Prison and amnesty of Paulo Freire: revealing documents

“In a country such as Brazil, keep the hope alive is itself a revolutionary act.”

Paulo Freire

 

 

On November 26 of 2009, the Folha de São Paulo, one of the newspapers with the largest impact in Brazil, published in its website: “The Committee of Amnesty of Ministry of Justice considered in this Thursday, by unanimity, the educator from Pernambucano state Paulo Freire as politic amnestied. […] ‘We are featuring the official apology by the mistakes of the State against Paulo Freire’, declared the president of the Committee, Paulo Abrão, at the end of the session. He considers that there is a lot to do, once that there are suspects that archives, mainly of intelligence services of Armed Forces, have not yet been delivered or been destroyed. […] ‘To amnesty Paulo Freire is to freedom Brazil of moral and intellectual blindness that took governments to considered enemies of of the Nation educators who wanted to freedom the country of literacy’, said the president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva”.

From the pilot-experience in the city of Angicos (RN), in 1963, when 300 workers were literate in 40 hours, the “Paulo Freire Method” became known, passed to be seen as revolutionary and passed to influence the pedagogical thought in several countries. The idea started in 1962 when Freire was director of the Department of Cultural Extensions in the University of Recife. Freire has long criticized the traditional process of teaching and learning, which used memorization, booklets with information far from those that would use, learning based on repetition, all taken as the main methodological procedures for the acquisition of reading and writing.

Exactly on April 02 of 1963 happened the 40th hour (class), given by the president at the time, João Goulart, with the presence of several governors of Northeast and representatives of the Alliance for the Progress (Alianza para el Progreso was a program of economic development for Latin America led by USA to freedom it of the dangers of communism), where also spoke Aluísio Alves (governor of Rio Grande do Norte state at the time), Paulo Freire and the ex-illiterate, Antonio Ferreira. The oldest student, Maria Hermínia, handed letters written by the participants of the course to the President. And thus was formed the first class of Angicos. In this occasion, also was noticed the presence of General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, in uniform, commander of the Military Region in Recife, that, at the end of the class, would have said to Calazans Fernandes (National Secretary of Education): “Young man, you’re looking for trouble around here, in the Northeast” (Fernandes & Terra, 1994: 18).

The method would start to be carry on throughout the country with the National Program of Literacy, coordinated by Paulo Freire and established by the Ministry of Education in January of 1964. Less then three month later, however, the initiative was extinct – Brazil was already living the first days of military regime.

Paulo Freire was arrested on July of 1964, one of the first Brazilians to be sanctioned and punished by the regime of authoritarianism self-implanted in Brazil, through a coup culminated on April 1 of that same year. He was arrested because he saw in education a path toward to critical consciousness of the most disadvantage and most oppressed social-historically classes, so they could build infrastructure for their own freedom and autonomy.

The newly literate Antonio, representing the class in the closing of the course, had driven up to the president João Goulart and said: “In that previous moment, came the president Getúlio Vargas, end the hunger of the people, the hunger for food, which is an easy hunger to sate. Now, in the current time, came our president João Goulart, to satisfy the need of the mind which all people have, the need of learning. We truly need things that we didn’t know, and now I am knowing. In other time, we were mass, today we are not mass, but people”.

Angicos, therefore, was the fermentation of a process of pedagogical change deeper, besides to announce the possibility of political and social changes: in the social turbulence of the time, where the literacy of adults looked like as precondition for social, political and economic development, Angicos was the voice of the people from Northeast, claiming for social justice, solidarity, democracy.

For Paulo, “(…) the people, in turn, while crushed and oppressed, injects the oppressor, can not, alone, constitute a theory of their liberating action. Only in the encounter with the revolutionary leadership, the communion of both, in the praxis of both, is that this theory is made and remade”.

