ABSTRACT

Writing on Holocaust monuments, James Young explains that "once created, memorials take lives of their own" that digress from the initial official meaning, and thus the significance of the memorial is ever-changing. This chapter focuses on this observation and analyzes the evolution in the meaning of World War II (WWII) monuments in Brazil. It turns the process Young describes on its head, in the Brazilian case, it was the masses who created the monuments and the state that tried to appropriate and invest new meaning into them. The 1964 military coup sought to dramatically change the meaning of WWII in Brazilian public memory by establishing new methods of interaction with existing monuments and representing them in other mediums. As the military regime took over civil society, its generals used the forca expedicionaria brasileiras (FEB's) prestige to legitimize their politics. This battle over consciousness and meaning included reinterpreting the mission of the FEB through interacting with WWII monuments in new ways.