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History

The Perus Project, step by step

All phases of Unicamp's work to identify missing politicians among the remains of the Dom Bosco, Campo Grande and Xambio cemeteries

EIn September 1990, an important page in Brazilian history began to be rewritten. Hundreds of human bones were found in a mass grave at the Dom Bosco Cemetery, in Perus, in Greater São Paulo. The discovery shocked public opinion, but also rekindled the hope of family members of political prisoners who disappeared during the military regime. Some of the bones, it was thought, could belong to militants who opposed the dictatorship. Later, thanks to the efforts of Unicamp and a team made up of teachers, employees and students, distrust turned into certainty.

Over seven years of work, a period that required great financial, technical and institutional efforts on the part of the University, the experts arrived at seven identifications. An important chapter of the country's recent past was thus rescued. A historical fragment of which Brazilians are not proud, but which needed to be recorded for future generations as a form of warning against possible new attacks on democracy.

The results of the work to identify the bones were quite significant, as highlighted by coroner Jos� Eduardo Bueno Zappa. He was part of the original team of experts at Unicamp and later took on the role of technical advisor to the Expertise Committee, even though he no longer belonged to the University's faculty. "Technically, we identified everyone we could identify. Within what we had at the University and the subsidies provided by relatives of the missing politicians, I can guarantee that there was no mistake. If we didn't identify everyone, it's because We didn't have the elements to do it, either because the bones weren't in Perus", maintains Zappa.

Eyewitness – In addition to helping with the forensic examinations, the coroner is a kind of eyewitness to the entire process. According to Zappa, shortly after the discovery of the mass grave at the Dom Bosco Cemetery, the City of São Paulo and the State government made a commitment to try to identify among the collection possible political prisoners who disappeared during the period. Exception method. Legally, the task would fall to the Legal Medical Institute (IML) of São Paulo, as Perus is within the agency's coverage area. This procedure, however, was discarded due to restrictions on family members of former political prisoners and organizations linked to the defense of human rights. In the view of these people and entities, the IML did not deserve credit, as it would not have pointed out in its reports that left-wing militants killed during the dictatorial regime had injuries compatible with torture.

Faced with this problem, the authorities came to the conclusion that the most viable alternative to try to recognize the bones would be to send them to the then Department of Forensic Medicine (DML) at Unicamp, currently extinct, which is not At the time, it enjoyed prestige both nationally and internationally. But for the procedure to be carried out, it would be necessary to overcome another legal impediment. Unicamp could not receive the bones, as it was not an official institution to carry out this type of examination. The solution found at the opportunity was to transfer the entire collection to the IML in Campinas, under the responsibility of the doctor Fortunato Badan Palhares, who in addition to being the body's coroner was also a professor at the University. "This way it was possible to bring the bones directly to Unicamp", recalls Zappa.

To complete the process, an agreement was signed between the City of São Paulo, the State government and Unicamp, in which the three parties assumed a series of commitments. Later, as Zappa reveals, it would become clear that the University would be the only one not measuring efforts to try to identify the bones. "The City Hall still provided some operational support, mainly in the field work. The State practically did not honor its part", says the coroner. Zappa emphasizes that, at the time, no other institution was willing to try to carry out the identifications or assist in the work. "No one had the courage to undertake an investigation of that size. We would have had to look for six missing people among more than a thousand bones", she recalls. To this day, according to him, there is no record in world literature of a work of this magnitude.

Sure of nothing – The degree of difficulty encountered by the experts was very great. According to Zappa, not even the commission made up of relatives of the missing politicians knew for sure whether the bones of their sons, brothers and husbands were really in the mass grave at the Don Bosco Cemetery. "This needs to be clear. There was never absolute certainty that there were bones of political prisoners among the material that was being analyzed by Unicamp. At the time, there were no reliable records about the burials carried out at the Dom Cemetery Bosco. It was very common to write something in the funeral requisition and send the body to another cemetery, precisely to create confusion. Furthermore, it was also not certain which blocks had been exhumed in Perus In fact, no one was sure of anything", explains the coroner.

