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scripttorture · 4 years

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what do you know about the use of torture in the military dictatorships in 20th century Latin America? i'm brazilian, so i learned a bit about them in history classes, and i've always known they (or at least the brazilian one) used a lot ov torture

I got in contact with the asker about this to get a better idea of what they were interested in and hopefully this will answer most of those questions.

What I know is mostly what Rejali collected in his book about this period.

Rejali’s particular focus was on what he calls ‘clean torture’, that is torture that doesn’t leave any obvious physical marks on the victims. He’d noticed that the practice of torture seemed to have undergone a rapid, global change: scarring tortures were becoming rarer and clean tortures more common.

Going forward it’s important to be aware that clean tortures can leave temporary marks. But they’re generally things that could come from something other then torture.

For instance the swelling that stress positions cause is also caused by some diseases. This makes it harder for a survivor to prove they were tortured, even if they have evidence of this swelling. Because they need to prove they weren’t ill.

A big part of what Rejali was looking at was the use of electrical torture in particular and how it spread across the globe. He maps the Brazilian use of electrical torture from the 1970s onwards but his data doesn’t seem to show a clear pattern of different devices.

What he does show in that during the 1970s most Brazilian tortures used magnetos. In the context of torture these are usually small portable, hand cranked electrical generators. They had legitimate uses in police and military groups globally; they were often used to operate field telephones and other electrical equipment.

Here’s a description of their use from the Franco-Algerian war:

‘Suddenly, I leapt in my bonds and shouted with all my might. Cha- had just sent a first electric charge through my body. A flash of lightning exploded next to my ear and I felt my heart racing in my breast. I struggled, screaming and stiffened myself until the straps cut into my flesh. All the while the shocks controlled by Cha-, magneto in hand, followed each other without cease.[…..] Suddenly I felt as if a savage beast had torn the flesh from my body. Still smiling above me Ja- had attached the pincer to my penis. The shocks going through me were so strong that the straps holding me to the board came loose. They stopped to tie them again and we continued.

After a while the lieutenant took the place of Ja-. He had removed the wire from one of the pincers and fastened it down along the entire width of my chest. The whole of my body was shaking with nervous shocks getting ever stronger in intensity, and the session went on interminably. They had thrown cold water over me in order to increase the intensity of the current and between every two spasms I trembled with cold.’ (H Alleg in The Question)

By the early 2000s Brazil had transitioned to mostly using stun guns.

Both devices can be clean but my understanding is that stun guns are less likely to leave marks and are more easily ‘explained’ as ‘essential equipment’ in a more modern context.

According to Rejali Brazilian police torture started to the transition from scarring to clean some time in the 40s.

In the 1930s victims were most commonly beaten, whipped and choked. There were also records of; teeth and nails being pulled out, burning with torches, cigars and electrical devices, and the use of needles.

In the 40s they started to use elements of the American National Style at the time, possibly as a result of greater contact with American and British agents in 1943 during a large investigation into a German spy ring.

Sleep deprivation and the ‘standing cuffs’ stress position were used when they hadn’t been before. More beatings were clean. But they also kept some scarring techniques such as burning with cigarettes.

The later records show similar mixes of clean and scarring techniques. What stands out as unusual to me is the rapid changes in regular used techniques decade by decade.

This might be due to changes in government, purges of torturers or just differences across a very large country. The data I have doesn’t break down the techniques by region. It’s possible that the shifts in ‘common’ techniques are actually shifts in regional rather then national styles.

In the 60s there were reports of the following clean tortures:

Electrical torture

Near drowning (it’s unclear if this is waterboarding or holding victim’s heads under water)

Exhaustion exercises

Clean beatings

Stress positions using furniture

Temperature torture using meat lockers

And the following scarring tortures:

Suspension

‘Pepper’, in this case by pouring alcohol in the anus

Pulling flesh with pincers

In the 70s-80s clean electrical torture was still prominent. Other clean tortures included clean beatings (some with historical objects used during slavery), sleep deprivation, pumping and standing stress positions. Suspension (scarring) was still used and more rarely insects, snakes and drugs were used.