Paulo Freire passed around 70 days of anguish and tension in prison, before the exile, that would count with stints in Bolivia, Chile, United States, Switzerland, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, Australia. Exile throughout the world that would make him be more and more recognize and would take him to travel even more after and to gather a kaleidoscope of activities and functions in the globe such as the Consultant of the World Council of Churches, Professor at the State University of Campinas, of Catholic University of Santiago, Professor invited of the Center of Studies of Development in Harvard, Special Consultant of UNESCO, Educational Counselor of the 3rd World Governments, President of the Executive Committee of the Institute of Cultural Action, Organizer of National Programs of Literacy of Guinea Bissau and Sao Tome and Principe, Secretary of Education of São Paulo city, founder of Institute Paulo Freire, almost thirty Honoris causa titles granted by institutions of the whole world. Concomitantly to all these activities, he wrote. In Chile, during the exile, he wrote his main work: Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

In the previous issue of this Bulletin, was launched a section entitled “Memory”, which has as finality to socialize commentaries and/or links to a text, photo or video, of or about Paulo Freire, from different sources. In this second issue the content was obtained in the Digital Repository of the Center of Reference Paulo Freire, developed by the Paulo Freire Institute of Brazil, with the patronage of Petróleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras), through the Federal Law of Incentive to Culture, of the Ministry of Culture of the country. The project “Paulo Freire Memory and Presence: preservation and democratization of access to Brazilian cultural patrimony” was developed between the years of 2011 and 2012, having as general objective to preserve the existing materials, to ensure and democratize access qualify to work and legacy of Paulo Freire, including to people with visual impairment. To know better the project, please, visit: http://acervo.paulofreire.org/xmlui. Concerning to the arrest and amnesty of Paulo Freire, deserve highlight two set of materials available for consultation and download in this link: one of them refers to the period of political prison of Paulo Freire and other to the process developed in the search of his amnesty,

It is possible, for example, access the entire Military Police Investigation (IPM) 1426/68, from the Superior Military Court, which aimed to determine the responsibilities of all those who, in the Popular Culture Movement and the National Literacy Program, had developed chapter activities in the laws that define military crimes and crimes against the State and the Political and Social Order.

 

The document is available in: (http://acervo.paulofreire.org/xmlui/handle/7891/2188#page/1/mode/1up)

The investigation registers a long and impressive testimony of Paulo Freire held on 01.07.1964, in which he describes his academic career, and especially his record as being critical, reflective and active, including treating Angicos and the National Plan, describing the theoretical models that he knew or knew existed and more substantial notions of his own thought. This all under the formality of oppressive situation of being asked, quite different from the usual situation and naturally formative in which he used to speak for and with people.

This disparity between the nature of his speech and the complexity of his inferences, and the withdrawn and mandatory context in which it needed to happen, reveal gems as “(…) The most important for the deponent is that all this work is founded on full respect for the human person. Never accepted or defended the deponent the decline of man, its massification. For the deponent,, the key is to educate, never indoctrinate. Asked how can the deponent, who, according to his testimony, so far, had real educational innocence, having pretensions of educator, replied that it is up to the deponent to judge. Asked, based on his testimony, according to which he states repeatedly that the differences between his ‘method’ and others are in the philosophies, showing, on the other hand, singular innocence in relation to each of them (…)”.

In another moment of this transcript, we have a different plan of coercion, but no less interesting: “Asked why, in the Record of Formation Course for Trainers (literacy educators) – Decisions taken at the meeting on 2nd Feb 1964: 1) the word DATA is quoted; 2) why among big common themes, only the political is quoted, said that despite not having been present at that meeting, the deponent believes to elucidate the quotes placed in the word DATA. It is that the team responsible for the training possibly wanted to call attention to the fact that, even to generalize the expression ‘course given’, intended to prevent any passive sense that the word ‘data’ might suggest. Hence the emphasis in which the course should be done actively. Regarding the quotes of the word ‘POLICY’ knows nothing or evaluates”. In that same statement, Paulo Freire needs to explain why he uses a ‘verbiage so complicated’ and ‘does not even exist in dictionary’, as well as he must deny he received 05 million of cruise (currency at the time) for the purchase of his literacy method by the federal government.

