Abstract

This article aimed to historically assess the impact undergone by the Faculty of Medicine-USP when it formally supported the military regime established in Brazil from 1964 onwards and the consequences of this support in its daily life. Another objective was unearthing how this context, lived between persecution, prisons, and torture, also intervened in didactic-pedagogical actions, such as the creation of a new model of medical education in 1967, known as the Experimental Course. This course would be immediately attacked by groups that saw it as a communist stronghold and a threat to the tradition of the so-called “Casa de Arnaldo”, resulting in the closure of its activities in 1974.

Key words:
Military Dictatorship; Institutional Violence; Faculty of Medicine-USP; Experimental Course

Introduction

Created throughout the second half of the 1970s³3 Vieira-da-Silva LM, Paim JS, Schraiber LB. O que é Saúde Coletiva. In: Paim JS, Almeida Filho N, organizadores. Saúde Coletiva: teoria e prática. Rio de Janeiro: MedBook; 2014. p. 3-12., Public Health, as a new health field, is initially crossed by ethical-political and institutional issues of the dictatorial regime installed in Brazil from the second half of the 1960s. This field committed to the relationship between health and society found fertile soil in the departments created in medical schools between the 1950s and 1960s within the preventive movement. However, it soon found itself inserted in a politically dark context when medical schools themselves were participants, and in many cases quite involved, in strengthening this dictatorial regime. The present study examines one of these situations: the one that occurred at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo (FMUSP).

In a manifesto published in the press in 1964, part of the medical corporation took a stand against communism threatening Brazil, as the population was experiencing a “mental nitridization”, which, according to the group, meant “a system that leads to dullness from perception to the justification of complacency, to the installation of conformity and even the innocent cooperation of many through conditioned reflective methods”⁴4 O Estado de S. Paulo. Médicos e democracia. 1964 mar 8. p. 7. (p.7). This mention made it clear that the corporation would be intertwined with other movements that would end up leading to the 1964 coup d’état, gaining supporters or staunch opponents in this group:

Regarding São Paulo, there is no doubt about its contribution to consolidating the strategy of systemic repression, in many cases leading to the elimination of opponents, exemplarily indicated in the case of the participation of coroners in the adulteration of documents on those killed and disappeared by the regime, presented in the Report of the Truth Commission, demonstrating that between 1969 and 1976:

Formed by doctors Elzira Vilela, Eva Teresa Skazufka, and Pedro Paulo Chieffi and social scientist Emilia Emiko Kita Lopes, the Truth Commission of the São Paulo Public Health Association - Nucleus of the National Health Reform Truth Commission, presented in 2014, brought a most important document, which “names the coroners of the IML of São Paulo who signed necroscopic reports on political prisoners killed in the State of São Paulo, in the period from 1969 to 1976, when they were in the hands of security agencies”⁷7 Assembleia Legislativa do Estado de São Paulo (Alesp). Comissão Estadual da Verdade Rubens Paiva. Comissão da Verdade da Associação Paulista de Saúde Pública. Núcleo da Comissão Nacional da Verdade da Reforma Sanitária. Assassinatos de Opositores Políticos no Brasil: laudos falsos e fraudes praticadas por legistas no Instituto Médico Legal de São Paulo durante a ditadura civil-militar, 1946-1985. São Paulo: Alesp; 2014. (p.5). In this survey, 51 cases of missing political prisoners with reports proven false were presented, demonstrating the link established between the repressive authorities and forensic doctors from the Legal Medical Institute of São Paulo:

This articulation between forensic doctors and the torture center in São Paulo indicates more complex ramifications beyond the police universe of the period, gaining spaces and dialogue in other spheres, such as the medical world, among them, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo, the most significant medical training center in the country. In this sense, this study seeks to broaden the view of this period of tension by paying attention to the day-to-day life of the college, following the conflicts that erupted with the establishment of a regime of exception between teachers, students, and staff, a period of radicalization of the university’s activities censorship and the resurgence of the political regime in repressive terms⁸8 Aquino MA. Censura, imprensa e estado autoritário (1968-1978): o exercício cotidiano da dominação e da resistência, O Estado de São Paulo e o Movimento. Bauru: EDUSC; 1999. (p.212). Furthermore, it also pays attention to the paradoxical fact that, in the same period, there was the formulation, institutional approval, and implementation of an experimental course, expressing a reform of undergraduate education that encouraged a reflective and critical pedagogy, encouraging greater student participation, in addition to innovating biomedical reading about the social.

