„Ponte Honestino Guimarães“: Who was Honestino and what happened to him?

The Ponte Honestino Guimaraes (formerly named „Ponte Costa e Silva“), had been designed by Oscar Niemeyer and built and inaugurated in 1976. Till 2015, the bridge remained to be the last public building named after a protagonist of Brazil’s dictatorship. In several attempts (1999, 2003 and 2012), the renomination of the bridge had been discussed. Finally, in August 2015, after an intensive discussion, the Câmara Legislativa do DF approved to alter the bridge’s name from „Costa e Silva“ (military president) to „Honestino Guimarães“(students’ leader), putting an end to the renomination of public buildings in Brasília as a process of redemocratization, started in 1985. The House of Deputies’ approval was celebrated as a political and ideological victory. As to José Otávio Nogueira Guimaraes, professor of history of the UnB and coordinator of the Comissão Anísio Teixeira Memória e Verdades, the bridge’s renomination will be of importance for the actual democracy: „People, by crossing this bridge, will ask themselves who Honestino was, what happened to him, and this will strengthen the necessity of reflecting about democracy and improve human rights“. Honestino Monteiro Guimarães: He was an important students’ leader during dictatorship, and dissapeared on October 10, 1973, in Rio de Janeiro, after being caught for the sixth time. He started his combat in the „movimento secundarista“ and joint the Ação Popular (AP). As a student at UnB, Honestino was elected for the Diretório Acadêmico de Geologia and, in 1967, although imprisoned, was elected