The building on 40 Relação Street is a somber structure in a state of decay that carries painful memories for the political prisoners who were held there during Brazil’s military dictatorship. The building acted as the headquarters of the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS), one of the state agencies responsible for political persecution, imprisonment, torture, death, and forced disappearance during the military regime. BBC reporting shows that human rights groups and ex-detainees are campaigning to turn the building into a site of memory.
The building, with its eclectic European design, was constructed in 1910 to house the Central Police Department. It was used as the “starting point” for the terrible torture system during the dictatorship – after being held there, prisoners were sent to Doi-CODI (an infamously repressive police agency) in Tijuca. But before that, the building served to repress other political movements considered to be “subversive” during various periods in Brazil’s history.
When it was first established, the building a center for the persecution of black and poor people and of capoeira, Afro-Brazilian religions, and “vagrancy”. A black man could be imprisoned for walking down a road without doing anything.
During the Estado Nova era, the building was the headquarters of the Special Delegacy of Political and Social Security (DESPS) and served as an apparatus of repression for the Getúlio Vargas government.
The BBC report interviewed Wadih Damous, president of the Rio de Janeiro Truth Commission published in 2012 with the aim to investigate crimes committed by the Brazilian State during the authoritarian regimes. Damous said that other countries transform spaces once used for torture and repression into sites of memory, but not so much in Brazil: “it’s a country that erases its tracks. It hides its history of slavery, of the Paraguayan War, of the Estado Novo dictatorship, of the military dictatorship. It is a country that seeks to forget.”