"Você me prende vivo, eu escapo morto": A comemoração da morte de estudantes na resistência contra o regime militar

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of 'political uses of the past' made by activists from the student movement in the 1970s in order to strengthen associative identity and legitimate resistance to the military dictatorship. The instrumentalization of the past was made through an emphasis on the martyrdom of student victims of repression: the death of Alexandre Vannucchi Leme (a geology student in USP and ALN militant) by army agents in 1973 and the 'disappearance' of Honestino Guimarães (last underground president of UNE). In the cult of victims of the dictatorship also remembered is the death of Edson Luis, a secondary school student shot by the police during a street demonstration in 1968.