Brazilian Dictatorship Research Articles

O Brasil contra a democracia: A ditadura, o golpe no Chile e a Guerra Fria na América do Sul

O Brasil contra a democracia: A ditadura, o golpe no Chile e a Guerra Fria na América do Sul

Communication between the Militants of the ‘8 October’ Revolutionary Movement and the Peasants of Brotas de Macaúbas, Bahia, Brazil (1969–71)

AbstractDuring the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–85), the Movimento Revolucionário 8 de Outubro (‘8 October’ Revolutionary Movement, MR-8) attempted to mobilise peasants for its revolutionary project. This article analyses communication between MR-8 militants and peasants in Brotas de Macaúbas, Bahia. Based on interviews and document analysis, it documents the central role of José Campos Barreto (Zequinha) as a leader in this political process. The son of a local family, Zequinha enjoyed the respect of peasants and relied on his knowledge of their lives to better communicate with them. While the MR-8 made some inroads with peasants, its work in the region was prematurely ended when agents of the state descended on Brotas to arrest Carlos Lamarca, one of the dictatorship's most wanted militants.

O arquivo Rusty Butler: revelações da repressão cultural durante a ditadura militar brasileira

ABSTRACT The twenty-one years of military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985) were marked by severe repression as government censors sought to control media and artistic production. During these tense years, as has been well documented, journalists, academics, writers, and artists at times struggled to voice their opposition to oppressive military control. Many turned to protest theater as a way to speak out against the dictatorship’s abuses. Unsurprisingly, many plays produced at this time were either heavily censored or shut down entirely. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a young Brazilianist scholar from the United States, Ross “Rusty” Butler, befriended, interviewed, and conducted field research on authors of protest theater and their works. When Butler was preparing to return to the United States after being threatened himself by government officials, a few of his new friends asked him to take their works-including some plays that were unpublished and in manuscript form-out of the country in order to avoid censorship. Now, fifty years later, those plays and manuscripts, along with Butler’s other research materials, are finally coming to light through the Rusty Butler Archive. The Rusty Butler Archive demonstrates the complex relationship between the military dictatorship, censorship, and cultural production during the 1960s and 70s.

Corporate Accountability for Involvement in Gross Human Rights Violations During the Brazilian Civil-Military Dictatorship – The Role of the Truth Commissions and the Case of Volkswagen Do Brasil

The article describes, analyzes, and evaluates transitional justice measures that were adopted in Brazil regarding corporate responsibility for complicity with the civil-military dictatorship in the practice of gross human rights violations. The main focus is on the performance of the National Truth Commission and the São Paulo State Truth Commission, as well as on the agreement reached between the Prosecution Service and Volkswagen do Brasil in the scope of the civil inquiry established to determine the company’s responsibility for complicity with the civil-military dictatorship. The measures are considered incipient and not problem free, though they represent a breakthrough in corporate responsibility related to transitional justice, encouraging further development and continuity through acknowledgment and the allocation of resources.

The clouds against progress: technoscience, environment and the U.S./Brazil “Radar in Amazon Project” (RADAM) (1970-1975)

The objective of this investigation is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the RADAM Project activities during the Brazilian civil-military regime (1964 -1985). The RADAM was a technoscientific project, created at the federal level in 1970, which intended to map Brazil’s Northeastern and Amazon territories and thus produce systematic knowledge about their natural resources, a process considered crucial for the federal government’s development plans. By analyzing original documents, we attempt to comprehend the role of the project in the authoritarian development policy set forth by the military government. We intend to demonstrate the juridical and institutional reforms that made the implementation of the project possible and then analyze how the RADAM project was effectively organized and its direct and indirect objectives. Lastly, we look into how the work of the technical agents and scientists in the social scenario of the Brazilian dictatorship.