It also intends to investigate the simultaneous presence of blocks in dispute, as opposed to the conservative thought aligned with the new political regime in the country and hegemonic in the institution, for a type of medical education capable of representing them. On the one hand, the traditional curriculum, based on medical specialties and innovative technologies, and, on the other, an experimental curriculum that expected a professional with a generalist character and concerned with deeper dimensions than what would be defined as social. Thus, what was limited to didactic, pedagogical, and training issues soon became a political struggle. Nevertheless, examining that further appears to be an action yet particularly committed to that traditional order, taking on the contours of an instrumental action that sought, in a certain way, to impose new institutional relations in a change little derived from exchanges interactive processes for the constitution of agreements, in a political action resulting from a collective in concert, as defined by Arendt when distinguishing power from violence²2 Arendt H. Homens em tempos sombrios. Lisboa: Relógio D'Água; 1991.^,99 Arendt H. Entre o passado e o futuro. São Paulo: Perspectiva; 2011.. From a methodological point of view, the present study is centrally based on institutional documents, most of them unpublished and others published, although little examined in the historiographical debate, all of which are in the collection of the Carlos da Silva Lacaz Museum of FMUSP, in the form of documents audiences available for research¹⁰10 Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo. Museu Histórico Prof. Carlos da Silva Lacaz. Guia do acervo [Internet]. [acessado 2024 jan 29]. Disponível em: https://www.fm.usp.br/museu/acervo-e-pesquisa /guia-do-acervo.
https://www.fm.usp.br/museu/acervo-e-pes... . When analyzing the collected day, two moments stood out.

The Faculty of Medicine and the echoes of repression: a daily life between the “family” and the “immigrant”

On April 3, 1964, the Congregation of the Faculty of Medicine met to draft a motion in support of the recently launched military coup:

Given this position and actions such as the one proposed by the same Congregation - which would donate one day of teachers’ salaries to the ‘cause’ - there was a rapid movement of denunciations and persecution of teachers in 1964, initially around the Department of Parasitology:

Without a doubt, considering the names listed, the hunt for the “red department” was relentless:

The Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported that three of the accused’s professors should have their preventive arrest ordered immediately: Thomas Maack would be ‘a German subject and confessed Marxist, director of the newspaper O Bisturi, a left-wing newspaper and a vehicle for subversive propaganda at the Faculty of Medicine at USP’¹⁴14 Folha de S. Paulo. IPM da medicina: prisão preventiva para três. 1964 dez 31.; Michael Rabinovitch would be ‘a notorious communist with great scientific culture’¹⁴14 Folha de S. Paulo. IPM da medicina: prisão preventiva para três. 1964 dez 31. and Luis Hildebrando Pereira da Silva, ‘an undisputed leader of Marxism at the Faculty of Medicine’¹⁴14 Folha de S. Paulo. IPM da medicina: prisão preventiva para três. 1964 dez 31.. According to the argument of Judge Delmo de Godoi from the 2nd Military Audit:

In the memories of parasitologist and Professor Luis Rey, this act corresponded to a larger plan surrounding the names of the professors arrested at the University of São Paulo:

The Congregation of the Faculty of Medicine did not leave many points of tension in its records, at least at that initial moment, except in specific cases, such as an aside from Professor Antonio Dácio do Amaral from the Department of Parasitology, reporting a newspaper article about the disclosure from the police report by Lieutenant Colonel Enio dos Santos on possible subversive activities carried out by parasitologists at the institution. The professor said he was “indicted and accused of lack of energy for not having acted against leftist elements in my department, allowing them wide freedom of movement”¹⁶16 Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP). Ata da Congregação. São Paulo: FMUSP; 1964. [manuscrito]. (p.56).

Among those persecuted and arrested at the Faculty of Medicine, not all linked to the area of Parasitology, there are private testimonies about the treatment received - the case of Isaias Raw, at the time president of the Carlos Chagas Foundation and full professor of Biochemistry, who was arrested, tortured and transferred to an Army barracks, with immediate repercussions in the national and international scientific community. In his defense, several world-renowned scientists hurriedly sent a telegram to the President of the Republic, General Castello Branco:

Going further, the regime implemented depended on the adhesion of segments capable of supporting the institutional daily life. Thus, it appears that there was a fraction of teachers, students, and employees who, in addition to supporting the military coup, collaborated, through complaints, many of them unfounded, to achieve the objectives of the repressive machine against supposed subversives¹⁸18 Rezende MJ. Ditadura militar no Brasil: repressão e pretensão de legitimidade - 1964-1984. Londrina: EdUEL; 2001. (p.50). In his study of universities under the military regime, Rodrigo Motta hypothesizes that the persecution of some FMUSP professors as early as 1964 was because:

