The man who is nicknamed after the bird also has a loose tongue. And everyone who knows him agrees that he is ruthless and brutal. But is Colonel Sebastião Rodrigues de Moura, known as Major Curió, also a friend of mankind? His enemies and friends alike can only shake their heads at the idea. "He doesn't have any feelings at all," says his associate Lício Maciel. In fact, he adds, if the retired Brazilian officer resembles anyone, it's a fictitious character: Colonel Kurtz, who went on murderous rampages through the jungles of the Mekong Delta in Francis Ford Coppola's film "Apocalypse Now," a megalomaniac who created his own realm, a godfather of horror culled from the pages of Joseph Conrad's novel about the Congo, "Heart of Darkness."
But the events and the people involved in the Brazilian's case are real. His story is one of murder and retribution, politics and personal vendettas. It's also about guilt, for which Major Curió will likely face charges in the near future.
It began during Brazil's military dictatorship in the late 1960s, when communist fighters became established along the Rio Araguaia. They wanted to be "fish in the water of the people," like their Maoist role models in China, and they planned to expand their operations from bridgeheads in the jungle to a large-scale revolution. They were an idealistic bunch, equipped only with light weapons and constantly threatened by malaria and snakebites. They remained undiscovered for a long time by blending in with the villagers along the big river, cautiously pushing forward with their infiltration campaign.
No Prisoners
But in 1969 the military arrested regime opponents who were carrying information about the guerillas and, when tortured, revealed names. The military government was looking for someone to clean up in the Amazon region, and it found an agent within its own ranks who had just completed the army's jungle training program.
Sebastião Rodrigues de Moura came from a poor background. The son of a barber and a concierge, born in a small city in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, he had an unspectacular childhood. His ambitions were only aroused when a cousin, who had fought with the Brazilian expedition corps alongside the Italians in World War II, was carried through the streets in a victory parade. The sight convinced Sebastião that he too would be a hero one day and achieve great things for himself and his country.
He passed the entrance examinations for the military academy, where he distinguished himself through diligence and obedience. In his free time, he became a prizefighter to augment his paltry military pay. Through neither particularly tall nor powerfully built, he won almost every fight, and that was when he acquired his nickname.
The regime seemed to have hit the jackpot with Curió. Using an assumed name and given leeway to do more or less as he pleased, he circled the rebels' presumed hideouts in helicopters, chased them in Jeeps along bush trails and pursued them in boats on the river. He soon became notorious for taking no prisoners. According to some of the grisly stories that were told about him, Curió had people beheaded and personally supervised the worst of all the torture sessions. He and his men crushed the guerilla organization and covered their tracks. There was talk of at least 60 rebels dead or missing, and of collateral damage among the rural population, which sympathized with the rebels and also suffered casualties.
The officer continued building his career during the military dictatorship. Beginning in 1980, he managed Brazil's largest gold mine, cleansing it of what he called undesirable elements, and he built an entire city centered around brothels. Even after the military was forced out of power in 1985, Curió remained on top, becoming a member of parliament and then mayor of the city that bears his name: Curionópolis.
For a long time, many Brazilians were reluctant to revisit the military's acts of brutality, preferring to forget the period instead. Under an amnesty law enacted by the military leaders in 1979, crimes committed during the dictatorship were exempt from prosecution. But then Dilma Rousseff, 65, became the country's president two years ago. Rousseff, a former guerilla fighter, had been tortured and humiliated at the hands of the generals' thugs at a prison in São Paulo.
She established a truth commission, which is expected to solve politically motivated
crimes by 2014. The family members of the rebels who went missing also didn't give up, bringing a case against the Brazilian government before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It delivered a groundbreaking judgment on Nov. 24, 2010, declaring the existing amnesty invalid and recommending that the case be tried in a Brazilian court. Now a group of young prosecutors is trying to bring a case against those responsible for the atrocities. The first person against whom an indictment will likely be filed is Curió. The accused, now 78, retired long ago and is keeping quiet about the matter.
Is it truly possible to prove that he was guilty of crimes committed almost 40 years ago, and are there any witnesses left? Who has an interest in stirring up old incidents, and who would rather keep things quiet -- both in the brightly lit corridors of power in the capital Brasilia and in the place where it all happened, in the Amazon's own heart of darkness?
'He Was God'
The men are digging. Ominous dark clouds are gathering above the wide, sluggish river nearby. The tropical downpour that usually happens in the afternoon could begin at any moment. But the sun is still beating down relentlessly and the air is full of mosquitoes, and the men continue to dig. The hole is already a meter (about 3 feet) deep, but they keep digging deeper. Finally, Marco Guimarães kneels down in the pit, his black shirt soaked with perspiration, and triumphantly holds up an object.
"A human skull," the forensic pathologist from Brasilia calls up from the pit, as he carefully blows bits of sand from the bones. "Judging by the size of the jawbone, these are probably the remains of an adult male."
Could it be a murdered guerilla fighter?
