1
Introduction
While the implementation of forensic anthropology was being made in the United States
of America and Europe during the 19th to mid-20th century [1,2], several dictatorships
were rising in Latin America between the 1960s and 1970s. The need for forensic anthropology
became evident when investigations started being conducted for the location and identification
of people killed through political rationale.
Latin America was in desperate need of the right tools to face a complex issue related
to the human rights violations it was immersed. The unknown number of missing and
unidentified persons led to a critical call for the location and identification of
individuals. Countries facing a humanitarian emergency contacted and employed people
to exhume and analyze the remains of found graves. The work, however, brought to common
knowledge the deficiency in the exhumations and recovery derived from the employment
of unqualified professionals, that cost severe postmortem damage in the remains and
caused the loss of evidence such as projectiles and personal effects. An important
additional issue was the loss of inhumations contexts.
The lack of professionally specialized personnel by the state is not an old problem.
That is why, currently, families of the missing persons from the dictatorship eras
ask for the intervention of independent forensic teams. The creation of such teams
dates back to 1984 when the American Association for the Advancement of Science sent
a forensic delegation to Argentina [3,4]. Among the experts, Dr. Clyde Snow was present
when hundreds of skeletons were to be found exhumed and unidentified. In his 1982
article entitled Forensic Anthropology, Dr. Snow had stated that there was no reason
why physical anthropology should not eventually apply their full knowledge of human
biological variation to a broader range of medicolegal problems, including the identification
of the skeleton [5]. Eventually, Dr. Snow trained the founders of the EAAF (Argentine
Forensic Anthropology Team), a team that today has worked in more than 40 countries.
Although Argentina and other Latin American countries counted with the expertise and
knowledge from expats to train them, such efforts were not directed towards Brazil.
It is essential first to understand the starting of legal medical studies in Brazil
and how forensic anthropology came to become a field within that area of expertise.
Only after that, we can understand how the development of forensic anthropology took
place in Brazil, and how the country differs significantly from the other countries
in Latin America.
2
Legal medicine in Brazil
Brazil had a late start with its studies in legal medicine when compared to Europe,
the United States, or other countries in Latin America. Although Brazil had great
Portuguese influence in its intellectual and cultural setting, Portugal did not have
a well-developed legal medicine study set during the Colonial Period. Therefore, during
the first phase of the legal medicine development in Brazil, the country experienced
a decisive influence coming from other European countries, such as Italy and Germany,
butespecially - and more intensely - from France [6].
The second phase of the legal medicine development in Brazil begins with Agostinho
José de Souza Lima, who started the practical teaching of legal medicine at the Medicine
College of Rio de Janeiro [7]. Without any prior knowledge of the judiciary field,
Agostinho de Souza Lima interpreted the Brazilian legislation in light of the legal
medical knowledge at that time. Due to his efforts in developing the field in the
country, Agostinho de Souza Lima is considered to be the pioneer – or the father of
– legal medicine in Brazil [7]. During that historical period, judges were not mandated
to consult with physicians before pronouncing their sentences, and this obligation
started with the Criminal Code of the Empire, dated December 16, 1830 [8].
In 1832, the field of Criminal Procedure started being developed in Brazil, shedding
light to the norms regarding autopsies, officially establishing the medicolegal investigation
[9]. Many of the first determinations are still currently in force in modern criminal
procedure norms at the Brazilian Code of Criminal Procedures. In the same year of
1832, Raimundo Nina Rodrigues creates the official College of Medicine in Bahia, followed
by a college in Rio de Janeiro, both containing legal medicine in their curricula
[10]. Students had to perform a thesis defense to receive the degree of Doctor of
Medicine, and this requirement helped in increasing the research within legal medicine.
The first article in legal medicine was published on September 21, 1835, and reports
the autopsy of Regente João Bráulio Moniz who had died 22 hours before the realization
of the necropsy [10].
