0065/2024 - Ditadura Militar e a Faculdade de Medicina-USP: o Curso Experimental de Medicina, 1967-1982
Ditadura Militar e a Faculdade de Medicina-USP: o Curso Experimental de Medicina, 1967-1982
Autor:
• André Mota - Mota, A. - <a.mota@fm.usp.br>ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5697-8628
Coautor(es):
• Lilia Blima Schraiber - Schraiber, L. B. - <liliabli@usp.br>ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3326-0824
Resumo:
O objetivo deste artigo é estudar historicamente o impacto sofrido pela Faculdade de Medicina-USP quando ela apoiou formalmente o regime militar que se estabelecia no Brasil a partir de 1964 e os reflexos desse apoio em seu cotidiano. Outro objetivo é apresentar como esse contexto, vivido entre perseguições, prisões e torturas, interveio também em ações de ordem didático-pedagógica, como na criação de um novo modelo de ensino médico no ano de 1967, conhecido como Curso Experimental. Esse curso seria imediatamente atacado por grupos que o viam como um reduto comunista e uma ameaça à tradição da chamada “Casa de Arnaldo”, logrando o encerramento de suas atividades no ano de 1974.Palavras-chave:
Ditadura Militar, Violência Institucional, Faculdade de Medicina-USP, Curso Experimental.Abstract:
The objective of this article is to historically study the impact suffered by the Faculty of Medicine-USP when it formally supported the military regime that was established in Brazil1964 onwards and the consequences of this support in its daily life. Another objective is to present how this context, lived between persecution, prisons and torture, also intervened in didactic-pedagogical actions, such as the creation of a new model of medical education in 1967, known as the Experimental Course. This course would be immediately attacked by groups that saw it as a communist stronghold and a threat to the tradition of the so-called “Casa de Arnaldo”, resulting in the closure of its activities in 1974.Keywords:
Military Dictatorship, Institutional Violence, Faculty of Medicine-USP, Experimental Course.Conteúdo:
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Ditadura Militar e a Faculdade de Medicina-USP: o Curso Experimental de Medicina, 1967-1982
Resumo (abstract):
The objective of this article is to historically study the impact suffered by the Faculty of Medicine-USP when it formally supported the military regime that was established in Brazil1964 onwards and the consequences of this support in its daily life. Another objective is to present how this context, lived between persecution, prisons and torture, also intervened in didactic-pedagogical actions, such as the creation of a new model of medical education in 1967, known as the Experimental Course. This course would be immediately attacked by groups that saw it as a communist stronghold and a threat to the tradition of the so-called “Casa de Arnaldo”, resulting in the closure of its activities in 1974.Palavras-chave (keywords):
Military Dictatorship, Institutional Violence, Faculty of Medicine-USP, Experimental Course.Ler versão inglês (english version)
Conteúdo (article):
Military Dictatorship and the Faculty of Medicine-USP:the Experimental Medicine Course, 1967-1982
Resumo
O objetivo deste artigo é estudar historicamente o impacto sofrido pela Faculdade de Medicina-USP quando ela apoiou formalmente o regime militar que se estabelecia no Brasil a partir de 1964 e os reflexos desse apoio em seu cotidiano. Outro objetivo é apresentar como esse contexto, vivido entre perseguições, prisões e torturas, interveio também em ações de ordem didático-pedagógica, como na criação de um novo modelo de ensino médico no ano de 1967, conhecido como Curso Experimental. Esse curso seria imediatamente atacado por grupos que o viam como um reduto comunista e uma ameaça à tradição da chamada “Casa de Arnaldo”, logrando o encerramento de suas atividades no ano de 1974.
Palavras-chave: Ditadura Militar, Violência Institucional, Faculdade de Medicina-USP, Curso Experimental.
Abstract
This article aimed to historically assess the impact undergone by the Faculty of Medicine-USP when it formally supported the military regime established in Brazil from 1964 onwards and the consequences of this support in its daily life. Another objective was unearthing how this context, lived between persecution, prisons, and torture, also intervened in didactic-pedagogical actions, such as the creation of a new model of medical education in 1967, known as the Experimental Course. This course would be immediately attacked by groups that saw it as a communist stronghold and a threat to the tradition of the so-called “Casa de Arnaldo,” resulting in the closure of its activities in 1974.
