HONORING DICTATORS:

Interinstitutional authoritarian collaboration in UFERSA’s Costa e Silva case

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the phenomenon related to the civil collaboration with military dictatorship legacies thought the conduct of professors, public lawyers, federal prosecutors and federal judges, in the context of praising an image of one of the most important military coup actors. Specially concerning the tribute on the former President Costa e Silva perpetrated by the Federal University of Semi-Drought’s Dean, the text seeks to answer the following question: how those legal professionals have behaved when they faced the dictator’s frame displayed in a public building? The level of acceptance or resistance on that practice will show the degree of commitment with democracy of them. The appropriate methodology capable to answer that question concentrates on a case study developed in a critical way that take the relation between law and political ideologies very serious. In conclusion, it is argued that the agent’s acts demonstrate an active or passive collaboration with authoritarianism, showing a coordinated engagement on the military dictatorship denialism.