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The Estado Novo: Politics and Political Propaganda in Brazil, 1937–1945  

Maria Helena Capelato

The Brazilian Estado Novo (New State) emerged from a coup led by then-President Getúlio Vargas with support from political and military groups. It was an enduring dictatorial regime (1937–1945), characterized by two distinct political moments. In the first phase, sympathy for European totalitarian regimes was evident. In addition to the violent repression of communist/socialist movements and other opponents, political propaganda—inspired by the Goebbelsian model—was put into practice: civic and sporting events, posters, and films encouraged patriotism and a cult of personality. In this period, because of the promulgation of an array of labor laws demanded by workers since the beginning of the century, Vargas was given the epithet “Father of the Poor.” The second phase began in 1942, when Brazil entered World War II in support of the Allies who fought against Nazi-fascist regimes. The contradiction of a dictatorial government in Brazil struggling for democracy abroad was patent, which contributed to the delegitimation of the regime and, consequently, the end of the dictatorship.

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The Labor Movement and Sugar Industry in Tucumán in the 1960s and 1970s  

Silvia Nassif

The province of Tucumán, Argentina, has been used as a test case for the fallacious “theory of the two demons” because it is both where a guerrilla movement formed in 1974 and where the country’s first clandestine detention center was established in the “escuelita” of Famaillá during “Operativo Independencia” in 1975. This “theory” reduces the conflict in the province to a confrontation in the Tucumán hills between no more than 150 combatants of the People’s Revolutionary Army (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, ERP) and 5,000 soldiers of the Argentine Army. This, however, largely conceals the social catastrophe suffered by Tucumán and the high levels of conflict that had already been taking place for more than a decade. Previously, in August 1966, the provincial territory had been militarized by the new dictatorial government led by Juan Carlos Onganía. On that occasion, militarization sought to guarantee the closure of sugar mills. This generated an unprecedented economic and social crisis. Between 1966 and 1968, eleven mills were closed out of a total of twenty-seven, more than 50,000 jobs were eliminated in the sugar agro-industry alone, medium and small sugarcane producers were severely affected, and more than a quarter of the total population of the province was forced to emigrate in search of new sources of work. Such were the root causes of social conflict, led mainly by the sugar working class assembled in the Tucumán Workers Federation of the Sugar Industry (Federación Obrera Tucumana de la Industria Azucarera, FOTIA), which the 1976 dictatorship was intent on reining in.

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Brazilian Universities and Politics in the 20th Century  

Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta

Recently Brazil reached the mark of eight million university students, which represents around 4 percent of the population. Although this level is less than those in developed countries, it signifies an advance in relation to the country’s starting point. Unlike Spain, the Portuguese Empire did not create university institutions in its colonies. Following the Independence of Brazil in 1822, the new governing elite established some higher-level courses (initially medicine, law, and engineering), but these functioned in isolation, in other words, university institutions were not created. The first universities emerged only in the 1920s and were regulated during the Getúlio Vargas administration (1931). Since then, higher-level education has been the object of greater public attention—as well as political conflicts—due to both its role in development projects and its capacity to produce leaders. Between the 1940s and 1960s, university students became a relevant political force, having engaged in debates for university reform and also in favor of social changes, contributing to the process of political radicalization abruptly ended by the 1964 military coup. The dictatorship led by the military implemented an authoritarian modernization of the universities, repressing and purging the “undesirables” at the same time that it increased investment in research and graduate studies. The results were paradoxical, since although the dictatorship created a better structured university system, it was a more authoritarian and socially elitist one. The first post-dictatorial governments maintained the university structure inherited from the previous period, but they deteriorated due to a lack of public resources caused by hyperinflation and also by the intention of reducing public expenditure on higher education. The country managed to improve its higher-level institutions during the 20th century, which became strategic spaces for political battles and, for this reason, targets of constant state intervention. Despite the reforms and the expansion, universities were marked by elitism and social inequality, like Brazilian society itself, problems that only recently have started to be addressed. Only in the 21st century did Brazilian universities undergo a new expansionist phase, led by the center-left Brazilian governments which, in addition to expanding the public system, also invested in the inclusion of social sectors that previously had no access to higher education. It appears that this process may be interrupted, thanks to the “right turn” experienced by Brazil since 2016–2018.