Review: Archival Silences: Missing, Lost and, Uncreated Archives, edited by Michael Moss and David Thomas

Review: <i>Archival Silences: Missing, Lost and, Uncreated Archives</i>, edited by Michael Moss and David Thomas

Political memories and feminist resistance

Abstract This paper presents the criteria, methodology, and main results of a recently published research that surveyed and analyzed testimonies made by women who fought against the military dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina, in a time frame that begins with the enactment of the Amnesty Law (1979) and ends with the release of the final report by the National Truth Commission (2014).◊

The clouds against progress: technoscience, environment and the U.S./Brazil “Radar in Amazon Project” (RADAM) (1970-1975)

This article explores the creation of the “Radar in Amazon Project” (RADAM), a technoscientific project developed through a joint Brazil/United States technical cooperation, originally designed for Amazon territorial mapping in 1970 and then extended to national territory in 1975. More specifically, the article discusses the role of humans and non-humans during the project’s survey of the country’s natural resources that took place during the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-1985), with particular focus on how nature challenged the program. By analyzing original documents such as reports, ordinances, scientific papers, and newspapers available at the National Archive of Brazil and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, this article discusses the entanglements between humans and non-humans in the formation of the RADAM; in addition, we explore how the project contributed to the development policy set forth by the military government. The paper is divided into four sections. First, technical cooperation between Brazil and the U.S. after World War II. Second, the creation of RADAM. Third, the role of the non-human/human assemblages within the emergence of radar as a new technology. Last, the paper discusses how the state mobilized RADAM’s achievements as a pillar of support for the dictatorship.

Jewish Brazilian Post-Holocaust Fiction: The Body as a Source of Polymorphous Memory Discourse in Cíntia Moscovich’s Por que sou gorda, mamãe?

Abstract In this article, I propose a reading of the Brazilian novel Por que sou gorda, mamãe? (2006) through the prism of the body as an oblique signifier of polymorphous post-Holocaust memory discourse. I will be employing the idea of the “strange body” in the following, that is, an experience of estrangement that can arise from trauma-induced conflict or fracture and “is capable of testifying to complexes of social operations and realities well beyond not only a given subject, but also a given generation” (Atkinson 2017, 34). In Cíntia Mos­covich’s novel, this strange-bodiness is articulated through the uncanny presence of an obese Jewish female body; a body which bears witness to a subversive force of trauma and denounces the fascist ideology within the continuities of subtly intertwined European and Brazilian histories. European Jewish life in shtetlech, pogroms, exile, and the Holocaust merge not only with the Brazilian context of Jewish immigration, but also with the history of Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985).

A aliança empresarial-militar e a ditadura brasileira: a atuação de empresários em escolas militares e de integrantes das forças armadas em companhias privadas durante o regime pós-1964

The article analyzes the rapprochement between the military and businessmen and their role in defining the Brazilian dictatorship inaugurated with the 1964 coup. For this, we approach two specific movements. Firstly, we deal with the presence of Brazilian businessmen in schools and military institutions before and during the dictatorship. Then, we problematize the employment of military personnel in private companies throughout the regime. We defend that this form of approximation played a fundamental role in the regime, considering that it expresses the social content and maximum meaning of the dictatorship, which, in our view, presents itself as a business-military regime. To endorse our hypothesis, we used documents from the business community and military archives, which prove this alliance, the basis of the regime implemented in the country since 1964.

O direito e a arte na resistência feminina ao autoritarismo patriarcal durante a ditadura civil militar brasileira

The relationship between law and art – apparently subtle – is intense. Law is a cultural product resulting from human conventions, while art, in its progressive bias, is a cultural product that questions these conventions to deliver life from the prisons that human beings create. The avant-garde artistic field contributes to breaking paradigms, as well as the female gender, which is constantly emancipated to deconstruct paradigmatic meanings. The woman increasingly comes out of silence and reports her experiences. From the perspective of law, there are very important historical events that can become institutionalized. The alteration of constitutional norms, depending on the context, can represent the gateway to authoritarian models filled with arbitrariness, such as, for example, the civil military dictatorship of 64 and, in particular, the AI-5, in Brazil. In the arrangement between law, art and gender issues, a powerful context for reflection appears. The hypothesis presented is that art is capable of converting tragedies into powers and, exposing the experience suffered by women during the Brazilian military regime in literature and cinema, it acts on the possibility of society overcoming traumatic experiences, while mobilizing the right to adapt to new models of human interaction, enabling – or at least not hindering – the nascent positions of female subjects in the social field. The research starts from primary and secondary legal sources, such as the analysis of historical documents, news published by the major newspapers of the time, examination of normative texts and reading of classic works.