"The man was buried without a coffin. The body was not pointing toward the west, as is customary in the region. There are remnants of a rope tied around the neck," the expert dictates. "All indications suggest a guerilla fighter." The scientist will only be able to provide more detail after comparing the bones with DNA from a relative, who had reported her family member missing and provided genetic material. The investigators are certain in the case of two exhumed bodies, found with the help of information from villagers who remembered the executions.
The search continues on the opposite bank of the river, reached on a rusty ferry that chugs its way through the greyish-brown water. Xambioá is a typical river village, with faded stone houses, general stores and simple fish restaurants. The cemetery is on the edge of the village, near a decorative Catholic church. The investigators are also exhuming bodies in the cemetery and categorizing the bones. Even the dead can tell stories, but only if they are properly understood.
The investigators are pinning their hopes on Manuel Cajueiro, one of the local witnesses. He is sitting on one of the white gravestones, a wizened old man who wants to help and is still plagued with remorse over what happened decades ago. "On the other hand, what could I have done?" he whispers, as if expecting absolution. "I couldn't rebel against them, because they were too powerful."
At the time, Cajueiro was forced to expedite the hunt for fleeing rebels. "Curió was the law," says the old man. "No, in fact, he was more than that: He was God." He had heads chopped off and taken to a military base as evidence. Aside from his job, Curió had few other interests. "A general once arrived in a helicopter and shouted from the cockpit: Pack up the bodies. We'll get them on the way back. Let's go fishing!" Curió went along with the general.
According to Cajueiro, the colonel personally tortured his prisoners, using iron rods or fists, and he was always unemotional and stone-faced. The old man characterizes Curió as a systematic torturer, someone who wanted to see "results." Cajueiro even witnessed his boss committing a murder once. "We had tracked down several fighters in the jungle, and they had already been disarmed and tied up," he says. "Curió asked a young female rebel what her name was. She looked at him with contempt and said: A
guerillera has no name. He turned toward her, pulled out his pistol and shot her in the head. Just like that. In the head."
A huge gallery of images covers an entire wall in the office of Victória Grabois, 69. At first glance, they look like nothing but harmless passport photos. But the truth is more tragic than that. "This is my husband, on the left," she says. "He disappeared in the Araguaia region in 1973, with my father, whose photo is next to his. And this down here is my brother, also a
guerillero, and also a
desaparecido."
She calls them the "disappeared," and yet she has no hope of ever seeing them alive again. She wants to know what happened, to see the remains of her loved ones buried and the culprits punished. It's what keeps her alive and gives her strength. She has to stick it out with the organization she co-founded, "Tortura Nunca Mais" ("Torture Never Again"), to finally put an end to the family nightmare. The many attractions of Rio de Janeiro -- nicknamed the "maravilhosa," or marvelous one, with its beaches, restaurants and galleries -- are just outside her doorstep. But amusement is a thing of the past for Grabois.
When she was in her late 20s, Grabois rebelled against the brutal military dictatorship and, like the rest of her family, sympathized with the outlawed communists. She understood why her husband, along with her father and her brother, became guerilla fighters, even though she was left behind with her young son, and despite the feeling that she could be saying goodbye to them forever. She never doubted that the struggle was worth it, she says, as her trembling voice becomes a bit firmer. She too would have gone into the jungle with the guerillas, but when she became pregnant, she says, her comrades insisted on removing her from the line of fire.
Didn't Grabois realize how hopeless and insane the jungle venture was? The question puzzles her. It's important to view the struggle in the context of the era, she explains. Fidel Castro's revolution certainly wouldn't have been launched under more favorable circumstances, she says, noting that Mao's teachings made sense to them at the time. "Anyone with a conscience simply had to do something against the brutal military dictatorship," she says.
Since no on else had the perseverance to keep up the campaign for the disappeared, Grabois did it herself. In 1980, she made her first research trip to Araguaia, traveling on her own, and more trips followed. She managed to find and identify two bodies. Nowadays, she says, she doesn't trust the democratic government's initiatives, even though President Rousseff was a guerilla herself. "She has to account for political realities," Grabois says. "Many of the military officers want only one thing: to forget those embarrassing episodes."
Grabois sees Curió as a henchman of the regime in power at the time. But he was also a driver and an especially ruthless implementer of its policies. "He once went on record as saying that he and his people had been given orders not to leave the jungle until they had killed every last guerilla," she says.
Grabois believes that Curió has kept all the files relating to his murders. He is a person, she says, who meticulously documented his actions, like the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge. "He bragged about it," she says. Grabois wants those documents. She is not convinced that there will be a trial, saying that influential friends and legal dodges could prevent it from happening.
But there has been a pretrial hearing. She forced herself to go, encouraged by her son, a university professor. Curió turned around and looked at her, and she stared back at him. But he didn't testify, nor did he say a word to her. It was only back in her office that she realized that her entire body was shaking.
Foes in the Jungle and Parliament
Hardly anyone has ever come as close to Colonel Curió as José Genoino, 66. It was first in the jungle and later in politics. And it was a painful, physical closeness.
