Corpos que falam: mulheres perseguidas, mas não silenciadas pela Ditadura Militar em Pernambuco (1968-1974)

Abstract

This work aims to discuss the process of resistance by women during the Military Dictatorship and the main mechanisms used to repress female bodies, both politically and culturally, in the state of Pernambuco between the years 1968 and 1974. Thus, we consider the body as a space where flesh, physicality, and the subjective, intangible aspects merge, resulting in human beings who are simultaneously mind and materiality. Within this space, power relations, gender, and language operate, and it is these relationships that we seek to study throughout the research. Through official documents, we focused on defining a sample for the research and, based on it, conducting a prosopography, which is an overview of the women who were targeted by repression and how the system endeavored to penalize them. However, studying the documentation alone would not be sufficient to achieve our objectives in the research. This is because it is only through testimonies that we can analyze the perspective of those on the other side of the document: the women. Therefore, we conducted interviews with some of the individuals who were arrested and persecuted during the period and accessed testimonies given to the National Truth Commission (CNV) and the State Commission for Memory and Truth Dom Helder Câmara (CEMVDHC). Oral History allows for a cross-referencing of official data documented by organizations and institutions with everything that was not written down; the feelings, violence, thoughts, sensations, and pain experienced by female bodies.