But Brazil slid toward state terror slowly. When General Castelo Branco took over in 1964, he had the backing of large portions of the old political order, but it slowly became clear that his real base of support was in the barracks and the boardrooms. In order to survive, he couldn’t turn his back on the reactionary forces in the military or on the business class—both of which were making demands that required more forceful, long-term dictatorship to fulfill. But he could afford to alienate the more moderate forces that supported the 1964 coup believing there would be new elections soon. The generals and the capitalists, who wanted radical anticommunism and steady profits, were the only thing propping up the government now that democracy was gone, and politics was reduced to its most base elements. The nice liberals and the democrats could be ignored.
So they were. Over the next few years, a series of “Institutional Acts” consolidated power in the hands of the generals and brought back indirect elections, meaning that Congress simply selected the president. Again, the Soviet-aligned Communist Party took a very moderate line compared to the other forces on the left. The Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) called for a united coalition of all the country’s forces that were now opposed to the dictatorship, including those that had initially supported the 1964 coup, to press for “democratic freedoms.” Asking for anything more, including any kind of socialism in the short term, was irresponsible and reckless, “adventurism and petty bourgeois haste,” according to the Brazilian Communists.6
It was groups of soldiers and students who looked to Che Guevara and Havana, rather than Brezhnev and Moscow, that took more radical actions in 1965–1968 and spooked the regime.7 The PCB remained nonviolent. Right-wing extremists did not; they carried out a series of bombings, which were blamed on the left, with the goal of prolonging and radicalizing the military dictatorship.8
The generals proclaimed AI-5, or Institutional Act Number Five, in December 1968, giving the military leaders even more power, imposing censorship, and suspending constitutionally guaranteed rights in the name of “national security.” Thus began the Brazilian anos de chumbo, or “years of lead,” which meant torture and murder. The worst years of Brazil’s dictatorship were largely overseen by Emílio Garrastazu Médici, a hard-line gaúcho general who took over the presidency in 1969.9
In the first years of the military dictatorship, students, artists, and intellectuals could still protest the regime, and violent repression was reserved for union leaders and the organized left. In the anos de chumbo, from 1969 to 1974, all that changed. Anyone could be suspected of being a “subversive” and taken off to a basement in São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro for rounds of torture that might end in death. In addition to their constant contact with the US government, soldiers learned techniques that the French had developed in Algeria, like the use of electric shocks.10
Médici’s forces largely concentrated their efforts on suspected members of Brazil’s small urban guerrilla movements, often young Marxists drawn from the educated middle classes who hoped to overthrow the dictatorship. In 1970, they arrested a young woman of Bulgarian descent. Dilma Rousseff later testified that they tortured her for weeks, hanging her upside down from a stick in a technique known as the “parrot’s perch,” beating teeth out of her head, and applying electric shocks.11
The military also put down a small rural rebellion, in the Araguaia River Basin, organized by the Maoist PCdoB, the new communist party that had split off from the PCB in 1962 and took inspiration from both Che Guevara and the communists in the Chinese Civil War.12
Brazil’s military suppressed its internal opposition with relative ease, and never turned to mass violence on the scale employed in Indonesia or other Latin American countries. But the terror was very real. Paulo Coelho, now a famous author, remembers clearly what happened to those who fell on the wrong side of the law. It happened to him. A group of armed men broke into his apartment, he recalls:
They start going through drawers and cabinets—but I don’t know what they’re looking for, I’m just a rock songwriter. One of them, more gentle, asks that I accompany them “just to clarify some things.” The neighbor sees all this and warns my family, who immediately panic. Everyone knew what Brazil was living at the time, even if it wasn’t covered in the newspapers.…
On the way, the taxi is blocked by two cars—a man with a gun in his hand exits from one of the cars and pulls me out. I fall to the ground, and feel the barrel of the gun in the back of my neck. I look at a hotel in front of me and think, “I can’t die so soon.” I fall into a kind of catatonic state: I don’t feel afraid, I don’t feel anything. I know the stories of other friends who have disappeared; I will disappear, and the last thing I will see is a hotel. The man picks me up, puts me on the floor of his car and tells me to put on a hood.
The car drives around for maybe half an hour. They must be choosing a place to execute me—but I still don’t feel anything, I’ve accepted my destiny. The car stops. I’m dragged out and beaten as I’m pushed down what appears to be a corridor. I scream, but I know no one is listening, because they are also screaming. Terrorist, they say. You deserve to die. You’re fighting against your country. You’re going to die slowly, but you’re going to suffer a lot first. Paradoxically, my instinct for survival begins to kick in little by little.
I’m taken to the torture room with a raised floor. I stumble on it because I can’t see anything: I ask them not to push me, but I get punched in the back and fall down. They tell me to take off my clothes. The interrogation begins with questions I don’t know how to answer. They ask me to betray people I have never heard of. They say I don’t want to cooperate, throw water on the floor and put something on my feet—then I see from underneath the hood that it is a machine with electrodes that are then attached to my genitals.