According to him, the expertise began to be carried out even before the bones were transferred to Unicamp. For almost three months, a team made up of coroners, forensic dentists and students cataloged all the bones still in the Dom Bosco Cemetery. Every bag found in the mass grave was opened. The bones were separated as follows: long (lower and upper limbs), medium (vertebrae) and small (feet). Each bone received a number and was filmed and photographed. "We assumed that each bag contained only one body. But we found three skulls in some bags, which indicated that there had been a mixture of bodies", explains the Commission's technical advisor. that of Expertise.

At the same time that the collection was catalogued, experts developed a type of protocol, based on international literature. In it, experts would record the data obtained by analyzing the bones. "We start from four basic principles of identification: sex, height, race and age. For each parameter, we set up at least three tables so that we could assess with a greater possibility of getting it right. We also created a questionnaire to be given to the families of the missing. In it, we asked for data about the political activists that could help with identification, such as age, height and use of prosthetics", says Zappa.

Six out of a thousand – At the end of three months, the experts had completed the cataloging work and already had dossiers on each political disappearance. "The family committee initially provided us with the names of six people who could be in the mass grave. Our mission was to discover among 1.049 bones six possible missing persons", states the coroner. According to him, these family members did a "fantastic" job. Zappa reports that the commission identified the six names based on a thorough analysis of records from the Dom Bosco Cemetery and documents contained in the São Paulo IML archive, which was considered a black box.

The forensic identification work, warns Zappa, becomes easier the more intact the bones are, especially the skull. Therefore, experts made another division of the bones. They were separated into groups, according to the following criteria: those with intact skulls, those with almost intact skulls and those with skulls with several fractures. The last group also included the bones that had completely fragmented skulls, those that had more than one skull and those that did not have a skull. Then, experts began to analyze the bones in detail. Each one was examined by at least four people. At the same time, a computer program was developed to store all the data that was obtained throughout the work. Even in the first year, the result of this effort could already be measured in a practical way: the bones of Frederico Eduardo Mayr and D�nis Casemiro were identified, both located in the mass grave of the Dom Bosco Cemetery.

'We were technically and ethically correct', says coroner

Soon after the first two identifications, forensics began to suffer some setbacks. According to coroner Jos� Eduardo Bueno Zappa, technical assistant at the Expertise Committee, political problems caused the forensic dentists to stay away from the case. "The dentists who stayed were not specialists. Furthermore, when the work fell into routine, the students and other technicians also started to leave", he says. "Even though Unicamp hired three doctors, two coroners and an orthopedist, everything became more difficult due to the reduced number of people involved in the process. It should also be noted that we are not We had other activities, such as teaching, from which we were not exempted", adds Zappa.

Another problem faced, according to the coroner, was the increase in requests made by relatives of the missing politicians, these related to bones found outside the mass grave in Perus. "In the beginning, we called the work Turkey Bones. After things grew, we started calling it the Turkeys Project", recalls the technical advisor to the Expertise Committee. Zappa says that the experts had to travel to other cemeteries such as those in Campo Grande and Vila Formosa, in S�o Paulo, and Xambio�, in Tocantins, where bones were also found that could belong to the militants left-wing. "Orders started arriving from various locations. This slowed down the work."

Despite all the difficulties, Unicamp experts managed to identify five other bones of the following missing politicians: S�nia Maria de Moraes Angel Jones, Ant�nio Carlos Bicalho Lana and Helber Jos� Gomes Goulart (also found in the Dom Bosco Cemetery, but outside the mass grave), Emanuel Bezerra dos Santos (found in the Campo Grande Cemetery, in S�o Paulo) and Maria L�cia Petit da Silva (found in the Xambio Cemetery) , in Tocantins). In the last month of work, in January 1997, Zappa was working alone on forensics. "I was the only one who started and finished. In fact, it is a mistake to say that the identification work took ten years. We worked from the end of 1990 to the beginning of 1997." In April 1997, Zappa prepared a report in which he stated that Unicamp no longer had the technical resources to try to identify new bones. In May 98, the entire collection was made available to the São Paulo Public Security Secretariat.