Persisting Abscences: The Socio-political Dynamics of a Desaparecido in Post-dictorial Brazil

The construction of memories following the last Brazilian dictatorship is as plural as the number of social actors implicated and as fluid as political circumstances can be. From investments on institutionalized forgetting to the creation of policies of memory, governmental initiatives affected the way society processed the acts of terror perpetrated by the military regime (1964–1985). The development of such initiatives, however, cannot be understood without accounting for the persistent struggle of victims’ relatives and human rights’ advocates. This paper aims to reflect on the Brazilian post-dictatorial mnemonic conflicts by observing how different levels of memory interacted with the political sphere in the process of coping with political disappearance. Drawing on relatives’ testimonies regarding the disappearance of Fernando Santa Cruz and the institutional mechanisms developed by different governments, this text intends to demonstrate how State-sponsored absences during the dictatorship are constantly being (re)constructed according to social and political circumstances of the present.

Democratizing memory and the question of Black difference in Brazil (ca. 1980–1988): The transformation of the Serra da Barriga (Alagoas), from haunted “Black territory” to national memorial in the transition between dictatorship and democracy

By voiding the previous social pact, including the predominant conception of racial integration, the Brazilian military regime (1964–1985) created the conditions for a radical understanding of Black difference, which found its leading motif in the memory of the Quilombo of Palmares, a historical community of rebel slaves. A new Black movement understood its cultural and historical experience as containing a utopian legacy, an alternative for a Brazil marked by racism and inequality. To overcome its problems of legitimation, the regime set into motion a process of gradual democratization. The need to symbolically and culturally accomplish this transition created an institutional breach for the memory politics of the Black movement. In this context, the inclusion of the Serra da Barriga, a site of the war against Palmares, into national cultural heritage became the testing grounds for novel politics of culture that changed both the understanding of Brazilian nationhood and Black difference, as represented in the memory of Palmares.

A filosofia no espaço escolar como possibilidade de cisão da Ideologia: uma breve análise

The present article pretends to debate the paper of the philosophy in the school space. More than this, pretends to understand the reasons that makes of philosophy as being removed from the school boards. For this, we seek to analyze, starting from social teoricals and education teoricals, the paper of school today, contributing on the maintance of determinates socials workings. We also pretend to understand the paper of philosophy inside of the school, once that paper is very specific wich is dintinguished by the proposition of a critical reflection on reality. Finally, turning our gaze, with Alves (2002), to the period of military dictatorship in Brazil, we will discuss the effects of a critical pholosophy whitin a rigid state functioning and seek in contemporany time traces of these same exclusionary practices.

When the Big House Freaked Out: The Rise and Fall of Industrial Brazil in a Single Lifetime

When the Big House Freaked Out: The Rise and Fall of Industrial Brazil in a Single Lifetime

Moldura institucional e projetos de institucionalização do regime militar brasileiro (1964-1978)

A ditadura militar consolidou moldura institucional que consistia na convivência de constituições (primeiro a de 1946, depois a de 1967) com legislação excepcional, especialmente os atos institucionais. Tal convivência não expressava uma contradição, tendo sido eficaz para a imposição das chamadas “punições revolucionárias”, ao mesmo tempo que possibilitou aos sucessivos governos militares a busca de um padrão de institucionalização que tinha como fundamento a inclusão em nova constituição de mecanismos de segurança do Estado que realizassem o projeto autoritário de uma “democracia forte”. A convivência entre constituição e legislação excepcional durante a ditadura militar foi possível como decorrência da tradição de intervencionismo militar na história republicana brasileira. O Superior Tribunal Militar (STM), a partir do momento em que passou a julgar civis acusados de crimes políticos, debateu a peculiar moldura institucional da ditadura militar.

"Unscrupulous and Morally Ill-Prepared" Laymen or Professionals? Controlling Pharmacists during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship.

