In the first years of the military dictatorship, students, artists, and intellectuals could still protest the regime, and violent repression was reserved for union leaders and the organized left. In the anos de chumbo, from 1969 to 1974, all that changed. Anyone could be suspected of being a “subversive” and taken off to a basement in São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro for rounds of torture that might end in death. In addition to their constant contact with the US government, soldiers learned techniques that the French had developed in Algeria, like the use of electric shocks.10
