"Why don't the generals imitate Globo Network?"

247 - In a compelling article written for the magazine Brasileiros, journalist Luiz Cláudio Cunha, who has held various management positions in media outlets such as Veja and Estadão and who was one of the consultants for the National Truth Commission, contrasts the inaction of the military with the mea culpa made by the Globo Organizations last year regarding the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. The text is titled "Why the generals don't imitate Rede Globo".

In the text, Cunha cites, in addition to Globo's acknowledgment that it erred in supporting the military coup, the process of elucidating the death of former president João Goulart. According to the journalist, these two events called into question two powerful forces in the establishment and essential support of the dictatorship: the Armed Forces and the Globo media group.

The article questions, in several passages, "the drama of a country that still grapples with the trauma of an unresolved past." According to the journalist, this issue can be measured among six men, "the two trios who command the two corporations, now circumstantially separated, that represent the two faces of the dictatorship they once defined and defended together, with the brotherhood of partners and allies."

And it continues: "On one side, the smiling faces of the global trio, the Marinho brothers, sons of the patriarch Roberto Marinho (1904-2003), who inherited, along with the Globo media empire, the painful reputation of being the most important civilian support for the authoritarian regime. On the other side, the increasingly tense, serious faces of the Armed Forces trio, the commanders of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, who bear the burden of the armed institution that, true to its motto today, was the 'strong arm, the friendly hand' of the dictatorship. Nothing illustrates the intimacy between the two forces, the global and the military, better than the emblematic photo of João Figueiredo, the last of the five general-presidents of the authoritarian cycle, arm in arm with 'Doctor' Roberto, according to the reverential treatment given by civilians or generals to the commander-in-chief of Globo."

The article also mentions the size of the Marinho brothers' fortune (considered the richest family in the world in the media sector) and relates this to the need to make amends for their involvement with the dictatorship. "It partly justifies the mea culpa that the family is now adopting, for an aggiornamento demanded by times of mandatory transparency and the growing demands of a fragmented public opinion, increasingly stirred by activist social networks."

And he contrasts this with the Armed Forces: "The dominant mentality of the Brazilian generals, however, rejects any evaluation of the recent past, slipping into the simplistic and easy reasoning of 'revenge.' They ignore, perhaps for subordinate reasons, the international legal principle of accountability, the due rendering of accounts demanded by societies transitioning from dictatorship to democracy. It is transitional justice that, in the definition of the UN Security Council, encompasses mechanisms and strategies, judicial or otherwise, to assess the legacy of past violence, assign responsibilities, make the right to memory and truth effective, strengthen democracy, and ensure that atrocities are not repeated. Strangely, the three commanders of the Brazilian Armed Forces insist on suppressing the past, forgetting that they have nothing to do with the excesses committed more than 40 years ago by military personnel who stained the uniform and the history of their corporations. They prefer to be in solidarity with the abuses committed by comrades who disrespected the Constitution and even..." "The exclusive Statute of the Military, instead of making the necessary mea culpa of transcendence and moral weight that would reconcile them with History, with the Nation and with the future."

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