"The Unpast examines how and why, after the abolition of slavery, elites in Brazil imported new methods of killing, torturing, or disfiguring dissidents and the poor to maintain dominance. Bringing a critical-historical analysis to events following the 1954 suicide of President Getulio Vargas, R. S. Rose takes the reader through a fifty-year period that helped to shape a nation's moral climate. He covers the misunderstood presidency of Joao Goulart, the overthrow of his government by a U. S. -assisted military, the appalling dictatorship that followed; the efforts to rid the countryside of troublemakers, and the ongoing attempt to rid the urban environment of the needy - an endeavor that produced 32,675 victims in just two Brazilian states between 1954 and 2000. " "The largest and most comprehensive documentation of suspected death-squad victims ever undertaken, The Unpast is an expose of practices and attitudes toward the poor in Latin America's largest country. "--BOOK JACKET.