brazil in warfare

THE ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS: ECONOMICWARFARE IN BRAZIL (1962-1964)

By John DeWitt*

INTRODUCTION

The Alliance for Progress was the crown jewel of President John F.Kennedy's Latin American policy. Press releases and speeches trumpeted thatthe Alliance would promote economic development and democraticgovemment. But fear of communism conquered programs ior democracy. Theconviction that Americans knew better than Brazilians what was best for Brazilpersuaded American policy makers to collaborate with civilian and militaryconspirators to destroy the democratic, constitutional government of PresidentJoao "Jango" Goulart. A program designed to further development anddemocracy was used as an economic warfare tool in the development of a coupclimate that led to a twenty-year military dictatorship.

ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS TO PROMOTE DEVELOPMENTAND DEMOCRACY

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John Kennedy set up working group to develop what became knownas the Alliance for Progress before he was inaugurated. Adolf A. Berle,Ambassador to Brazil under President Getulio Vargas and an old New Dealerconverted to Cold War warrior, was head of the Latin American Task Force.Lincoln Gordon wrote the economic section of the report. AppointedAmbassador to Brazil while Janio Quadros was still in office, Gordon arrivedin Brazil in October 1961 after Quadros had resigned and Joao Goulart becamepresident. His overseas postings with the Marshall Plan were in Paris andLondon. He did not speak Portuguese or Spanish.

The drafting officer of the final document was Richard Goodwin. Hedid not speak Portuguese or Spanish and had never been in Latin Americabefore March 1961. Goodwin became the White House expert on LatinAmerica. During a trip to Brazil in April 1961 in preparation for an Alliancefor Progress conference he (described the air of Rio de Janeiro as anaphrodisiac, "its warm, odored moisture at once calming the mind and arousingthe flesh with promise of sexual pleasure." In Rio he had meetings with Latin

*Dr. DeWitt, now deceased, was an independent scholar who retired from the U.S.Department of State and George Mason University.

Journal of Third World Studies, Vol. XXVI, No. 1 2009 by Association of Third World Studies, Inc.

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American economists, drank with journalists until after midnight "and enjoyed,in the time remaining, the girls of Ipanema."'

Like the Truman Doctrine, containment policy and the Marshall Plan,the Alliance for Progress was a program to combat the expansion ofinternational communism. The report sent to the president in early 1961declared that the problem was to prevent capture of the "inevitable andnecessaryLatinAmericantransformation" by "Communist power politics." Theobjective of the Communists was "to convert the Latin American socialrevolution into a Marxist attack on the United States." The analysis warned thatthe communist threat "is far more dangerous than the Nazi-Fascist threat of theFranklin Roosevelt period and demands an even bolder and more imaginativeresponse."'^

Kennedy announced the Alliance for Progress in a 13 March 1961speech to the Latin American Diplomatic Corps. He said "our aspiration foreconomic progress can best be achieved by free men working within aframework of democratic institutions" and asserted that "political freedom mustaccompany material progress ... we call for social change by free men." ' TheCharter of the Alliance signed at Punta del Este, Uruguay in August 1961declared "The Alliance is established on the basic principle that free menworking through the institution of representative democracy can best satisfyman's aspirations." "

JFK had a Janus-faced policy for the Western Hemisphere. Agrandiose plan to promote economic development and democracy wasannounced with great enthusiasm. Hidden from public view was thecounterinsurgency program designed to prevent at all costs the expansion ofcommunist influence in Latin America. For example, Kennedy establishedAID'S (Agency for International Development) Office of Public Safety (OPS)in 1962. The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) worked through OPS and insix years it was a global anticommunist operation with an annual budget of $35million and four hundred advisors assigned abroad. By 1971 the program hadtrained over one million police officers in forty-seven countries, including100,000 in Brazil.^

Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote, "The Alliance forProgress represented the affirmative side of Kennedy's policy. The other sidewas absolute determination to prevent any new state from going down theCastro road and so giving the Soviet Union a second bridgehead in thehemisphere."^ When he became president, Lyndon Johnson vowed to preventanother communist state in Latin America. The Cuban missile crisis convincedLBJ that "any man who permitted a second communist state to spring up in thishemisphere would be impeached and ought to be."'

Senator J. William Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign

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Relations Committee, wrote in 1966 that the United States followed twoincompatible policies in Latin America: discriminating support for socialreform and undiscriminating anticommunism. The latter always receivedpriority, "often making us the friend of military dictatorships and reactionaryoligarchies." Suspicion of communist support was enough to discredit reformmovements and "to drive United States policy into the stifling embrace of thegenerals and the oligarchs."^ Charges of communism killed debate. JolinKenneth Galbraith said it was not as though policies were discussed and thewrong choices made; the problem was that there was no debate at all becauseof the prevailing anticommunist mood.'

THE BRAZILIAN NORTHEAST

The huge Brazilian Northeast seemed an ideal place to accomplishAlliance for Progress objectives. It was a region making up about 20 percentof Brazil with an area of 970,000 square miles. In the early 1960s thepopulation was about 22,000,000, the great majority li\'ing in misery andeconomic deprivation. The estimated annual per capita income was less tlian$100, less than one-third the national average.'"