Keywords: Military Dictatorship, Institutional Violence, Faculty of Medicine-USP, Experimental Course.
The right to truth also received attention from the High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2006, when the study on the right to truth was published, which defines the right to know the “whole and complete truth” about the causes that led to the victimization, the causes and conditions for serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, the progress and results of investigations, the circumstances and reasons for the commission of international crimes, the circumstances in which violations occurred and, finally, the identity of the perpetrators.1
Dark times [...] are not only not new, they do not represent a historical rarity [...]. But even in the darkest times, we have the right to hope to see some light.2
Introduction
Created throughout the second half of the 1970s3, Public Health, as a new health field, is initially crossed by ethical-political and institutional issues of the dictatorial regime installed in Brazil from the second half of the 1960s. This field committed to the relationship between health and society found fertile soil in the departments created in medical schools between the 1950s and 60s within the preventive movement. However, it soon found itself inserted in a politically dark context when medical schools themselves were participants, and in many cases quite involved, in strengthening this dictatorial regime. The present study examines one of these situations: the one that occurred at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo (FMUSP).
In a manifesto published in the press in 1964, part of the medical corporation took a stand against communism threatening Brazil, as the population was experiencing a “mental nitridization”, which, according to the group, meant “a system that leads to dullness from perception to the justification of complacency, to the installation of conformity and even the innocent cooperation of many through conditioned reflective methods”4 (p. 7). This mention made it clear that the corporation would be intertwined with other movements that would end up leading to the 1964 coup d\'état, gaining supporters or staunch opponents in this group:
The extent and depth of the involvement of Brazilian doctors in the country\'s political struggles during the 21 years of the regime can be measured both by the approach and provision of services by doctors to the dictatorship and by the opposition, organized or not, of doctors or medical students to discretion. In experiencing the political struggles of their time, individually and collectively, doctors supported or fought the dictatorship and were even affected in their practices and the development of their professional careers, whether due to some benefit or some persecution5 (p. 31).
Regarding São Paulo, there is no doubt about its contribution to consolidating the strategy of systemic repression, in many cases leading to the elimination of opponents, exemplarily indicated in the case of the participation of coroners in the adulteration of documents on those killed and disappeared by the regime, presented in the Report of the Truth Commission, demonstrating that between 1969 and 1976:
[...] 51 cases of murdered opponents were described, the absolute majority under torture. Thirty-three coroners signed false autopsy reports [...] Isaac Abramovich, Orlando José Bastos Brandão, and Abeylard Queiróz Orsini – 44 cadaveric reports. Harry Shibata, the most famous forensic fraudster in the Wladimir Herzog case, signed eight false reports 6 (p. 31-32).
Formed by doctors Elzira Vilela, Eva Teresa Skazufka, and Pedro Paulo Chieffi and social scientist Emilia Emiko Kita Lopes, the Truth Commission of the São Paulo Public Health Association – Nucleus of the National Health Reform Truth Commission, presented in 2014, brought a most important document, which “names the coroners of the IML of São Paulo who signed necroscopic reports on political prisoners killed in the State of São Paulo, in the period from 1969 to 1976, when they were in the hands of security agencies”7 (p. 5). In this survey, 51 cases of missing political prisoners with reports proven false were presented, demonstrating the link established between the repressive authorities and forensic doctors from the Legal Medical Institute of São Paulo:
According to the official version, on 15-03-1973, three militants (Arnaldo Cardoso Rocha, Francisco Emanoel Penteado, and Francisco Seiko Okama) were tracked down on Caquito Street, Penha, SP, and, after shooting, two of them were killed on the spot and, the third after an attempted escape, died nearby [...] the same version appears in the requests for necroscopic examinations sent by the DOPS-SP to the IML-SP and in the necroscopic reports signed by coroners Isaac Abramovitch and Orlando Brandão. In testimony to the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances, Bahian University professor Amilcar Baiardi, arrested at the DOI/CODI at the time, declared that he saw, through the window, two injured young men lying on the sports court and, apparently being interrogated, amid agents\' rejoicings and noisy celebrations. One had oriental features and was called \'Japanese\' by the agents. They were left there for over an hour until the IML hearse collection. The other young man was Arnaldo Cardoso Rocha7 (p. 28-9).
