Born May 7, 1944, in São Paulo, Brazil, Yara Yavelberg (also spelled Iara Iavelberg) was a psychologist, teacher, and Marxist militant during Brazil’s military dictatorship.  

Yavelberg was born into a traditional Jewish family. She got married at sixteen in a Jewish ceremony but ended the marriage after three years. She engaged in leftist organizations at the University of São Paulo (USP), starting with the student movement and continuing to organize after becoming an assistant professor of psychology in 1968.  

Yavelberg engaged deeply with USP’s Institute of Psychology as both a student and faculty. She was the president of the University Association of Psychology Students. In this position she advocated for student influence on course structure, engaged in debate over compulsory hospitalizations, and contributed to the creation of the Psychological Assistance Service (SAP), a program that aimed to assist people who could not afford psychological treatment. As a professor Yavelberg enjoyed challenging dominant scientific theories. The Institute of Psychology’s academic center is now named the Iara Iavelberg Academic Center in her honor and a Brazilian social clinic is named The Iara Iavelberg Project. 

As Brazil’s military dictatorship intensified, Yavelberg joined Marxist organizations that were more combative. She eventually abandoned her job teaching psychology because of growing state repression and violence, becoming a clandestine militant. Yavelberg led theoretical discussions and training in guerilla warfare. Believing psychologists could uniquely contribute to resistance, Yavelberg emphasized the importance of revolutionaries’ mental states and provided psychological support.  

By the 1970s, security agencies were desperately searching for Yavelberg. In July 1971 she fled with her partner to Salvador, the capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia, after a member of their organization was kidnapped, dissolving the organization. The subsequent arrest and torture of another organization member led to the revelation of Yavelberg’s location. That August, dozens of state agents swarmed a building in Salvador Bahia and cornered Yavelberg, resulting in her death at 27 years old. The official claim was that she committed suicide to avoid arrest, but her family never believed this. After 13 years of legal battles, Yavelberg’s family succeeded in getting her body exhumed for a new forensic analysis. In 2013, the Rubens Paiva Truth Commission of São Paulo held a public hearing that proved  Yavelberg had been murdered by state agents.  

Sources: 

Juberto Antonio Massud Souza. “Iavelberg, Iara.” In The Palgrave Biographical Encyclopedia of Psychology in Latin America, edited by Ana Maria Jacó-Vilela, Hugo Klappenbach, Rubén Ardila, 611–12. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. 

“Iara Iavelberg.” Wikipedia, March 29, 2023. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iara_Iavelberg. 

“Iara Iavelberg.” Memórias da ditadura, June 3, 2017. https://memoriasdaditadura.org.br/memorial/iara-iavelberg/. 

“Iara Iavelberg.” Memórias da ditadura, August 17, 2016. https://memoriasdaditadura.org.br/biografias-da-resistencia/iara-iavelberg/. 

“Projeto IARA IAVELBERG.” Escola de Formação Política da Classe Trabalhadora - Vânia Bambirra. Accessed November 15, 2023. https://www.efopvaniabambirra.com.br/projetoiara.