A Brazilian Nationalist's Studies of Revolutions

Abstract

Two recent books by one of Brazil's most prolific scholars are much more similar in intent than their titles-governo Jodo Goulart and De Marti a Fidel-suggest. Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira has written about Brazil's reaction to the Russian Revolution, the United States's role in Brazil and in Latin America, social democracy and its leaders in Brazil, and the reunification of Germany. His work is characterized by his political engagement as a socialist, a nationalist, and an internationalist. O governo Joao Goulart was originally published in 1978, toward the end of the military dictatorship, when the discussion of redemocratization was intensifying. Bandeira entered this discussion because he had been closely involved in the Goulart regime of 1961-1964 as a journalist-he was head of the politics section of Rio de Janeiro's Didrio de Noticias and an aide to S6rgio de Magalhaes. Magalhaes was vice president of the federal Chamber of Deputies and a leading member of the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (Brazilian Workers' party-PTB). Through Magalhaes he became friends with other leading social democratic nationalists whose testimonies form much of the basis of this book. As a defender of the Goulart regime, Bandeira was sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served ten months. His book was among the first to argue that the events of April 1, 1964, were not a revolution as the military alleged but a coup d'etat that succeeded not because of the weakness of the Brazilian left but because of U.S. efforts to overthrow a democratically elected and popular government. Bandeira was one of the first historians of the period to suggest that Janio Quadros had resigned the presidency in 1961 not because he was emotionally unstable but in the hope that either a popular reaction or a military coup would award him dictatorial powers. When neither happened in the short run, Joao Goulart, a former minister of labor under Getflio Vargas, undertook what Bandeira considers the most radical reforms in Brazil's history.