Memória e Esquecimento Social: a Comissão Nacional da Verdade do Brasil

Abstract

The National Truth Commission was set up as an instrument to promote public clarification of human rights violations committed by agents of the State in the repression of opponents of the Brazilian Military Regime from 1964 to 1985. The purpose of this study is to analyze the knowledge, attitude and social representations of the National Commission of Truth, among students of a university institution of Rio de Janeiro - Brazil. The present research is based on the theory of social memory, as well as on the theory of social representations. The intentional sample is composed of 159 undergraduate students from different knowledge areas. The instrument adopted was a questionnaire, based on research carried out in Chile (Arnoso, Cardenas and Páez, 2014) and in Argentina (Zubieta et al, 2013) and in the collection of free evocations to the stimulus "National Truth Commission". The material colected by the word evocation technique was analyzed with the EVOC 2005 Software, aiming to identify the structure and contents of the representation analyzed. The answers to the questions of the questionnaire were analyzed in terms of statistical frequency distributions; bivariate analysis (Test t); analyzes of correlations between certain issues; and, multiple linear regression analysis. The descriptive and inferential analysis was performed using the SPSS software. The results of the bivariate analysis showed that those students who know the CNV and those who identify with left-wing political orientation: have a higher degree of approval of the objectives of the CNV; are the ones who most discussed the theme in the circle of friends; are the ones that have the highest agreement with the institutional recommendations and are the ones most emotionally touched by the commission's theme. When the nuances of support for forgiveness are verified, as well as the support for remembrance and forgetfulness, it was observed that students with a right-wing political orientation are the ones who most agree with issues of forgiveness and also forgetfulness. A positive social representation was observed about the National Truth Commission, defined by the central terms: “truth is necessary”, “Brazil´s history”, “it must be remembered” and “search for the past”. It is concluded that the students of UERJ tend to agree with the rescue of memory realized by the National Commission of the Truth.