Rioters, rowdies, guerrilla fighters: an event in the democratic transition

ABSTRACT Recently, the archives of the Brazilian Federal District’s Department of Public Safety regarding the Military Dictatorship was open to the public. A dossier on the “badernaço” (a riot that happened after a demonstration of Plano Cruzado II) is part of these archives. It is the documentation of the commission of inquiry that was established to the allegations that the “badernaço” occurred with the collusion or cooperation of sectors of the government, such as the Public Safety Department or the so-called “information community”. This article analyzes this dossier from the perspective of the topics of the “democratic transition” and the survivals of the Military Dictatorship (which are understood, conceptually, in terms of the ghostly, spectral).