Three agricultural zones comprise the Northeast. The zona de mata,forest zone, along the coast is about eighty kilometers wide and extends fromsouthern Bahia to Natal in Rio Grande do Norte. The fertile alluvial soil in themany river valleys along the coast proved ideal for sugar cane cultivation."During the colonial era these valleys were staked out in huge plantationsworked by African slaves. Sugar production totally dominated land use. Thesertao, semiarid backlands, developed as a region of immense ranches thatsupplied beef and draft animals to the coastal plantations. The agreste, thetransition zone between the humid coast and semiarid interior, was devoted tosubsistence farming, producing foodstuffs for the urban centers and plantationsalong the coast.'^

During the colonial period the Northeast was the most prosperous andproductive area of the Portuguese empire. The region was the world's leadingsugar producing region for more than one hundred years. By the 1950s theNortheast was the most backward, underdeveloped, impoverished area inBrazil. Colonial legacies plagued the Northeast including an archaic landownership system, one of the most inequitable income disd'ibution patterns inthe world, and a social system that excluded most of the population frompolitical participation.

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BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT PROJECTS TOAID THE NORTHEAST

Brazilians know the Northeast as a region where droughts in thesertao cause enormous hardships for poor agriculturists. Two of the worstdroughts occurred in 1877-79 and 1958. In the former about one-half ofCeara's one million population died of starvation. In 1958 about 540,000impoverished Northeastemers were put on the public payroll to prevent famine.There was much out-migration to coastal cities and to the new capital, Brasilia,where construction projects offered employment. Brasilia could not have beencompleted rapidly without the work of the hardy candangos, destituteNortheastemers who went to the new capital to escape the drought.'^

Brazilian government programs to alleviate suffering caused by thedroughts provided some emergency welfare assistance to the poor and a boonto large landowners who benefited from the construction of reservoirs, roadsand irrigation systems. President Juscelino Kubitschek took the first steps toprovide long range solutions to Northeast problems.

CELSO FURTADO AND SUDENE

In May 1958 President Kubitschek asked Celso Furtado, a widelyrespected economist of the National Bank for Economic Development(BNDE), to develop legislation and a program for the Northeast. Bom in asmall town in the Northeast sertao, Furtado had a doctorate in economics fromthe Sorbonne and did post graduate work at Cambridge. He had worked forseveral years as an economist with the United Nations Commission forEconomic Development (ECLA) in Santiago, Chile.''' The bill creatingSUDENE (Superintendency for the Development of the Northeast) was signedinto law in December 1959. President Janio Quadros gave Furtado cabinetrank, an appointment reconfirmed by President Joao Goulart followingQuadros' resignation. Getting congressional approval of a new developmentagency proved much easier than obtaining finances for SUDENE's master plan.

The Northeast's congressmen and public officials opposed anautonomous agency directly subordinate to the president. Previous schemes toassist the Northeast had established agencies that could be influenced by theregion's power brokers to use federal financial assistance for pet projects,profit, patronage and pork. Those opposed to the SUDENE program "engagedin character assassination of Furtado, whom they accused of a number ofcrimes, such as being an economic theorist and a Communist." SUDENE'senemies claimed the agency was infiltrated by communists who advocatedcommunist-inspired development projects.'' The law providing SUDENEfunding was finally approved in December 1961.

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PEASANT LEAGUES

In the Northeast in the middle of the twentieth century a few largelandowners lived lavishly while millions of poor farmers barely survived assharecroppers, wage laborers and squatters. In the mid-1950s rural workersbegan organizing themselves to supply basic services that were unavailablefrom their employers or public sources. These societies became known asLigas Camponesas (Peasant Leagues).

The primary goal of the first leagues was to provide decent burialservices for the destitute who by local custom were carried to a hole in theground in a false bottom coffin. The corpse was dumped into the grave andcovered with earth leaving the coffin intact and ready for reuse.'' The practiceproduced the Northeast saying "Quem tempatrao, nao morrepagao," (If youhave a boss, you won't die a pagan.)

The number of leagues grew rapidly, concentrated in the sugar zonealong the coast, with a membership consisting primarily of sharecroppers andtenant farmers on large plantations. In 1955 league leaders in Pemambucosought legal assistance from Francisco Juliao, a lawyer and state deputyrepresenting the PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party) because a plantation ownerwas trying to evict one hundred and eighty league members. Juliao used hisassociation with the leagues as a trampoline to irther his own politicalambitions. He was elected federal deputy in the October 1962 elections.

By 1962 three groups were active in forming rural worker associations- Juliao and his followers, communists, and the Catholic Church." TheBrazilian govemment began forming agricultural unions in 1963. The numberof rural unions recognized by the govemment grew from six in 1961 to 270 in1963 with 557 applications for legal status pending approval. By the end of1963 Juliao's leagues had been overtaken by Catholic Church and govemmentunions.'* :

THE PEASANT LEAGUES: VANGUARD OFCOMMUNIST REVOLUTION?

The growth of organizations representing the rural poor was portrayedas a threat to social, economic, and political structures that had existed forcenturies. Elites branded all peasant movements communistic and sought toundermine their societies and destroy their influence by fair means and foul,including well-funded propaganda campaigns and assassination of leagueleaders. Scare stories were published in Brazil and the United States. In theearly 1960s the press and television introduced the Northeast to Americans asan area with an impoverished population that was "perhaps in imminent dangerof a takeover by Castro-Communist-inspired peasant leagues."" Philip

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Sickman wrote in Fortune magazine that in late 1963 "In the destituteNortheast, illiterate peasants were being organized with money from Red Chinaand arms smuggled in from Cuba."^

The oligarchs labeled Francisco Juliao a Northeast Fidel Castro whowanted to establish a communist state. Anthony Leeds wrote that Juliao "is oneof several paternalistic representatives" of social movements of greatcomplexity "in a small part of the very large Northeast" which is a subordinatepart of multifaceted Brazil.^' According to Phillippe Schmitter, "the avalancheof comment by both nationals and foreigners seems to have greatlyoverestimated" the degree to which rural workers represented a threat toexisting economic and social structures.^^ Although Juliao's influence wasdeclining and his movement losing members to unions sponsored by theCatholic Church and the govemment, the belief that his leagues were a serioussubversive threat remained strong.