This articulation between forensic doctors and the torture center in São Paulo indicates more complex ramifications beyond the police universe of the period, gaining spaces and dialogue in other spheres, such as the medical world, among them, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo, the most significant medical training center in the country. In this sense, this study seeks to broaden the view of this period of tension by paying attention to the day-to-day life of the college, following the conflicts that erupted with the establishment of a regime of exception between teachers, students, and staff, a period of radicalization of the university\'s activities censorship and the resurgence of the political regime in repressive terms8 (p. 212). Furthermore, it also pays attention to the paradoxical fact that, in the same period, there was the formulation, institutional approval, and implementation of an experimental course, expressing a reform of undergraduate education that encouraged a reflective and critical pedagogy, encouraging greater student participation, in addition to innovating biomedical reading about the social.
It also intends to investigate the simultaneous presence of blocks in dispute, as opposed to the conservative thought aligned with the new political regime in the country and hegemonic in the institution, for a type of medical education capable of representing them. On the one hand, the traditional curriculum, based on medical specialties and innovative technologies, and, on the other, an experimental curriculum that expected a professional with a generalist character and concerned with deeper dimensions than what would be defined as social. Thus, what was limited to didactic, pedagogical, and training issues soon became a political struggle. Nevertheless, examining that further appears to be an action yet particularly committed to that traditional order, taking on the contours of an instrumental action that sought, in a certain way, to impose new institutional relations in a change little derived from exchanges interactive processes for the constitution of agreements, in a political action resulting from a collective in concert, as defined by Arendt when distinguishing power from violence 2,9. From a methodological point of view, the present study is centrally based on institutional documents, most of them unpublished and others published, although little examined in the historiographical debate, all of which are in the collection of the Carlos da Silva Lacaz Museum of FMUSP, in the form of documents audiences available for research10. When analyzing the collected day, two moments stood out. The Faculty of Medicine and the echoes of repression: a daily life between the “family” and the “immigrant”
On April 3, 1964, the Congregation of the Faculty of Medicine met to draft a motion in support of the recently launched military coup:
[...] comes to make clear to all university colleagues, faculty, and students, as well as to the people of this great State of São Paulo, the total communion of their ideas and ideals embodied in (1) total and unrestricted support for total obedience to order, discipline, hierarchy, and democratic freedoms within the current constitution, both within the University and the social environment [...]11 (p. 22-3).
Given this position and actions such as the one proposed by the same Congregation – which would donate one day of teachers\' salaries to the \'cause\' – there was a rapid movement of denunciations and persecution of teachers in 1964, initially around the Department of Parasitology:
[...] due to the presence of militants and supporters of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and around the scientific and political leadership of Samuel Barnsley Pessoa (1898-1976), professor of medical parasitology [...] the complaint was forwarded by the governor to the military and police authorities for action. This same list of those reported was reproduced in the request for information to the State Department of Political and Social Order (Deops) made in July by Lieutenant Colonel Enio dos Santos Pinheiro, who was in charge of the Police-Military Inquiry (IPM) that would investigate “subversive activities at the USP Faculty of Medicine”12 (p. 26).
Without a doubt, considering the names listed, the hunt for the “red department” was relentless:
[...] Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva, Thomas Maack, and four other teachers were fired by the same decree, signed by then-governor Adhemar de Barros: Erney Felício Plesmann de Camargo, Luiz Rey, Pedro Henrique Saldanha and Reynaldo Chiaverini. In addition to professors from the Faculty of Medicine, doctors and professors from Hospital das Clínicas were also affected. Among them are Antônio Dácio Franco do Amaral, Leônidas de Mello Deane, Maria José Deane and Victor Nussenzveig, Michel Rabinovich, J. M. Taques Bittencourt Julio Puddles, Nelson Rodrigues dos Santos and Israel Nussenzveig13 (p. 140-1).
