The original article, written in Italian, appeared on April 16, 2025 in the Pressenza website. English translation is by Pina Piccolo.
The night between Sunday, 3 March and early morning Monday, 4 March, I didn’t sleep a wink because I was determined to watch the Academy Awards ceremony on TV, broadcast from the US. The display of luxury, the frivolity of the celluloid world, the idiocy of the presenter, the banal statements of the TV commentators were not at all easy to bear. The reason for viewing such a futile event was my desire to see how the movie I’m still here would fare, how it would be received and judged. When news about this feature film began to circulate, I was struck by the fact that it is inspired by the life of attorney Eunice Paiva. I have never met her personally, but her name is inextricably linked to the struggle of Brazilian indigenous people to defend their rights. Her and my involvement in the same cause immediately spurred in me a desire to see the movie.
In the nineties, I read the book Ua:brari, by Marcel Rubens Paiva. I liked it so much that I translated a passage into Italian and included it in my collection of short stories, Portable Amazon, published in 2003. However, it was only in August 2015, while surfing the Internet, that I learned that Marcelo had become tetraplegic at the age of twenty after diving from a rock into a shallow lake; that his father was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the military in 1971, that he is the son of attorney Eunice Paiva. I’m still here premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 1 September, 2024, and received a ten-minute standing ovation from the audience, much of it reserved to the performance by actor Fernanda Torres. Marcelo Paiva appears in the poster used in Venice, so I learned that he is the author of the book that inspired the movie. Having learned this, it became one more reason to want to see the feature film. In November 2024, I traveled from Boa Vista to Brasilia, with a fixed and clear idea in my head: the first thing I would do upon arriving in the city would be to go to the movies.
Whatever event I attend, I always like to arrive early. While waiting for the cinema to open, I spent the time taking selfies in front of the poster of I’m still here, hoping that at least one of them would turn out decent. The first time you see a movie you cannot capture all its nuances and subliminal messages. During the screening, what caught my attention the most was that no military, weapons or torture ever appeared on screen. The cruel Brazilian dictatorship, among the longest in Latin America, is denounced through the anguish of the family portrait; the horrors perpetrated at the time are enunciated through silence, existential confusion, suffering, the difficulties faced by the members of a very united, very cheerful, very hospitable, wandering family.
After seeing the movie, I began to systematically spread the word about it. I can’t resign myself to the fact that the people who committed crimes during the years of the dictatorship in Brazil have never been tried and punished. Law No. 6,683, i.e., the Amnesty Law as it is popularly known, was approved by then President João Batista Figueiredo on August 28, 1979, when the dictatorship was still in force. Among the beneficiaries of the amnesty were sociologist Herbert José de Souza (Betinho), journalist Fernando Gabeira, the intellectuals Darcy Paulo Ribeiroe Freire, the governors Leonel bristle and Miguel Arres, the former city councilor Antônio Losada. This same law, however, granted forgiveness to all those involved in “political or related crimes”, including agents of repression who had carried out torture, assassinations and the concealment of the bodies of the political prisoners until 1979. The law is still in effect today and that means that the loophole of impunity remains open for those who conspire against democracy. The original wording of Bill No. 14 of 1979-CN reads as follows: “Art. 1. Amnesty is granted to all those who, in the period between 2 September 1961 and the August 15, 1979, have committed political or related crimes, electoral crimes, those who have had their political rights suspended as well as direct and indirect servants of the Administration, of foundations linked to public power, servants of the Legislative and Judiciary Powers, military and trade union leaders and representatives, punished according to the Institutional and Complementary Acts and other legal degrees”. The final part of the sentence, which says “And other legal degrees”, was deleted at the request of then president John Batista Figueiredo through a proposal presented to the sitting Joint National Congress on August 22, 1979.
The impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, during her second term as President of the Federal Republic of Brazil, was a coup d’état. Yes. The process was legal, political and mostly media driven. The Regional Federal Court of the 1st Region found Dilma to be innocent of charges that she practiced “fiscal pedaling”; an accusation abundantly and falsely used by representatives and senators to put an end to her mandate during the 2016 impeachment trial. Her impeachment then opened the way to the far right which, in 2018, elected president Bostanaro, such an ignoble being whose name I even refuse to write. Since ‘bosta’ in Portuguese means shit, I have chosen to edit his surname to Bostanaro. This thug denies that there was a dictatorship in Brazil and his heroes are brutal Latin American dictators; he has run his electoral campaign performing the obscene gesture of pointing his hand as if it were a revolver; has spewed swear words against women, homosexuals, blacks, indigenous people; has appointed ignorant, obtuse, backward people to ministerial posts. As president of the republic, he was in the habit of speaking nonsense, insulting wives of presidents of foreigncountries and children of personalities assassinated during Latin American military dictatorships. His hate speech has, naturally, encouraged violence against the aforementioned marginalized people, especially against indigenous people who have preserved the Amazon rain-forest intact to this day. He was Commander in Chief of the Army, his deputy was general Anthony Hamilton Martins Mourão, seven of his ministers were military men, two of whom worked directly with him. About one hundred people coming from the Armed Forces occupied seats in the second and third upper echelons of ministries and federal bodies.