In early 2000 suspension was still in use but otherwise torture was entirely clean. Electrical torture, falaka (beating the soles of the feet), exhaustion exercises, clean beatings and sweat boxes.

Brazil does have the most well recorded example of direct torture ‘training’. In the 1960s American operatives supplied Brazil with magnetos and actively encouraged their use in torture. Rejali examines a discussion of this in N Chomsky and E Herman’s The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism. He rejects their conclusions that the US was behind the overall spread of electrical torture but accepts that in the case of Brazil particularly the US played a role in its spread and promotion. I think Rejali’s evidence is persuasive.

Brazil in the 60s is also one of the few examples we have of torture actually being taught in a classroom style (see Langguth Hidden Terrors 1978). The demonstration included suspension, clean beating, falaka, magnetos, pumping and forced standing on sharp cans.

Pumping is forcing a victim to swallow a huge quantity of liquid. It causes the internal organs to swell and it’s incredibly painful. It also causes diarrhoea and vomiting. It’s sometimes accompanied by beating the stomach which causes- well bluntly it causes liquid to spew out of every possible orifice. It’s incredibly messy but it also leaves no lasting marks.

The type of suspension favoured in Brazil is something I refer to as ‘the parrots perch’. It was also used in France historically. Essentially the victim’s hands and feet are cuffed. The legs are bent in front of the body and the arms go over the knees. A stick is then put through the gap, so that it’s under the knees and over the elbows. The victim is then hoisted up and often beaten or subjected to electric shocks.

This isn’t a recent torture but I’m unsure how old exactly it is. It was certainly used through European colonies in the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade; mostly against enslaved people.

The kind of active training program described above seems to be very rare. In fact there isn’t any evidence that this was a regular occurrence in Brazil at the time. Rather the evidence suggests that most torture is ‘learnt’ on the job, ie by observation of other torturers.

Brazil also provides another rare case: clearly documented evidence of the extent to which torture fractures organisations.

This is documented elsewhere. Examination of Japanese police departments shows deskilling and there are a lot of well documented cases of torture leading to rogue groups that refuse to obey orders. But the Brazilian case is both unusually well attested and unusually extreme.

In the 60s Brazilian intelligence units had stopped communicating and working together to the point where they were conducting active raids on each other’s prisons. Rejali quotes records of blackmail, extortion, active violence within the military, murder of fellow soldiers and finally imprisoning and torturing fellow officers.

Here’s a quote Rejali repeats from the time ‘The torturers were going to have to be isolated, marginalised and eliminated, so as to save the Army.’

For a more in-depth discussion of the incident Rejali references Huggins Political Policing (180, 186).

This might give the impression that Brazil during the 60s is somehow unique in torture use. I don’t think this is the case. I think that what we have in Brazil is uniquely good quality record keeping.

It makes it a valuable case study and comparison.

What does seem ‘different’ about Brazil is the extent to which torture techniques have kept changing. There isn’t a sense of a settled modern ‘style’ that some countries have.

That could be because of changes in leadership. It could be because it’s common for torturers to be periodically purged (often violently), however these purges occurred in the Soviet Union with no accompanying stylistic changes.

It could also be because Brazil is huge. It’s possible that rather then a ‘National Style’ Brazil has several distinct ‘regional styles’, some of which are more prominent at different times or better recorded at different times.

I hope that’s given you enough to work with, if you can I would recommend getting hold of Rejali’s Torture and Democracy. I feel like it puts Brazil in a more global context and comparison with neighbouring countries may be helpful for you. :)

Availableon Wordpress.

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#cr0nch-noodle #writing advice #tw torture #tw scars #scarring torture #clean torture #Brazil #Brazilian history #Junta in Brazil #national styles #effects of torture on organisations

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