The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported that three of the accused\'s professors should have their preventive arrest ordered immediately: Thomas Maack would be \'a German subject and confessed Marxist, director of the newspaper O Bisturi, a left-wing newspaper and a vehicle for subversive propaganda at the Faculty of Medicine at USP\'14; Michael Rabinovitch would be \'a notorious communist with great scientific culture\'14 and Luis Hildebrando Pereira da Silva, \'an undisputed leader of Marxism at the Faculty of Medicine\'14. According to the argument of Judge Delmo de Godoi from the 2nd Military Audit:
[...] we come to the conclusion that the activities performed by the previous defendants are most evident, who, taking advantage of their high position in higher education and the undeniable prestige they enjoy in scientific and university circles, compete faithfully for subversion, sometimes conveying or disseminating Trotskyist-Marxist preachings, sometimes omitting itself through malicious tolerance so that activities of this nature found a favorable and fertile field for the harmful infiltration of compromises to the democratic institutions in force in the Republic14 (p. 7).
In the memories of parasitologist and Professor Luis Rey, this act corresponded to a larger plan surrounding the names of the professors arrested at the University of São Paulo:
[...] I heard that all the former disqualified people from the University would be arrested to form an exchange pool for when the guerrillas kidnapped foreign ambassadors. I was on the list [...]15 (p. 94).
The Congregation of the Faculty of Medicine did not leave many points of tension in its records, at least at that initial moment, except in specific cases, such as an aside from Professor Antonio Dácio do Amaral from the Department of Parasitology, reporting a newspaper article about the disclosure from the police report by Lieutenant Colonel Enio dos Santos on possible subversive activities carried out by parasitologists at the institution. The professor said he was “indicted and accused of lack of energy for not having acted against leftist elements in my department, allowing them wide freedom of movement” 16 (p. 56).
Among those persecuted and arrested at the Faculty of Medicine, not all linked to the area of Parasitology, there are private testimonies about the treatment received - the case of Isaias Raw, at the time president of the Carlos Chagas Foundation and full professor of Biochemistry, who was arrested, tortured and transferred to an Army barracks, with immediate repercussions in the national and international scientific community. In his defense, several world-renowned scientists hurriedly sent a telegram to the President of the Republic, General Castello Branco:
Dear President, when gathered at the Sixth International Congress of Biochemistry, we shockingly heard that Prof. Isaias Raw from the University of São Paulo was arrested. Prof. Raw is known for his personality and being a man of great integrity, one of the most important Brazilian scientists. The international scientific community calls for consideration and release of this personality so he can continue performing his work in Brazilian science and education17.
Going further, the regime implemented depended on the adhesion of segments capable of supporting the institutional daily life. Thus, it appears that there was a fraction of teachers, students, and employees who, in addition to supporting the military coup, collaborated, through complaints, many of them unfounded, to achieve the objectives of the repressive machine against supposed subversives18 (p. 50). In his study of universities under the military regime, Rodrigo Motta hypothesizes that the persecution of some FMUSP professors as early as 1964 was because:
[...] the traditional institution had to coexist with characters foreign to conservative principles from the end of the 1950s when it began to admit teachers from non-Fourth Century families and also young people linked to the left. At the USP Faculty of Medicine, as in others, political polarization in 1964 was also internal, and some professors became suspect due to their social origin or for questioning traditions. With the political changes of 1964, the right wing of the faculty thought it was time to get rid of the “foreign body”19 (p. 54).
In his letter \'Casa de Arnaldo, circa,\' written in 1964 and published by ‘Revista da USP’ in 1991, Professor Thomas Maack already identified such a structure within the faculty. According to his testimony, there was a group made up of traditionalist doctors and teachers who said they were descendants of an elite school in São Paulo and called themselves \'family\' and an increasingly expressive teaching group coming from an ascending middle class, called by the \'family\' as \' immigrant:\'
[...] “family” knew that it was on the verge of losing its dominance in FMUSP forever – March 31st gave it the last breath of life. Taking advantage of the military coup, an intense and, unfortunately, successful campaign of internal repression and intimidation was launched, the extent of which, to my knowledge, was unparalleled in other schools at Brazilian universities20 (p. 124).
