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The Brazilian Left has long disdained the question of human rights, judging it in terms of “formal rights” and “bourgeois democracy.” As shown by Luciano Oliveira, it was during the military dictatorship that the Left simultaneously broke with Marxism and developed a new political culture that considered the question of rights. Reflecting on the history of these transformations leads us to examine how the dictatorship received popular support in its early stages, and how broad sectors of society legitimated multiple human rights violations against opponents. The advent of a democratic regime translated into a new concern with equality among citizens, and this encouraged a new perspective on the use of torture and violence.