In his letter ‘Casa de Arnaldo, circa,’ written in 1964 and published by Revista da USP in 1991, Professor Thomas Maack already identified such a structure within the faculty. According to his testimony, there was a group made up of traditionalist doctors and teachers who said they were descendants of an elite school in São Paulo and called themselves ‘family’ and an increasingly expressive teaching group coming from an ascending middle class, called by the ‘family’ as ‘ immigrant:’

In 1966, the Report of the Permanent Council of Justice analyzed the sentence of the police-military investigation against a group of professors from FMUSP, a student, a doctor, and an employee from the Hospital das Clínicas indicted by Lieutenant Colonel Enio dos Santos Pinheiro due to an anonymous report. The Judge’s arguments revealed part of the content of the accusations and the fragility of the accusatory arguments, to the point that they were all refuted, with the consequent acquittal of the accused. In an article entitled ‘Teachers acquitted’, O Bisturi shared the news:

The following years continued to reverberate the established tensions, but:

The prevailing institutional climate, full of insinuations and denunciations, directly affected student life at the Faculty of Medicine. With its publication banned, the newspaper O Bisturi went underground. Students were arrested and tortured, and some were killed or disappeared. In October 1964, the Book Fair held by the Oswaldo Cruz Academic Center (CAOC) was accused, within the school itself, of selling works considered subversive. The civil police and the Political and Social Order Police Station (DOPS) were called and seized 18 volumes from the Fair and two from the library. During this police action, there was a new complaint saying that the students had kidnapped the DOPS investigator. O Bisturi himself reports:

In 1966, student Reinaldo Morano Filho, president of the Oswaldo Cruz Academic Center (1969), was arrested for the first time. Gelson Reicher and Antonio Carlos Nogueira Cabral, were arrested and killed by repression agencies in April 1972²³23 Câmara Municipal de São Paulo. Registro taquigráfico da sessão Desaparecidos. São Paulo; 1991. p. 63-72. [mimeo].. Fausto Figueira de Mello Junior, a student in the fiftieth class at FMUSP, reports the arrival of Luiz Hirata, a student at the Luís de Queirós Higher School of Agriculture, tortured and taken to the Hospital das Clínicas: “There he was with scars made of wood, on the legs and wrists. His body was a dark paste due to the massive destruction of the muscles, caused by the torture that took place”²⁴24 Mello Junior FF. Anos de chumbo. In: Goto H, Lemos RC, Labonia Filho W, organizadores. Turma 55 da Faculdade de medicina - USP. São Paulo: RG Editores; 2022. p. 181-182. (p.181).

Case of the police invasion of the University of São Paulo campus in 1977, under the argument that there would be subversive student movement around the UNE Congress. During a public student event, the Faculty of Medicine had its building invaded on September 20^th, under the leadership of the then Secretary of Public Security Erasmo Dias, resulting in fines and records at the DOPS-SP: in total, there were 45 medical students, four in physiotherapy, three in speech therapy and one postgraduate student in medicine²⁵25 Divisão de Ordem Política (DOPS). Polícia Civil de São Paulo. Registro de autuação e lista dos alunos presos e fichados da Universidade de São Paulo. São Paulo; 1977. [mimeo]..

However, such actions involving doctors were not subsequently investigated by the Brazilian State, even with already irrefutable evidence described in detail in the Truth Commission reports and disclosed in meetings and seminars²⁷27 Centro Universitário Maria Antonia da USP. SEMINÁRIO Tortura Nunca Mais! - Comissões da Verdade e a pós-verdade na ditadura. São Paulo: Museu Histórico da Faculdade de Medicina da USP/Faculdade de Saúde Pública-USP/Pró-reitoria de Cultura e Extensão Universitária da USP (PRCEU); 2022 ago 19.. According to Maria Amélia Teles, “the fight to punish doctors, waged over the years by family and human rights groups, is a true juggling act, full of labyrinths and obstacles, with difficult continuity”²⁸28 Teles MAA, Teles JA. A participação de médicos na repressão política. In: Mota A, Marinho MGSMC, Nemi A, organizadores. Medicina em contexto de exceção: histórias, tensões e continuidades. São Paulo: UFABC; 2017. p. 87-114. (p.110-111).

