SOO #34 - Eunice Paiva
The reluctant warrior with a heart of steel
If there ever was a woman who was thrust into the crucible of history with neither ambition nor appetite for it, it was Eunice Paiva. She was no fiery orator, no political radical, and certainly no friend of grandstanding; her life, as she would have preferred it, was a quiet one—a life dedicated to family and the law, far from the machinations of power. Yet fate, in its perverse generosity, had other designs. Eunice was not merely a footnote in Brazil’s tumultuous twentieth century; she was an exemplar of resilience, moral clarity and—against all odds—a reluctant revolutionary.
Born on 7 November 1929 in the Brás district of São Paulo, Eunice Facciolla Paiva grew up in a working-class household shaped by duty and restraint. Her parents, Teresa and Angelo, had left Italy with modest expectations and settled into a neighbourhood where factory hours set the pace of life. Her father worked in textiles; her mother kept the home running and rarely missed mass. Eunice was a serious child—quiet, observant, inclined to ask questions that made adults uncomfortable. She read widely, followed rules without revering them, and had a habit of noticing when others were left out or spoken over. One teacher remembered her intervening when a classmate was hit unfairly. She didn’t raise her voice—she just refused to look away. That refusal would follow her for life.
At twenty-three, she married Rubens Paiva—an engineer with a calm voice and a clear sense of right and wrong. Rubens came from a more comfortable background, but had no use for privilege. He believed in democracy, in education, in the idea that a country should serve all of its citizens—not just the few. By the early 1960s, he was serving in Congress and beginning to speak out, directly and by name, against the creeping abuses of Brazil’s military regime. He was among the first to denounce torture on the parliamentary floor. It was a principled stand, and a dangerous one. But at home, Rubens was different. He liked to cook. He sang to the children, off-key. With Eunice, he didn’t argue politics—he asked if she needed help with the dishes. They were, by most accounts, a strong match. Where he could be idealistic, she kept him grounded; where she hesitated, he encouraged her to speak up. It worked.
In the years that followed, their life took on a quiet rhythm. They had five children—Vera, Eliana, Ana Lúcia, Marcelo, and Maria Beatriz. Their home in Leblon was full but never chaotic. Eunice had put her law degree on hold, but she managed the family’s daily life with a kind of practical authority. Mornings were for school uniforms and scraped knees; evenings for piano practice and homework. There were books on every surface. Dinnertime meant conversation, not just food. Friends and colleagues came through the house—sometimes for political discussion, sometimes just to catch their breath. Journalists, professors, even exiled artists passed through, always quietly. Eunice wasn’t involved in politics directly, but she supported Rubens without hesitation. She kept the house steady, which made it a place where others could come without fear. For a time, it worked. There were birthdays, Sunday lunches, samba records in the evenings. She didn’t ask for more than that.
Then came January 1971. It was late. Cold. Masked agents burst through the door, shouting. Rubens was taken without explanation. Eunice and their daughter Eliana were detained briefly. The car that carried Rubens away disappeared into the night, and he was never seen again. There was no warrant, no trial, no record—only silence. The life they had built together vanished in a matter of minutes. Eunice, who had never sought public attention, now had no choice.
At first, she was stunned. She returned home to a house that no longer made sense. But she didn’t collapse. Instead, she turned to the only tool she believed could hold the state to account: the law. She resumed her unfinished law degree at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo and began studying with the focus of someone who could no longer afford illusions. She wasn’t interested in theory—she wanted legal tools she could use. Within a few years, she was a qualified lawyer. And from that point on, she never stopped working.
Eunice didn’t march or give speeches. She didn’t align herself with political parties or movements. She filed petitions. She wrote letters. She asked questions that couldn’t be ignored. She met with judges, journalists, and civil servants—anyone who might listen. She combed archives, sat through hearings, and refused to let the official story remain untouched. When doors closed, she knocked again. Her fight wasn’t loud, but it was constant.
She didn’t use her cause to chase broader ideological goals. Eunice kept her focus narrow: she wanted the truth about what had happened to her husband, legal recognition for other families who had suffered the same fate, and accountability from a state that had operated in the shadows. She didn’t speak in slogans. She didn’t posture. She simply refused to give up.