Bostano was not re-elected in 2022. In March 2025, as of this writing, he is being tried for the coup attempt that took place on January 8, 2023, as are his allies and brainwashed followers who are deemed responsible for terrorist acts and depredations of public property. Can you guess what is the password used by all of these scoundrels to try to evade justice? AMNESTY. The movie I’m still here has triggered a powerful reflection in society against dictatorship, torture, concealment of bodies, impunity of perpetrators. The danger of new coups will continue to be real if the truth is not shouted, if memory is not recovered, if the guilty are not punished, if the population is not educated on the subject and stays informed. My attempts at popularizing the movie are aimed at drawing attention to the impunity of torturers and murderers, to the shameful law that protects them. I wish to draw public attention to the risks democracy faces even in our days; I want to do my part to contribute to raising awareness and consciousness in society.
The intense promotional activity for the movie, tirelessly carried out by the main actors and the director, contributed to giving visibility to the work, which has won awards and recognition throughout the world. But it was the massive, passionate dissemination made by the public that has brought the work to the Academy Award nomination: Fernanda Torres, already awarded with the Golden Globe, was nominated as Best Actress, while the feature film competed as Best Film and Best International Feature Film. I really doubt the movie would have even been considered if left to the gringos to decide; I even projected that the “cowboys” would never have allowed the movie to win two Oscars. That is why my promotionaI efforts and cheering were not geared toward shining a light only on the protagonist and her performance, but on the film as a whole, with its content, story, messages. The brightest light is indeed emanated by the actual protagonist of the film, Eunice Paiva, with her resilience and activism. When it was announced that I’m still here won the Oscar as Best International Feature Film, I was surprised by my own reactions, as I jumped up and down for joy and my heart raced with emotion. I have always thought that art and poetry are more effective than science and politics; as shown by this movie of Walter Halls which achieved what politicians from various parties were unable and unwilling to do this date: questioning impunity and the indecency of the Amnesty Law raising a broad popular debate.
Rubens Beyrodt Paiva (b. in Holy in December 26, 1929, d. in Rio de Janeiro, between the 20 and the 22 January 1971) was trained as an engineer. A member of the PTB, the Brazilian Labour Party, he was elected representative in 1962 to the Federal Parliament of Brazil. After the coup of 1964, the Institutional Act Number One did away with his parliamentary post and he left the country in exile. After returning to Brazil, he continued to practice engineering, but maintained contacts with exiles. Unfortunately, his attempts to oppose the dictatorship were in vain and in January 1971 he was kidnapped by the military. They also kidnapped his daughter Eliana, who remained a prisoner for twenty-four hours, as well as his wife Eunice, who was subjected to interrogation in the course of twelve days. Rubens was tortured and murdered in the dungeons of DOI-CODE – Information Operations Detachment- Internal Defense Operative Center. His body was buried and dug up several times by the agents of repression and was finally thrown into the sea, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, two years after his assassination.
Rubens was married with Eunice Facciolla, daughter of Italian immigrants who left their native town of Polignano a Mare in Southern Italy, to settle in Brazil. With her husband gone and five children to care for, Eunice needed to reinvent herself. After Rubens’ disappearance, the family left Rio de Janeiro to return to Sao Paulo. In the 1973, Eunice Paiva enrolled in the University Mackenzie and began training as an attorney, completing her law degree at the age of forty-six. She tirelessly continued the search for information regarding her husband’s disappearance and for the recognition of the State’s responsibility for it. She coordinated campaigns for the opening to the public the archives on the victims of the military regime and became a symbol of the fight against the dictatorship. Her militancy and opposition to the dictatorial regime put her life at risk as demonstrated by the documents of the SNI – National Intelligence Service which were released to the public in 2013. Such documents revealed, for example, that she and her children were under surveillance by military agents from 1971 to 1984. The pressure brought by Eunice Paiva culminated with the promulgation of the Law n° 9.140/95, which recognizes the death of people who were disappeared due to their participation in political activity during the dictatorship. Eunice was the only relative of the disappeared who was invited to attend the special session during which then president Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed the law. After twenty-five years of struggle for truth, memory and justice, in February 1996 Eunice obtained the death certificate of her husband Rubens Paiva.
