Resisting Brazil’s Military Regime: An Account of the Battles of Sobral Pinto (review)

Noteworthy among the literary works of John Watson Foster Dulles (1913–2008) are the voluminous biographical studies of contemporary Brazilian personalities. In his final work, Dulles continued in this line of research by cataloguing the courageous activities of legal expert Heráclito Sobral Pinto (1893–1991) during the Brazilian military regime of 1964–85. In fact, Dulles had already touched on Sobral Pinto in a previous work: Sobral Pinto, “The Conscience of Brazil” (Austin, 2002), a text that analyzed the work of this lawyer during the 1930–45 presidency of Getúlio Vargas, who governed as a dictator from 1937.

The struggles in favor of human rights and democracy—or for its restitution—from the viewpoint of a certain individual trajectory are once again brought to light in Resisting Brazil’s Military Regime, whose pages constitute a solid inventory of the battles of Sobral Pinto against numerous acts of force of the government installed in March 1964. The text is enriched by the note that, thanks to his anticommunism, Sobral Pinto had applauded the putsch that ousted reformist president João Goulart. This approval did not impede him from taking an opposing stance days after the coup, taking on the defense of many of those who were persecuted by the new order. Such was the case of former president Juscelino Kubitschek, politically a liberal, and also those to the Left such as Miguel Arraes, deposed governor of the impoverished Pernambuco state, and Franciso Julião, leader of the Ligas Camponesas (Country People’s Leagues), characterized by the recently installed regime as agents of “Cubanization” of the Brazilian countryside.

As the repression deepened, the activities of Sobral Pinto would make the lawyer himself one of its targets. As such, the promulgation of Institutional Act Number 5 (AI–5) in December 1968—a regulation that, among other actions, closed the national congress, imposed prior restraint on the press, prohibited habeas corpus for political causes, and incarcerated dissidents—even imprisoned Sobral Pinto. His captivity, although short in duration, was nevertheless rich in significance. The incident confirmed the testimonial character of his militancy, a result of Sobral Pinto’s Roman Catholicism. Dulles emphasizes that for Sobral Pinto, the struggle for freedom was a consequence of his personal faith, cultivated through daily Mass and Communion.

Thus Dulles paints a picture of (and exalts) the lawyer, champion of human rights and a figure admired by many, including other opponents of the regime quite distant from Sobral Pinto’s decidedly conservative way of interpreting Catholic faith. Dulles also stresses that despite Sobral Pinto’s struggle against dictatorship, he was a tireless critic of some important social actors of Brazilian democratic resistance. Such was the case of progressive Catholicism and liberation theology—an original Latin American ecclesiology denounced by him as a Marxist infiltration of the Church.

Another point well covered by the author is Sobral Pinto’s conservatism in morals and customs. For him, the social role of women ought to be basically confined to the home, a view that earned him attacks from the feminist movement.

The text, backed by impressive documentary research, is lacking only in analytical depth in some passages. For example, the author could have developed the connection between the juridical activity of Sobral Pinto and the traditional Catholic view of the prevalence of natural right over positive right—a view that certainly motivated Sobral Pinto and other contemporary leading Catholic figures (such as his friend Alceu Amoroso Lima) to challenge the holders of power in the name of the greater ideal of justice reflected in the faith they practiced.

This omission fails to diminish the merit of this work by Dulles, who sheds light on an important part of Brazil’s tempestuous twentieth century.