Interview with Fred Morris: An Experience of Torture in Brazil

Fred Morris went to Brazil in 1964 as a missionary of the United Methodist Church and served for nearly five years in southern Brazil near Rio de Janeiro. He returned to the U.S. in 1968 to do graduate study in urban sociology at the University of Chicago, after which he went back to Recife in northeastern Brazil. There he organized a community center which housed a tutorial program for children and a family planning clinic (one of the few such clinics in Brazil) among Recife’s urban poor.

Through an ecumenical worship and fellowship team, Morris came into close association with Dom Helder Camara. Fred was also doing some part-time journalism for Time magazine and The Associated Press.

Wes: What were the circumstances that led to your arrest and torture in Brazil?

Fred: As a result of my involvement with Time magazine and my friendship with Dom Helder in the ecumenical work, the Brazilian army became extremely unhappy with me. Just two years ago, June 24, 1974, Time published a full page story on Dom Helder. It was very uncomplimentary of the repressive Brazilian regime and talked about how Dom Helder fights against their use of torture. The Brazilian army officials in Recife wrongly assumed that I was the author of the article. Actually I didn’t even know that it was going to be in the magazine until I bought the magazine and read it. I was called in for questioning on three different occasions, in July by Colonel Meziat, the head of intelligence in the Fourth Army of Recife. They were extremely upset about this article. They had all sorts of questions about my relationship to Dom Helder and accused me of being in all sorts of subversive activities, said that my name had been cited by a number of known subversives, though they would not say who these people were. There was no opportunity for defense.

At the end of the third period of questioning, Colonel Meziat said they had been checking me out. If I avoided any further contacts with Dom Helder and any journalistic activities and minded my own business, everything would be alright. I rather naively assumed that it was and went about my business.

On the morning of September 30, I was leaving my apartment in the company of a very close Brazilian friend of mine, Alanir Cardoso. As we were getting in my car, about a dozen men materialized out of nowhere with machine guns and 45 caliber automatics. With a great deal of hustle and bustle we were forced into the back of a station wagon. Our heads were covered with cloth hoods as we were forced to lie down on the floor, and we were taken immediately to Fourth Army headquarters about five minutes away from where I live.

In the prison we were forced to remove all our clothing except for shorts. Rings, watches, and anything that would give us a sense of identity and dignity were taken from us. We were separated then.

I was put into a five-by-seven foot cell and left alone for about ten to fifteen minutes. After a few minutes I began hearing my friend’s voice screaming in obvious pain. Of course I knew as soon as they got us what we were in for. Torture is very common in Brazil -- it’s what happens to everybody that falls in the hands of the army. It’s routine, even if they don’t have anything on you. It’s just sort of what they do to warm you up.

After a few minutes they came for me. I had been lying down on the floor, resting and waiting, feeling the unreality of it all.

Wes: Had any foreign citizen been tortured before?

Fred: No, and I was still nurturing some hope that they might just be trying to scare me.

While I was waiting I found myself very self-consciously and deliberately repeating Psalm 23, not with any kind of thought that God was going to come and deliver me from this but knowing that he was with me. And this is what I was reminding myself of as I repeated it. On the way from my cell to the torture chamber I would again repeat for myself the psalm, which took just about that long. And I found it a tremendous source of strength every time they would come for me, which was very frequently the first four days. I knew that hundreds, if not thousands of other Christians through the centuries, had no doubt used this same psalm in similar situations and found the same strength. I kept reminding myself that there is more to me than these people were going to be able to touch. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” They can kill me, but I don’t have to be afraid of them because I’m in God’s hands. I found it to be a tremendous source of tranquility even though I was in an absolutely hopeless situation.

Usually in Brazil it’s about a three-to-four week period of torture for openers. And then you may get out, you may be dead, or you may be in prison for years. So all of this was going through my mind while I was waiting, and here was my friend screaming.

Then they came and got me and took me off to what was the torture chamber. I was taken to one end of it, and my hands were handcuffed behind my back. I had a hood over my head and had no clothes on except my shorts. There were a number of men in the room who immediately began yelling questions at me. Nurturing the hope that as an American citizen I might not have to go the whole route, I reminded them of that fact, and formally said that I wanted to see the American consul. That was the first time that they hit me. The guy hit me in the belly and said, “Here’s your consul.”