THE UNITED STATES FEARS COMMUNISMIN THE NORTHEAST

Among the reports that severely exaggerated the subversive potentialof the Peasant Leagues and Francisco Juliao were lurid articles published on30 October and 1 November 1960 by New York Times Latin American expertTad Szulc. The first carried the front page headline "Northeast Brazil: PovertyBreeds Threat of Revolt" and the second blared, "Marxists Are OrganizingPeasants in Brazil: Lefrist Leagues Aim at a Political Army 40 Million Strong."

Szulc said that organizers of communist-infiltrated leagues glorifiedFidel Castro and Mao Tsetung as heroes to be imitated and that the leagues"appear to be the closest thing to a Fidelista movement in Latin Americaoutside Cuba." One of Juliao's key aides was quoted as saying to sharecroppersthat Cuba presented a model for change and "if we can't do it peacefully we'llcome here and ask you to grab weapons and make a revolution. The biglandowners backed by United States imperialism are sucking our blood."

Recife, the capital of Pemambuco, was "Long a Red Stronghold"according to Szulc. He reported that Mayor Miguel Arraes was said to be acommunist and the city govemment had several communists in high positions.A high municipal official in Recife told Szulc that "the Northeast will goCommunist and we'll have a situation ten times worse than in Cuba -- ifsomething is not done." The official added that "If the Brazilian Northeast islost to you Americans, the Cuban revolution will have been a picnic bycomparison.""

The national economy and the communist threat were the two mainissues in the nip and tuck 1960 presidential race between Richard Nixon andJohn Kennedy. JFK attacked the Eisenhower-Nixon administration for being

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soft on Castro and letting a communist government come to power in Cuba"only ninety miles from Mianii." Kennedy won the 8 November election with49.7 percent of the popular vote to Nixon's 49.5 percent. The New York Timeswas the most influential newspaper in the United States and Szulc was regardedas an authority on Latin America. It is a sure bet that John Kennedy and theNew Frontiersmen were troubled by Szulc's reports.

Fears kindled by media reports were reinforced by CIA evaluations.In an August 1961 National Intelligence Estimate the CIA reported that tlieCommunist Party and its pro-Castro allies could keep the Northeast in ferment.The CIA warned that the 25,000 member Peasant Leagues led by pro-communist, pro-Castro Francisco Juliao had become a powerfiil force for socialagitation."

PRESIDENT KENNEDY, CELSO FURT ADO AND SUDENE

On 14 July 1961 JFjK met in Washington with Celso Furtado todiscuss the SUDENE prograih. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote that during the1950s the American Embassy regarded Furtado "with mistrust as a Marxist,even possibly a Communist."" As a result of the meeting a United Statesmission went to Brazil to consider Alliance for Progress assistance for theNortheast. A positive finding led to an agreement signed by Foreign MinisterSan Tiago Dantas and Secretary of State Dean Rusk during President Goul art'sApril 1962 visit to Washington. The Northeast aid convention called for a $274million program with the United States providing $131 million over fouryears. ^ '

The United States and Brazil had very different views on the roles tobe played by USAID and SUDENE, the number of Americans needed to staffUS AID and the purpose of the development program. President Goulart saidon 15 April that "SUDENE will have total autonomy in the distribution ofresources anticipated in the program of the Alliance for Progress to beexecuted in the Northeast." Foreign Minister Dantas asserted "The program tobe executed is not a mixed program, Brazilian and North American, but onlyBrazilian, elaborated and executed by our technicians. The financial measureswill originate simultaneously with the United States and Brazil.""

The United States refused to accept a subordinate role. USAIDnegotiated agreements directly with state governments and other governmentagencies. Albert Hirschman' wrote that the United States had "grossoverconfidence in its ability to solve other peoples' problems." Any "JourneyToward Progress" is an immensely complex process with "roundabouts andpolitical implications - all matters of which the Washington architects of the'Alliance for Progress' seemed completely unaware."^*

According to Peter Flynn, Americans thought they understood the

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Northeast better than Brazilians. A USAID director told him "we were in avery serious political situation; we thought the Communists were going to runall over the place. That was uppermost in our minds . . . Furtado said thatSUDENE only needed capital. They did not see their problems as clearly as wethought we did."^'

By the end of 1962 USAID policy was to bypass SUDENE and workdirectly with favored state governments. A memorandum from an Embassyofficial presented USAID's strategy:

It seems to me that each of the nine governors [in theNortheast] must be made to feel as sharply as possible thathe is competing to demonstrate to the U.S. that he is readyand with better assurance of making good use of our moneythan any of the other eight governors.'"

If state governors did not meet the standards of American functionaries,USAID worked directly with local mayors. In June 1963 Pemambuco governorMiguel Arraes complained that the Alliance for Progress was making dealsdirectly with mayors of his state.^'

There was strong disagreement about the number of Americanpersonnel that should be assigned to the Northeast. Brazilians believed that asmall technical staff of four or five officers would suffice. From a smallconsulate in the 1950s staffed by three Americans the post in Recife had beenupgraded to Consulate General by 1964 with a staff of seventy Americans,including fifty-one with USAID and six with USIA (United States InformationAgency). Besides American personnel assigned to the Northeast on apermanent basis many more officials arrived on the scene for temporary duty.Celso Furtado said there were thousands of Americans in the Northeast in theearly 1960s."

