It's part of the deal when someone who was once a member of a guerrilla rebel group runs for president at the head of a mainstream political party: People are bound to try to find out what "really" happened. During Brazilian President-elect Dilma Rousseff's campaign, journalists and researchers went to the national archives and the Superior Military Tribunal (known by its Portuguese acronym, STM) to dig up records on Brazil's 21-year military dictatorship and the candidate's resistance activities that led to three years of jail and brutal torture. And many say they were told: Not during the campaign.
With Rousseff about to be confirmed as president on Jan. 1 in Brasilia, the question of what's in the archives -- and why no one was allowed to get into them -- has taken on new importance. It's not that anyone expects Rousseff's files to yield some shocking Patty Hearst moment. The documents released since the election -- a batch of previously unpublished STM files reported on in November by a leading newspaper, Folha de Sao Paulo -- add only a few new details to what's already known about Rousseff's days as a young rebel. But more importantly, the protest from journalists and transparency activists over an apparent cover-up may actually help enable a much-delayed reassessment of Brazil's conduct during its U.S.-supported 1964-85 military dictatorship -- something the country has still barely reckoned with.