The House of Death and a human incinerator: dark tales from Brazil’s military dictatorship

This week, a federal court in the city of Campos dos Goytacazes, in the north of Rio de Janeiro state, ordered the condemnation of the Cambaíba industrial complex, home to an abandoned sugarcane mill of the same name. While seemingly an innocuous development, expropriating land that has been unproductive since 2012, the decision has links to one of the darkest chapters of Brazil’s military dictatorship.

During the brutal regime, the military held dozens of political prisoners at a clandestine detention center in the city of Petrópolis, morbidly nicknamed the “House of Death.” There, men and women were tortured and executed. The regime used the Cambaíba sugarcane mill’s facilities to incinerate their corpses.

Running concurrently with the condemnation of the Cambaíba industrial complex, federal prosecutors seek to convict a group of former military agents for severe human rights violations in the kidnapping and disappearance of lawyer Paulo de Tarso Celestino da Silva, in 1971.

The case in question refers to the period in which Mr. Celestino da Silva was held at the House of Death. While from the outside, the building appears to be a normal home, the atrocities committed within mark some of the darkest days of Brazil’s dictatorship....