They began asking where I was going, where I was taking my car and my friend Alanir. They weren’t interested in the answers; they asked the question and started hitting me before I had a chance to answer. I was subjected to about twenty minutes of this kind of questioning, which was designed to disorient and thoroughly intimidate me. I was kicked in the groin three times in succession, until I was laid out altogether, and then I was forced to get up again for more questions and beatings.

Wes: This all took place the first time?

Fred: Right, this was for openers. After about fifteen or twenty minutes, all of a sudden there was this complete silence and everybody left except for one guy. I heard him filling a bucket with water, which he poured on my legs and on the floor around me. Then he came back with electrodes, fastening one to the second toe of my right foot and the other fastened with a spring clip to the nipple of my right breast, cutting right into the flesh. Then of course I knew what I was in for -- because electric shock is their standard torture technique. He went back and sat down at what must have been a table and began asking the same questions -- only this time, with the question would come electric shock.

The first shocks with the electrodes went on for probably fifteen or twenty minutes. The current would increase to the point of producing muscular convulsions, and I would just be thrown to the floor. And then he would turn the current off, and if I didn’t get up rapidly enough, even with my hands handcuffed behind my back on the wet floor with no clothes on, he would turn on the current with light doses, like a cattle prod. As soon as I would get on my feet again, it would be the same thing: more questions, turning on the electric shock, increasing the voltage until I would be thrown to the floor again. We did that for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Then he came over and took the electrode off my breast and put it on my right ear. He sat down, and we went through the same thing, only this time the shocks were actually much more painful, going through my head. They were just indescribable. The shock, of course, would always produce some rather impressive screams.

After about fifteen or twenty minutes of that, he came and took it off of my ear and put it on my penis and went back and sat down and started all over again. Not only is it extremely painful, but it triggers a nerve reaction in the legs. I was in a standing position, and when the current would get to a certain point, my legs would just simply fly up in front of me, contracting at the hips, and I would fall on my back from this height to the floor. I got some dandy bruises and sprained my wrists on these handcuffs behind my back. I got pretty well beat up by that.

I think the whole first session was about an hour and a half, counting the beatings and the shocks. By that time I was really just sort of in limbo, which is I think a physiological and psychological defense mechanism. You get to the point where it is just not real, you are really not even there anymore. You are just kind of hanging on. It was all sort of a big blur. And when they became aware of that, they stopped, because they don’t want you to get to that position. Then you are not hurting badly enough: that is sort of anesthesia. They took me back to my cell and took the handcuffs off from behind my back and put them through a bar in the door and fastened them at eye level, so that I was forced to remain in a standing position. Then they left me in the cell for about ten or fifteen minutes.

And then back to it again. This we were to do all day long. They would torture me until I would get in that blurred state of mind and then take me back until I got myself back together and then back for more. The only variation to all that first day were two times when they strapped me to an arm chair and put the electrode on my breast and on my ear, which was by far the worse shock -- they knocked me out a couple of times -- and brought in my friend, Alanir. They were torturing me in front of him to try to get him to say where he was staying.

Wes: Was it of particular significance that you were with this friend?

Fred: Alanir and I had been friends for two and a half years when this all happened. Our friendship was a very close one, but not a political one, and certainly didn’t involve anything that would in a normal society be considered subversive. I did not know of his involvement in anything political.

What I found out afterwards from a priest friend who got to see him in prison was that back about 1968 Alanir and some other students at a university in southern Brazil protested independence day celebrations by throwing firecrackers into an army band as they were marching by, disrupting the parade. It’s not exactly heavy stuff. But as a result of that, several of the young kids were captured and tortured and implicated my friend Alanir as one of the ring leaders. He was not imprisoned. And in Brazil you don’t turn yourself in to explain things. That’s suicide.

So he left and went into hiding and apparently changed his name and got a new identity, and that’s when he went to the northeast. They tried and convicted him in absentia and sentenced him to two and a half years in prison for his participation in that independence day prank.

