Torturing the Torturers With Truth : A MIRACLE, A UNIVERSE Settling Accounts With Torturers <i> by Lawrence Weschler (Pantheon Books: $22.95; 300 pp.; 0-394-58207-1) </i>

Repression in some countries in recent years reached such heights that in the mind of one 5-year-old, even the birds in the forest took to hiding. Lawrence Weschler’s book explores the use of state terror by military regimes in Brazil (1964-85) and Uruguay (1973-85) to impose particular political, economic and social models. His account is part adventure story, part political and economic history and part first-rate journalism.

The author’s purpose is to respond to the cry of the tortured, the disappeared, the assassinated who have been told again and again that no one will ever hear them, nor know their fate. For torture to be effective, the victim must feel abandoned and the torturer secure as a result of a sense of impunity. Truth-telling breaks down both the victim’s anguished solitude, which survives long after the crime, and the torturer’s security that his or her actions will never be judged.

Truth-telling also is an essential ingredient for the recuperation of societies and individuals that have experienced high levels of repression. It is particularly important in facilitating the establishment of the rule of law in fragile democracies such as those that have emerged in Latin America in the 1980s.

The adventure story is Weschler’s account of how a band of slightly more than 30 Brazilians managed in three years to smuggle out the entire contents of a military archive, photocopy it and replace it without being discovered. The 1 million pages of documents thus obtained revealed the nature and extent of torture in Brazil, information that was computerized and distilled into one volume that analyzed the tortures used, the torturers and their justifications, and the background and fates of the victims.

Two hundred eighty-three different tortures were catalogued in alphabetical order with rates of incidence and descriptions of the instruments used. Four hundred forty-four torturers were identified, most of whom were military men, although a few were doctors. One thousand four hundred sixty-one men and 382 women had the courage to denounce their mistreatment in military courts. The majority (947) were under 30, although 27 were over 60. The height of the torture was in 1969 and 1970, and by the mid-1970s, such abuse was declining as the military embarked on a process of liberalization.

These chilling statistics provided the framework for the book “Brasil: Nunca Mais” (Brazil: Never Again), which appeared unexpectedly in bookstores on July 15, 1985, shortly after the return to civilian government. Written and published in secret, it became an immediate best seller. In this fashion, the military learned that a handful of lawyers had legitimately checked out every single case in the archive, had them photocopied overnight and returned by the next day. Three photocopy machines were kept running 24 hours a day by clerks who had no idea what they were involved in.

Funded by the World Council of Churches, the enterprise was coordinated by a Presbyterian minister, Jaime Wright, working for the Catholic cardinal of Sao Paulo, Paulo Evaristo Arns. In response to Weschler’s query as to how they could carry off something like this under the noses of the military, Wright replied that the armed forces “after so many years of successful represssion . . . could not imagine that anyone would still have the gall to be attempting anything on such a scale. The possibility never entered their minds. It didn’t--it couldn’t --occur to them.” Not only did it happen, but after publication, many of the victims testified to having been helped to heal by having their stories told.

In the Uruguayan case, the suspense is provided by Weschler’s account of the struggle over the 1985 amnesty law absolving those, largely the military, who engaged in torture and other abuses from any judicial sanctions. By late 1987, 634,802 signatures had been obtained, and after a year of challenges, the Electoral Court finally set the referendum for April 16, 1989.

In a small country of approximately 3 million people, virtually no Uruguayan family was untouched by the repression. According to Amnesty International, from 1973 to 1985 one in every 50 Uruguayans was detained for interrogation, one in 500 was imprisoned for political offenses and 300,000 to 400,000 went into exile.

The military government justified torture on the grounds that it was necessary to break the urban-guerrilla movement, the Tupamaros, as well as discipline society in order to unleash the national potential, particularly after economic downturn in the 1960s and early 1970s. The military government was not, however, ultimately successful in revitalizing the economy, and human-rights violations further eroded its claims to legitimacy.

Hence, when the armed forces returned to the barracks in 1985, Uruguayans rejoiced. But the question of amnesty roiled the political waters, with politicians and ordinary citizens debating which would be more dangerous, not to try the torturers or to try them. Ultimately, the majority of voters opted for the former in the hopes that such action would allow the country to heal. Weschler clearly feels that the airing of the issues during the fight over the referendum constituted a form of truth-telling and gave notice that in the future, impunity would be more difficult to obtain.

In his explorations of Brazilian and Uruguayan political and economic history, Weschler plumbs three important issues: the emergence of national security ideology as a rationale for repressive military regimes, the viability of neoconservative economic models in countries such as Brazil and Uruguay, and the role of the Catholic Church and liberation theology as defenses against human-rights violations.

In dealing with the roots of national security ideology, Weschler tends to focus on contemporaneous developments and fails to explore its roots in 19th-Century European geopolitical thought, and the professionalization of the Uruguayan and Brazilian militaries, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s. As a consequence, at times he tends to accept caricatures, as he does in styling the Uruguayan military as little more than traffic cops up to the 1960s. In so doing, he suggests an almost overnight transformation from Keystone Kops to a highly complex bureaucratic institution with sophisticated ideological underpinnings. This tendency is less pronounced in his analysis of the Brazilian military.

Weschler’s exploration is sketchy on the reasons for the failure of industrialization models in Brazil and Uruguay, and the emergence of neoconservative strategies that resulted initially in high growth rates and later economic chaos. The continuing appeal of the latter, even among the middle and working classes (as evidenced by the recent election of Fernando Color de Mello as president of Brazil), is hence inexplicable.

Similarly, his analysis of the political and ideological divisions within the Brazilian Catholic Church is slightly Manichaean, and his comments on liberation theology fail to show it as part of a long-term historical process.

Ultimately, Weschler is at his best in capturing the words and feelings of those for whom the struggle for democracy is centered on the defense of human rights. The book brilliantly depicts how, in the face of extreme repression, there were courageous individuals who pointed the way back to freedom.

Weschler demonstrates the importance of truth-telling for that journey, and for the healing of whole societies.