Science, health and the military dictatorship in Brazil: the Integrated Endemic Disease Program (PIDE) of CNPq (1973-1987)

Abstract

This article analyzes the Integrated Endemic Disease Program (PIDE), which was established in 1973 by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development CNPq, financed by the Brazilian Funding Authority for Studies and Projects FINEP. The program was established to finance research on diseases considered strategic to the economic development plans of the military regime (1964-1985). Acknowledged to be a landmark program in the history of Brazilian parasitology, PIDE was set up during a period when the dictatorship was both violently repressing scholars and investing heavily in science and technology (S&T). The article examines the context in which the program was implemented and analyzes what it signified for planners in the S&T field and for the scientists who coordinated it. The contention is that PIDE was an example of how the scientific community managed to use financial and institutional resources available under the S&T policy in the 1970s to advance research on parasitic diseases and update its agenda. This analysis contributes to recent historiography that, based on specific historical cases, reflects on the paradoxical nature of a regime that, in its authoritarian modernization project, simultaneously persecuted scientists and supported science.