In 1966, the Report of the Permanent Council of Justice analyzed the sentence of the police-military investigation against a group of professors from FMUSP, a student, a doctor, and an employee from the Hospital das Clínicas indicted by Lieutenant Colonel Enio dos Santos Pinheiro due to an anonymous report. The Judge’s arguments revealed part of the content of the accusations and the fragility of the accusatory arguments, to the point that they were all refuted, with the consequent acquittal of the accused. In an article entitled \'Teachers acquitted,\' O Bisturi shared the news:
Regarding another accused individual, Professor Luís Hildebrando Pereira da Silva, the sentence unveils another significant aspect of the accusation: one of the witnesses summoned by the Prosecutor\'s Office ardently defended the accused, resulting in her arrest on the spot for contempt of the presiding judge during the hearing. Another defendant, Professor Michael Rabinovitch, faced allegations of subversion, primarily due to his attendance at a scientific conference in Ribeirão Preto. In this context, the sentence remarks, \'The accused’s participation in the Ribeirão Preto congress as a subversive activity is worthy of laughter\' 21(p. 9).
The following years continued to reverberate the established tensions, but:
[...] it was unnecessary to eliminate all \'immigrants,\' many remained after 1964. After all, someone had to teach medicine at FMUSP. Intimidation, isolation, and demoralization were enough to neutralize them as an internal political force. The dismissal of the seven teachers by Adhemar de Barros\' decree, the indictment of sixteen in the police-military process, and the denunciation lists had this primary function20 (p. 9).
The prevailing institutional climate, full of insinuations and denunciations, directly affected student life at the Faculty of Medicine. With its publication banned, the newspaper O Bisturi went underground. Students were arrested and tortured, and some were killed or disappeared. In October 1964, the Book Fair held by the Oswaldo Cruz Academic Center (CAOC) was accused, within the school itself, of selling works considered subversive. The civil police and the Political and Social Order Police Station (DOPS) were called and seized 18 volumes from the Fair and two from the library. During this police action, there was a new complaint saying that the students had kidnapped the DOPS investigator. O Bisturi himself reports:
With siren and everything, we were taken there. At DOPS we noticed, upon arrival, apprehension on the part of the staff regarding the kidnapped colleague. The delegate saw the books and released them, saying that some were his private reading [...]22 (p. 4).
In 1966, student Reinaldo Morano Filho, president of the Oswaldo Cruz Academic Center (1969), was arrested for the first time. Gelson Reicher and Antonio Carlos Nogueira Cabral, were arrested and killed by repression agencies in April 197223. Fausto Figueira de Mello Junior, a student in the fiftieth class at FMUSP, reports the arrival of Luiz Hirata, a student at the Luís de Queirós Higher School of Agriculture, tortured and taken to the Hospital das Clínicas: “There he was with scars made of wood, on the legs and wrists. His body was a dark paste due to the massive destruction of the muscles, caused by the torture that took place”24 (p. 181).
Case of the police invasion of the University of São Paulo campus in 1977, under the argument that there would be subversive student movement around the UNE Congress. During a public student event, the Faculty of Medicine had its building invaded on September 20th, under the leadership of the then Secretary of Public Security Erasmo Dias, resulting in fines and records at the DOPS-SP: in total, there were 45 medical students, four in physiotherapy, three in speech therapy and one postgraduate student in medicine25.
The Hospital das Clínicas became a “national security area,” functioning as a rearguard for transporting political prisoners injured during the arrest, torture (when there was no intention of physical elimination), or sub judice prisoners and also police officers. There are reports of torture practices (threats, prolonged pain without analgesia, delay in care even in cases of serious trauma6 (p. 31). [...] What was remarkable about this journey through Hospital das Clínicas is that there was a colleague, who I knew from the student movement, who came to a cop – at the time, he was a resident – and said: “She is good. She can take more torture”26.
However, such actions involving doctors were not subsequently investigated by the Brazilian State, even with already irrefutable evidence described in detail in the Truth Commission reports and disclosed in meetings and seminars27. According to Maria Amélia Teles, “the fight to punish doctors, waged over the years by family and human rights groups, is a true juggling act, full of labyrinths and obstacles, with difficult continuity”28 (p. 110-1).
