BRAZIL:
Mother Courage of the Fashion World
Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO,  (IPS) - The film "Zuzu Angel", which hits theatres in Brazil Friday, providing a fresh look at the crimes committed by the country's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, ends with a moving new version of renowned singer-songwriter Chico Buarque's 1977 song "Angélica", which was written in homage to Zuleika Angel Jones.

Angel Jones, better known as Zuzu, was a Brazilian fashion designer who became famous in the 1950s and 1960s with haute couture designs that relied on colourful Brazilian floral patterns. She became well-known in certain circles in the United States, and her fans included Hollywood stars like Joan Crawford, Kim Novak and Liza Minnelli.

But in the 1970s, her vibrant designs were replaced by harsh black stripes, crosses, red splashes, tanks, and children peering out of cages on New York runways, as she used her unique vantage point in the world of fashion to protest the murder of her son and the torture and killings committed by the dictatorship.

Zuzu's life and her struggle to recover the body of her son, one of the roughly 150 political prisoners who fell victim to forced disappearance in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s, are the focus of this film directed by Sergio Rezende, who specialises in historical events and personalities.

Zuzu's son, Stuart Angel, a student activist and member of a guerrilla group, was arrested by the military in May 1971.

Tortured in an air force barracks in Rio de Janeiro, Stuart died a few days later, after he was dragged back and forth on the ground by a jeep and forced to directly inhale vehicle exhaust fumes, political prisoners who were held in cells near Stuart's told Zuzu later.

It is believed that his body, which never appeared, was dumped into the sea.

After her son's disappearance, Zuzu Angel became a sort of forerunner to the "crazy ladies of the Plaza de Mayo", as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina became known in Brazil.

During Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship, the Mothers met once a week in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the seat of government, wearing white headscarves and walking slowly in a circle, in a silent form of protest to demand information on the fate of their sons and daughters, who were among the 30,000 people forcibly disappeared by the de facto regime in Argentina.

Zuzu did everything she could to draw attention to the disappearance of her son. She sent letters to the United Nations, the U.S. Senate, and to then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. She faced Brazilian military tribunals, and became a high-profile enemy of the dictatorship.

"It is the sacred right of a mother to find and bury the body of her son," she responded to the authorities when they attempted to silence her outspoken protests.

"I am not brave; it was my son who was brave. But I have right on my side," she also said when people commented on her courage in confronting the military regime.

She received telephone death threats, and one of her stores was burnt down in Rio de Janeiro. Finally, in April 1976, five years after her son was killed, she died in a suspicious crash when her car was cut off by another vehicle as she was driving through a tunnel at night.

The tunnel now bears her name.

Her death has since been acknowledged as a murder, for which no one has ever been brought to justice.

Her glamour and her already cinematographic story made the decision to direct a movie on her life an easy one, says Rezende, whose films include "Lamarca", about a captain who deserted from the Brazilian army to join a guerrilla organisation that fought the dictatorship, and "The Battle of Canudos", about a late 19th century armed peasant and religious uprising that was brutally quashed by the army.

The star-studded cast of "Zuzu Angel" includes popular actress Patricia Pillar as the designer herself. Daniel Oliveira, who plays Zuzu's son, is a young actor who was acclaimed for an earlier performance as rock star Cazuza, who died of AIDS in 1990.

Chico Buarque not only has a close relationship with the film. Shortly before her death, Zuzu Angel gave him a letter to publish if anything were to happen to her, which read in part: "If I die, by accident or otherwise, it was the work of the murderers of my beloved son."

The songwriter distributed copies of the letter to the local newspapers, but it was not published by any one of them. In homage to his late friend, Buarque wrote the song "Angélica", which now forms part of the soundtrack to the film, in a slower version sung by Buarque himself.

"Who is this woman who always sings that refrain/I only wanted to rock to sleep my son/Who lives in the darkness of the sea/" says one verse of the song.