Posted on April 10, 2008
Hildegard Angel, daughter of Brazilian fashion designer Zuzu Angel, has a passion for the truth.
“Believe in the truth without measuring the consequences,” she said Friday at a banquet in her honor.
Hildegard has been a journalist in Brazil for 40 years. But her quest for the truth began when her brother, Stuart Edgar Angel Jones, was tortured and murdered in 1971 by the Brazilian military regime that reigned from 1964 to 1985. Stuart’s murder was hushed up, as was the murder of her mother.
When Zuzu learned of her son’s arrest and murder she sought to discover the truth and recover his body, until she was killed because of the danger she posed to the dictatorship.
In 2006 a documentary titled “Zuzu Angel” was made about the Angel family. It has been shown in the United States three times since it was made. The first was in Central Park in New York City where more than 8,000 people attended, according to Hildegard. The second was at a film festival in Florida. The third was at JMU Friday. Hildegard and her husband, Francis Bogassian, came to JMU to attend the showing.
Music Professor Dorothy Maddison, performed a concert in Brazil at the Portuguese Palace at the embassy in Rio de Janeiro, with Hildegard’s cousin, Jane Straumann, a flutist. Hildegard arranged the concert after hearing them play together.
“I asked Hildegard ‘what can I do for you?’ after she had arranged the concert,” Maddison said.
She organized for “Zuzu Angel” to be shown at Grafton-Stovall Theatre following a reception to honor Hildegard for her work as a journalist and her mission to tell her family’s story.
She and her husband were given medallions by David Jeffrey, dean of the College of Arts and Letters, commemorating their trip to JMU.
A slideshow of her mother’s work and quotes followed Hildegard’s first speech in English.
Alessandro Leoni, the assistant to the ambassador of Brazil, spoke before the showing of the film. He spoke of the “dark years of the dictatorship.”
“This movie proves that life goes on,” Leoni said. “Brazil is fortunately a very different country today.”
The 108-minute documentary spoken in Portuguese with English subtitles spared no details of what it was like to live in Brazil from 1964 to 1985. The Angel family’s story left many in tears.
“People have to know,” said Maddison, speaking to Hildegard. “You have come through the most profound grief…to make a profound change on the lives of your family, your friends and your country.”
Hildegard spoke at the reception before the film screening.
She said the purpose of the film was to make students aware of who Zuzu Angel was, a mother and a fashion designer.
“I came to talk to you about Brazil… the Brazil that took the lives of so many,” Hildegard said.
On March 31, 1964, the military in Brazil staged a coup and overthrew President João Goulart. For the next 20 years the military would control the country.
“Imagine if the people at the Pentagon took over the White House and Congress,” said Keo Cavalcanti, head of the sociology department. Cavalcanti was a missionary in Brazil during the military regime before
leaving because of persecution.
“Imagine, as college students, not having an SGA, a student newspaper. Imagine that some of your classmates were militants put there to make sure your professor didn’t deviate from the approved syllabus.”
This regime caused a deep sense of uncertainty for the people of Brazil. It was hard to have a regular life when people never knew when or if the government was going to come for them, according to Cavalcanti. Many people chose to leave Brazil at this time.
“Throughout the whole thing, the Angel family stayed as a witness to a very brutal government… at great personal cost,” Cavalcanti said.
This was the state of Brazil when Zuzu was becoming a world-renowned fashion designer. She was the first Brazilian to have her work shown in the United States. It was also the state where Stuart, being a “young, idealist student, who carried the pain of his country” according to Hildegard, began to defy the military regime.
“Activism wasn’t a fashion, it was a necessity,” Cavalcanti said. “Some of us worked as activists, and some of us disappeared.”
One day Zuzu received an anonymous phone call telling her that Stuart was arrested. Because prisoners were moved from military base to military base, it was nearly impossible for family members to find them, according to Cavalcanti. This made finding Stuart impossible for Zuzu, but she didn’t stop trying.
Zuzu enlisted the help of famous Americans in her attempt to find her son. In 1976 Zuzu, disguised as an American tourist, personally handed a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, detailing the torture and death of her son as relayed to her by another prisoner.
“Forgive me on insisting in bringing to you the case of my son when you are visiting my country and believe me, these are the most sincere words you are hearing in this trip,” Zuzu wrote in her letter to Kissinger. “You will understand the suffering of a mother, who had her only son tortured and murdered by the Brazilian military government.”
Stuart’s wife, Sonia, was also arrested, tortured and eventually killed in the same fashion.
Zuzu’s outspokenness and zeal, with which she pursued the truth of her son’s death, did not go overlooked by the military regime.
“If something should happen to me, if I die in a car accident or assault or some other way, it will have been the work of the same assassins who killed my beloved son,” she said.
On April 14, 1976, one month after handing her letter to Kissinger, she was killed in a provoked car accident. Her death was deemed an accident until 22 years later, when it was proven to be murder.
In the end, Hildegard’s father gave up his Brazilian and American citizenship, and died without a passport.
“That’s how deeply the tragedy affected him,” Maddison said.
During a fashion show in New York City in 1971, Zuzu presented the first political protest fashion collection. She used her work to shed light on the oppression in Brazil.
“She had the conviction that her son had been murdered during a torture session in a military air force base,” Hildegard said. “She thought [the fashion show] could be an opportunity to denounce this to the world.”
She used white cloth embroidered with such symbols as the sun behind bars, military caps, armed forces jeeps and doves painted black in her collection.
After the presentation, Zuzu appeared on the catwalk dressed in black, with a black veil and a belt made of crucifixes — something Madonna did years later.
The collection was titled “Fashion and freedom” and newspapers all over the world covered it as the first ever protest fashion show in the history of fashion.
“She saw beauty in freedom,” Hildegard said. “It was a huge success.”
Zuzu used her connections with Hollywood figures, such as famous movie actresses Joan Crawford and Kim Novak, to help her in pursuing the truth of her son’s murder, but the military regime in Brazil was unyielding.
Years after his death, Stuart Edgar Angel Jones, was acquitted of all charges for which he was arrested, too late.
“Now I am asking for the body of my son. It is the minimum a mother could ask for,” Zuzu said after her son’s trial.
Stuart’s body was never returned to her, according to Hildegard. It is suspected that it was thrown from helicopter into the ocean, as was the custom.
A former model-turned-journalist, Hildegard set up the Zuzu Angel Institute of Fashion of the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1993 in the memory of her mother.
She has been a journalist since she was 17 and works in Rio de Janeiro at the Jornal do Brasil — one of the oldest papers in Brazil — where she has her own page, and covers all subjects.
“Sometimes I turn back and look at the past and think, if you work a lot and pay no attention to time or salary, then you have succeeded,” Hildegard said. “And to have this approach to the profession, you have to love it a lot.”
As someone who has lived through the time of the dictatorship in Brazil, Hildegard emphasized the importance of freedom of the press. During the 20 years of the military regime, they controlled radio, TV and print.
“In my country [journalism] is an option of freedom, of opinion and also a kind of vigilance of the government,” Hildegard said.
She has spent her life making sure that what happened to Stuart and her mother is not forgotten. Even though Brazil has reinstated democracy, the past cannot be erased.
“I think I have an obligation to tell the story, because I’m the one who was there,” Hildegard said.
“There was an amnesty when democracy was reinstated,” said Maddison. “This country is healing, emotionally.”
Maddison asked what JMU’s role could be in fostering this healing.
“There is so much room for growth,” she said. “And that growth can come from learning about events such as the role that Zuzu Angel played in that regime.”
