Silence and impossible mourning in fa milies of missing Brazilian political militants

Abstract

Taking Brazilian recent political history as a scenario, and starting from the background provided by the theory of generational psychological transmission, the present work discusses questions related to impossible mourning and the silence imposed by "state secrets"to the families of political militants who disappeared during the military regime. In order to illustrate the discussion, two members of two families of missing militants, indicated by the group Torture Never Again, were interviewed. These families still try to fulfill the bumpy memories, which can only be rescued through the temporal inscription of occurrences, through the ritualization of mourning and the knowledge of the circumstances involving the death of their family members, putting and end to an unfinished cycle. The traumatic situations not recognized by society, thus not legitimated, resulted for these families in the incapacity to elaborate and overcome trauma.