Brasilia, November 2 (teleSUR-RHC)-- In what could be a historic move for reparations, car manufacturer Volkswagen has opened a dialogue with the Brazilian government to negotiate compensation for the German multi-national’s support of Brazil’s 1964-1985 dictatorship.

Volkswagen was among numerous private companies that backed Brazil’s military dictatorship financially and operationally, according to the Truth Commission that investigated dictatorship-era crimes against humanity.

Brazilian and foreign companies also spied on union activists, passing sensitive and personal information to the country’s military government.

The Truth Commission found Volkswagen guilty of handing over some facilities at a factory in an industrial area of Sao Paulo directly to the military.  The regime then used the Volkswagen facilities as detention centers and torture chambers. 

The German company also registered records of union activity with the military, such as a 1983 union rally in which former President Lula da Silva, then a union leader and member of newly founded Worker’s Party, participated.

Volkswagen also gave the military regime some 200 vehicles, the Truth Commission found, which were also used in carrying out acts of repression, according to the commission.
  
After the release of the Truth Commission, Volkswagen was the only company implicated in collaborating with the military regime that committed to investigating its own involvement with the dictatorship

According to Volkswagen, the company is now in the preliminary phases of reaching an agreement with authorities in Brazil on how to compensate for its historical wrongdoing.

Under consideration in the negotiations with Brazilian institutions is the possibility of creating a museum, funded by Volkswagen, in memory of victims of the dictatorship in Sao Paulo.
      
Last year, Brazil’s Truth Commission released its report on the atrocities committed under the country’s 21-year military dictatorship and called for an end to amnesty for perpetrators of dictatorship-era human rights violation.

The Truth Commission found at least 400 people were killed or disappeared during the more than two-decade period, and many more were victims of arbitrary detention and torture.

But prosecuting the perpetrators of these abuses has not been possible because an amnesty law put in place under the dictatorship in 1979, and ratified four years ago by the Supreme Court, protects victimizers from being tried.

Many of Brazil’s disappearances have been seen as part of the U.S.-backed Operation Condor, which saw dictatorships quash rebellious voices and leftist movements throughout the continent.