Genoino, a working-class child who wasn't given his first pair of shoes until he was 15, was enthusiastic about Mao's writings and, as a student, made connections among the rebels. He set out into the jungle at 23 after being tasked with doing so by communist cells. He was used as a messenger for the rebels, who were waiting for revolutionary instructions from China.
After a few months, just as Genoino was beginning to feel somewhat comfortable, the adventure came to a sudden end. He walked into a trap and was arrested. Curió was apparently one of the men who grabbed him and took him to the capital. Genoino admits that he revealed secrets in the prison after being brutally tortured. But he insists that he didn't betray any of his co-conspirators.
He was in prison for five years, longing for the end of the dictatorship. He became politically active again in 1982 but severed his ties to the communists. He won a seat in parliament for the Workers' Party, and there he met his former persecutor, Curió, who had won a seat for a conservative faction. The two men avoided each other.
Genoino's career took off. In 2002, he was elected president of the Workers' Party. He enjoyed the confidence of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had won the presidential election. In his modest little house in a middle-class neighborhood of São Paulo, Genoino had collected everything that had been written at the time about the uprising in the Amazon region. Sometimes he would sit there at night, smoking a cigar and thinking about his days in the jungle. "Major Curió was hungry for power," he says. "
Brazil let him do as he pleased, and there is still that city that was named after this criminal, and that worships him."
A Man for All Systems
It started with the gold mine, the Serra Palada, but then things became chaotic and Major Curió was brought in. In the early 1980s, more than 100,000 adventurous souls had set out to dig around like ants in the legendary "Bald Mountain," where enormous nuggets were found, the largest weighing more than six kilograms (13 lbs.). The gold rush flushed away all traces of civilized society. The workers came to blows over the best prospecting sites, they drank to excess every night, and pimps auctioned off prostitutes to the highest bidder. The military sent its hatchet man into this lawless environment, and Curió did what he did best: He cleaned up relentlessly. After the Rio Araguaia, the Serra Pelada mine became his second lifelong dream, the joy of his later years.
Curió threatened to have escaped criminals executed by firing squad, imposed curfews and established rules for buying gold. He banished the prostitutes to buildings 30 kilometers from the mine. A small city grew up around the brothels, and Curió self-confidently named it Curionópolis, apparently hoping to build a legacy bigger than just the guerilla graves. After completing his term in parliament, he was elected mayor of Curionópolis. He proved that he could be a man for all systems, successfully managing the transition from military dictatorship to democracy. Some even mourn his loss today, despite the executions. "He was the most effective mayor we ever had in Curionópolis," says Fernando Lopes, the union leader, near the old Curió villa, which unemployed gold prospectors have occupied for months. "His methods were questionable, but he brought order to the place."
Convinced of Innocence
In Brasilia, where he now lives, Curió has hired a top attorney to represent him. His name, Adelino Tucunduva, is printed on his expensive-looking black business cards, and his behavior is similarly ostentatious. Tucunduva, 71, calls his client his "best friend." He believes that the prosecution will embarrass itself, and that it has no case. According to Tucunduva, Curió's actions were always correct. "There is nothing he should regret and, in my eyes, he is a hero who protected us from great evils," Tucunduva says. "Every administration happens to have its own philosophy, and each one needs its scapegoat -- and this time it's Curió."
The defendant lives in an upscale middle-class suburb. He doesn't want to display any legal weaknesses and insists that he can only be quoted as saying the following. With regard to his work, he says: "The goal was to protect the integrity of the nation at all costs." And when asked about the torture allegations, he notes: "I ran interrogations, and you don't exactly serve cookies there. There is a limited window for extracting important information from an enemy prisoner. Such interrogations cannot be soft and must be in keeping with the circumstances." And when asked about the military dictatorship's crimes, he says: "If there were excesses, they are nothing when compared to the abuses that communist governments elsewhere have gotten away with."
The old man goes shopping every morning, and he also visits his three sons. He takes a nap in the afternoon. In the evening, he drinks a beer and sometimes watches one of the telenovelas that are ubiquitous on Brazilian television. But according to his attorney, he usually switches channels, searching from something more graphic, such as war films.
The retired colonel, who receives a pension of €2,500 ($3,300) a month, is enjoying his golden years. He has also forgiven his victims. He says that he has now accepted the notion that the young rebels of Araguaia "were probably idealists, imbued with a spirit not unlike our own. But their path went in one direction and mine in the other."
NOTEM QUE QUER NO BRASIL QUER CÁ SÃO AS "RECENTES AQUISIÇÕES DA NAÇÃO" OS MAIS AFOITOS NO "DEITA ABAIXO".CÁ EM PORTUGAL QUASE TUDO O QUE ERA "DIFERENÇA" E PANELEIRAGEM ESTAVA AO SERVIÇO DA "DITADURA DO PROLETARIADO".SER "AVANÇADO" EM TERRA ALHEIA AFINAL NÃO CUSTA NADA.QUER-SE DIZER EXISTE SEMPRE UMA RESERVA DE FUGA PARA A NAÇÃO ORIGINAL...
