The existence of the so-called Krenak Reformatory is one of the least known and at the same time most horrifying episodes of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985). Hundreds of indigenous people considered too rebellious or dangerous were imprisoned in this re-education camp, where they were subjected to forced labour and torture with the aim of cultural assimilation. The ruins, both physical and psychological, of this kind of concentration camp built in Resplendor (Minas Gerais), are the protagonists of a work by photojournalist Leonardo Carrato, who on 9 August, International Day of Indigenous Peoples, reclaims the history hidden behind the official history.
Almost six years ago, Jair Bolsonaro had just won the elections and Carrato was looking for a concrete story to investigate in the memory of Brazilians, who were about to open the doors of the government to a military captain nostalgic for the dictatorship. When he heard about the internment camp at a conference, he was clear: “Douglas Krenak was there. His father went through all that. His words impressed me deeply, especially because many people still live in the place where they suffered all that trauma,” he explains by phone. That is how it was born. Krenak Reformatory. Fragments of an underground memory.Last April, on the 60th anniversary of the coup, the Brazilian state apologized to indigenous people for the atrocities committed against them.
In the houses around this now abandoned boarding school live indigenous people from the local ethnic group, the Krenak (who were almost driven to extinction by the dictatorship). Carrato spent four years visiting his neighbours, between 2019 and 2022, to gain their trust and be able to respectfully address an issue that touches very sensitive nerves, especially among the village’s older people. “I photographed those who went through this at night, in a darker environment, so as not to focus so much on the person themselves, but on the feeling they could provide.” It was not so much about making portraits as capturing the soul of the place, the wounds that have not yet fully healed.
The Brazilian military dictatorship killed at least 8,300 indigenous people, according to a report by the National Truth Commission published in 2014. Indigenous people from all over the country passed through the Krenak Reformatory, some of whom the military expelled from their ancestral territories to impose their development programme and make things easier for large landowners. Faced with the difficulty of understanding them due to the enormous linguistic diversity, the military created the Rural Indigenous Guard, recruiting young indigenous people to repress their own ethnic groups.
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In contrast to this doubly cruel process of cultural assimilation, Hacienda Guaraní, the re-education camp that succeeded the Krenak Reformatory, is today a vibrant hub of indigenous culture, where young people from the Pataxó ethnic group learn their native language and reclaim their stolen identity. Life makes its way through the ruins, and Carrato’s images combine the density of historical memory with the lightness of everyday life. In its original version, Carrato’s project, with Gabriel Cabral as curator, wanted to provoke a confrontation between history and memory, which is why it also includes photos from the period and even the cards with which the military identified the indigenous people, where they described in great detail the traits of their character. It was one of the winners of the Pierre Verger National Photography Prize and was recently exhibited at the Bahia Museum of Art.
Credits:
Texts: Joan Royo Gual
Photograph: Leonardo Carrato
Visual edition: Hector Guerrero
Design and programming: Monica Juarez Martin
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