In 1854, José Martins da Cruz Jobim, a tenured professor at the Legal Medicine College
in Rio de Janeiro, was asked by the Brazilian Justice Department to coordinate a commission
to standardize the practice of medicolegal exams, organizing a prognostic table of
physical injuries. The regulation that overlooked the medicolegal activities was passed
in 1856 by the Enactment n° 1.746 on April 6. The Police Agency of the Court created
the “Medicolegal Advisory Council,” intending to “perform personal injury analysis
and any exams necessary for the investigation of crimes and the facts suspected to
have had happened” [11]. The Advisory Council was composed of four physicians, whose
two were full-time members with the job of performing investigative exams, and two
were professors of legal medicine and had consulting positions in the field of toxicology.
Additionally, in that same year, the first morgue of Rio de Janeiro was inaugurated
in Gamboa, at the space that used to store unknown bodies, remains of slaves, and
remains of inmates [11].
The Medicolegal Advisory Council was replaced by the Medicolegal Office in 1900, with
the creation of the first anthropometric identification service. Two years later,
Afrânio Peixoto proposes a reform to the Medicolegal Office, inspired by his observations
in Germany. Afrânio Peixoto affirmed that the compilation of “monstrous misterming
on autopsies findings, and confused, incoherent, and disorganized reports of personal
injuries, are a sad testament to the professional incompetence and prejudices the
interest to pursue justice” [6]. Influenced by the critique coming from Peixoto, the
Brazilian Government edits the Enactment n° 4.864, of July 15, 1903, that details
the norms of the medicolegal procedures [12]. The legislation was considered to be
ahead of its time, and policymakers started referencing Brazilian laws as models to
French and Italian governments. However, the determinations presented by the Enactment
continued to fall into disuse, and physicians who were not specialized in legal medicine
were asked to testify as experts in court. The National Academy of Medicine protested
this issue, and alongside the Brazilian Bar Association, the Enactment n° 6.440, of
March 30, 1907, replaced the Medicolegal Office for the Medicolegal Service, named
Afrânio Peixoto after its first director [13].
The Maximiliano Law, of 1915, conferred legitimacy for the practical classes offered
by the Colleges of Medicine and recognized the validity of the reports resulted from
medicolegal exams [6]. Accompanying the growing recognition of the medicolegal field,
in 1924, the Medicolegal Service became the Medicolegal Institute, under the Brazilian
Justice Department [11].
The Brazilian Code of Criminal Procedures of 1941, still currently in force, determines
that official specialists must perform the investigations. Therefore, the practice
of legal medicine in Brazil is an official and public activity with Medicolegal Institutes
throughout the entire country, with the main branch in every Brazilian state capital
plus Brasília (Distrito Federal – D.F.). The medicolegal reports are considered an
administrative act and hold the value of an official document. The limitation of forensic
investigations of crimes to official experts who are police staff, comes from the
Brazilian Code of Criminal Procedures [14] and the Brazilian Criminal Code [15]. Ad
hoc experts can be appointed as non-official experts by the judicial or police authorities
to participate in the forensic investigation. However, this practice is not very common,
with official experts rarely being questioned by other experts in court.
Although one of the most well-known functions of the Medicolegal Institute is to perform
autopsies, this type of exam constitutes only 30% of the work served by their experts.
Nonetheless, the exams related to cadavers besides autopsies are exhumations, forensic
anthropology, and forensic odontology [16].
Noticeably, each assignment designated to the Medicolegal Institute requires expert
professionals and specialists. As in many public administrative matters, the Institutes
face difficulties in filling the gaps, which aggravates the flow and response to high
work demands in existence. Therefore, many improvised mechanisms are present - not
working as they should – with many staff members working in specialized positions
which they are not qualified. When the need for forensic anthropology was noticed
in Brazil, the country faced a shortage of specialized personnel, and individuals
started pursuing this area of expertise due to the necessity for investigations.
3
The rise of forensic anthropology in Brazil
The rise of forensic anthropology in Brazil occurred simultaneously with the legal
medicine. The influence of the school of thought in Brazil came from Europe, especially
from the British Association for the advancement of Science – Section of Anthropology
(founded in 1822), the Société Ethnologique of Paris (founded in 1839), the Berliner
Gesellschaft Für Anthropologia, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (founded in 1869) and
the Société d’Anthropologie of Paris (founded in 1865) [17].
