Rower, athlete, regular at Rio's beaches, university student, and political activist associated with the Revolutionary Movement of October 8 (MR-8). Stuart Angel was only 25 years old when he was brutally tortured and killed by agents of the Military Dictatorship, at the Galeão air base, in 1971, in a story that has never been fully uncovered.
Image description: The image is a black-and-white photograph of a smiling man. It is positioned at the center of the page, surrounded by a light border. Above the photo is the logo of the Secretaria de Estado dos Negócios da Segurança Pública. Below the photo is written "STUART-EDGAR-ANGEL-JONES" in blue. To the right of the photo, there is a handwritten note in red that appears to say "Esta é uma 'FOTO'". In the bottom right corner, there is a stamp with a date and number, indicating "50 E 8 946".Only in 2014, during the Truth Commission's investigations, was her family able to access a more solid account of her death and the probable fate of her remains. Her murder by the regime, after all, followed a script similar to that of so many other young Brazilians during the Anos de Chumbo (Years of Lead): for a long time, it was treated as a mere “disappearance.”
What made Stuart become a symbol of the horror occurring in the Dictatorship's dungeons was the struggle of his mother, the designer Zuzu Angel, who used her international prestige to denounce the atrocities of the military and demand news of her son's whereabouts. But this struggle cost her her life. Zuzu died in a car tragedy that was attributed to an “accident.”
In truth, however, the designer was also murdered by agents of the repression, as a special investigative commission attested in the 1990s. Today, the site where her death occurred, the former Dois Irmãos tunnel, in São Conrado, bears her name. The film Zuzu Angel (2006), directed by Sérgio Rezende, recounts part of the story of Zuzu and Stuart.