Now I understand that, in addition to the blows I can’t see coming (and therefore can’t even contract my body to cushion the impact of), I’m about to get electric shocks. I tell them they don’t have to do this—I’ll confess whatever they want me to confess, I’ll sign whatever they want me to sign. But they are not satisfied. Then, in desperation, I begin to scratch my skin, tearing off pieces of myself. The torturers must have been frightened when they saw me covered in my own blood; they leave me alone. They say I can take off the hood when I hear the door slam. I take it off and see that I’m in a soundproof room, with bullet holes on the walls. That explains the raised floor.13
The modern defenders of Brazil’s dictatorship protest that the generals “only” killed hundreds of people. But it was not through internal suppression that Brazil had the biggest impact on the mass murder programs that shaped the world we occupy today. In the early 1970s, under Médici, Brazil began intervening across South America, creating brutal regimes in its own neighborhood that also served Washington’s interests.
As Tanya Harmer, the historian who has looked most closely at this short, influential but often-forgotten period, notes:
The Brazilian dictatorship’s body count is relatively low when compared to Chile or Argentina, but it was abroad that it had the most devastating impact on the intensification of the Cold War both through its example, its interference in other countries’ domestic politics, and its support for counter-revolutionary coups. Brazil’s experience in and after 1964 was a game changer that shaped the way in which the ideological battles of the 1970s were conceptualized and fought thereafter.
Brazil helped establish violent anticommunist regimes in Bolivia and Uruguay. By 1976, much of South America was a “killing zone” of US-backed regimes on its borders, which had employed Brazil as its “prototype.”14 But Brasília’s most notable right-wing foreign intervention took place over on the west coast of South America, in pacific Chile.
Allende Arrives, Barely
In 1970, Salvador Allende ran for office again in Chile, and again the CIA financed a scare campaign. Henry Kissinger, national security advisor to President Richard Nixon, approved the use of hundreds of thousa
nds of dollars for a political warfare mission. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people,” Kissinger said.15 The Agency fed propaganda to prominent reporters, and got a story on the cover of Time that was heavily influenced by its materials. In Chile, the CIA relied heavily on El Mercurio, a right-wing paper that received Agency funding, and paid for posters, pamphlets, and messages painted on walls across the city.16
The efforts failed. Allende’s Unidad Popular coalition won by a slim margin. A few days later, El Mercurio published a large special on Brazil. One headline read: “Brazil—Tomorrow Is Today.”17 Over the next few months, the Brazilian military began plotting ways to help roll back socialism in Chile.
Allende was both a socialist and an urbane member of Santiago’s elite. He was a Marxist intellectual who enjoyed sipping red wine in silk tweed jackets. He admired Fidel Castro and considered him a close friend, but he thought the Chilean road to socialism could be very different. He’d work within the system, and take advantage of a Cold War truce between Washington and Moscow, which he thought opened up space for la vía Chilena, the peaceful “Chilean way” to socialism.
When Richard Nixon was elected, he had sought “détente” with the Soviet Union, and as a result the two superpowers pretended to ignore ideological disagreements with each other. But as it turned out, the truce didn’t apply to the Third World.18
The chaos and violence in Chile was not caused by President Salvador Allende, or the failures of his democratic socialist project. US-backed right-wing terrorism began before he even took office.
Under Chilean law, Congress had to ratify Allende’s election, since he had not won an outright majority. Under Chilean custom, this was a formality. Nixon viewed it differently; he ordered the head of the CIA to find a way to stop Allende from taking over. Richard Helms emerged from the meeting with Nixon’s orders written on a notepad:
1 in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile!…
$10,000,000 available, more if necessary…
best men we have
make the economy scream19
While Allende was waiting to take office in 1970, the CIA opened up activities on two “tracks” in Chile. Track One was political warfare, economic pressure, propaganda, and diplomatic maneuvers. CIA agents tried to bribe Chilean politicians and terrify the population. If all that failed, they would “condemn Chile to utmost deprivation and poverty,” Ambassador Edward Korry told Kissinger, hopefully “forcing Allende to adopt the harsh features of a police state.”20 They wanted Allende to abandon democracy. Track Two was a military coup. The CIA began conspiring with right-wing military officers, and funding a group of radicals that would grow into Pátria y Libertad, an anticommunist terrorist group known for its hideous geometric spider logo and sympathies with fascism.21
Like Frank Wisner’s early forays into Eastern Europe, or the 1958 bombing of Indonesia, the 1970 CIA operation in Chile ended in total disaster.
René Schneider, commander in chief of Chile’s Armed Forces, was a constitucionalista, which meant that he believed the military should never overstep its constitutional role. Allende had won the election, so he should be president. Schneider was strongly opposed to a military coup that would stop that from happening. His stance on this was so uncompromising that it became known as the “Schneider Doctrine.” It also meant, as far as the CIA and its right-wing conspirators were concerned, he had to go. On October 25, 1970, a group of armed men tried to kidnap him, and killed him in the process. The plan was to blame the whole thing on left-wing Allende supporters, and therefore provide the justification for an anticommunist military coup.22
For placid, democratic Chile, this was a moment of unimaginable national trauma.23 Terrorists had murdered the head of the Armed Forces in the attempt to subvert an election.
