Brazil’s president accused of ‘drinking from the sewers of history’ by recommending The Suffocated Truth

This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been accused of “drinking from the sewer of history” after urging teenage students to read a book by a notorious dictatorship-era torturer accused of directing interrogation sessions where victims were were whipped, given electric shocks and pounded with vine wood canes.

Bolsonaro, an outspoken fan of the 1964-1985 military regime during which hundreds of political opponents were murdered and thousands more tortured, met with students at the gates of the presidential palace in the capital, Brasília, on Monday.

Video of the encounter shows one of the students saying, “Send a hug to my teacher.”

“You teacher is a leftist?” the president replies, as the crowd erupts with laughter.

“Tell her to read the book The Suffocated Truth. Just read it,” Bolsonaro says. “There are facts, not the blah blah blah of the left.”

The book he recommended was written by Col Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who in 2008 became Brazil’s first military man convicted for kidnap and torture during the dictatorship.

The Suffocated Truth – The Story the Left Doesn’t Want Brazil to Know, was published a year before Ustra’s death in 2015 and – according to the summary – “seek(s) to dispel myths, deceptions, and lies”.

In a recent interview with the Brazilian media, one Ustra victim, Gilberto Natalini, described sadistic torture sessions that had played out under the watch of the man Bolsonaro considers a role model.

“It was a house of horrors,” Natalini said of the torture centre where he was held by Ustra’s men. “Once I saw them hang a man upside down by his feet and leave him there for almost 48 hours.”

“We were terrified of Ustra because he was in charge of it all,” Natalini added. “How could you ever forget a face like his? It was the face of depravity itself.”

“It’s very sad that the president continues to defend the most cowardly crime that man can practice; the crime of torture,” said Antônio Funari, president of the Justice and Peace Commission, a Catholic Church advocacy organization.

Brazil: tortured dissidents appalled by Bolsonaro's praise for dictatorship Read more

Sâmia Bomfim, a São Paulo congresswoman with the leftwing Socialism and Liberty party tweeted: “Those who encourage this monstrosity are accomplices to the suffering that plagued countless families during the dictatorship. Bolsonaro drinks from the sewers of our history.”

But with the rise of Brazil’s far right, Ustra has become a cult hero for some, with T-shirts bearing his face and chants of “Ustra lives” sometimes seen at rallies and events.

In 2016, Bolsonaro, then a congress back bencher, praised Ustra in a speech during the impeachment of the president, Dilma Rousseff, who was herself a torture victim during the dictatorship.