All Of A Sudden, I Don’t Remember

Troops on the streets, 1964

Nothing ever happened. The tears and tales of brutal arrests, torture and disappearances are fabrications scripted by the enemies of law and order. Today, is the anniversary of the military coup in 1964 that ushered in a twenty-year dictatorship. It also happens to be my dead father’s birthday. At a picturesque location in the shadow of the Pão de Açúcar, one of Rio’s iconic backdrops, a special lunch is being hosted in the Clube Militar to commemorate the event perversely advertised as Movimento Democrático de 1964.  In Florida a teacher is sacked for showing children a photograph of Michelangelo’s David deemed by moral guardians as pornography. In India, Narendra Modri is launching new school textbooks that rewrite the country’s history expunging Muslim culture and reducing the Mughal Empire to a footnote. There is nothing new about the desire to control narratives about the past and to manipulate collective memory for political intent, but we appear to be in the midst of a particularly virulent wave of ideological distortions. I really wish stories like this weren’t true.

They make me think of the end of time.