Paulo Fonteles

Paulo César Fonteles de Lima (born February 11, 1949 in Belém , † June 11, 1987 ) was a Brazilian resistance fighter .

Years earlier, his parents, Benedito Oswaldo Rodrigues de Lima and Cordolina Fonteles de Lima, had fled to Manaus to escape persecution from the totalitarian regime of General Magalhães Barata . Benedito had been caught posting inflammatory posters on house walls. Shortly before Paulo's birth, the family returned to Belém. When Paulo Fonteles was fifteen, the military carried out a coup and established a dictatorship in Brazil .

From 1969 Fonteles participated in the resistance together with his wife Hecilda Veiga . In the capital Brasília , the law student coordinated the publication of a subversive magazine , put up posters at night calling for resistance to the dictatorship and hoping the people would rise. But it turned out differently: Fonteles and his pregnant wife were kidnapped by the secret police and tortured for months. The unborn child survived. Fonteles was released after two and a half years in prison. While Brazil was in a smooth transition to a presidential democracy ruled by oligarchies , Fonteles developed a poetic language that reproduces the torture experienced and the process of memory with extraordinary consistency . As a lawyer and member of the state parliament in Pará , he fought for the farm workers against the criminal eviction methods of the large landowners in the south of the state, which is rich in wood and mineral resources , since the early 1980s . When he raised a case of corruption involving influential families, he became a threat.

On June 11, 1987, a former military policeman shot and killed Paulo Fonteles in his car. The clients have never been charged. Fonteles' funeral in Belém turned into a mass demonstration against injustice and violence.

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• Carvalho, Luiz Maklouf: Contido a Bala. A Vida ea Morte de Paulo Fonteles, Advogado de Posseiros no Sul do Pará. Belém do Pará (CEJUP) 1994.
• Uhly, Steven (Ed.): Paulo Fonteles - When death approaches, just one breath. Berlin (Matthes & Seitz) 2006.
• Uhly, Steven: Paulo César Fonteles de Lima - Poesia e Ditadura. In: Projeto Literatura e Autoritarismo, revista eletrônica ISSN  1679-849X , n ° 9, January-June 2007, http://coralx.ufsm.br/grpesqla/revista/num09/art_01.php .