The Brasil Nunca Mais Collection is by far the source from which most researchers draw from the collection of the Edgard Leuenroth Archive (AEL) at Unicamp. In its 29 years of existence, AEL has collected and organized nearly 50 funds and collections, in addition to books, publications and separate documents that arrive non-stop to fuel studies on the recent social, political and cultural history of Brazil. The result of a noble and meticulous project coordinated by D. Paulo Evaristo Arns and Reverend James Wright, the BNM collection was donated to Unicamp in 1987, with 707 military cases filed against suspected subversion during the dictatorship period, totaling 1,2 million pages .
Brasil Nunca Mais has been supporting the production of books, films, documentaries and master's and doctoral theses, offering information and figures on the dead and missing politicians, profiles of those affected, legal absurdities in arrests and convictions, forms and instruments of torture, dramatic testimonies of victims, photos proving the abuse. Until May of this year, there were 325 consultations, equivalent to triple the demand for the Ibope and Teatro Oficina collections, which appear next among the most browsed.
In August 2002, the BNM was formally made available (access was already public) to the Secretariat of Justice and Citizenship Defense, with the aim of gathering evidence and information to support and accelerate compensation processes in favor of victims suffering from physical torture. or psychological practices practiced by agents of repression. (Read articles at the addresses provided on this page). The promulgation of the law providing for the payment of these compensations by the State, reflected in the sharp increase in consultations to the volumes where processes are efficiently ordered, facilitating the search for information by family members and victims of the dictatorship.
However, there is a part of the BNM that is less known to the public – and no less important –, whose content is especially attractive to academics, but which requires the patience of a prospector to discover the gems that interest them. It is part of the Annexes, bringing together the material seized from militants' pockets, backpacks, homes and devices, and attached to the processes as proof of “subversion”. There are 10.170 pieces, including minutes, guerrilla and bomb assembly manuals, clandestine newspapers, pamphlets, doctrinal texts, personal correspondence, etc. Discounting texts with more than one edition and duplicates, we have approximately 8.500 different documents, which allow us to identify 2.000 people, 1.500 entities and more than 300 periodicals.
The cradle – Those responsible for the Brazil Never Again Collection recall, in the presentation of the Annexes, that the 1964 coup led to the seizure of a large amount of material considered subversive in public and private libraries and archives, opening a huge gap in Brazil's documentary heritage. The police disappeared books and other printed materials that could constitute the “infiltration” of incompatible ideas and doctrines, before and during the coup. However, unlike other dictatorships in the world, the Brazilian military did not destroy the documents attached to the proceedings against opponents of the regime.
Organized in chronological order, statutes, minutes of meetings, correspondence, newspapers and pamphlets form primary sources to understand how clandestine organizations and sectors of society were structured and acted in the fight against the dictatorship, as well as to evaluate the factors that led to the defeat of the movement . The period of production and reproduction of the material goes from 1961 to 1977, thickening between 1963 and 1972. It is possible to see, for example, how the set of social segments in the opposition changes qualitatively, attracting progressive sectors of the clergy and the student movement among 1967 and 1970. From then until 1972, the documents portray the process of regrouping and self-criticism of left-wing organizations, with their fragmentation and the triggering of armed struggle.
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