Ambassador Merwin L.Bohan had been the United StatesCommissioner on the Joint Brazil-U.S. Economic Development Commission(1952-53). He recommended that seven or eight Alliance for Progresstechnicians be sent to the Northeast "to work with the highly nationalisticorganization that was up there [SUDENB] . . . Within a year there were overa hundred and fifty people in a small town in Northeast Brazil." Bohanmaintained that the value of the assistance program had been reduced "many,many times by expansion, expansion, expansion" concluding that "the overallprogram was ruined by bureaucracy.""

The United States and Brazil did not agree on the purpose of theNortheast development program. USAID wanted short term impact projects forpolitical gain to eliminate the alleged communist menace. SUDENE wantedlong term projects designed to change the social and economic structures that

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retarded development and impoverished the people. The United States believedthat communist subversion was the biggest problem in the Northeast. Furtadobelieved that ignorance, exploitation and hunger were the causes of Northeastdiscontent. "Furtado saw thei Northeast as a national economic and socialproblem. The United States viewed the region as an international securityproblem."'" SUDENE objected to USAID's strategy "so undermining SUDENEbecame one of the purposes of the [USAID] program."''

JFK sent his brother,iAttomey General Robert Kennedy, to Brazil inDecember 1962 to have a "political confrontation" with President Goulart.RFK told Jango that the United States was concerned about the increasing roleplayed by communists in government and requested that Celso Furtado beremoved as head of SUDENEl "Goulart's response was defensive, including adenial that Furtado was a Communist, but said he was a poor executive andwould be out of SUDENE in January" according to Assistant Secretary of Statefor Inter American Affairs Edwin Martin. When Foreign Minister San TiagoDantas arrived in Washington^ on 11 March 1963 to seek desperately neededfinancial assistance, Martin wrote that Furtado was "still in charge [ofSUDENE] despite Goulart's promise to the Attorney General to replace him asincompetent."''

Ambassador Gordon claimed that Goulart's word could not be trusted.In 1973 he said that Jango "was like a cork bobbing in water. Goulart wasimpressed by the latest argument he heard."" President Goulart may have toldRFK that he would replace Furtado when he had no intention of doing so. Hemay have been so flabbergasted by the outrageous American request toterminate the services of the man who had created and directed SUDENE sinceits inauguration that he agreed to the proposal just to avoid giving offense tothe brother of President Kennedy who would soon receive a Braziliandelegation requesting urgently needed economic assistance.'* Celso Furtadoremained head of SUDENE until fired after the April 1964 golpe de estado. Hewas among the first to lose his political rights under the military dictatorship.In 1965 he was appointed head of the economic development faculty of theSorbonne by President Charles DeGaulle. When democracy returned to Brazilin 1985 he served as Ambassador to the European Economic Community andMinister of Culture, among other assignments.

ATTEMPT TO INFLUENCE THE 1962 ELECTIONSWITH AMERICAN FUNDS

United States interference in the October 1962 elections forcongressmen and state governors with Alliance for Progress funds subvertedthe democratic process in an attempt to defeat candidates found undesirable byUnited States functionaries. In February 1962 JFK wrote Fowler Hamilton,

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USAID Administrator, "I believe we should do something of a favorable naturefor Brazil before the election this fall, which is going to be crucial."'' PhyllisParker wrote that Kennedy's request was "an obvious attempt to assistopponents of Miguel Arraes who was regarded by the United States as aCommunist." The State Department described Arraes as "the Commie-liningMayor of Recife."""

Hamilton responded to JFK's memo a week later saying that USAIDwas about to conclude three important agreements in the Northeast. The firstwas a $33 million "immediate impact loan-grant program," the second a $62million long range development program and the third "a very substantial"program for emergency food, wheat, com and dried milk (Public Law 480 -Food for Peace). "We hope to initiate projects elsewhere in Brazil which willhave impact before October."'"

At a taped 30 July 1962 White House meeting major policy decisionswere made. It was decided President Goulart "was giving the country to theCommunists," the United States should "stiffen the spine" of the Brazilianmilitary, covert financial assistance should be provided the anti-Goulartpsychological warfare organization IPES (Institute for Research and SocialStudies) and covert funds should be provided anti-Goulart candidates in theOctober 1962 elections. The only participants in this important meeting werePresident Kennedy (Choate, Harvard), Lincoln Gordon (Harvard, Ph.D. ineconomics from Oxford), National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy(Groton, Yale, at age 34, was named Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts andSciences)"^ and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs,Richard Goodwin (first in his class at Harvard Law School where he was editorof the Harvard Law Review\. No high-ranking official of the State Departmentor authority with extensive experience in Brazil was present. If the NewFrontiersmen were the best and the brightest then these four men were amongthe most brilliant of the best, the most dazzling of the brightest. Theirintellectual abilities, however, did not prevent them from making disastrouserrors in analysis of the complex currents and counter currents of politicallypolarized Brazil in the 1960s.

Goodwin: I think the [ 1962] elections really could be a tuming point.Line is analogizing to the Italian elections of'48.

JFK\ How much are we going to put in?Gordon: Oh, this is a matter of a few million dollars, say (seven

seconds excised as classified information).JFK: That's a lot of money. Because, you know, after all, for a

presidential campaign here you spend about 12. And our cost- so that I don'tthink- that's 8 million dollars, would be an awful lot of money in an election.