In this context, however, a reformatory curriculum proposal emerged, characterized by its experimental nature and aimed to shape the training of future doctors. The experimental course was short-lived, established in 1967, and completed in 1976. Nonetheless, it facilitated new interactions among faculty members and between faculty and students, although not without internal conflicts within the institution. Nevertheless, his effective contributions, both humanistic and technically innovative, were inadequately publicized and not publicly disseminated. Conversely, this experiment became entangled in the discourses of institutional hegemonic thinking that "belittle the whole truth under the guise of defending old truths"2 (p. 8), which warrants further investigation in this historical study.
The Experimental Medicine Course: a subversive project?
In full force of the dictatorial regime and motivated by the movement of the so-called “surpluses” – a movement in the 1960s that involved high school students who passed the entrance exam but without places to enter existing colleges – an intense discussion about university reform and its structuring mechanisms, like the system of chairs and training centers, resulted in the elaboration of a new curricular project for FMUSP called the Experimental Course (CEM). Born from pressure from the state governor, Abreu Sodré, he demanded more undergraduate places from the faculty. This request entailed:
[...] informal meetings that took place in 1966 in the Clínica Médica amphitheater at the invitation of professor Alípio Correa Netto, who at one point asked professors Isaias Raw and Eduardo Marcondes to present a basic schematic idea for the creation of the experimental medical course for 50 students. The idea presented was discussed and approved by those present and constituted a request to the Director, signed by nine teachers29 (p. 173).
On March 28th, 1967, João Alves Meira, Director of the Faculty of Medicine (1963-1970) and Professor of Tropical and Infectious Diseases approved the formation of a Didactic Guidance Committee for the Experimental Course in Medicine (CODCEM) and, on January 05th 1968, his memorial was sent to the state governor asking for the release of special funds for the installation of the first year of his activities, in addition to the construction of a university hospital. The international references in the project brought CEM closer to experiences considered successful:
[...] it was thought about proposing a more updated teaching structure based on the integrated block teaching model, which the Western Reserve University in Cleveland, United States, had been experimenting with for many years, with great international dissemination through several works in specialized magazines. Thus, the proposal was born with two objectives: integration with the university and modernization of the curriculum30 (p. 15).
There were also two fundamental trends in the proposal in the orientation of medical curricula: “the preparation of professionals to work in hospitals and their preparation to work in the community, understood as a social grouping, from different socioeconomic groups, capable of presenting health problems at a high level, both individual and collective”29 (p. 175). One of the fundamental characteristics of CEM was the proximity between teachers and students, with high student participation in course referrals in the so-called “forums”:
The Forums brought together students and teachers who met during this period to discuss subjects, content, methods, and relationships, with intense student participation. Even though the Forums were places for discussion and without deliberative power, they could influence CODCEM to make decisions, initiate changes to the Course, and also influence teachers to propose changes to their practices and content31 (p. 245)
The Course systematized little teaching material directed at students so that all classes and readings were followed pari passu. That is because the classes were defined during the educational process itself. The didactic contents were implemented in the teachers\' contributions through indicated and reproduced texts, the proposed pedagogical work, and some exercises for the students. In addition to the theoretical classes, the students had to develop research projects, 40 hours per student over four weeks, on the following topics:
(a) Medical profession (expectations before and after training, comparative study between 1st year students and resident doctors); (b) Health indicators (morbidity rates of more prevalent diseases, comparative study between government hospital institution and private hospital institution); (c) Demography (data survey on population policies, comparative study between Malthusian and anti-Malthusian theories)32 (p. 1).
