These three books dealing with U. S. relations with Brazil during different periods in the postwar era all stress within that general rubric the penetration of Brazil by government and business interests of the Colossus of the North. This is hardly a surprise. Despite this commonality, and generally clear format and writing styles, these works are somewhat short on revelations for Brazilianists and for Latin Americanists in general. While it is convenient to have the materials presented in the cogent manner of these three works, little new is to be found in them.
Readers will perhaps be perplexed to find that, while each of the three authors notes in passing that the fundamental goals (needs) of the two nations were incompatible or contradictory, none stresses this indispensable, indeed, bedrock theme. Basically, Brazil desired: (a) to be treated like a great nation and fellow veteran of World War II, in which its soldiers fell alongside Norteamericano counterparts in the Italian campaign; (b) long-term commodity price agreements; and (c) substantial U.S. aid targeted on industrial development and, to a lesser degree, military modernization. For its part, the United States wanted and all but demanded: (a) an anticommunist policy both at home and on the floor of the United Nations; (b) an open field for private investment in Brazil; and (c) a guaranteed and steady flow of Brazilian raw materials crucial to its industrial economy and war machine. The United States positively shied away from the concept of Brazilian industrialization, was aghast at Brazilian government involvement in what it considered the private economic sphere, and adamantly opposed any form of guaranteed commodity prices. And, although never openly stated, the United States simply did not consider Brazil in any way an equal. As Haines notes (contradicting his text), the United States revealed “a pervasive racial arrogance, a sense of cultural superiority, and a touch of paternalism” in its dealings with Brazil (p. 190). Unwilling to meet Brazil’s needs, Washington resorted to bullying. A prime example of this was Robert Kennedy’s embarrassingly brusque five-hour visit to Brasilia to intimidate João Goulart in 1963 (Leacock, p. 134). The United States also purveyed the type of aid that it preferred, rather than what Brazil desired (see Haines, chapter 9, on the attempted Americanization of Brazilian agriculture). It almost saturated Brazil with U. S. technicians and consultants, some of whom engaged in what Bandeira terms—but does not define—“covert action e spoiling action” aimed at frustrating those Brazilian plans that did not coincide with those of the United States (Bandeira, p. 117).
Haines, who states at the outset that his is a study of U.S. policies and actions (xi), succumbs to annoying redundancy with his topical organization but nonetheless presents a detailed glimpse of his rather limited topic, admitting the naïve inconsistencies of U.S. policy. Among these is the humorous tour of the Tennessee Valley Authority given to Brazilian president Eurico Gaspar Dutra, who was at the same time being sternly lectured to keep his government out of the economic sphere (p. 131). Although the author notes the generally unrealistic and unfruitful approach of Washington in terms of aid and advice, he somehow concludes that Washington’s policy did obtain some results: “In the short run it produced a solid American ally,” though that ally steadfastly refused to cooperate in the Korean War (p. 186). Haines, senior historian at the Central Intelligence Agency—and obviously no Brazilianist—has presented us with a modestly useful book, but one could be forgiven for asking why he all but ignores Vernon Walters. A Freudian slip?
Leacock, who writes felicitously, is at her best making sense of the confusing plethora of movements, groups, factions, and splinters that characterized Brazil in the 1960s (no mean task) and focuses in large part on U.S. penetration of Brazil (much of it covert, such as C.I.A. creation and/or funding of various Brazilian anticommunist organizations). Brazil was to be a target for President Kennedy’s blueprint for “Nation Building” (p. 61); hence U.S. officials attempted to become involved in all aspects of Brazilian development, from school building in the impoverished Northeast to covert political actions designed to prevent the rise of a Brazilian Perón. Leacock’s narrative flows smoothly, but she has a tendency to denigrate many of the main players, and to do so unabashedly. Thus we have President Kennedy, who “did not have an original mind” (p. 12), Jânio Quadros, “an impulsive neurotic” (p. 37), João Goulart, “the satellite chieftain” (p. 137), and a number of Brazilian officials who, according to her, “seemed almost pathologically pro-American” (p. 223). These strong words are not substantiated in the text.
Leacock’s work, however, is of value, for it is a solid exposition of U.S. intervention on a variety of levels in Brazil. But as she herself admits (p. 259), the Brazilian military would probably have ejected Goulart even without the encouragement of Washington, and the generals’ postcoup articulation of “National Security Doctrine” should surprise no one. That doctrine, which strongly links overall national development to national “security” (p. 229), is as old as the republic itself and has been borne on its flag since its inception in 1889: ordem e progreso. It was simply updated and dusted off by the boys at the Escola Superior da Guerra.
Bandeira, a militant socialist, newspaperman, lawyer, and professor of history, tackles a much longer time frame of thirty-eight years, although in truth he almost omits the 1950s, dismissing President Eisenhower as serving “the interests of the great bankers, industrialists, and merchants” (p. 51). He spends a great deal of time on the Goulart administration and U. S. pressures on Goulart, including a destabilization campaign managed by the C.I.A. (pp. 118-126). Goulart’s manifest weaknesses are glossed over, and Bandeira ingenuously asserts that only on the eve of the coup itself did Goulart begin “to lose control over events” (p. 130). It could be cogently argued that the ill-fated gaúcho never had control of events, but to let him off as easily as does the author is indefensible.
Bandeira is most impressive when detailing the economic strains that crippled Brazilian relations with the United States, especially the issue of full-cycle nuclear energy and the major trade disputes. The book comes to a close with the South Atlantic War frustrating Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s plan to preen Argentina as a counterweight to an uncooperative Brazil. This resulted in the almost unthinkable: 1980s Brazilian wargaming featuring the United States as a probable enemy (pp. 259-263)!
At the least, all three accounts show a Brazil never comfortable with U.S. tutelage and increasingly flexing its muscles of independence no matter the inconvenience. If the best portions of these three books could be skillfully melded into one cohesive account, it would be a valuable treatment of an important aspect of inter-American history. As Leacock admits in the last line of her book, “It is too early to put away the pencils” (p. 261).