This article traces the transformation of the system of control and repression of Brazilian pharmaceutical activities between the 1930s and the 1970s, through a Foucauldian framework of "differential management of illegalisms." The period between 1930 and 1960 can be understood as a process of negotiation between pharmacists and state agencies that achieved a compromise on the differential management of illegalisms in relation to drugs, with a clear distinction between "laymen" and "professionals." This compromise came into question during the dictatorship, due to institutional transformations that reinforced the autonomy of institutions of repression and a military struggle against subversion and corruption. Pharmacists and laymen alike were considered potential suspects. This suspicion even extended to the civilian agencies that were at the core of the regulation of the licit drug market. These developments profoundly changed the way illegalisms committed by professionals and state officials were treated, blurring the boundaries that had been established between laymen, professionals, inspectors, and industrialists. The final section of the article focuses on the various ways in which institutions of repression focused on pharmacists and state regulatory control agencies as potential places of subversive activity or corruption.

UMA FANTASIA AMARGA: O FANTÁSTICO EM A HORA DOS RUMINANTES, DA LITERATURA AO CINEMA

Este artigo discute o problema do fantástico dentro da obra literária A hora dos ruminantes (1966) de José J. Veiga, bem como na sua adaptação para o cinema, idealizada em 1967 pelo cineasta Luiz Sergio Person e pelo crítico e roteirista Jean-Claude de Bernardet – que nunca chegará a ser filmada. Enfocamo-nos no problema da oposição entre o mundo real e o fantástico, e fazemos referência a alguns gêneros literários com os quais a obra de Veiga dialoga, como a literatura fantástica e o realismo mágico. Em seguida, tratamos da adaptação de Person e Bernardet para o cinema da obra de Veiga. Discutimos a relação da adaptação com alguns gêneros cinematográficos como a ficção científica, o terror e a fantasia. Detalhamos o uso original que Person e Bernardet pretendiam fazer do elemento fantástico de Veiga, alçando-o a espetáculo cinematográfico, e utilizando-o como alegoria política para comunicação de uma mensagem de resistência à Ditadura Militar. Concluímos discutindo, a partir do caso de A hora dos ruminantes, as implicações da transposição do elemento fantástico da literatura ao cinema, e os possíveis caminhos estéticos que o filme poderia ter aberto.

Democracy, Populism, and Political Identity: a brief essay of the actual political context in Brazil and threats to the Brazilian 2022 elections / Democracia, populismo e identidade política: um breve ensaio sobre o contexto político atual no Brasil e as ameaças às eleições brasileiras de 2022

Brazil lives a challenging moment due to a political crisis, which has started in 2016 with the ex-President Dilma´s impeachment, aggravated by the problem in the public health system in reason of unsuccessful measures of our political representatives, mainly President Jair Bolsonaro, in the fight against the pandemic of Covid-19. This political crisis harms the "newbie" Brazilian democracy; populism is at its center. The struggles by power carried out by the varieties of political identities have been determinant factors. Brazil does not get out of this spiral of problems in which it is involved. The interaction of democracy, populism, and political identity has an essential role in the current constitutional period, which is installed after the Brazilian military regime (1964-1984), because, despite being a "country" with more than 500 years, Brazil is still searching for itself inside and out of its frontiers. Thus, to understand the Brazilian current political context, it is necessary to analyse it from different cracks: this unpretentious essay tries to do so.

Atoms in the campus: Van de Graaff accelerators and the making of two major Latin American universities in 1950s Brazil and Mexico

ABSTRACT This paper deals with two cases of acquisition and construction of Van de Graaff accelerators in 1950s Latin America, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of São Paulo, respectively. A comparative approach allows us to appreciate the significance of this particular technology within scientific, cultural, commercial, and political processes. Van de Graaff accelerators appeared as an affordable technology to engage in experimental nuclear physics and to be part of the atomic age. The circumstances that motivated physics communities in Brazil and Mexico to choose this specific technology took shape in close interactions with US institutions and scientists. These inter-American alliances involved precisely the main companies and groups that competed for the market of this technology around the world. These accelerators also intertwined with the building of campuses for two major Latin American universities, occupying then a singular place (physically and symbolically) within their execution. This paper engages with comparison for the common goal of going beyond frameworks and methodologies tied to the nation, while integrating the study of connections and interactions, as well as the interplay of multiple scales.