Raul Amaro Nin Ferreira was arrested at a checkpoint coming back from a party with friends, and he was taken to DOPS on 1 August, 1971, during the “Anos de Chumbo,” the most repressive period during the Brazilian military dictatorship. The recently graduated engineer collaborated with the Revolutionary Movement 8th October, or MR8, contributing to the group’s journal, making donations and hiding group members in his home. On 2 August, Raul left DOPS for the army’s prison and torture center, Doi-Codi, and was tortured there for two days, until he was brought the Army’s General Hospital, where he went through at least two more torture sessions before dying on 12 August.
It took more than 40 years to discover the truth behind Raul Amaro’s death. On 31 August, 1982, Mariana Lanari Nin Ferreira, Raul’s mother, managed to get the State convicted of first-degree murder for her son’s death, “I just wanted the State to recognize that it had made a mistake, that it had tortured and killed my son, so that this never happened again in Brazil.,” she said at the time. Through hard work, nephews Raul Amaro, Felipe Carvalho Nin Ferreira, and Raul Carvalho Nin Ferreira, along with Marcelo Zelic, vice-president of the group Tortura Nunca Mais, finished a report in 2013 with details of Raul’s story. The research expanded the list of 3 nameless people responsible for his death to 17 names of state agents who were directly implicated in the illegal arrest and murder by torture of Raul Amaro.
“In the research that we did, having access to documents from the National Archive and the Public Archive of the State of Rio, we discovered that the last torture and his end was carried out by DOPS agents inside the Army Hospital on 11 August. His case shows how these various political repression organs from the dictatorship worked together,” said Felipe Nin to Agência Pública.
Felipe is part of the Occupy DOPS Movement, a collective looking to transform the old DOPS building into a space of memory and resistance. At the time that his uncle was arrested, the building acted as a sector for police intelligence; everything that involved political persecution, agents infiltrated in public universities and institutions, censorship of music and film, all passed through DOPS, which also served as a triage for prisoners.
“We speak of political repression not just during the dictatorship; DOPS was a space for repression in the Vargas era, and even earlier when its target was black citizens. We want the space to be a reference center for human rights, we want to redefine the building. The idea is that, beyond being a memorial, it will house human rights institutions that don’t have their own space and can work together,” explains Felipe.
The building, preserved by the State Institute of Cultural Patrimony (INEPAC) for its historical value, belongs to the State and is still administered by the Civil Police, but has not functioned since 2008 due to its damaged structure.