In this context, however, a reformatory curriculum proposal emerged, characterized by its experimental nature and aimed to shape the training of future doctors. The experimental course was short-lived, established in 1967, and completed in 1976. Nonetheless, it facilitated new interactions among faculty members and between faculty and students, although not without internal conflicts within the institution. Nevertheless, his effective contributions, both humanistic and technically innovative, were inadequately publicized and not publicly disseminated. Conversely, this experiment became entangled in the discourses of institutional hegemonic thinking that “belittle the whole truth under the guise of defending old truths”²2 Arendt H. Homens em tempos sombrios. Lisboa: Relógio D'Água; 1991. (p.8), which warrants further investigation in this historical study.

The Experimental Medicine Course: a subversive project?

In full force of the dictatorial regime and motivated by the movement of the so-called “surpluses” - a movement in the 1960s that involved high school students who passed the entrance exam but without places to enter existing colleges - an intense discussion about university reform and its structuring mechanisms, like the system of chairs and training centers, resulted in the elaboration of a new curricular project for FMUSP called the Experimental Course (CEM). Born from pressure from the state governor, Abreu Sodré, he demanded more undergraduate places from the faculty. This request entailed:

On March 28th, 1967, João Alves Meira, Director of the Faculty of Medicine (1963-1970) and Professor of Tropical and Infectious Diseases approved the formation of a Didactic Guidance Committee for the Experimental Course in Medicine (CODCEM) and, on January 05^th 1968, his memorial was sent to the state governor asking for the release of special funds for the installation of the first year of his activities, in addition to the construction of a university hospital. The international references in the project brought CEM closer to experiences considered successful:

There were also two fundamental trends in the proposal in the orientation of medical curricula: “the preparation of professionals to work in hospitals and their preparation to work in the community, understood as a social grouping, from different socioeconomic groups, capable of presenting health problems at a high level, both individual and collective”²⁹29 Machado EM. O Curso Experimental de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo. Edu Med Salud 1975; 2(9):172-195. (p.175). One of the fundamental characteristics of CEM was the proximity between teachers and students, with high student participation in course referrals in the so-called “forums”:

The Course systematized little teaching material directed at students so that all classes and readings were followed pari passu. That is because the classes were defined during the educational process itself. The didactic contents were implemented in the teachers’ contributions through indicated and reproduced texts, the proposed pedagogical work, and some exercises for the students. In addition to the theoretical classes, the students had to develop research projects, 40 hours per student over four weeks, on the following topics:

This material defended the end of the asylum regime and denounced the inadequacy of the services provided to the population, indicating the failure of the Brazilian and São Paulo psychiatric system, at the same time that it rehearsed the first psychiatric reform movements, following the example of those developing in Europe and Latin America. About Juqueri Hospital, it said:

On August 30^th, 1974, Carlos da Silva Lacaz, one of the signatories of the creation of CEM-USP in 1966 and paradoxically its highest opposing leader, was taken to the board of directors of FMUSP (1974-1978) and, in his inauguration speech, announced its first measure: the closure of the Experimental Course. A deeper assessment of what happened in this course reveals a series of intertwined issues that may explain this closure³³33 Mota A. Tempos cruzados: a Saúde Coletiva no estado de São Paulo, 1920-1980. São Paulo: Hucitec; 2020.. Initially, it is worth pointing out the new scenario that the higher education educational policy imposed on FMUSP with Law No. 5,540/1968, reorganizing the areas of teaching and research, creating institutes of basic sciences, allocating teachers to departments and establishing the Guidelines and Bases of National Education for subjects in the basic and professional cycle with semester registration and introduction of the credit system.

This context resulted in immense discomfort at FMUSP, which saw an unexpected and abrupt change in its activities, in addition to losing power previously concentrated in the hands of a specific group of teachers. With this change, FMUSP was:

Carlos da Silva Lacaz’s rise to power - whether as Secretary of Health for the Municipality of São Paulo under Paulo Salim Maluf in 1970 or as director of FMUSP in 1974 - would have caused the crisis at Experimental. According to Guilherme Rodrigues da Silva, he would be interested in higher positions, which would have led him to oppose the course:

It was within this framework and with the support of the Congregation of the Faculty that, in his inauguration speech, Carlos da Silva Lacaz asked for the constitution of a Commission to proceed with the closure of the CEM-USP project and its incorporation into the traditional course, for a project called curricular fusion, starting in 1976. In a letter sent to students, Carlos Lacaz criticized the current situation and, between the lines, expressed himself about how he understood the CEM-USP proposal:

Given this position, in which criticism of the division of courses between clinical and basic courses was already implicit, with the 1968 Reform, the Experimental Course was not spared. Chaired by Professor João Alves Meira, a committee was formed responsible for developing a single program, predicting that in 1979, all students would be unified by a single curriculum, as happened.