Gordon: That's right.JFK: (U'nclear)

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Gordon: It's an incrjsdibly complicated political scene -JFK: Well, now, is it really being spent now? Are you going ahead

with it? (Thirty-nine seconds excised as classied information.)'"When asked in a 1977 interview with the Brazilian newsmagazine

Veja how much American govemment money was used to support anti-Goulartcandidates in the 1962 elections, Gordon replied that he thought it was morethan one million dollars but less than five million. He said he might not havebeen aware of all govemment funds involved because "as everyone knows" theCIA used business ventures, some real and some merely fronts, to conduct theiroperations. When asked how the decision was made to give money to anti-Goulart candidates, Gordon responded that "this was more or less a habit inthat period" adding that "the CIA was accustomed to have political funds"since the 1948 Italian elections.""

USAID, SUDENE AND RIO GRANDE DO NORTE

Glaucio Ary Dillon Soares wrote that to comprehend Brazilianpolitics, local politics must be understood. State and municipal issues and localpersonalities are the most important factors."' Rio Grande do Norte providedan excellent example of Gl^ucio's observation. This small, poor andunderdeveloped state with an economy based on agriculture is located on theAtlantic coast in the Brazilian Northeast. Traditional clans like the Maia,Alves, and Rosado families, the elites of Rio Grande do Norte, competed forstate political power.

Based in the city of Mossoro (the state's second largest city), whereall public buildings were painted pink (rosa), the Rosados had controlled themayor's office in every election except one since 1950 when the author visitedRio Grande do Norte on a research field trip in the 1980s. Two powerfulfamilies were linked near the end of the nineteenth century when JernimoRosado married Isaura Maia. Jernimo was a great admirer of French cultureand he named his sons witli French numbers. The wide range ofhis offspring'spolitical and economic activities shows the influence of the Rosado-Maiafamily: Dix-sept, former govemor; Dix-huit, former senator and mayor ofMossoro; Dix-neuf, industrialist; Vingt, federal deputy; and Vingt-et-un, headof the school of agriculture of" the state university.

Aluizio Alves was the most influential politician of another clan. Hehad a close relationship with Carlos Lacerda, leader of tlie opposition UDN(National Democratic Union), vociferous enemy of the Goulart govemment,Guanabara govemor and confidant of Ambassador Lincoln Gordon. Lacerdawas the pit bull of Brazilian politics, a driving force in the destruction of thepresidencies of Getulio Vargas in 1954, Janio Quadros in 1961 and JoaoGoulart in 1964. Rio de Janeiro was the communications capital of Brazil and

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Lacerda was a spellbinding speaker on radio and television. His activities weregiven wide coverage in major newspapers and his biting witticisms were prizedcontributions to Rio's extensive and influential gossip network. Alves wasdirector of Lacerda's newspaper Tribuna da Jmprensa from 1949 to 1958,including the period when Lacerda sought asylum in the Cuban Embassyfollowing his participation in the abortive coup to prevent Juscelino Kubitschekand Joao Goulart from taking office in 1955.'"'

During the early 1960s Alves' political star was ascendant. Bom in1921, he served as UDN federal deputy from 1946 to 1961. In his successful1961 campaign for governor, Alves ran on the PSD (Social Democratic Party)ticket supported by several minor parties, defeating the official UDNcandidates Djalma Marinho and Vingt Rosado. Alves conducted an activecampaign backed by publicity, songs, parades, and emotional speeches thatproduced enough votes for victory. Walter Jose da Silva wrote that thecampaign allowed Alves to display all his talents as "a demagogic, populist andopportunistic politician." ""

Aluizio Alves caught the fancy of Ambassador Lincoln Gordon.During his 30 July 1962 meeting with President Kennedy the Ambassador toldJFK that the United States should move ahead with some AID projects in theNortheast including Rio Grande do Norte. Gordon described RGN GovernorAluizio Alves as a "hell of a good fellow... a 40-year old fellow, energetic ascan be, not a demagogue, honest." He added that "Alves wanted to organize astrong center, slightly le of center, and we ought to support this absolutely tothe hilt.""'

In August 1962 a committee from USAID headquarters visited RioGrande do Norte. Before returning to the United States the delegation and theAlves' government issued The Manifesto of Natal (RGN state capital) thatdeclared "We conclude that we are able to realize together a social andeconomic development undertaking in Rio Grande do Norte within the spiritof the Alliance of Progress.'"" The manifesto did not mention SUDENE or theNortheast Development Master Plan. No SUDENE representative was presentduring the negotiations between the USAID delegation and the Alvesgovernment.

The United States blundered into Rio Grande do Norte like a blind ox.American bureaucrats thought they knew more about Rio Grande do Norte thanBrazilian specialists in Northeast development working with SUDENE. Adviceand assistance from SUDENE was shunned because it was allegedly tainted bycommunism. The Brazilian Northeast development organization was excludedfrom project planning and oversight functions. The United States gavebountiil support directly to Governor Alves who impressed AmbassadorGordon as a "hell of a good fellow."

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Over the objections of SUDENE an education plan between USAIDand Rio Grande do Norte became effective at the end of 1962. Of the onethousand classrooms planned for the project, forty-five new ones had beenconstructed by April 1965 arid two hundred and forty-four existing ones hadbeen renovated. Progress in other areas of the education project was equallyunsatisfactory. The construction program ended in 1970.^ "

All completed classrooms were located in the western part of the statewhere Alves sought to bolster, his political support. "From the beginning of theprogram, political misuse of USAID funds plagued the undertaking."^' InNatal, a housing project built entirely with United States funds gave Alvesadditional political clout. He "used his control of the social services apparatusto dole out houses on the basis of political patronage," according to BrazilianistRobert Levine."