That clarity became her strength. She couldn’t undo what had been done. But she could make it harder to forget.
With the return to civilian rule in 1985, many assumed Eunice would retreat from public life. She didn’t. Instead, she stayed close to the legal and institutional processes that were slowly trying to reckon with the past. She participated in the early human rights commissions that laid the groundwork for Brazil’s later accountability efforts. She advised NGOs and legal bodies, always quietly, always with purpose. Her contributions weren’t headline material, but they carried weight. When Law No. 9.140/95 was passed—granting official recognition to those who disappeared under the military regime—Eunice’s efforts were widely acknowledged as one of its driving forces. Her meticulous documentation, her unrelenting pressure on institutions, and her refusal to accept silence as an answer helped change the legal landscape.
Even in the early 2010s, when the Comissão Nacional da Verdade (National Truth Commission) was formally created, Eunice—though no longer active due to illness—was often cited as part of its moral foundation. Her earlier work had shaped the culture of institutional memory that made such a commission possible.
Around the same time she was pushing for justice for victims of political repression, Eunice began turning her attention to Indigenous rights. It was not a predictable shift, but for her, the logic was simple: the same system that had disappeared her husband had long erased entire communities. In 1978, she joined the Comissão Pró-Índio de São Paulo, a civil society group focused on Indigenous legal advocacy. Over the next decade, she contributed to legal frameworks that helped enshrine protections for Indigenous peoples in the 1988 Constitution—particularly Article 231, which recognised their land rights and cultural autonomy.
Eunice worked in a quiet, deliberate way. She travelled to remote areas, listened more than she spoke, and worked on conflict resolution cases involving land use, displacement, and Indigenous claims. She helped translate oral histories into legal arguments. She never claimed to represent Indigenous people—she stood alongside them, using her skills to support their own efforts. Her credibility came not from speeches, but from consistency. And because of that, her presence often opened doors that would otherwise have stayed shut.
In her later years, Eunice was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The decline was slow but unrelenting. For a woman known for precision and clarity, the erosion of memory was a quiet cruelty—but she held on to what mattered. She remembered her daughter’s laughter in the kitchen. Rubens’s smile in their wedding photo. A morning in Kayapó lands, drinking coffee from a clay pot. Her public appearances faded; her voice, once firm, became quieter, more tentative. Yet her name still carried weight. In Brasília, when her work was referenced, lawmakers paused. People remembered. Eunice Paiva passed away quietly in 2018, leaving behind a legacy that outlasted the fading of her own memories—a testament to a life shaped by courage and perseverance.
Over time, Eunice’s story was kept alive by those who refused to let the past be buried. Her legacy lived on—in legal reforms, in memory initiatives, in the next generation of lawyers and activists who studied her casework and her example. And now, decades later, her life has reached a global audience through Fernanda Torres’ portrayal in I’m Still Here. Torres doesn’t dramatise Eunice—she channels her. The restraint, the grief, the discipline. The refusal to look away.
Her performance is not just a tribute—it’s a reminder: history doesn’t always move through revolutions and speeches. Sometimes it moves through a single voice insisting that absence must be acknowledged. That the disappeared must be named. That justice, even when late, must still arrive.
As the world turns its attention to the Academy Awards, I’m Still Here stands out not only as a film, but as an act of remembrance. Through Torres’ work, Eunice Paiva is no longer a name on a document or a footnote in the story of Brazil’s dictatorship. She is once again present—firm, steady, unflinching.
There is a certain symmetry in the fact that a woman who avoided the spotlight now finds herself at the centre of one. The same historical forces that took her husband have, in their own time, ensured that Eunice Paiva’s name will be remembered wherever justice is discussed. She never asked for recognition; she wanted a death certificate and a grave. “Eu não queria fazer história,” she once said. “Só queria enterrar meu marido.”
Eunice Paiva was a reluctant figure of history—no banners, no slogans, just a steady refusal to give up. She proved that strength doesn’t always shout; sometimes it moves quietly, through persistence and principle. She reminded us that justice can begin with a question asked in a courtroom—and that some of the most important revolutions unfold in silence. If history is a record of what people choose to stand for, Eunice Paiva’s place is secure: a name etched not in monuments, but in the work that still continues.