Justiça de Transição não é transação: a brutalidade e o jardim: Memorial to the Public Prosecutor's Office in Rio de Janeiro

MPF inaugurates Memorial in Rio de Janeiro with exhibition on Transitional Justice and crimes committed by the Military Dictatorship.

Curated by Fabiana Schneider, Mirtes Cristina Marins de Oliveira, Helena Barbour Marins de Oliveira and Luisa Angélica Paraguai Donati, from October 19, 2023 to March 2024, the exhibition "Justiça de Transição não é transação: a brutalidade e o jardim" (Transitional Justice Is Not a Transaction: Brutality and the Garden) is open to the public and shows the agency's work against human rights violations.

The exhibition, which features works by artists such as Cildo Meireles, Claudia Andujar, Denilson Baniwa, Panmela Castro, Ciro Fernandes, Letícia Parente, Giselle Beiguelman, Marisa Silva and photographers Otávio Magalhães and Evandro Teixeira, exposes the context of repression and crimes practiced by the military regime, at a time when rights and freedoms were severely curtailed, provoking reflections on serious human rights violations and the work of the MPF in the search for reparation and punishment of the regime's agents responsible for such violations. The agency's work, known as Transitional Justice, is a set of measures - judicial or otherwise - adopted to confront a past dictatorship.

"Garden brutality" is an expression used by Oswald de Andrade in his book " Sentimental Memoirs of João Miramar". It was taken up by the poet Torquato Neto, in Tropicália, with the poem 'Geleia Geral', set to music by Gilberto Gil. The last four lines are: 'Someone who cries for me / A carnival of truth / Hospitable truth / Garden brutality'. The country lived through slavery for 350 years and military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, but brutality against minorities, growing social inequality and frequent human rights violations by public officials are still part of today's reality.