Petition for the immediate transformation of the former Political and Social Order Department building into a Memory Space of Resistance by the Rio de Janeiro State Governor.

The building that housed the former Political and Social Order Department, inaugurated in 1910, in the centre of Rio de Janeiro, was built to be the headquarters of the Central Police of the Brazilian Republic. This institution’s main objectives were the pursuit of “vagrancy”, the criminalization of capoeira and Afro-Brazilian religious worship. Over the years, the building housed different political police responsible for repressing the activities of different social groups that could supposedly compromise “public order”, especially during the dictatorship periods. From 1962, the Political and Social Order Department of Rio de Janeiro (DOPS-RJ), one of the main organs of political persecution, torture, and the death or forced disappearance of people during the last civil-military dictatorship.

The building is listed by the State Institute of Cultural Patrimony (INEPAC) but the building is still under the administration of the Civil Police, and is in an awful state of conservation, with deteriorating archives proving the destruction and abandon by the public authorities of historical patrimony. Furthermore, there is evidence that currently the Government’s intention is to create a Museum of the Police and an arcade of shops in the premises, disregarding the former Governor, Sérgio Cabral’s promise, who on the 8th May 2013, during the inauguration of Rio de Janeiro’s Truth Commission, committed to transform the building into a memory site.

It has become more urgent, with Brazil’s undeniable setback in the Transitional Justice process, the destination of this building, by the state governor, to construct a space committed with the memory of resistance and social struggles, which makes the relation between the violations carried out by the State in the past and the present explicit, stimulating measures which prevent the repetition of such practices. The transformation of this building as a whole into a space aimed to promote human rights policies, in a dynamic way, bringing together production, safekeeping, and circulation of information, documentation, archives, projects and proposals about the right to memory, truth and justice is fundamental. For this to be possible different social movements must play a central role in the construction and management of this space, with effective decision-making powers.

The reparation of the damage caused by the impact of State violence on society is achieved through concrete measures, like the creation of memory supports, or in other words, the implementation of tools which demand the recognition of a past that has been deliberately buried, forgotten and silenced by the official versions of history, and contribute to the production of ethical principals which hopes to promote the democratic construction of the present and the future. The Brazilian State and the government of Rio de Janeiro have this outstanding historical debt. Making public what happened in those dark times strengthens citizenship, reinvigorates democracy and paves the way to a more just future.

It is necessary to occupy memory so to not forget our history!