Аннотация:and articles from O Estado de São Paulo (OESP) and Folha de São Paulo (FSP) on the Death Squad of Sao Paulo city, comprising the period from November 1968 to December 1978.It aims to contribute to the historical study of the press and its operation in contemporary Brazil, insofar as its agents have real interests and aims in the construction and in the conduction of a collective interpretation of society.We adopt the concept of social representations by the historian Roger Chartier, according to whom, the social representations produce practices and strategies, aiming to legitimize a reform project, to the detriment of others.In addition, we made interviews, aiming to broaden the discussion about the sources and to recover a certain context that we were not able to understand only by analyzing the articles.In doing this, we also gave voice by interviewing the protagonists of the story -the journalist Percival de Souza, and the attorneys Hélio Pereira Bicudo and Dr. João Benedito Azevedo Marques (who participated in the investigations on the activities of the Death Squad) -and the Captain Francisco Jesus da Paz.Finally, the research found out that, at the beginning, the articles presented the emergence of the Death Squad as a revenge act, accepting police officers and chiefs' versions of the story.However, from the 1970s and forwards, the newspapers changed its perspective and showed the incoherence of the public authorities of the Executive Branch of the State of Sao Paulo, particularly regarding to the former governor Roberto de Abreu Sodré and to the former Secretary of Public Security Hely Lopes Meirelles, who insisted in denying the existence of the Death Squad, they also highlighted the work of Justice to punish the members of the Death Squad.Besides, from the 1970s and forwards, these newspapers also highlighted the actions of Justice to punish the members of the Death Squad.