Alves was governor; 1961-1966, and returned to Brasilia as federaldeputy for ARENA (the government political party established followingInstitutional Act Number 2) from 1967 to 1969. The military dictatorshipcanceled Alves' political rights on 7 February 1969, allegedly for corruption,under the terms of Institutional Act Number 5 of December 1968." Thepolitical rights of Carlos Lacerda were voided under the provisions of the sameact.

Neither the Alliance for Progress nor the military changed statepolitics in Rio Grande do Norte. Tarcisio Maia became governor in 1975. Heformed an agreement of "Political Peace" with Aluizio Alves, influential instate politics even without political rights. Tarcisio's cousin, Lavoisier MaiaSobrinho, became governor in 1979. In the direct elections for governor in1982 Jose Agripino Maia, riephew of Lavoisier, defeated Aluizio Alves.Eduardo de Souza Soares and Josefa Emilia de Macedo observed that in theelections of 1986 the candidate supported by the Maia oligarchy was defeatedby the candidate backed by th Alves oligarchy thus ending twelve consecutiveyears of state government doniinated by the

ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS RESULTS

In 1961 the Latin American Task Force reported to PresidentKennedy, "A 'father knows best' attitude has been the cause of much of the illwill directed toward the United States in recent years."" Alliance for Progressofficials had this imperious attitude in spades. USAID's posture was that ofacharitable father doling out rewards to obsequious youngsters deemeddeserving by American functionaries.

Riordan Roett concluded that "economic aid oi' the United Statescounteracted Brazil's modernization efforts for the Northeast and contributedto the retention of power by the traditional oligarchy. "" Celso Furtado declared

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that the fear of reform "brought panic to the dominant classes who appealed tothe armed forces to play the role of gendarme of the social status quo, whosepreservation demanded the elimination of formal democracy.""

UNITED STATES POLICY CONTRIBUTES TOCREATION OF COUP CLIMATE

United States policy makers looked at Brazil through Cold Warlenses. They were terrified that the moderately reformist President Goulartwould lead Brazil to a communist dictatorship. There was no ringingpronouncement similar to President Richard Nixon's orders to "make theeconomy scream" as part of the program to destabilize Salvador Allende inChile.'* Economic warfare against Joao Goulart was slow strangulation.

Ambassador Lincoln Gordon claimed that "far from bringingeconomic pressure to weaken the Goulart regime, our policy was to sustaineconomic assistance where it could be effective."^' The Ambassador'sstatement would be laughable if the results of American policies had not beenso tragic for Brazil. Jan Knippers Black wrote:

By mid-1963 the U.S. effort to undermine Goulart had beenformalized in an approach called "islands of administrativesanity," a phrase originated by Lincoln Gordon. Under thispolicy, aid to the central government was suspended, whilemore than $100 million was committed to state governorswho were pro-U.S. and anti-Goulart [including Lacerda andAlves] . . . The public safety assistance program [trainingpolice officers to control demonstrations by allegedsubversives] was geared at that time to the "islands ofadministrative sanity" policy; most of the policemen trainedin 1963 were from the states of Minas Gerais, Guanabaraand Sao Paulo [states with anti-Goulart governors].'"

FOREIGN FUNDS AVAILABLE FOR GOULARTENEMY LACERDA

While President Goulart was being overwhelmed by enormouseconomic problems his most vehement enemy, Guanabara governor CarlosLacerda, was inaugurating projects with great fanfare that were funded lavishlyby foreign sources. Lacerda received two loans firom the InteramericanDevelopment Bank (IADB) to construct hospitals, improve water supply andquality and to expand the sewage system." These were 30 year loans, withinterest of 2.75 percent (loans from die Brazilian Caixa Econmica were at 16

70

John DeWittATie Alliance for Progress: Economic Warfare in Brazil (1962-1964)

percent interest). Lacerda made speeches praising the Alliance for Progresswhen he got funding from USAID to build five public markets in poor areas ofthe city. Donations of Food for Peace money were used for schools and lowcost housing. A slum resettlement project was funded with a $2 million (1billion cruzeiros) donation to the Guanabara affiliated Fundacao Leao XIII inJune 1962 by USAID using counterpart funds obtained from Food for Peace(Public Law 480) wheat sales| to Brazil."

I

CONCLUSIONS

Two factors converted the Alliance for Progress fi-om a program fordevelopment and democracy to an economic warfare weapon used todestabilize the democratic govemment of Joao Goulart. The first was theanticommunist fervor, at times bordering on hysteria, which gripped the UnitedStates in the early 1960s. American policy makers were so afi-aid of appearing"soft on Communism" they conspired with right-wing civilian and militarygroups against reform moveitients. The second destructive characteristic ofAmerican policy making was the Gook Syndrome, a term coined by PeterWyden in describing the Bay of Pigs catastrophe. He attributed the disaster tothe arrogance of American policy makers. "They tend to underestimate grosslythe capabilities and determination of people who committed the sin of nothaving been bom Americans, especially 'gooks' whose skins are less thanwhite.""

Arrogance was a cliaracteristics of Kennedy's New Frontiersmen.Humility was in short supply. The embodiment of the New Frontier's "penchantfor toughness, grace, and brilliance was McGeorge Bundy," the president'sNational Security Adviser.'" !Kai Bird wrote "What for some was Bundy'sarrogance appeared to Kennecly as simple balls. Kennedy respected balls." Ina Febmary 1965 interview, Stanley Hoffman told Bird that:

There was this sense of infallibility, which I must say is whatexasperated me about the Kennedy administration. 1 knewmany of these people. They were arrogant bastards... Theyalways knew what the interest of another country was muchbetter than the natives."^'

i

Ronning and Vannucci wrote that "quite clearly" Ambassador Gordonbelieved that he knew better than Brazilian leaders what was best for thepeople.'* !