The anatomist, physician, and anthropologist Paul Brocca was the responsible for developing
the field of anthropology, creating the Anthropology Laboratory of the School of High
Studies in 1871 and the School of Anthropology in Paris, in 1876 [18]. The French
school of thought greatly influenced the development of anthropology in Brazil, mostly
during the mid-19th century, while the country was still an Empire. Cesar Lombroso
influenced the legal medicine, criminal anthropology and criminology in Brazil through
his 1871 published work entitled L’uomo Delinquent [17]. In 1895, Lombroso characterized
criminal individuals through conclusions resulted from the autopsies of 383 crania
from convicted felons and the anthropometric analysis of 3.939 convicted felons who
were still alive [19].
The first decades of the 20th century saw colleges of medicine, natural history museums,
police agencies, schools, and social work institutions, mobilize themselves with the
practice of physical anthropology [20]. Anthropologists, physicians, and naturalists
started concentrating their activities in acquiring knowledge about human populations,
especially in the characterization of Brazilian populations, their constitution, and
racial-biological diversity. Those perspectives included the physical anthropological
analysis of Native Brazilians, Black individuals, country-side populations, and European
immigrants; the debates revolved around racial admixture and immigration; and the
studies on biotipology, legal medicine, and legal anthropology [21].
Rio de Janeiro, at that time, the capital of the Republic, initiated the use of physical
anthropology as an “organization of the physical body” of the Brazilian nation [22].
Through institutions such as the National Museum and the College of Medicine, Rio
de Janeiro was one of the first centers to produce and disseminate the research being
done in physical anthropology in Brazil [23]. Many of the people involved in early
researches and publications came from schools of thoughts that gained strength during
that time period, names like João Batista de Lacerda, José Rodrigues Peixoto, Edgard
Roquete Pinto, Heloísa Alberto Torres, and Fróes da Fonseca, were the ones to push
physical anthropology studies in the first decades of the 20th century [24]. Most
of these studies, however, were related to the “racial types” of Brazilians, focusing
on their physical, psychological, and physiological characteristics.
Souza and Santos [25] report that the first use of physical anthropology as a method
to aid in criminal investigations in Brazil, came from the development of the Bertillon
technique, in France. Alphonse Bertillon, developed the anthropometric method, consisted
of the morphological and physical description of individuals. His method was developed
based on Paul Brocca and Adolphe Quetelet and emerged to help investigations and criminal
identification, using science to solve problems in the legal setting.
In 1939, the physician Arídio Fernandes Martins, exemplified the model of the exam
of a human skeleton, indicating its completeness, articulation, color, measurements,
and indexes [26]. Júnior, published on the use of morphological characteristics for
human identification, and based his studies in the former Bertillon method [27].
Nina Rodrigues, one of the contributors to the expansion of legal medicine as a discipline
in Brazil, also participated in the early development of anthropology in the country.
Following the tendency of his time, Nina Rodrigues researched bioanthropology with
the main focus on questions involving the race of Brazilians [28]. His ideas can be
seen and exemplified by two articles he published in The Gazette News: “Pathological
Anthropology” and “Criminal Anthropology” [29]. Nina Rodrigues started the first research
initiatives, creating and implementing the criminal investigation in Bahia, as well
as the official creation of the professional of physician-investigator, which had
been denied many times before. Nina Rodrigues had visited countries in Europe, and
after returning to Brazil, proposed that University professors in legal medicine should
hold the position of official physician-investigators within the law enforcement agencies
[29].
The early stages of physical anthropological studies in Brazil were marked by the
studies of races and human characteristics [28]. It was believed that the degeneration
of the Brazilian populations was due to the miscegenation between races and that Brazil
could only revert that situation by replacing Black and Native Brazilian individuals
by Europeans. Fortunately, these racist ideas did not perpetuate through time in the
field, and the growth in research in legal medicine and forensic anthropology changed
focus and started shedding light into new and relevant questions.
