Scherpenberg had returned to Brazil in 1964, the year of the coup which established the subsequent military dictatorship. On her return to Rio de Janeiro in 1974, Scherpenberg produced work amongst intellectuals and artists who opposed the Brazilian dictatorship, such as socialist intellectual Loio Pérsio, and artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The figures of Brazil’s military dictatorship are captured by the artist across a number of works in oil paint and tempera, painted as caricatures with their gormless expressions, and dressed in their sunglasses and suits. The works were produced from her experience of military parades and political speeches which the artist bore witness to during the period known as the 'Years of Lead'.

Scherpenberg frames the figures as if they are speaking before a crowd behind microphones, and yet they seem silent, further enhancing the dark comedy of the work. For art historian Alberto Saraiva, the artist reduces the military into ‘deformed images of bureaucracy, recreating silly monsters and weakling creatures’ as a mark of the era. By rendering the figures in a style characteristic of her work in the 1970s, where the figures are distorted, wooden and inhuman, the artist directly mocked and criticised the dictatorship.