Secret Dialogues: Church-State Relations, Torture, and Social Justice in Authoritarian Brazil (review)

Secret Dialogues: Church-State Relations, Torture, and Social Justice in Authoritarian Brazil. By Kenneth P. Serbin. Pitt Latin American Series. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. Photographs. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xx, 312 pp. Cloth, $50.00. Paper, $24.95.

This is the story of Brazil's "Bipartite Commission," which met secretly between 1970 and 1974, during the height of military rule in the country. The Commission, over the course of some 24 meetings, brought together military officials and Catholic Church leaders. The purpose of the meetings was to revitalize a church-military ("cross and sword," as Serbin puts it) dialogue damaged by military repression and growing social and political activism on the part of the Catholic Church. Three broad themes addressed by the Commission were economic development and social justice, the growing church-military conflict after decades of cooperation and agreement, and the issue of human rights.

General Antônio Carlos de Silva Muricy, the army chief of staff in 1970, founded the Commission, and was joined on the military side by junior officers from key components of the military's repressive apparatus. Candido Mendes, the prominent, Catholic intellectual led the religious side, joined by "the most influential bishops from across the political spectrum" (p. 3). These included Dom Eugênio de Araújo Salles, cardinal-archbishop of Salvador, Bahia, and Dom Vicente Scherer, cardinal-archbishop of Porto Alegre.

Serbin's thesis is that the Bipartite's activities disprove the dominant assumption in the literature that "the church and the armed forces only fought and had little or no dialogue or attempts at cooperation" (p. 2). His other argument challenges the tendency to define Church officials as either progressive or conservative. Instead, someone like Dom Eugênio, often portrayed as an "authoritarian opportunist" (p. 12) because of his ties with the military and his support in the barracks, was active in the defense of human rights, but did so behind the scenes in forums like the secret Bipartite Commission.

The strength of this monograph is the author's use of military records. His principal sources are a 58-hour interview with General Muricy, which was conducted by the staff of the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de História Contemporânea do Brasil (CPDOC), as well as the General's minutes of roughly one-half of the meetings of the Commission. In addition, Serbin puts to good use documents created by the units of military repression, principally the Departamento de Ordem Política e Social da Guanabara (DOPS-GB). He also interviewed an impressive array of key participants.

For Serbin, the "Bipartite was a central episode in the history of authoritarian Brazil" (p. 221). It was "a remarkable development in the history of dictatorial regimes in contemporary Latin America" (p. 234). And yet, the author's evidence fails to support such lofty claims. General Muricy reached mandatory retirement age in 1970 and left his post as army chief of staff after the first meeting of the Commission. Thus "it was never quite clear where the Grupo da Situação (the military side of the Commission) fit into the nebulous web of the Medici administration nor to what extent it represented the president" (p. 96). Indeed Candido Mendes, in an interview with the author, argued that "Muricy's effectiveness was reduced because he had lost power upon retirement and therefore was not an 'insider' in the Medici government" (p. 97). Dom Eugênio likewise questioned the influence of the Commission vis-à-vis President Medici, and Serbin even notes that Muricy himself was unsure about the status and influence of the Commission.

The author does provide a few specific examples of how the Bipartite dialogue led directly to the release of Catholic activists imprisoned by the regime. And yet, elsewhere in the book (pp. 106-12) he suggests that a principal goal of the military...