PN #63 - The double legacy of Idibal Pivetta (1931-2023)

Idibal Pivetta was one of Brazil's great lawyers in the fight for freedom and democracy. He always stood up against what he thought was unfair, whether it was to him or anyone else. When the dictatorship started in 1964, he was working in the military courts, where enemies of the military regime were tried under the National Security doctrine.

He himself was arrested several times, once along with ten other lawyers from São Paulo, for protesting against the practices of torture in a prison that housed political prisoners. The judges ignored the complaints, and one of them referred the petition to the DOI-Codi. Eventually, the Superior Military Court would redress the lawyers and censure the judges.

Always available, he had this small cart in which he carried his “office,” a portable Olivetti Lettera typewriter. Students, workers, teachers, and artists affected by repression found in him their lawyer. His voice never went silent, and he never shied away from defending anyone. He instilled that sense of indignation in several of his colleagues, including Airton Soares, Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh, Miguel Aith, Paulo Gerab, and Belisário dos Santos Jr., at different times. His friends will have countless stories to tell about his courage, his humor, his ethics, and his willingness to welcome victims of injustice.

He was also a notable figure in the theater, under the pseudonym Cesar Vieira. Author of a text as powerful as it was poetic, he took “Teatro do XI” to France after spending more than a year performing at a circus in Ibirapuera, São Paulo, with the play “Evangelho segundo Zebedeu” (The Gospel According to Zebedee), directed by Silnei Siqueira, who is also no longer with us.

He brought to life the award-winning Teatro Popular União e Olho Vivo (Union and Sharp Eye Popular Theater), which toured the outskirts of São Paulo, as well as major cities in Brazil and around the world, with funny and even educational stories opposing authoritarianism. In the fight for amnesty or in acts against the civil-military dictatorship, União e Olho Vivo was always present, singing songs in favor of freedom and democracy.

The legacy of Idibal Pivetta will remain forever in the memory of those who knew him. And many will surely remember him shouting one of the lines from the “Gospel”: “I am like sugarcane stubble, cut me and I will always grow back.”

In remembering him, the Arns Commission pays tribute to this great defender of human rights whom Brazil has lost today. To his family, we offer our condolences and solidarity.

At that time, the Court rejected, by a significant majority of 9 votes to 2, the thesis of the time frame, which is frankly incompatible with the constitutional guarantee of the right to the land of Brazil's indigenous peoples.