Klaus Hart Brasilientexte

Dear friends,

 

We wish to announce that Frei Betto™s new book Diario de Fernando “ Nos cárceres da ditadura militar brasileira (Fernando™s Diary – In the prisons of the Brazilian military dictatorship) will be available in bookstores in June. The author invites you to the launchings which will take place in Belo Horizonte and in Sáo Paulo. We will be pleased to welcome you all there.

http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2008/11/22/ich-bin-christ-und-sehe-mich-als-revolutionar-brasiliens-wichtigster-befreiungstheologe-frei-betto/

 Diário de Fernando (Fernando™s Diary)
In the Brazilian military dictatorship™s prisons
Frei Betto
  
This is a hitherto unpublished historical document which after 36 years has been made public. It is the prison diary of Fernando de Brito, a Dominican friar who was a prisoner of the Brazilian military dictatorship for four years (1969-1973) when he was tortured and moved around between various jails. Fernando, together with other Dominican friars, experienced something uncommon with regard to political prisoners in Brazil: he was obliged to live in the company of common prisoners for almost two years in Sao Paulo™s penitentiaries.

Just as the ”Diary of Anne Frank revealed the cruel nature of Nazism, Fernando™s Diary portrays the real character of the military regime which governed Brazil between 1964 and 1985. There is no other known record similar to this in works published about that period.

Risking punishment, Fernando wrote daily on tissue paper and in microscopic handwriting what he saw and experienced. He would then dismantle a plastic biro pen, cut the ink tube in half replacing it with the diary which he had carefully rolled up and then putting the pen back together again. On visiting days he would exchange the pen with the diary in it for an identical one brought by one of the visiting convent friars.

The fear of discovery by the prison guards and the permanent risk of being searched often obliged Fernando to destroy the memoirs he had registered on paper. However what he experienced never disappeared and surpassed prison walls. His prison companion Frei Betto rescued the notes giving them a literary touch then put them together in this book which constitutes a document of great historical value.

In the narrated episodes the friars™ journey becomes involved with personages who are today outstanding figures in Brazilian history such as Carlos Marighella, Carlos Lamarca, Caio Prado Jr., Apolônio de Carvalho, Paulo Vannuchi, Franklin Martins and Dilma Rousseff to name but a few. For those who are interested in learning about the true face of the military regime in Brazil during the violent years (anos de chumbo), Diário de Fernando is the moving testament of one of its victims. This is not a journalistic investigation or the result of a historian™s thesis but the sincere, emotional and intuitive work of someone who dared to register, on a daily basis, the bowels of one of the most dramatic periods in the history of Brazil.

It is all there: torture, disappearances, the kidnapping of diplomats, urban and rural guerrilla, the hunger strike lasting almost 40 days as well as the daily life of prisoners marked by moments of unusual beauty: Christmas celebrations, sing songs and the undying solidarity amongst themselves. Diario de Fernando chronicles the saga of a generation who did not surrender to the dictatorship and to whom Brazil today owes its re-democratisation. Here is a work which ennobles human dignity, the capacity to resist oppression and the experience of Christian faith as in the ancient catacombs of the Roman Empire.

 
Launchings: In Belo Horizonte: Wed. 17th June in the CEMIG auditorium “ Av. Barbacena 1.200 at 19.30 hrs. In Sáo Paulo: Thurs. 18th June at SESC Vila Mariana “ Rua Pelotas, 141 at 19.30 hrs.

About the author: Frei Betto is considered one of the most active voices in the struggle for social justice in Latin America. A well known writer and winner of two Jabuti prizes, he has published more than 50 books in Brazil and abroad which reflect his journey as a militant in politics and a talented writer of fiction. This is his fifth book published by Rocco which also edited Batismo de Sangue (Baptism of Blood), A Mosca Azul (The Blue Fly), Calendário do Poder (Calendar of Power) and A Arte de Semear Estrelas (The Art of Sowing Stars).