‘Scientific torture’? Scientism and the marks of torture inside a police station in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Uma ciência da tortura? Cientificismo e marcas de tortura numa delegacia de Belo Horizonte, Brasil

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine several architectural marks registered during 2013-2015 at the police station that once housed the DOPS, the headquarters of Brazil’s dictatorial police in the city of Belo Horizonte. To understand their importance as archaeological findings, we propose an analysis of ‘scientific torture’. We will examine the phrase’s genealogy and the practices associated with it in the second half of the twentieth century. While practiced by a number of institutions from several countries, it was the CIA that created an entire research program to organize bodies of knowledge about torture practices, producing now declassified documents about ‘interrogation techniques’. First, we will discuss some of the materialized practices developed as a result of those efforts. Second, we will discuss how these practices are reflected in the Kubark interrogation manual, edited by the CIA in 1963, particularly in what pertains to its more architectural recommendations. Finally, we will analyze the building which once housed the DOPS, to expose the notable congruencies between its architectural recommendations and the marks recorded at the DOPS building.

Key words:
Torture; Archaeology of Repression; Interrogation; Internment; CIA