What I’ve been able to imagine is that I had been under surveillance from July on. I know they had been watching my home and tapping my phone. Alanir had just dropped by to see me the first week in September when we were arrested. Earlier, the first week in March, he had come by and had lunch with me. They probably got a picture of him at that time, and then found that this was a wanted man for this heinous crime down in southern Brazil, participating in the disruption of a band. So they waited for him to come back because that would be a legitimization of their grabbing me.

Their real purpose in all of this was aimed at Dom Helder Camara, of course. The interrogation after this first day, and from then on, was all aimed primarily at Dom Helder and Time magazine. They were trying to get me to say that I was a communist, that Alanir was a communist, and that Dom Helder was cooperating with the Communist Party.

I think they were hopeful that if they tortured me for two or three days I would confess to being a communist, and then they could tell the State Department that I was a confessed communist, and the Department probably wouldn’t give them any static, so they could get away with anything.

Wes: That was the second day?

Fred: Yes. That night they hung me up at the door of my cell. I guess that they got tired and went home. I stood up all night, shackled to the door of my cell. Early the next morning, probably around 7, they came for me and we went through the same kind of things all over again. The questioning was again more specific. They began to ask me about my career as a missionary and my relationship to Dom Helder. The electric shock was constant. I was usually seated for this, and the guy was writing all sorts of notes. They were asking questions, and sometimes we would talk for ten or fifteen minutes with no shock, and then all of a sudden out of the blue would come one that would shock the daylights out of me, which was all designed to keep me nervous and upset. This went on all day Tuesday.

My jailer had heard that I was a minister of a church and came some time Tuesday late afternoon while I was alone in the cell. He opened the door and said, “Are you really a protestant pastor?” I said, “Yes.” He just shook his head and closed the door; he just couldn’t believe it. Later that evening, apparently taking pity on me, he gave me about a half a glass of water and a piece of bread, which was the first bread or water that I had had in 36 hours.

I was questioned off and on until fairly late in the evening and then was allowed to sleep. They just dumped me on the floor; I was so exhausted then that I slept through until six or so in the morning.

Wednesday, back to the same. The intensity of the physical barbarity was declining Wednesday afternoon. I was quite aware that something was different because I wasn’t getting shocked or beaten to the same degree. I found out later that that was exactly when Richard Brown, the U.S. consul, began to really put the heat on them and got them to admit that they had me in custody. The first Monday or Tuesday they had been denying that. My fiancee, now my wife, had notified the American consul Monday afternoon that something had happened. I think the Brazilian officials realized that they were going to have to show the body sooner or later.

Wednesday morning they had started a slightly different technique. Instead of having me stand or strapped to a chair, they shackled me with the handcuffs over my head against a wall, and they were beating me. They had some kind of a gadget -- I never saw one, but I felt it. It felt like a little wheel with spikes on it. And they would run this across my back. As they would push down on it, it would produce electric shock.

By Wednesday night, I was really exhausted. I hadn’t had any food at all, except that water and a piece of bread. I could feel my heart palpitating real rapidly and then real slowly. Around midnight they took me in for some more questioning. It was about this time that they began making accusations that I was with the CIA. I think that this was probably a result of the pressure that they were getting from the American consul. They were puzzled that they were getting this pressure. They made me stand up again all night, from midnight until morning. Thursday morning I was really in bad shape.

On Thursday, the basic rough stuff had stopped, but there were lots of threats and intimidation. I was slapped around a little bit, but no electric shock on Thursday and no serious beatings, just sort of open-handed stuff. Thursday afternoon around 2:00 p.m. Major Maia, who was the head of the torture section, came in and told me that they were going to take me to see the American consul. They wanted me to take a bath and get cleaned up.

Wes: What happened then?

Fred: They had me get dressed. They threatened me pretty thoroughly, saying that if I said anything unacceptable I would be in real trouble because I had to go back for more questioning. They took me out to a place about a half hour outside of town and put me into a nice little guest room and told me that within a few minutes the American consul would come.