Things did not go exactly according to CIA plan. Schneider probably wasn’t supposed to be killed. Maybe the wrong group carried out the wrong plan at the wrong time. At first, the Agency didn’t even know which of their local partners had done it.24 Most importantly, everyone in Chile found out who was really behind it. Instead of blaming the left, they correctly held right-wing terrorists responsible, and Chile’s military rallied even more enthusiastically around the constitucionalista position. Allende was going to be president.
But it’s hard to avoid the nagging question: what if they had succeeded? What if they convincingly blamed some radical leftists, supporters of Allende, for carrying out a violent kidnapping, even when such an action was entirely unnecessary for them to take power? Would we still believe today that it was true? Would there be an anticommunist monument to Schneider in the center of Santiago, like the one in Jakarta?
Instead, this was one of the CIA’s notorious failures. Nixon was furious. Allende took over as president on November 3, 1970. For Chile’s young leftists, it was a moment of unimaginable euphoria. Carmen Hertz was aligned with the MIR, the younger, more radical contingent of Chilean leftists who did not officially believe in electoral politics. But she voted for Allende anyway, as so many of her friends did.
“It was fantastic. Like everyone else, we flooded the streets” when Allende’s victory was announced, Carmen remembers. “When we finally came home we were full of hope and joy, even spiritual ecstasy.”25
They had done it. And they would do it. Carmen remembers: “I was convinced—just like everyone I hung out with—that we were going to change the world.”
Allende was a believer in the Third World movement, and many of his supporters believed that global revolution was imminent, and would be led by the Global South. Not long after Allende took power, Chile joined the Non-Aligned Movement and became increasingly active in Third World organizations.26
Fidel advised Allende against picking a fight with Washington, as did economist Orlando Letelier, a member of the so-called “elegant left” working at the Inter-American Development Bank. Castro also told Allende not to “ignite” continental revolution or incite the Yankees unnecessarily by being “too revolutionary”; for that reason, he did not attend Allende’s inauguration.27 Fidel knew it was best not to provoke the gringos.
As in Guatemala, it was clear what Washington really considered a threat in Chile. It was not an alliance with the Soviet Union—indeed, Allende went to Moscow and came back largely empty-handed.
The Soviets continued to view Latin America as Washington’s sphere of influence, and they maintained their long-held orthodox view that revolution should progress gradually in the Western Hemisphere.28 Allende had opposed aggressive Soviet moves in the international arena, and had condemned the 1956 invasion of Hungary and Moscow’s 1968 intervention in Czechoslovakia.29
Washington was not worried that Chile’s economy would be destroyed under irresponsible left-wing mismanagement either, or even that Allende would harm US business interests. What scared the most powerful nation in the world was the prospect that Allende’s democratic socialism would succeed.
Just days after Allende was elected, President Nixon convened his National Security Council. Nixon said:
Our main concern in Chile is… that [Allende] can consolidate himself, and the picture projected to the world will be his success.… If we let the potential leaders in South America think they can move like Chile and have it both ways, we will be in trouble. I want to work on this and on military relations—put in more money. On the economic side we want to give him cold Turkey [sic].… We’ll be very cool and very correct, but doing these other things which will be a real message to Allende and others.… No impression should be permitted in Latin America that they can get away with this.30
After Allende took office, the White House pushed for closer relations with Brazil as a way to counterbalance the perceived threat from Chile. Brazil was, at times, even more ferociously opposed to Allende than the United States. Brazil urged the US to get more involved in South American affairs, because they were working for the same goals.
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br /> In 1971, the year that Brazil’s military began to “disappear” its own dissidents, Médici’s dictatorship helped to overthrow the government in Bolivia and install right-wing General Hugo Banzer as dictator. Evidence indicates Brasília and Washington both supplied money and assistance for the August coup.
A few months later, Uruguay had an election. It appeared the left-leaning Frente Amplio coalition might win, so Brazil moved troops to the border and covertly interfered with the vote. Authorities handed the victory to the incumbent, right-leaning Colorado Party.31
At the very end of 1971, Médici met with Nixon in Washington. The Brazilian leader told the president his dictatorship was in contact with Chilean military officers and working to overthrow Allende. He told Nixon, “We should not lose sight of the situation in Latin America, which could blow up at any time.” Médici said that Brazil could assist organizing a “million” Cuban exiles to fight back against Castro, and urged more action in South America. This was not because he thought the Russians were plotting something. Exactly the opposite. Médici was recorded as saying that “he did not believe that the Soviets or the Chinese were interested in giving any assistance to these countries’ communist movements; they felt that communism would come all by itself because of the misery and poverty in these countries.”
The problem for both men, in other words, was not an international communist conspiracy. The problem was that they thought the Soviets and Chinese might be right. The impoverished people in Brazil’s neighboring countries might choose “communism” all by themselves, and they had to be stopped.
The Jakarta Method Page 23