Love It or Leave It, Ep. 3: Cross-border persecution in South America

After having received support from the U.S. in usurping the presidency and consolidating its dictatorship, Brazil’s military decided to try its hand at foreign interference, working against democracies around Latin America.

The idea was that working outside its own borders would help weaken the left on the continent and expand the scope of Brazil’s repressive powers. Capital cities around the region that once served as a refuge for Brazilian political exiles would soon become new dictatorship outposts to monitor and even exterminate opponents.

Documents from the U.S. indicate that the Brazilian military dictatorship worked to rig the 1971 elections in neighboring Uruguay, even coming up with a plan for military invasion were the left to have won at the polls. Two years later, an agreement between the elected president and that country’s armed forces put Uruguay under military rule.

In that same year of 1973, the Brazilian military lent its know-how and logistical and diplomatic support to the violent military coup in Chile. At the time, Uruguay and Chile had been the homes of the region’s most consolidated democracies. 

A few years later, another military coup in Argentina began the bloodiest dictatorship in South American contemporary history.

If the Brazilian dictatorship was already able to persecute opponents abroad, with the lights on, imagine what it was able to do in the 1970s, with the lights turned off in every corner of the region. Saying that, it also had to learn how to walk in the dark, and collaborate with other authoritarian regimes.

In the third episode of the special series about the Brazilian military dictatorship, from within to abroad, we fly over South America, dominated by authoritarian rule in the 1960 and 1970s. We tell the story of how Brazil supported coups in the region, and how it operated internationally to persecute exiles.

If you missed the second episode, check it here. 

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This episode used music from Envato. License codes: Dystopian Cyberpunk Cellos by Orchestralis (XK3687SABD), Mysterious Suspenseful Investigation Documentary by lucafrancini (7LB2QQX), Minimal Dystopian Ambient by Orchestralis (YF67RTZKMQ), Suspenseful Pulsing Drone and Strings by Orchestralis (HCYR5AGT7X), Sad Tango Violin by Korolkov (3BLYF2TWHG), Acoustic Guitar Background Ambient by AudioZen (REV3HRP), Ambient Suspense by Orchestralis (JUPKH36Y2B), and Dark Melancholic Documentary Background by Orchestralis (5CGVDMTLP4).

In this episode:

• Isabela Cruz holds a law degree from the State University of Rio de Janeiro and a master’s degree in social sciences from the Fundação Getulio Vargas. Prior to The Brazilian Report, she covered politics and the judicial system for Nexo.
• André Pagliarini is a history professor at Hampden-Sydney College, specializing in Latin America. He is also a columnist for The Brazilian Report.
• Roberto Simon is a journalist and international analyst, with a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University. He wrote “Brazil Against Democracy: The dictatorship, the coup in Chile and the Cold War in South America”, published by Companhia das Letras, in 2021.

Background reading on dictatorships in South America:

• A special playlist with songs that defined the resistance against the dictatorships in Brazil and the other countries that were mentioned in this episode.
• An overview of the Brazilian military dictatorship
• How the Brazilian press covered the 1964 coup at the time
• The AI-5, the legal measure that made torture and repression legal
• CIA documents which prove that the Brazilian government killed people during the military regime
• Why Brazil has never punished its dictators
• Get to know all of Brazil’s presidents in this interactive timeline

Do you have a suggestion for our next Explaining Brazil podcast? Drop us a line at podcast@brazilian.report

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• #democracy
• #dictatorship
• #history
• #latinAmerica