According to Guimarães and colleagues [30], the Brazilian legal medicine and forensic
anthropology got extremely affected by the military dictatorship era in Brazil that
occurred between 1964 and 1985. During that period, the military had no interest in
proceeding with missing person investigation or the identification of the individuals
killed. Therefore, the Brazilian military dictatorship era set back the entire development
of the criminal investigation and consequently, the forensic anthropological studies
that acted directly in the identification of unknown individuals found in unmarked
or mass graves.
4
The development of forensic anthropology in Brazil
The first country to develop a forensic anthropology team to identify individuals
murdered in political crimes during the dictatorship era was Argentina, in 1986. Argentineans
received forensic anthropological and archeological training from Dr. Clyde Snow,
who was also responsible for training many other professionals throughout South and
Central America. The field of forensic anthropology in Brazil is still new [17] with
its ascension in the 1990s following the explosion of forensic anthropology and archaeology
throughout other Latin America countries [31].
It was only after 1992, when the Torture Never Again Group created an interdisciplinary
forensic team to search for the missing persons from the dictatorship era in Brazil
[32], that many challenges and difficulties came to surface. These issues were regarding
funding, expertise, methodologies, and techniques being used by the forensic experts
in the field and laboratory [33].
Initiatives were created to discuss the new steps of forensic anthropology and help
with the development of the field in Brazil. The Legal Medicine Center at the College
of Medicine in Ribeirão Preto (CEMEL) at the University of São Paulo (FMRP-USP) and
the Center for Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology (CAAF) at the Federal University
of São Paulo, are two centers that need to be highlighted in this effort.
CEMEL was created through a scientific partnership between FMRP-USP and the University
of Sheffield, in the United Kingdom [34]. The CAAF was established in partnership
with the Department of Justice and the National Truth Commission, to analyze the victims
of the dictatorship era in Brazil who were buried at the clandestine mass grave in
the Dom Bosco Cemetery in Perus – São Paulo –, between 1990 and 2000 [35,36]. The
bodies of the clandestine mass grave at Dom Bosco Cemetery had been exhumed in 2002
and were stored at the general skeletal room in the Araçá Cemetery [37]. CAAF’s forensic
anthropology and archaeology teams were responsible for analyzing the circumstances
of the death and aide the Truth Commission to clarify the human rights violations
that happened during the dictatorship era in Brazil [38].
Between 2005 and 2006, Sérgio Francisco Serafim Monteiro da Silva, archaeologist and
graduate student at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at the University of São
Paulo, idealized a course in forensic archaeology [39]. This course was given at the
Civil Police Academy of São Paulo, to minimize the problems regarding the loss of
criminal evidence caused by the lack of knowledge from personnel performing the collection
of such pieces of evidence. The course was directed only toward police officers and
professionals involved in the criminal/judicial system. Besides the demonstration
of the importance of forensic archaeology and anthropology in medicolegal settings,
the course also explored the knowledge of other forensic disciplines, such as legal
medicine, taphonomy, and entomology [17].
In 2009, the Brazilian government established a working group for the investigation
of missing persons and cold cases [40]. This effort seemed to be the first step into
following the direction and examples from other countries in Latin America with the
creation of a specialized group such as the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team
(EEAF) and the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF). However, two years after
the announcement of the working group, the project was forgotten and left unattended,
closing the communication channels among members of the team [40].
In the study “Evaluating the demand of experts in forensic anthropology for the improvement
and modernization of specialized analysis,” Dr. Andrea Lessa shows the nuances of
anthropological analysis in the main Official Medicolegal Institutes in Brazil [41].
The study demonstrates that the Institutes face technical difficulties that hinder
the importance of anthropological analysis as a means to guarantee the fundamental
rights of individuals. Lessa expresses that “the data presented prove the importance
of the formal existence of forensic anthropologists in the Medicolegal Institutes,
contrary to the general idea that the anthropological analyses were a “complementary
exam,” of lesser importance, or not accurate” [41].
