The diffuse memory of a traumatic past/present: some questions about a term associated with torture around a recent controversy

Abstract

The purpose of this article is discuss the relationship between history and memory. Starting from the episode in which the President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro, says the phrase “who is the right take chloroquine, who is the left, tubaína”, I follow the paths of the trouble relationship between history and memory, considering that the website Diário do Centro do Mundo (DCM) published an article referring “tubaína” as a type of torture. I discuss the issue of the memory of militants and victims of the dictatorship, who were heard by the DCM report, and who read between the lines of Bolsonaro´s words a reference to the traumatic past, trying to understand the reasons why memory evoked this reminiscence in the light of memory diffuse in a present coated with new and dangerous traumas. In preparing this article, I try to contextualize the discuss of the topic of chloroquine, demarcating the field of offering an alternative to people form the right and left, following an intervention by two activists who, in a live, confirmed, albeit hesitantly, the association of the term “tubaína” to torture by drowning.