Campaign asks the US for hidden roles of the dictatorship in Brazil – 07/03/2023 – Politics

American historian James Green, one of the main researchers on Brazil in the United States, participated in the efforts for the Joe Biden government to help prevent a break in the Brazilian democratic regime in 2022 and applauded everything that was done. Now, he wants a bigger gesture.

The Brazilianist states in an interview with Sheet which is preparing, together with activists and national organizations, a request for the US to release about a thousand secret files that could reveal the country’s role in the 1964 coup and in the military dictatorship that lasted for 21 years.

“It would be a sign of good intentions, in the context of 60 years of the military coup and 200 years of recognition of Brazil’s independence by the USA, of showing that they really believe in democracy”, he says, adding that the two countries coexist with the risk of return of the ultra-right to power.

A progressive, Green is chairman of the board of directors of the WBO (Washington Brazil Office), one of the organizations that expressed concern to the American authorities about the coup attempts by then-president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and his threat not to respect the results.

“What he represents for Brazil is very dangerous”, says the Brown University professor.

Green also criticizes Lula (PT) —a candidate he supported, as he likes to emphasize, on a personal basis— for relativizing dictatorships and strengthening ties with authoritarian leaders, such as Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro.

A frequent visitor to Brazil, the professor lived in the country in his youth and was active against the military regime. He is also known for his activism in the LGBTQIA+ area, which is the subject of some of his books. He spoke to the report during his most recent visit to São Paulo, last week.

The USA and 2022

Green says that before the elections he was approached by Brazilian social movements who were asking for support to raise international solidarity. He has helped arrange meetings with members of the US State Department and Congress, in work he describes as independent and non-partisan.

“The meetings and letters we made were all in the sense of reaffirming: we believe in Brazilian democracy and in the Brazilian electoral process, we believe in the possibility of free elections and we want the American government to immediately recognize the results”, he says.

For Green, the role of the US and other international actors was fundamental, but the determining factor for the positive outcome was local mobilization.

“Since the Americans played such a horrible role in 1964, we thought it was very important to try to avoid making another mistake in that sense. [errarem de novo] it was not possible with Biden. If it were [Donald] Trump in the White House would be another scenario — and I think it would have been a successful coup.”

The USA and 1964

Creator of the Abrindo os Arquivos project, which collected and made available more than 60,000 papers produced by the Americans in the context of the coup and dictatorship, the researcher estimates that around a thousand files are still under partial or complete secrecy.

“Our campaign is to ask the Biden government, as an indication of good relations between the two countries, to release this documentation. And we hope that it will do so. For those who study this period, these details are important, to complete what we know.”

One of the targeted materials are the testimonies of American authorities in an investigation from the 1970s into the relationship between the financing of sectors of the Brazilian police and cases of repression and torture.

The mobilization will begin with an open letter to Biden, which has already been signed by 17 organizations, including the Arns Commission and the Vladimir Herzog Institute, and seven academics, “to see if there is a gesture” from the US.

Green cites an encouraging precedent. After pressure from Chilean society, the US released 11,000 documents in 2000 showing its “direct and nefarious involvement” in the 1973 coup in Chile.

Interference

Green refutes claims that the US performance in 2022 was a case of foreign interference. The thesis was spread by Bolsonaro a few days ago, after a report from the Financial Times newspaper reporting how the Biden government pressured Brazilian politicians and military to respect the election.

“What interference? This is another fake news from him [Bolsonaro]”, says the researcher. “Our concern was to let Brazilians decide and guarantee democracy in the country”, he argues.

“The United States did not say ‘we support Lula’ or ‘Bolsonaro, you have to leave’. They said: ‘We believe in electronic voting machines, in the possibility of clean elections and in Brazilian democracy, and we are against actions by the Armed Forces to interfere in the electoral process ‘.”

8/1 and 6/1

Green says the January 8, 2023 attacks in Brasilia and the Capitol invasion on January 6, 2021 are equally unsuccessful coup attempts. In the Brazilian case, he believes, it was an attempt to “measure society’s reaction” that failed because the Armed Forces were divided.

“It wasn’t a spontaneous thing, like January 8 wasn’t. It was all planned.”

For the researcher, the conservative predominance in Congress hinders an adequate and honest investigation of the facts in Brasília, but Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Supreme Court, has been efficient in identifying and prosecuting those involved.

Lula and dictatorships

Asked about Lula’s rapprochement with authoritarian leaders like Maduro, Green says that “Brazil has to reflect a lot on this, because, if a country is defending domestic democracy, it is a little complicated to support governments that are not democratic”.

“I understand the argument that Americans are hypocrites, that sometimes they support democratic regimes and sometimes, due to economic interests, they support anti-democratic regimes. But I think that Brazil, if it wants to regain international power with Lula, needs to demonstrate consistency.”

Green cites Russia, China and Nicaragua after saying that some of the regimes Lula alludes to “maybe even worse than the worst moment of the military dictatorship here” in terms of repression and the disappearance of opponents. “The left has to face this issue.”

Bolsonaro and nostalgia

The professor says that Brazil has the immense challenge of clarifying what the military dictatorship was, in the face of the historical revision proposed by Bolsonaro and supporters.

“There are sectors of society in the US and Brazil that do not believe in democracy. In the case of Brazil, they have a nostalgic memory of the dictatorship, as a moment that was better, that had order. They have no idea what it really was.”

“It’s not a question of turning the page, it’s reading the page before turning it. Many people still haven’t read the page about what the military dictatorship was”, says Green, who associates Bolsonaro with the promotion of “anti-democratic, reactionary values , even fascists and neo-Nazis”.

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X-RAY | James Naylor Green, 72

American, he is a professor of Latin American history at Brown University and one of the most important Brazilianists in the United States. He lived in Brazil from 1976 to 1981, during which time he was active against the military regime and in defense of LGBTQIA+ rights. He wrote, among others, the books “Beyond Carnival”, “Despite You” and “Revolutionary and Gay: the Extraordinary Life of Herbert Daniel”. He chairs the board of directors of the WBO (Washington Brazil Office), a non-partisan Brazilian think tank based in the US.