This material defended the end of the asylum regime and denounced the inadequacy of the services provided to the population, indicating the failure of the Brazilian and São Paulo psychiatric system, at the same time that it rehearsed the first psychiatric reform movements, following the example of those developing in Europe and Latin America. About Juqueri Hospital, it said:
[...] on 2/31/1964, it had 13,345 patients. In 1970, it had 17,000 patients. In 1965, one of the sad records at Hospital do Juqueri was its average length of stay, estimated at 1,863 days. The death rate in that institution has been, in consecutive years, much higher than expectations compatible with psychiatric hospitals. It seems that ¼ of discharges there come out in a coffin32 (p. 4)
On August 30th, 1974, Carlos da Silva Lacaz, one of the signatories of the creation of CEM-USP in 1966 and paradoxically its highest opposing leader, was taken to the board of directors of FMUSP (1974-1978) and, in his inauguration speech, announced its first measure: the closure of the Experimental Course. A deeper assessment of what happened in this course reveals a series of intertwined issues that may explain this closure33. Initially, it is worth pointing out the new scenario that the higher education educational policy imposed on FMUSP with Law no. 5,540/1968, reorganizing the areas of teaching and research, creating institutes of basic sciences, allocating teachers to departments and establishing the Guidelines and Bases of National Education for subjects in the basic and professional cycle with semester registration and introduction of the credit system.
This context resulted in immense discomfort at FMUSP, which saw an unexpected and abrupt change in its activities, in addition to losing power previously concentrated in the hands of a specific group of teachers. With this change, FMUSP was:
[...] forced to give up its basic chairs to the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at USP, which was not only an organization where all the professors from the various courses at the University would gather, but also geographically positioned far from the faculty’s headquarters, as it was located in University City. Furthermore, professors are stripped of their positions and lifetime and, alongside their assistants, are placed in departments34 (p. 93).
Carlos da Silva Lacaz\'s rise to power – whether as Secretary of Health for the Municipality of São Paulo under Paulo Salim Maluf in 1970 or as director of FMUSP in 1974 – would have caused the crisis at Experimental. According to Guilherme Rodrigues da Silva, he would be interested in higher positions, which would have led him to oppose the course:
[...] the unit director was Professor Carlos da Silva Lacaz, who decided to run for the Ministry of Health with the military government. He decided to open a political process that would guarantee – at least he thought so, but the military thought the opposite – his appointment to the Ministry. Lacaz decided, as director, to propose the extinction of the course with the argument that it was a group of communists. Why was this bizarre argument used? Calling Isaias Raw a communist is a fantastic thing. Calling me, thankfully, but Isaias and Eduardo Marcondes, calling them communists was an incomprehensible thing if that kind of thing wasn\'t behind it30 (p. 16-7).
It was within this framework and with the support of the Congregation of the Faculty that, in his inauguration speech, Carlos da Silva Lacaz asked for the constitution of a Commission to proceed with the closure of the CEM-USP project and its incorporation into the traditional course, for a project called curricular fusion, starting in 1976. In a letter sent to students, Carlos Lacaz criticized the current situation and, between the lines, expressed himself about how he understood the CEM-USP proposal:
The Congregation of the Faculty of Medicine, made up of professors of the moral and scientific stature of a Décourt, a Zerbini, and its dean, Professor Cintra, wished to safeguard the name of the great institution, already so sacrificed by the university reform, by stripping it of its pre-clinical chairs. It was urgent to reformulate the curriculum at the Faculty of Medicine, whose teaching had been hampered in recent years, demotivating students and causing them to abandon the medical course35 (p. 1).
Given this position, in which criticism of the division of courses between clinical and basic courses was already implicit, with the 1968 Reform, the Experimental Course was not spared. Chaired by Professor João Alves Meira, a committee was formed responsible for developing a single program, predicting that in 1979, all students would be unified by a single curriculum, as happened.
The figure of Guilherme Rodrigues da Silva gained centrality in guiding the participation of the Department of Preventive Medicine at CEM-USP. When he arrived as a full professor in 1967, the course had already been created, but he was soon placed as one of the organizers to monitor its progress daily. To the idea that he would be another “immigrant” was added his “mulatto” origin and his “communist” convictions, attributes that placed him under more suspicion and persecution31 (p. 112). In Moisés Goldbaum’s interpretation of this presence:
[...] Professor Guilherme joined (the majority of this group of professors were impeached and compulsorily retired, if not arrested, by the civil-military dictatorship; Professor Guilherme escaped this unfortunate and disastrous beheading because his political commitment was little known in São Paulo, remembering his recent incorporation into the ranks of USP)36 (p. 2131).
