ABSTRACT
This article is the result of a technical advice favorable to the opening of the documents of the Secretariat of Public Security of Distrito Federal, made upon request of its Public Archive. The technical advice was requested in order to evaluate the historical and public relevance of the documents of the military dictatorship (1964-1988). The themes here discussed are related to the historical value of the collection, the expectations regarding memory and truth and the limits set by policies, deliberated or not, of silence and forgetfulness. Our objective is to present this collection to new inquiries, relating it with the politics of preservation and the lapses of the dictatorial archives. Methodologically, we departed from a direct contact with these documents, studying them in the light of the political history. The idea of patchwork refers to a historiography made with pieces and remnants of lost or forgotten information.
Keywords:
archives; military dictatorship; memory; forgetfulness