After about 40 minutes, the consul hadn’t arrived, and I began remembering the number of political prisoners in Brazil that had been assassinated by the Brazilian army. They kidnap somebody and just simply shoot them, and then they come up with the story of mistaken identity or resisting arrest, or anything that is convenient. All of a sudden I realized that I didn’t know that anyone even knew where I was. They had told me that the American consul was coming to see me, but that was just their word. I began imagining all sorts of things, that maybe they were setting me up, got me all dressed up so that I would look decent, and then they were just going to wipe me out.

About this time I heard a noise outside the window, and about 25 feet away a Brazilian soldier dropped down out of a tree. He had an automatic rifle in his hand, and he started snaking his way through the grass. When he had stopped moving, he had lined up that rifle right on my forehead. The consul was supposed to have been there at four, they had said, and here it was getting close to five, and here was this rifle at my head. The more I thought about, the more it made sense that that’s what they were going to do. I was convinced that this guy was just waiting for the order to shoot me. And I sat there for about another forty minutes, just waiting.

That was when I really faced my own death, because I really was sure that October 3 was going to be my last day. I realized then that I could do it, and I wasn’t anxious about it, although I wasn’t all that happy about the prospect. But I really did not feel fear as I had thought I would feel, and I became aware of the fact that the ultimate victory is ours in Christ and because of that these people can do whatever they want, and they lose.

I was thinking about this when the door suddenly opened and in came Richard Brown, the U.S. consul, accompanied by a Brazilian colonel. I don’t suppose I was ever as glad to see another human being as I was to see him, because it was over, and I knew that at least some form of help had arrived. So we sat down and talked, I guess for about an hour and a half.

Mr. Brown started off by asking me how I was. I was very much aware of all the intimidation the day before, that if I talked too much I was going to be in for more of the same. So I said, “So-so.” So he said, “Well, have you been mistreated in any way?” And very much aware of the colonel’s presence, I said, “No,” but winked at him with my left eye, so he could understand. He perceived immediately what was going on and said, “Mr. Morris, I want you to understand that there has been very high diplomatic pressure brought to bear in order to get me in here to see you, and I can assure you that if anything happens to you after this point there will be hell to pay at the very highest levels, so I hope that you will tell me everything that has happened.” Now that was all I needed, so I told him the whole thing like I‘ve been telling you, blow by blow.

Then I was taken back down to where I was before in the evening. They must have been recording the whole thing at the other location because later they were already aware of what I had said. I was taken in for questioning. This time I was strapped to the chair but no electrodes. Someone took a formal deposition. When that was over, I was taken back to my cell, and as I was getting near the cell, the guy who had been interrogating me, who was my chief torturer all of the way through, said, “Squealed’ on all of us, huh?” And he gave me big kick in the tail, but that’s the last time that they laid hands on me.

I spent the next two weeks in solitary confinement. From Saturday on, I saw Mr. Brown for fifteen minutes every day. I was interrogated regularly, and there was considerable psychological torture -- they were still making threats, and I would be woken up in the middle of the night and interrogated for five or six hours or would be made to stand up for hours at a time while answering questions -- but it was all pretty small potatoes after those first four days.

Finally, after a total of 17 days, they took me to my house and had me pack a suitcase and put me on a jetliner for New York.

Wes: Could you describe what the purpose of torture is in repressive societies such as Brazil?

Fred: I think basically that there is a universal dynamic here that applies to all repressive regimes irrespective of ideology -- to Brazil and Chile and Korea and Russia and Iran. One purpose of torture is information gathering. Brazil successfully wiped out a rash of urban guerillas in 1969 by the use of torture. They would get somebody that they suspected of being involved in one of these subversive groups, and they would torture them for the names of all their friends. They would bring in and torture all of their friends and ask in turn for the names of their acquaintances. Out of 500 people tortured, they probably found three or four legitimate subversives. That’s a massive overkill, but it does work in that kind of a situation. However, in Brazil, since 1969 or 1970, there has been no visible, organized resistance activity. So information gathering is a minimal purpose. The main purpose in any of these societies is social intimidation.