The figure of Guilherme Rodrigues da Silva gained centrality in guiding the participation of the Department of Preventive Medicine at CEM-USP. When he arrived as a full professor in 1967, the course had already been created, but he was soon placed as one of the organizers to monitor its progress daily. To the idea that he would be another “immigrant” was added his “mulatto” origin and his “communist” convictions, attributes that placed him under more suspicion and persecution³¹31 Tavano PT. Tramas da tessitura curricular: o Curso Experimental de Medicina da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (1968-1975) [tese]. São Paulo: Faculdade de Educação, Universidade de São Paulo; 2015. (p.112). In Moisés Goldbaum’s interpretation of this presence:

Regarding the approach to health issues through the social sciences, a central point in the definition of what should be called Collective Health and characterized as a sociology of health, in line with the more practical and integral teaching perspective of the CEM-USP, the option fell on a 1st-year subject that used operational and field research with medical subjects to discuss social theories, taught by the sociologist and professor Maria Cecília Ferro Donnangelo from the Department of Preventive Medicine. The FMUSP used an earlier trick to solve this problem: it appointed the Department of Forensic Medicine as the official responsible for this discipline and an open action linked to the Department of Social Sciences, thus ending this formative experience in the undergraduate program. In addition, some professors began to denounce professors in the department as politically subversive members of the Samuel B. Pessoa school, particularly those involved in mental health.

Right at the beginning of classes in 1976, there was an open action linked to the Social Sciences discipline, ending this formative undergraduate experience. Along with the curriculum fusion project, a statement was sent to the then-coordinator of the USP Undergraduate Chamber about the fact that they had been allowed:

In a letter sent to the coordinator of the Faculty’s Undergraduate Chamber on October 1^st, 1976, a group of 36 professors suggested curricular changes in light of the consequences of the merger between Experimental and Traditional. They proposed placing ‘the Social Sciences course integrated with the subjects of Legal Medicine and Brazilian Problems’³⁵35 Lacaz CS. Carta a Antônio Guimarães Ferri, coordenador da Câmara de Graduação. São Paulo; 1976. p. 1-3 [mimeo]. (p.1). Reading this proposal, the Oswaldo Cruz Academic Center and the FMUSP student representation in the Congregation called an assembly and distributed material titled: The Newest Threat to the FMUSP Medical Course. The text dealt with the extinction of the block system, the reduction of the mathematics and statistics course load, the speed of resolution, which would come into force in 1977, and, finally, ‘the virtual extinction of the Social Sciences Course, with eventual transfer to the Department of Legal Medicine’³⁵35 Lacaz CS. Carta a Antônio Guimarães Ferri, coordenador da Câmara de Graduação. São Paulo; 1976. p. 1-3 [mimeo]. (p.1).

Final considerations

This analysis brings new perspectives to the study of the military dictatorship in its relationship with academic institutions, showing the impacts of this new relationship on the structure of departments and the relationship established with professors, students, and employees. The two parts of this study seek precisely to present what would be in the memory of some, but without the methodological limitations that History imposes, giving a historical meaning to the data.

The opposition born from the experience of the new course implemented and the belief that there was a subversive movement in progress, if, on the one hand, it made no sense when checking the teachers’ proposal in the formulation of the Experimental Course, on the other, with its innovations pedagogical, challenged the conservatism and authoritarianism that was intended to be maintained and deepened. The Department of Preventive Medicine case elucidated that the Experimental Course was an experience that sought a new perspective on medical training, broader, connected with social life, requiring innovative and creative reasoning. It is relevant to say that innovative experiences were not unknown to the institution. Just remember the 1950s, when the faculty was at its peak, including the existence of the Department of Parasitology, with the influence of Samuel Pessoa. The tradition’s discourse that opposed the Experimental was an invention of the moment, recalling the conservatism of the institution.

After several decades, Professors Erney Felício Plessmann de Camargo, Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva, Luiz Rey, Michel Pinkus Rabinovitch, Pedro Henrique Saldanha and Thomaz Maack were awarded emeritus professorships in a special session of the Congregation on September 18, 2008, in an attitude that the then director of the Faculty of Medicine, Marcos Boulos, described as a historic renegotiation. Isaias Raw, who already held this title, was awarded the “Arnaldo Vieira de Carvalho” medal. The idea was to make the first movement towards a new constitution of memory in the face of so many others that the institution later experienced, with the aim of reassembling voices, characters, and experiences lived by and at the Faculty of Medicine. We can say that the military dictatorship is not over and will continue to exist, as there is an open history that cannot be closed until we have opened our public institutions to historical studies about the period in question.

References

Publication Dates

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