Unicamp then began working with the Secretariat to promote the transfer of the bones to the IML of S�o Paulo, which was appointed by the Ministry to resume the identification work. Eight of them, which could belong to Hiroaki Torigoi, Fl�vio Carvalho Molina, Luiz Jos� da Cunha and Francisco Manoel Chaves are already in the body. The rest should be sent to the Ara�� Cemetery in the coming weeks. The transfer has not yet been completed because the location is not prepared to receive the collection. The expertise is now in charge of coroner Daniel Mu�oz. In a meeting held on February 9th, he reinforced what Zappa had already told the families of the missing politicians: there are no elements that allow the identification of the bones that belonged to Torigoi. As for the bones supposedly belonging to Cunha, Zappa highlights that, although it has several characteristics that match the data of the missing person, it does not have a skull, which makes identification difficult.

Strange fact – Regarding Molina's case, the skeleton was subjected to DNA tests at the Department of Biochemistry and Immunology of the Institute of Biological Sciences of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. The technicians extracted DNA from three different bones and obtained three different results. "It would be the same if they had carried out the examination on three different bodies. It is a very strange fact. And, incredible as it may seem, none of the results match the DNA of the political activist's family" , reports Zappa. The coroner states that he considers Mu�oz an excellent professional, but finds it extremely difficult for him to be able to identify more bones. "Unless some new fact emerges. Although new techniques were developed after Unicamp closed work, the confrontation data is very meager. Furthermore, the conditions of the bones makes the work difficult", he explains.

According to him, Unicamp did not advance in its work because it no longer had the technical conditions. "We were correct technically and ethically. It would not be difficult to make a false identification. Any bones we identified would be accepted by the families. No one exhumed the bones we identified in an attempt to say that we were wrong. If we had to carry out some kind of scheme or take some advantage for our own benefit, it would be very easy. Family members would be happy, the press would be happy and the university would be happy. The extinct DML, in this case, would be covered in glory and there would be no problem. I cannot speak about the policy for conducting the work, as it was not my area. But technically, we identified everyone we could identify", maintains Zappa.

Even seem – This position was reinforced by the chief coroner of the IML of São Paulo, Carlos Delmonte, who was appointed by the Public Security Secretariat to evaluate the work carried out by Unicamp experts. In April 97, he signed an opinion declaring the University's work closed. "The possible identifications, considering the confrontation data, were carried out. No other institution could, at the moment, have carried out research of such scope", maintained the expert in the document.

President of the Unicamp Expertise Committee, tasked by the Rectory with concluding the Perus Project, the philosopher and professor of ethics Roberto Romano assesses, as a privileged observer of the process, that the University fulfilled its duty as an institution public. "From a scientific and technological point of view, Unicamp proved to be an institution concerned with dialogue and debate", he highlights. For coroner Zappa, if there was any "sin" in the conduct of the identification work, it can be translated into the lack of preparation of reports on the activities. "The thing was done a lot by mouth and things by mouth work up to a certain point. Then, they no longer work. There was a lack of experience in carrying out the work", he analyses.

The University's financial effort

To reach the seven identifications, Unicamp experts had to develop a specific technique, based on data from the literature available at the time. The main resource used was the comparison of information obtained from examinations of the bones with that provided by the relatives of the disappeared. According to Zappa, if there is no reliable data, there is no point in having thousands of bones to check. "It's also no use having just three or four characteristics. There's little point in knowing if the person was white and 1,80 meters tall. There are thousands of men with these characteristics", he explains.

According to the technical advisor to the Expertise Committee, the data collected by family members was stored on a computer. A program developed specifically for this purpose identified bones with matching characteristics. "In light of this, we studied each bone in detail. It was mining work, practically artisanal. We also superimposed images, using photos provided by relatives", says Zappa. Experts also used more prosaic but efficient resources to attempt identification. The coroner says that a cardboard table was set up, which contained the main characteristics of the missing politicians. "Through artifice, we were able to cross-reference new data, such as the information contained in the necroscopic reports carried out by the IML."

All this technical effort also required high financial investments. Although the agreement signed between the City of São Paulo, the State government and Unicamp provided for the transfer of resources from public authorities to the University, this commitment was practically not fulfilled. In June 96, coroner Badan Palhares sent a letter to the Public Security Secretariat estimating that the identification work would cost around R$150. In September of the same year, the state agency transferred only R$16.038,70. The University, however, spent a total of R$142.095,38 paying employees hired to work on the expertise, in addition to R$409.600,00 on physical works and purchasing equipment. Until today, the State's participation has been limited to the initial transfer of funds, enough to buy a popular car.