The deadly combination of fear driven anticommunism and a colossalsuperiority complex led American policy makers to collaborate withconspirators in the destruction of Brazilian democracy.

71


END NOTES

FRUS - Foreign Relations of the United States, Govemment Printing Office,Washington, DC

NARA - National Archives, Washington, DC

FOIA - Document obtained under the Fredom of Information Act

NOTES

1. Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from theSixties (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1988), p. 139, p. 162,pp. 178-179.

2. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in theWhite House (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, 1965),pp. 184-185.

3. Edwin McCammon Martin, Kennedy and Latin America (Lanham,MD: University Press of America, 1994), pp. 52-54.

4. //i/.,p. 52,p. 59,p. 63.5. Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from

the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Metropolitan Books,2006), p. 60.

6. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 712.7. Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Dell

Publishers, 1969), p. 451.8. J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (New York: Random

house, 1966), p. 83.9. John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times (Boston: Houghton

Mifflin company, 1981), p. 359.10. FOIA - CIA Current Intelligence Weekly Summary, 1 June 1962, p.

5.11. Merilee S. Grindle, State and Countryside: Development Policy and

Agrarian Politics in Latin America (Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1986), pp. 28-30.

12. John DeWitt, "Sugar Cane Cultivation and Rural Misery in NortheastBrazil," Journal ofCultural Geography (9), Spring/Summer 1989, p.33.

13. Albert O. Hirschman, Journeys Toward Progress: Studies ofEconomic Policy Making in Latin& Company, 1963), p. 22, p. 68.

72


14. Albert Hirschman dedicated his classic book on economicdevelopment in Latin America to Celso Furtado and Colombia'sCarlos Lleras Restrepo.Hirschman,yoMre;;5 Toward Progress, p. iv.

15. ic/., pp. 82-90. '16. R.S. Rose, One of the Forgotten Things: Getulio Vargas and

Brazilian Social Control, 1930-1954 (Westport, CN: GreenwoodPress, 2000), p. 14. ,

17. Rowan Ireland, "The Catholic Church and Social Change in Brazil:An Evaluation" in - Riordan Roett (ed.), Brazil in the Sixties(Nashville: Vanderbjlt University Press, 1972), pp. 357-359.

18. Boris Fausto, A Concise History of Brazil (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999), 259-60; Anthony W. Pereira, The End of thePeasantry: Rural Labor in Northeast Brazil (Pittsburgh: Universityof Pittsburgh Press, 1997), pp. 31-33.

19. Hirschman, Journeys Toward Progress, p. 1L20. Phillip Sickman, "When Executives Turned Revolutionaries,"

Fortune (70), September 1964, p. 214.21. Anthony Leeds, "Northeast Brazil: Poverty Breeds Threat of Revolt"

in Joseph Maier and Richard W. Weatherhead, Politics of Change inLatin America (New,York: Praeger, 1964), pp. 194-195.

22. Phillipe C. Schmitter I Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), p. 209.

23. Tad Szulc, "Northeast Brazil: Poverty Breeds Threat of Revolt, " NewYork Times 31 October 1960,1 ; Tad Szulc, "Marxists are OrganizingPeasants in Brazil: Leftist Leagues Aim at Political Army 40 MillionStrong," New York_fimes, 1 November 1960, p. 3.

24. FRUS 1961-1963 (vol. XII), American Republics, NationalIntelligence Estimate of 8 August 1961 (NIE 93-61), Subject: "TheOutlook for Brazil," p. 443.

25. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 172; FRUS 1961-1963, (vol. XII),American Republics, "Memorandum of Conversation: Subject: CelsoFurtado Call on the I^resident, 14 July 1961," pp. 439-441.

26. Moniz Bandeira, Presecnca dos Estados Unidos no Brasil (Rio deJaneiro: Civilizacao Brasileira, 1973), p. 424.

27. Riordan Roett, The Politics of Foreign Aid in the Brazilian Northeast(Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1972), p. 85, p. 91.

28. Hirschman, Journeys Toward Progress, p. vi.29. Peter Flynn, Brazil: A Political Analysis (Boulder: Westview Press,

1978), pp. 276-277. 30. Jan Knippers Black, United States Penetration of Brazil

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), p. 131.

II 7 3I

JOURNAL OF THIRD WORLD STUDffiS, SPRING 2009

31. Carlos Castello Branco, Introducao a Revolucao de 1964: Agonia dePoder Civil (vol. I), (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Artenova, S.A., 1975)I, p. 193.

32. Black, United States Penetration of Brazil, p. 131.33. "Oral History Interview with Merwin L.Bohan," 15 June 1974,Harry

S. Truman Library, Independence, MO, 79-80. Bohan was a careerForeign Service officer whose assignments included Counselor ofEmbassy for Economic Affairs, Mexico City (1945-49) andAmbassador to the Inter American Economic and Social Council.

34. Roett, The Politics of Foreign Aid,70, pp. 91 -93.35. Jan Knippers Black, "Lincoln Gordon and Brazil's Military

Counterrevolution" in C. Neale Ronning and Albert P. Vannucci(eds.). Ambassadors in Foreign Policy: The Influence of Individualson U.S.-Latin American Policy (New York: Praeger, 1987), p.lOl;Fabio Sa Earp and Luiz Carlos Delorme Prado, "Celso Furtado" inJorge Ferreira and Daniel Aarao Reis, Nacionalismo e reformismosocial, 1945-1964 (Rio de Janeiro: Civiliazacao Brasileira, 2007),pp. 392-393.