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Conflicts between Caribbean Basin Dictators and Democracies, 1944–1959  

Aaron Coy Moulton

Between 1944 and 1959, conflicts with anti-dictatorial exiles and democratic leaders against dictatorial regimes and dissident exiles shaped inter-American relations in the Caribbean Basin. At the end of World War II, anti-dictatorial exiles networked with students, laborers, journalists, and politicians in denouncing the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo, Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza, and Honduras’s Tiburcio Carías. Opponents of and dissident exiles from the 1944 Guatemalan Revolution and Venezuela’s Trienio Adeco (Adeco Triennium) under Rómulo Betancourt likewise turned to dictatorial regimes for aid. By 1947, a loose coalition of anti-dictatorial exiles with the help of Cuba, Guatemala, and Venezuela’s democratic leaders formed what would become known as the Caribbean Legion and organized the abortive Cayo Confites expedition against Trujillo. Seeking regional stability, U.S. officials intervened against this expedition and Caribbean Basin dictators and dissident exiles’ attempts to air-bomb Guatemala City and Caracas. Caribbean Basin leaders and exiles focused upon these inter-American conflicts, rather than the international Cold War. José Figueres’s rise to power in Costa Rica provided a pivotal ally to democratic leaders and anti-dictatorial exiles, and Caribbean Basin dictators began working with the Venezuelan military regime after the 1948 military coup. In 1949, Trujillo’s regime coordinated a counter-intelligence operation that destroyed the Caribbean Legion’s expedition at Luperón and brought greater attention to the region. By the early 1950s, dictatorial regimes operated as a counter-revolutionary network sharing intelligence, aiding dissident exiles, supporting Fulgencio Batista’s 1952 coup in Cuba, and lobbying U.S. officials against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Figueres in Costa Rica. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) utilized these dictators and exiles during Operations PBFORTUNE and PBSUCCESS to overthrow the Guatemalan government in 1954, but U.S. officials intervened when the counter-revolutionary network invaded Costa Rica in 1955. From 1955 onward, anti-dictatorial exiles from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Venezuela continued organizing expeditions against Caribbean Basin dictatorships, and multiple groups conspired against Batista’s regime. Among Cuban exiles, Fidel Castro rose to prominence and received important resources and alliances through anti-dictatorial exiles. Dictators shared intelligence and gave aid to Batista, yet Caribbean Legion veterans, Cuban exiles, Betancourt, Figueres, and others helped Castro undermine Batista. In 1959, Castro supported anti-dictatorial expeditions, most notably those against Trujillo and Luis Somoza. However, Castro disagreed with many former exiles and Betancourt and Figueres’s policies, so the resulting tension separated Castro from democratic leaders and divided the region among dictatorial regimes, democratic governments, and Castro.

Article

General Victoriano Huerta and the Mexican Revolution  

Friedrich E. Schuler

General Victoriano Huerta (1850–1916) stands out as the bête noire of twentieth-century Mexico. He was a career army officer who had attained the rank of general. Other generals and the old economic and social hierarchy supported him as a transitional national leader who could restore order following Francisco Madero’s revolution and presidency. Huerta has become the national bête noire because of his assumed responsibility for the assassination of Madero and his vice president, along with several governors and congressmen of the revolutionary regime. His seizure of power resulted in a new phase of the Mexican Revolution, the U.S. occupation of Veracruz, and his involvement with German Mexico and the area along the border with the United States. After going into exile, he attempted to return to power by invading Mexico. He was arrested by U.S. officials and interned at Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, where he died during emergency surgery.