The film devotes only little attention to Eunice’s legal work on behalf of Brazilian Indigenous groups, and this is one more reason why I decided to write this article. During the dictatorship, the military government persecuted the native population, expelled them by the thousands from their ancestral lands, deported hundreds of them to forced labor camps and prisons. In the midst of the agonizing grief for the loss of her husband, Eunice Paiva studied law, specializing in the legal defense of indigenous peoples. While searching for answers to her husband’s disappearance, she worked closely with the struggles of indigenous leaders, signing legal opinions, demanding compensation and border settlement of their ancestral lands, publishing articles and books that have contributed to discussions regarding the rights of indigenous peoples. And Eunice gained ever increasing fame thanks to her consistency and commitment. She dedicated herself to the indigenous cause by fighting against violence and the unjust expropriation of lands. In October of 1983, together with the anthropologist Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, she published the article “Defend the Pataxos”, which appeared in the section “Trends and Debates” of the newspaper Folha ; the article became a hallmark for the fight of the indigenous populations and served as a model for other native peoples, including in Africa, the Americas and for the Inuit people. Recognized by the Brazilian Association of Anthropology, Eunice acted as an expert for legal actions undertaken by FUNAI (the National Foundation of Indigenous People) in the border settlement of the Crikati Indigenous lands. Commenting today on a1985 photo, a Crikati leader wrote: “We are grateful for having had her as an advocate in the defense of our territory”. In 1986, by the time Eunice was put in charge of the Zoro border settlement case, the dictatorship had ended the year before, but deforestation continued at a rapid pace. She prepared a legal opinion analyzing the arguments in favor of recognizing the Zoro area as indigenous land. The closing paragraph of the document was crystal clear: “Nothing prevents settling the borders of the Indigenous Zoro Area. The rights of the Indigenous people to possession of their lands are inalienable rights and cannot be negotiated, since there is no valid appeal able to cancel, restrict, extinguish or modify the rights of the Zoro community to their land. That is their natural habitat”. The opinion of attorney Eunice Paiva contributed to prevent the extinction of the Povo people. In 1987, together with other members, she founded it IAMA – Institute of Anthropology and Environment, a non-governmental organization engaged until 2001 in the defense and autonomy of indigenous peoples. In 1988, she was a consultant to the National Constituent Assembly, which wrote the Federal Constitution, a document containing important articles that ensure the territorial and cultural rights of indigenous peoples.
- Note: Before closing this article, the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil has declared the former president Bostano and a group of high-ranking military personnel guilty of the attempted coup d’état that occurred on January 8th, 2023. For the first time in Brazil, military personnel were tried by a civilian court. Eunice Paiva, the attorney who fought hard for Brazil not to lose its memory, died in Sao Paulo on December 13, 2018, at the age of 89, having lived the last fifteen years of her life with Alzheimer’s syndrome. Today, March 30, in various cities, people demonstrated in the streets to demand that no amnesty be granted to the coup plotters and that they be duly punished. Eunice Paiva’s story was honored, the historical memory of Brazil redeemed. What must not cease is the commitment on the part of each and everyone of us to maintain democracy and raise awareness in society.
Bibliography
Eunice Paiva: uma Antígona brasileira na defesa dos direitos humanos para além da finda-linha, , Mariana Rodrigues Festucci Ferreira, SciELO Analytics, Analytica: Revista de Psicanálise, Online version ISSN 2316-5197, Analytica vol.7 no.12 São João of the Rei Jan./Jun. 2018.
http://pepsic.bvsalud.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2316-51972018000100003
Nome e sobrenome de quem destrói a Amazônia, Loretta Emiri, January 2022.https://drive.google.com/file/d/10xQZlgO6d3lLdH-UdpvEC3_MSkGwLGBK/view
Loretta Emiri (photo by Pedro Alencar (RTU/UFRR) lived in the Brazilian Amazon for eighteen years, working with and for indigenous peoples including the Yanomami. She has published the Dicionário Yãnomamè-Português, the poetic collection Mulher entre três culturas, the ethno-photographic book Yanomami para brasileiro ver. In Italian, she wrote Amazzonia portatile (Portable Amazon), Amazzone in tempo reale (Amazon in real time, special jury prize for Nonfiction “Franz Kafka prize Italy 2013”), A passo di tartaruga -(At a Turtle’s Pace)In May 2018 she was awarded the special career prize “Novella Torregiani – For Literature and Figurative Arts”. In 2020 her book Mosaico indigeno(Indigenous Mosaic) was released by Multimage press.