Regarding the approach to health issues through the social sciences, a central point in the definition of what should be called Collective Health and characterized as a sociology of health, in line with the more practical and integral teaching perspective of the CEM-USP, the option fell on a 1st-year subject that used operational and field research with medical subjects to discuss social theories, taught by the sociologist and professor Maria Cecília Ferro Donnangelo from the Department of Preventive Medicine. The FMUSP used an earlier trick to solve this problem: it appointed the Department of Forensic Medicine as the official responsible for this discipline and an open action linked to the Department of Social Sciences, thus ending this formative experience in the undergraduate program. In addition, some professors began to denounce professors in the department as politically subversive members of the Samuel B. Pessoa school, particularly those involved in mental health.
Right at the beginning of classes in 1976, there was an open action linked to the Social Sciences discipline, ending this formative undergraduate experience. Along with the curriculum fusion project, a statement was sent to the then-coordinator of the USP Undergraduate Chamber about the fact that they had been allowed:
[...] evident distortions of the current curricular structure that are not meeting teaching needs, whose standard, according to teachers, has been falling alarmingly. Disciplines not relevant to medical training, such as ‘Social Sciences,’ have been taught [...] [and an urgent request was made] for the suppression of the Social Sciences discipline, whose content is identical to that taught in a department of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences35 (p. 1).
In a letter sent to the coordinator of the Faculty\'s Undergraduate Chamber on October 1st, 1976, a group of 36 professors suggested curricular changes in light of the consequences of the merger between Experimental and Traditional. They proposed placing ‘the Social Sciences course integrated with the subjects of Legal Medicine and Brazilian Problems’35(p. 1). Reading this proposal, the Oswaldo Cruz Academic Center and the FMUSP student representation in the Congregation called an assembly and distributed material titled: THE NEWEST THREAT TO THE FMUSP MEDICAL COURSE. The text dealt with the extinction of the block system, the reduction of the mathematics and statistics course load, the speed of resolution, which would come into force in 1977, and, finally, ‘the virtual extinction of the Social Sciences Course, with eventual transfer to the Department of Legal Medicine’35 (p. 1).
Final considerations
This analysis brings new perspectives to the study of the military dictatorship in its relationship with academic institutions, showing the impacts of this new relationship on the structure of departments and the relationship established with professors, students, and employees. The two parts of this study seek precisely to present what would be in the memory of some, but without the methodological limitations that History imposes, giving a historical meaning to the data.
The opposition born from the experience of the new course implemented and the belief that there was a subversive movement in progress, if, on the one hand, it made no sense when checking the teachers\' proposal in the formulation of the Experimental Course, on the other, with its innovations pedagogical, challenged the conservatism and authoritarianism that was intended to be maintained and deepened. The Department of Preventive Medicine case elucidated that the Experimental Course was an experience that sought a new perspective on medical training, broader, connected with social life, requiring innovative and creative reasoning. It is relevant to say that innovative experiences were not unknown to the institution. Just remember the 1950s, when the faculty was at its peak, including the existence of the Department of Parasitology, with the influence of Samuel Pessoa. The tradition\'s discourse that opposed the Experimental was an invention of the moment, recalling the conservatism of the institution.
After several decades, Professors Erney Felício Plessmann de Camargo, Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva, Luiz Rey, Michel Pinkus Rabinovitch, Pedro Henrique Saldanha and Thomaz Maack were awarded emeritus professorships in a special session of the Congregation on September 18, 2008, in an attitude that the then director of the Faculty of Medicine, Marcos Boulos, described as a historic renegotiation. Isaias Raw, who already held this title, was awarded the “Arnaldo Vieira de Carvalho” medal. The idea was to make the first movement towards a new constitution of memory in the face of so many others that the institution later experienced, with the aim of reassembling voices, characters, and experiences lived by and at the Faculty of Medicine. We can say that the military dictatorship is not over and will continue to exist, as there is an open history that cannot be closed until we have opened our public institutions to historical studies about the period in question.
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