Violence Workers

Of the 23 Brazilian policemen interviewed in-depth for this study, 14 were direct perpetrators of torture and murder during the three decades that included the 1964-1985 military regime. They help answer questions that haunt today's world on how ordinary men are transformed into state torturers. "A groundbreaking work. Its conclusions allow us to understand how state-sponsored violence is a social illness, and how easily moral boundaries can be destroyed. Our lesson is to grasp carefully how the technique of transforming individuals into evildoers is a highly rational exercise of constructed hatred, the isolation of individuals, and the blurring of the border between duty and cruelty."—María Pía Lara, editor of Rethinking Evil: Contemporary Perspectives "It's rare enough that people study torturers. It's very dangerous fieldwork, demoralizing material to ponder over, and intellectually hazardous to put it together coherently. These authors do better than this: they come back with a book well worth thinking about. Thinking about torture these days is something we do less and less; one can only hope this book will be an antidote to so much thoughtlessness."—Darius Rejali, author of Torture and Modernity: Self, Society and State in Modern Iran "The volume disturbingly reminds us that the problem of impunity is not just one that concerns the direct torturers and murderers but also all those who are complicit in the system of impunity."—Sir Nigel Rodley, United Nations Commission on Human Rights Of the twenty-three Brazilian policemen interviewed in depth for this landmark study, fourteen were direct perpetrators of torture and murder during the three decades that included the 1964-1985 military regime. These "violence workers" and the other group of "atrocity facilitators" who had not, or claimed they had not, participated directly in the violence, help answer questions that haunt today's world: Why and how are ordinary men transformed into state torturers and murderers? How do atrocity perpetrators explain and justify their violence? What is the impact of their murderous deeds--on them, on their victims, and on society? What memories of their atrocities do they admit and which become public history?