Democracy and the paradoxes of the discourse on torture in Brazil

Despite the fact that torture is on first inspection observed as an inacceptable practice in contemporary societies, when one looks further, two different discourses are identified : one that legitimates torture and another one that refuses it. This article will focus on the discourse that rejects torture and on the "construction of the sense of the problem" (Bachelard) of torture in Brazil and its explanations. These explanations are somewhat based on the belief that the persistence of torture in Brazil during the democratization period is due to its fragile democratic consolidation. This kind of reasoning carries some blind spots that prevent us from seeing important aspects, like the fact that torture is not the exclusive reality of authoritative regimes, but also, unfortunately, of democracies.