Prática médica e repressão na prática: os médicos legistas e as torturas durante a ditadura militar brasileira (1964-1985)

Abstract

What was the importance of the role played by coroners in the State repression that took place during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985)? The paths found for this research question are developed in the wake of the historical incursions arranged towards providing an instrument that could approach both the medical practices that were linked and contributed to the military dictatorial period in Brazil as well as escaping from eventual discursive homogeneities intended to establish a sort of "official report". Although it was mostly supported by the findings of the “Comissão Nacional da Verdade (CNV)” (in English “National Commission of Truth (NCT”) report -given the importance and completeness of this document in the Brazilian context- the studies, notes, sources and testimonies of both victims in the military audits and groups that until today seek punishment to those involved in the crimes of torture committed at the time – such as the group “Tortura Nunca Mais” (in English “Torture Never More”) – explain the participation of coroners in the authoritarian regime and therefore were also used as part of the interdisciplinary methodology adopted. The study is justified by the historical, sociological and theoretical gap, mainly from the fundamental human rights bias, regarding the participation of specific characters linked to the Brazilian military dictatorship, in addition to the military; as such, coroners, not so much explored in this literature orientation, were retrieved within the research agenda proposed given their outstanding levels of cooperation with the regime, as pointed in the NCT notes. With emphasis on the theoretical foundations formulated by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, as well as the provisions on the evil and its approach as a social fact, the discussion is situated in the core of a controversial period which until today polarizes opponents and widowers. Verifying how the symbiosis between the political, legal, journalistic and medical fields contributed to an institutional and social organization based on combating the (always imminent) "communist threat", it is discussed how the military habitus and the inculcation of revolutionarily committed to state officials and warrior ethos were a kind of socialization that, in ultimate measure, influenced determining provisions so that some coroners could participate in the humanitarian damage that occurred in the period. Without admitting liability for the practices of torture to a blind and imposing structuralism but also moving away from the theories that blame the pure and independent volition of individuals as the main reason for their actions, this study's approach disposes of military institutional arrangements as frames of meaning technocratically compromised which certainly assisted the authoritarian purposes of the time. As immediate results of this research, it was also discovered that it was a specific category of doctors, the coroners, who effectively took part in the institutional tortures of the time. This is explained by the technocratization and the ideological-military engagement of the government and its officials who structured the criminal expertise institutions in such a way as to safeguard interests in the concealment of “official crimes” and in the authentication of the legitimacy of State acts. In addition to the influence that the warrior ethos had in this process, the medical expertise and the way in which the medical field is arranged were important for the militarized government to reinsert the crimes committed by official agents within the scope of formal legality intending not only to have the affection of public opinion but above all for the legal conformation of an orderly regime of exception that had torture as a State policy