To understand the current situation of forensic anthropology in Brazil, the Department
of Justice and the National Office for Public Safety carried the “Diagnostic of the
Brazilian Criminal Investigation” in 2012. The final report on forensic anthropology
was released again by Dr. Andrea Lessa, member of the National Museum. The report
stresses that the importance of research in this field relies on the world recognition
of forensic anthropology as one of the disciplines that contribute to the resolution
of criminal investigations [42].
On August 16th and 17th, 2014, Rio de Janeiro hosted the first National Conference
in Forensic Anthropology. In August 2015, the first Brazilian International Meeting
in Forensic Anthropology was hosted in the city of Natal, both events being organized
by ABRAF, the newly founded Brazilian Association of Forensic Anthropology. The discussions
and debates at these meetings revolved in knowing what path forensic anthropology
was heading towards in the 21st Century, what technologies were being developed and
what were the workloads being addressed to experts in the field.
The researches being carried in Brazil had been essentially developed in Universities,
with rare cases of researches in the Medicolegal Institutes. The overall theme has
been human identification, with age at death analysis based on dentition. This aspect
has been highly studied in Brazil due to the early research by Nicodemos and colleagues
on the mineralization of teeth in the Brazilian population [43]. Although some of
the departments that carry researches in forensic anthropology are the Departments
of Anthropology and the Departments of Medicine, the prevalence of studies carried
is derived from the Departments of Odontology. Specific majors and minors, or graduate
courses, in forensic anthropology at Universities and Colleges are inexistent in Brazil.
This phenomenon can be understood by the main research theme in age at death from
teeth eruption and development being in the realm of Odontologists, and also from
the aspect that early physical anthropological studies were mainly related to studies
of “race,” which is seeing as a social science by many.
Currently, the vast majority of experts in forensic anthropology working at Medicolegal
Institutes, teaching classes in the field, or working as private consultants in Brazil,
have to perform both the anthropological and odontological analyses. Therefore, the
usual find is that forensic anthropologists in Brazil are Odontologists (or dentists).
Additionally, due to bureaucracies and funding issues, Brazil decided to combine both
disciplines – forensic odontology and forensic anthropology – to a single expert who
could carry both specialties in their analyses.
5
Where to go from here
Although there is a lack of resources related to the forensic anthropology history
in Brazil, it is clear that it has its roots at the legal medicine and physical anthropology
being applied in Europe. The Brazilian forensic anthropology started as a specialized
work being carried out by physicians and other experts who worked for the State, in
the early Medicolegal Offices and Institutes. Thus, it has been an essential function
and exclusively performed by the State, with some new trends starting in the past
decades. Many new initiatives have been successful, allowing a channel for discussion
and development of new methodologies, and debates related to the evolution of the
field to attend current demands.
It is important to note that we should recognize that our history and needs are different
when compared to other countries.
Although this work intended to shed light into the initial and current state of forensic
anthropology in Brazil, it also exposes the difficulties the country faces in the
field. The hope is to open a channel for discussion and to bring the Brazilian forensic
anthropology scene to international attention while giving background information
on how we reached the current state of our field.
The changes needed must come from efforts in education and legislation in the country.
Nevertheless, Brazilian agencies and institutions would be better equipped if they
recognized that the valuable forensic anthropologist experts are the ones with both
specialized educational background and field experience. Therefore, academic programs
in physical and forensic anthropology to train students in theory and practice, in
a research environment, at the masters and doctoral levels should be initiated. This
is particularly important to differentiate the current practices in which students
pursue graduate degrees in Odontology or Medicine to research their thesis and dissertations
with a focus on forensic anthropology. Forensic anthropology should be seen as its
own field, with its own peculiarities, research questions, and specific training.
The change in legislation stating and estabilishing the profession of forensic anthropologist
would also come a long way. The fact that Brazil lacked the initial training when
many other countries were developing their forensic anthropology teams does not mean
that we cannot improve our field now, creating the opportunities that are necessary
to develop the future Brazilian forensic anthropologists.
Declaration of competing Interest
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.