence. The first is to diffuse responsibility, assigning responsibility to others, the situation, or no one in particular. The second is blaming individuals, policemen that had a momentary lapse in judgment, “bad” policemen that used violence for fun, or victims that deserved the torture. The third is just cause, claiming violence was permitted in the cause of national security. The fourth is professionalism, which separates actions done in the name of the job from the individual. 

According to Huggins, the first three of these are embodied reasonings, while professionalism is disembodied – putting the responsibility on a system rather than a person. Huggins argues that perpetrators’ explanations often follow a discourse that they believe is favorable in contemporary society, thereby hoping to gain more understanding or acceptance. They distinguish between three forms of police violence: acceptable, not acceptable but understandable, and unacceptable. The first is a violence only used in the name of the state, the second considered a lapse of judgment, and the third violence for pleasure. What she deducts from the interviews is that professionalism is becoming a more frequently used explanation than for example just cause. She argues that this shift from embodied to disembodied explanations for legitimizing police violence grows in justifying or even perpetuating police abuse of power.

Author of this entry: Dagmar Nan

Huggins, Martha K. “Legacies of Authoritarianism: Brazilian Torturers’ and Murderers’ Reformulation of Memory.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 27, no. 2, 2000, pp. 57-78.