ABSTRACT
Recent Latin American history was marked by the period of dictatorships in the second half of the 20th century. In Brazil, the 1964 coup brought about the start of the Military Regime, which officially lasted for 21 years, between 1964 and 1985. At the end of the Regime, amid similar experiences shared by other countries, Brazil began, belatedly, the process of implementing transitional justice, which in general terms, is the set of juridical and political measures that mark the move from an authoritarian/dictatorial regime to a democratic regime. In 2004, the UN Security Council published a document outlining its observations on the transitional justice process. One of the mechanisms adopted in the democratic transition process is the establishment of National Truth Commissions, the first of which was in Uganda in 1974. In Brazil, the National Truth Commission was set up in May 2012 and completed its final report in 2014. In this context, archives were present as instruments of evidence and indication, either for concealing or for revealing. Archives can be thought of as building blocks of state rationale, constituting mechanisms for its legitimisation and agencies of symbolic power. One notes, in this process, that archives are pervaded by political factors governed by disputes, which can impact on how their documents are revealed or omitted. This chapter discusses the relationship between the archives and the democratic transitional justice process in Brazil, focusing on the actions taken by the National Truth Commission.