When I taught at the University of Recife, one of my students was a 20-year-old girl who was secretary of the student council. The army one day picked up the president, the vice-president, the secretary, and one member of the student council and tortured them for three weeks, then sent them back to the university. No accusations were ever made against them, no allegations of involvement in subversion. You can imagine the kind of student activities you have on a campus where three or four people are picked up and tortured simply because they are on the student council. It’s just to let everybody know. It’s extremely effective. The main purpose of torture in a society like this is social repression and inhibition, rather than information gathering. It’s not very effective as a means of getting information, because once people break under torture they say anything, and a lot of the things that they say are just not accurate.

Wes: What about torture’s roots. It’s one thing to say it’s simply necessary to keep a repressive government in power, but does it go deeper than that? Why is it necessary for a particular government not just to stay in power but to keep alive an atmosphere of apparent tranquility?

Fred: Now you are getting to the heart of the matter -- the social, economic structure of the society. I don’t think we Americans want to understand this aspect because it makes us feel bad to know about it. But it’s the real story.

Labor unions have been wiped out, wages are controlled by the government, profits are completely free, management does what it wants. It’s an investor’s paradise. And they deliberately choose to make the rich richer and the poor poorer in order to increase investment capital. Now when you have a government like that, over the last ten years the poor people, the bottom sixty percent of Brazil, are worse off now than they were a decade ago. When you have that kind of skewing of income, with a government that is unpopular, that came into power by force and not by anyone’s choice, it requires repression to stay in power. It requires the appearance of tranquility and stability in order to encourage foreign investors to want to continue to put their money in there.

A country like Brazil is an investors’ paradise because there is stability. One of the things that any American multinational group would emphasize over and over again is the stability of the regime. And that’s an immeasurable plus to foreign investors. What they don’t want to recognize is the cost of this stability -- not just the cost in terms of the bodies that are tortured but also in the millions of people who are hungry and who are staying hungry and who are condemned to perpetual pauperism.

There is nothing in the Brazilian development model that will ever include these people at the bottom of the mass. It’s not intended to. Those people are permanently excluded from that. And when you have that kind of development model in operation, you have to use repression to keep the thing going because otherwise it will fall apart. People will rise up and do something.

Wes: Look at our major allies. Increasingly those allies where we have the deepest, economic relationships are those countries where, frequently, the grossest forms of torture and repression are practiced.

Fred: Yes, with the exception of western Europe.

Wes: Iran, Brazil, Philippines, Korea, Chile, South Africa. It seems like the roots to it have to do with the placing of economic interests over human rights. How much do you think that the whole lifestyle Americans are accustomed to has a real relationship to the kind of torture that you endured as an individual?

Fred: I think that it’s all of a piece. I don’t think it’s any question but that the whole social and economic order that we are accustomed to, which is our consumer-oriented lifestyle, is part and parcel of the kind of support a regime like Brazil gets from the United States. Now this isn’t to say that every American businessman who is investing in Brazil is willfully or knowingly involved in the torture apparatus. We’re talking about a systemic problem and many of the people in the system have no idea of the ramifications of what they are doing.

Wes: Your situation, with an American consul intervening, was not really typical, even for the Brazilians.

Fred: Not at all. My Brazilian friend Alanir is still in prison. That’s a point that needs to be made. Torture in Brazil is as great today as it has ever been, in terms of its intensity and the numbers subjected to it.

On the first of April of this year, four of the fellow prisoners of my friend Alanir in political prison in Recife, people who have been in prison for three to five years, were taken out of their cells to the air force headquarters in Recife and tortured for 24 hours and taken back. No one yet knows why except it was the twelfth anniversary of the military takeover. Whether that is a sort of celebration event that they have or not, I don’t know, but a guy that has been in jail for four years can’t possibly be a security threat to anybody.

My friend Alanir Cardoso was tortured for at least a month and a half after I left. He didn’t have any American consul to get him out. He is still in prison, and they haven’t even tried him. He is just there.

Wes: How did your experience deepen your compassion for those to whom you ministered?

Fred: I became identified with the Brazilian people in a manner that would have been impossible in any other way. For 17 days I was a Brazilian, with no future, no options, at the mercy of my oppressors. Spiritually, this was a great gift.