The National Truth Commission (CNV), created in 2011, aims to investigation human rights violations committed in Brazil between 1946 and 1988 – that is, between the 1946 constitution issued immediately after the forced resignation of Getulio Vargas, which resulted in the New Republic (1945 -1964), and the 1988 constitution which ended the period of military dictatorship.
The Truth Commission report, which has just been published, makes clear that there were 434 fatalities or missing people, several thousand were tortured and many others imprisoned. President Jair Bolsonaro, who said that 1,300-page document was just nonsense and questioned what credibility a commission appointed by former president Dilma Rousseff could ever have.
The President then proceeded to replace members of the Commission on the Dead and Disappeared of the military dictatorship with people he trusted. And finished by praising Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, one of the most celebrated repressors of the Brazilian dictatorship, who Bolsonaro called a national hero because he helped “stop the country become what the left still wants today”.