36. Martin, Kennedy and Latin America, pp. 302-305, p. 396 note 66.37. Phyllis R. Parker, Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, 1964 (Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1979), p. 56.38. Politicians are characteristically courteous with visitors, wrote

Elizabeth Drew. They often respond to requests for specifications invague terms that the visitors interpret as ironclad commitments. Thepolitician wants no confrontations or visitors departing in anger.Elizabeth Drew, On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency (New York:Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 204.

39. NARA President John F. Kennedy to Fowler Hamilton, 2 February1962, Box 112, Brazil, Security.

40. Parker, Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, p. 26, p. 94.41. FRUS American Republics, 1961-1962, (vol. XII) "Memorandum

from the Administrator of the Agency for International Developmentto President Kennedy," 9 February, 1962, pp. 455-456.

42. Kai Bird wrote that a Groton education produced a "myopia toanything outside the Anglophile world" and produced in its graduatesan "ill-fated marriage" of "intellectual self-assurance andcondescension toward other cultures." Kai Bird, The Color of Truth:McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms, ABiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), p. 53, p. 190.

43. Timothy Naflali (ed.). The Presidential Recordings - John F.Kennedy: The Great Crises, 30 July-August 1962 (New York: W.W.Norton, 2001),I, pp. 16-17; Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John

74

John DeWitt/The Alliance for Progress: Economic Warfans in Brazil (1962-1964)j

F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 (New York: Little, Brown and Company,2003), p. 521. I

44. Roberto Garcia, "Entrevista Lincoln Gordon: Castello perdeu abatalha: A presenca da Embaixada American na deposicao de JoaoGoulart em abril de 1964," Veja 9 March 1977,2-8. In Paris LincolnGordon was an economic expert on Governor Averell Harriman'sMarshall Plan staff. 'The CIA fmanced anti-Communist labor andelectoral activities in France and Italy with Marshall Plan counterpartfunds, about $200 million a year. The Governor enthusiasticallysupported the CIA's propaganda and psychological warfareoperations. The CIA claimed an important victory in the 1948 Italianelections when the Christian Democrats defeated tlie Communists andtheir allies. Frances Stoner Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: TheCIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: The New Press,1999), pp. 107-109. !

45. Glaucio Ary Dillon i Soares, Sociedade e politica no Brasil (SaoPaulo: Diflisao Europeia do Livro, 1975), p. 12.

46. John W.F. Dulles, Unrest in Brazil: Political-Military Crises, 1955-1964 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), ]). 259, p. 290.

47. Walter Jose da Silva, "Articulacoes politicas para Aluizio Alvesganhar a cena," Historia do Rio Grande do Norte n@ Web(www.seol.com.br/rnnaweb/historia/republica).

48. Naftali (ed.). The Presidential Recordings, p. 12, p. 15.49. Roett, The Politics of Foreign Aid, p. 111.50. Black, United States,Penetration of Brazil, p. 131.51. Roett, The Politics of Foreign Aid, pp. 122-123.52. Robert M. Levine, Brazilian Legacies (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe,

1997), pp. 49-50. '53. "Aluizio Alves," Dicionario Historico-Biografico Brasileiro, 1930-

1983 (Rio de Janeiro: Fundacao Gettilio Vargas, 1984), I, pp. 95-96.54. Eduardo de Souza Soares and Josefa Emilia de Macedo, "A

Rearticulacao Oligrquica: A Terceira Via dos Maias (de CortezPereira a Jose Agripino)" in Historia do Rio Grande do Norte n@Web (www.seol.com.br/mnaweb/historia/republica).

55. Goodwin, Remembering America, p. 167.56. Roett, The Politics of Foreign Aid, pp. ix-xi, p. 170.57. Celso Furtado, "Brasil: Da repblica oligrquica ao estado militar" in

Celso Furtado et al, Brasil: Tempos modernos (Rio de Janeiro:Editora Paz e Terra, 1968), p. 12.

58. David AtleePhillips,T/eMg/i/ Watch (New York: Atheneum, 1977),p. 221 ; Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Lonon:Verso, 2001), p. 56.1

75


59. Lincoln Gordon, Brazil's Second Chance En Route to the First World(Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution press, 2001), p. 64.

60. Black, "Lincoln Gordon and Brazil's Military Counterrevolution," p.101.

61. Mario Victor, Cinco anos que abalaram o Brasil: de Janio Quadrosao Marchal Castello Branco (Rio de Janeiro: Editora CivilizacaoBrasileira, 1965), pp. 479-482.

62. John W.F. Dulles, Carlos Lacerda, Brazilian Crusader: The Years1960-1977 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), II, pp. 93-94,p. 101; Mauricio Dominguez Perez, Lacerda na Guanabara (Rio deJaneiro: Odisseia Editorial, 2007), pp. 119-125.

63. Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (New York: Simon andSchuster, 1979), p. 326.

64. Leebaert, The Fifty Year Wound, p. 263.65. Bird, The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, p.

190, p. 442 note 16.66. C. Neale Ronning and Albert P. Vannucci, "Ambassadors in Foreign

Policy" in C. Neale Ronning and Albert P. Vannucci (eds.).Ambassadors in Foreign Policy: The Influence of Individuals onU.S.-Latin American Policy (New York: Praeger, 1987), p. 139.

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