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  • We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States
  • W. Michael Weis
We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States. By James N. Green. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv, 450. Illustration. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

When one thinks of 1960s-era protest movements, opposition to the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985) does not immediately come to mind. It is not only that events in Latin America are usually of secondary concern to most Americans, but also because, in comparison to the drama of the Cuban Revolution and the coup against Salvador Allende, the events in Brazil seem pale. It would thus be tempting to think that the limited opposition in Brazil and the United States to the military regime was unimportant and ineffective. James Green, building on the outstanding work by Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) on transnational advocacy networks, shows in We Cannot Remain Silent how grassroots movements are created and sustained, and how, over time they challenged and changed U.S. foreign policy.

This is an extremely well-written and timely book. As Brazil starts a new era with a female president (who was once a guerrilla fighter against the military regime), Brazilians seem to have moved beyond the dictatorship. On the other hand there has been a lot of discussion in Brazil about Brazilianists—those Americans who study Brazil—who have been charged with having only a superficial knowledge about Brazil and attacked on the grounds of privilege, specifically with having too-easy access to the top echelons of government and economy. Most damning, many Brazilian intellectuals believe North American scholars did little to oppose the dictatorship. This work effectively counters those charges.

Green was able to interview numerous Brazilians and Americans involved in the struggle, and the effort provides a sense of drama and makes this a valuable historical document. These personal accounts also humanize what Green asserts is the usual "sterile analysis of political campaigns and foreign policy shifts." But the book's strength is also its weakness. The problem is that such micro-examination of individuals and groups can lead to a tendency to overvalue their impact and contributions in regard to returning Brazil to democracy. There were many reasons why the military dictatorship ended. Certainly the embrace of liberation theology by the Brazilian hierarchy of the Catholic Church was crucial, as was the rise of ex-president Lula's independent labor movement. And while it is tempting to point to U.S. President Jimmy Carter's focus on human rights (perhaps as a way of showing off the influence of the American activists on the evolution of policy), it is easy to exaggerate Carter's influence.

Let's be clear: the most important factors in bringing the end of the military government were the two oil shocks of the 1970s and the resulting debt crisis in the 1980s. The oil crisis ended the economic boom (the so-called "miracle") and destroyed the argument of the technocrats that only a government free from political pressure could ensure development. The pressures put on Brazil by the U.S. government or any other [End Page 311] organization were of minor concern. In fact, by the time the military relinquished control, it had found an ideological ally in the White House in Ronald Reagan. Had the dictatorship been able to maintain growth and provide for a more equitable distribution of resources, it might still be in power.

This is not to discount the efforts of Brazilians and their American allies. By documenting torture and repression, making international connections, and educating the American public, they were able to create a new discourse about human-rights violations in Latin America that in turn undermined support for the regime and laid the groundwork for subsequent U.S. movements against human-rights abuses in the rest of the continent during the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, by the time the wars in Central America began at the end of the 1970s, there existed a large network of activists (many closely affiliated with the Catholic Church) able to oppose the claims of American officials that those wars were...

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