In a second document available in the Repository, entitled “Report” (http://acervo.paulofreire.org/xmlui/handle/7891/2189#page/1/mode/1up), is possible to access other fractions of this investigation so crucial for Brazil’s history and for its current history of political and economical opening. The document dates of 1965 and it self-entitled referent to “promoting of subversion at the University of Refice”. It comprises, among other texts recorded in full, the examination of witnesses involved.

The inquiries denounce the manipulation of the discourse of the deponents. The testimony of Sales Yedda Botelho, supervisor of the PNA at the time, is quite tense due to the discursive play based on a succession of twenty juxtaposed sequential and inquisitive questions, as the snippet highlighted below: “[...] Asked to justify her name on the list of contributors to that institution [Communist Party], a relation written in handwriting of Regina Prado and seized by the person in charge of IPM at the National School of Philosophy, answered that she did not know how to justify; asked if she belonged to the group of members of base organization [...] she answered that she did not belong; asked if she participated of the invasion of the National Faculty of Philosophy on December 30, 1963, she said she does not remember”.

In the testimonial of Amado Menna Barreto Júnior (government employee belonging to the Ministry of Education and Culture), can read fragments as the following: “[the deponent affirmed] that these activities [the subversives activities of National Union of Students, of literacy, of popular culture movement] acquired greater force with the establishment of the PNA, the literacy process employed was from Professor Paulo Freire; that this process was later elevated to a method, that this “method” can be perfectly related to the actions of the communist revolutionary movement; that the analysis of the work of study and research allows to make connection of literacy principles conveyed by ‘Paulo Freire method’ with the thesis defended by the researcher Vieira Pinto [...] eminently leftist orientation, which preached the dissolution of the basic foundations of traditional Brazilian university […]; that PNA aimed not only the literacy and awareness of the illiterate mass, but particularly its politicization, with the evident intention of forming an electorate perfectly identified with principles which had until then guided subversive activities in the country “. Then, later on, in the same statement, this discreet reference to the work of Vieira Pinto became much more than a comparison or insinuation, but a conclusion, proven “scientifically.”

The report also proposes to analyze some of generating words of freirean method. For the report, the word “arado” (plow) referred exclusively ‘to exam of capitalist society and their several domination’; “terreno” (terrain) would e ‘bound to economic domination to latitudinarian and to foreign imperialism in the exploration of minerals; the word “comida” (food) gives motive to exam of external aid to the country and the word “bicicleta” (bicycle) explores “the social domination, the problem of transports (with highlight to the privilege of affluent caste)”.

The 04 tomes of the Investigation are available since the final of 2012 for the world and they were already object of study of some researchers who visited the Center of Reference of Paulo Freire. Similarly, the Repository hosts three hundred of pages, in two tomes, of Requirement of Amnesty, led by the widow of Paulo Freire, Ana Maria Freire. It also hosts texts of several researchers. Including Freire, making analytic the reading of the historical period.

The Amnesty Commission, from the Ministry of Justice of Brazil, and Paulo Freire Institute of Brazil launched on Monday, 10/15/2012, the book Paulo Freire – Brazilian Political Amnesty. The book, of hardcover and with 156 pages in color format, was conducted by the project Marcas da Memória (Brands Memory). The book tells the whole story of the persecution of Paulo Freire and his life in exile until the day of his political amnesty in Brazil. The introductory text of the book is signed by Moacir Gadotti, honorary president of the Paulo Freire Institute and the president of the Amnesty Commission, Paulo Abrão. “We hope that the reader will enjoy this book about a Brazilian who dared to enhance the educational process, the knowledge proper to each individual, proposing the contextualization of teaching and learning from the experience of the students. Paulo Freire will be fully pardoned when Brazil are free of illiteracy”, says Abram in the book’s opening.

In 1979, Paulo Freire returned to national land. In the next year, reintegrated to UNICAMP (after, how not to stress, an explicit misunderstanding of the rector at the time), after more than fifteen years of exile, Freire affirms that the long time spent out of the country demanded to him to build greater intimacy with his actuality. It was necessary “…to relearn Brazil”.

He relearned soon. And left the door open for us.