The Estadão's break with the dictatorship is a bedtime story.

* Originally published in Citizenship Blog

The death of journalist Ruy Mesquita, director of the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, on Tuesday night (21), prompted reports on television news and internet portals that are publicizing one of the oldest nonsense conversations of the intellectual authors of a bloody, savage and degenerate dictatorship that befell Brazil for more than two decades.

A word of warning: this article has nothing to do with the citizen Ruy Mesquita, whose death the Blog mourns as it would with any human being, but rather with a cunning attempt at historical revisionism that his passing has triggered.

The Jornal Nacional, for example, presented the role of Estadão during the military dictatorship in this way, which, at least the news program acknowledged, was supported in its early stages by the newspaper that Ruy Mesquita directed until his death:

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National Journal

Edition of May 21, 2013

News report about the death of Ruy Mesquita

"Alongside his father, Júlio de Mesquita Filho, and already working as a journalist, [Ruy Mesquita] He supported the 1964 coup, but the family broke with the regime the following year. [1965]when the elections were cancelled [by the dictatorship]

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That's a tall tale.

In the moments leading up to the coup, Ruy Mesquita, son of the owner of O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, was linked to the UDN (National Democratic Union). In his newspaper's newsroom, conspiratorial meetings were held weekly with civilians and military personnel who were just as interested as that media baron in plotting the coup.

However, the rupture that supposedly occurred in 1965 – a year after the coup – between Estadão and the regime that the newspaper had helped to establish, was not genuine. It was merely a way for the publication to disguise its support for measures of the dictatorship that aligned with its political and ideological vision.

For example, Estadão supported the censorship of leftist movements and even plays that it considered "communist propaganda." An editorial published in that newspaper in June 1968, therefore well after its supposed "break" with the regime, reveals that its much-vaunted fight against censorship was nothing more than a facade.

Below is an excerpt from that editorial:

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The State of São Paulo

Editorial

 (…) It was a timely statement that was recently made in the Legislative Assembly, by Deputy Aurélio Campos, regarding the excesses that have been observed in theatrical performances in the area of ​​disrespect for the most basic moral precepts.

The theatrical world – both actors and actresses as well as authors – has been waging a systematic campaign against censorship, and since this is not always exercised by authorities up to the task of handling such serious and sometimes delicate issues, the tendency of many is to close ranks among those who fight against it.

What is generally seen in censorship is a threat to freedom, which takes on a particularly unpleasant aspect when the freedom threatened is artistic freedom. However, the aforementioned parliamentarian was quite right when he pointed out, regarding a theatrical play he had attended, that censorship, far from being rigorous in purging it of its most scandalous excesses, revealed a complacency that cannot fail to be severely criticized (...).

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The editorial considered the dictators' censorship of the play, which the newspaper deemed too leftist, to be "mild." Now, can anyone explain what kind of rupture this was that demanded that those with whom they had supposedly broken with them intensify censorship of theatrical plays?

This request from the newspaper to the regime to intensify censorship caused intense commotion among the artistic community, to the point that theater critic Sabato Magaldi gave an interview expressing the artists' repudiation of that Estadão editorial.

Artists from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, on the same day the editorial was published, summoned the press to announce that the "Saci" awards (an award given annually by Estadão to the best in Brazilian film and theater production) would be returned to the newspaper in protest against the editorial, which the artists considered "totally favorable to dictatorial censorship."

The “Saci” awards were returned to Estadão by the following artists: Cacilda Becker, Walmor Chagas, Fernanda Montenegro, Maria Della Costa, Sérgio Mamberti, Odete Lara, Jorge Andrade, Lélia Abramo, Etty Fraser, Ademar Guerra, Fauzi Arap, Augusto Boal, Flávio Império, Flávio Rangel, Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, José Celso Martinez Corrêa, Liana Duval, Paulo Autran, and Tônia Carrero.

And let's not even talk about the dismissal of psychoanalyst Maria Rita Kehl by Estadão in 2010 for "crime of opinion," that is, for writing an article that the newspaper, which openly supported José Serra's candidacy, considered to be favorable to Dilma Rousseff's candidacy. After all, the focus is on that newspaper and the dictatorship.

In this respect, there is even a substantial academic work among the various that denounce the promiscuity between major newspapers like Estadão and the military dictatorship far beyond 1965. This is the book by historian Beatriz Kushnir, based on her doctoral thesis, entitled "Watchdogs – Journalists and Censors from AI-5 to the 1988 Constitution" (Boitempo Publisher).

Regarding the author, it is worth mentioning that she holds a master's degree in History from the Federal Fluminense University (UFF) and is the director of the General Archive of Rio de Janeiro, which possesses one of the largest collections on the military regime. Her thesis was presented to the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp).

The book recounts how journalists by training became part of the Department of Censorship of Public Entertainment (DCDP) and discusses police officers who acted as journalists with the approval of the owners of Estadão newspaper.

According to the author, the owners of newspapers such as Folha de São Paulo, Jornal do Brasil, O Estado de São Paulo, and others "complied" with the notes from the repressive authorities regarding what could and could not be published.

The collaborationist journalists that people like the Mesquita family installed in newsrooms even earned nicknames, becoming known as "geese".

The highlight of the book is the section about the newspaper Folha da Tarde (FT), from the Folha Group, owned by Octavio Frias. It was the newspaper that provided the greatest services to the repression. Independent journalists called it the "police station" or "official organ of OBAN".

However, Kushnir's book also addresses the stance of many other media outlets during that period. It recounts that all major news organizations broadcast the state's version of the fight against the guerrillas, concealing the torture, assassinations, disappearances, and deaths of opposition members.

Besides the Folha group, the focus of the book, the coup was also sponsored and supported by Diários Associados, owned by Assis Chateaubriand; Estado de São Paulo and Jornal da Tarde, owned by the Mesquita family; Rádio Eldorado; TV Record; TV Paulista; Jornal do Brasil; Correio do Povo; Tribuna de Imprensa, owned by Carlos Lacerda; Noticias Populares, owned by Hebert Levy; and Organizações Globo, owned by Roberto Marinho.

“Watchdogs,” for example, recounts the writer Frei Betto’s position on the behavior of Estadão during that period. He criticized the culinary news that replaced the censored articles in Jornal da Tarde and Estado de São Paulo.

According to Frei Betto, the culinary recipes "mitigated the complicity of Estadão with the official lie by publishing, in the censored spaces, cake recipes or poems by Camões," but, according to the writer, "The acolytes of the regime adapted, replaced the censored news, anticipated the censor's scissors."

Mesquita's death, as has already been said, is as regrettable as that of any human being. But let's not allow media outlets like Globo, which licked the boots of the dictatorship and helped it kill and torture innocent people, to now try to erase the crimes that these media barons committed during those dark years. We will not forget.