Article

The Evolution of Transitional Justice in Uruguay  

Debbie Sharnak

Uruguay passed the Ley de Caducidad de la Pretensión Punitiva del Estado (Law on the Expiration of the Punitive Claims of the States or Law of Expiry) in December 1986, which provided amnesty for all members of the military and security personnel involved in crimes during the nation’s military rule (1973–1985). A referendum in 1989 democratically affirmed the law, producing a silencing about accountability efforts in Uruguay in subsequent years. As such, much of the literature that emerged in the 1990s about the field of transitional justice excluded Uruguay, considering it a failure to engage with justice initiatives. Since 2000, however, Uruguay has followed a winding path toward employing accountability measures. This has included a difficult process of overturning its amnesty law, some selected domestic court cases, as well as some truth-telling initiatives, reparations, and memorialization. Overall, Uruguay’s experience and evolution toward engaging transitional justice initiatives represent a nonlinear progress of accountability that depended on a combination of domestic political will, friendly courts or judges, international legal and norm shifts, and sustained civil society activism.1 Both Uruguay’s eventual engagement with justice initiatives and expanding ideas about what constitutes transitional justice have driven the country’s re-emergence in scholarship within the field of transitional justice. Uruguay’s thirty-five-year battle Offers an example of a non-teleological path of transitional justice. Additionally, the case of Uruguay urges consideration of understanding the longer timeframes that justice might take to achieve, even in stable democracies.

Article

US and the Cold War in Latin America  

Thomas C. Field Jr.

The Cold War in Latin America had marked consequences for the region’s political and economic evolution. From the origins of US fears of Latin American Communism in the early 20th century to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, regional actors played central roles in the drama. Seeking to maximize economic benefit while maintaining independence with regard to foreign policy, Latin Americans employed an eclectic combination of liberal and anti-imperialist discourses, balancing frequent calls for anti-Communist hemispheric unity with periodic diplomatic entreaties to the Soviet bloc and the nonaligned Third World. Meanwhile, US Cold War policies toward the region ranged from progressive developmentalism to outright military invasions, and from psychological warfare to covert paramilitary action. Above all, the United States sought to shore up its allies and maintain the Western Hemisphere as a united front against extra-hemispheric ideologies and influence. The Cold War was a bloody, violent period for Latin America, but it was also one marked by heady idealism, courageous political action, and fresh narratives about Latin America’s role in the world, all of which continue to inform regional politics to this day.

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The Wreck of the USS Memphis in the Dominican Republic  

Eric Paul Roorda

On August 29, 1916, the USS Memphis wrecked on the coast of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. A series of enormous waves drove the heavy armored cruiser ashore, killing forty-five sailors. The fact that the death toll was not much higher is owed to the heroic efforts of Dominicans to rescue the survivors of the shipwreck. This was despite the fact that the US Marine Corps had invaded their country three months before, initiating an occupation with unwonted violence. The US Marine occupation of the Dominican Republic would last for eight years, compiling a record of brutality inflicted on the civilian population that Senate hearings documented in excruciating detail. In the aftermath of the traumatic occupation, the shipwreck of the USS Memphis itself, rusting away in plain sight along the seaside boulevard in the Dominican capital city, became symbolic of US imperialism. The dictator Rafael Trujillo, a Marine protégé who seized power in 1930, pointed to the wreck as a relic of the days before US domination, contrasting it with the happy days after national sovereignty had been attained under his own strong rule. In order to implement the Good Neighbor Policy, an effort to expunge the negative legacy of the era of intervention and occupation known as “Gunboat Diplomacy,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the removal of the wreck of the Memphis after taking office in 1933. The wreck’s removal finally took place in 1937.

Article

Authoritarian Urbanism in the Era of Mass Eradication in Rio de Janeiro, 1960s–1970s  

Leandro Benmergui

As the number of favelas and poor residents of Rio de Janeiro grew quickly by the mid-20th century, they became the object of policymaking, social science research, real estate speculation, and grassroots mobilization. After a decade in which local authorities recognized the de facto presence of favelas but without legally ascertaining the right of permanence, the 1960s and early 1970s witnessed the era of mass eradication. Seemingly contradictory—but complementary—policies also included the development of massive low-income housing complexes and innovative community development and favela urbanization experiences empowered by community organizations with the assistance of experts committed to improving the lives of poor Cariocas (residents of Rio). Favelas in Rio were at the crossroads of a particular interplay of forces: the urgent need to modernize Rio’s obsolete and inadequate urban infrastructure; the new administrative status of the city after the inauguration of Brasilia; and the redefinition of the balance of power between local, municipal, and federal forces in a time of radical politics and authoritarian and technocratic military regimes, Cold War diplomacy, and the transnational flows of expertise and capital.

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Uruguayan Theater in Exile  

Luciana Scaraffuni

Between 1968 and 1985, Uruguay experienced the twelve most tragic years of its history, due to the establishment of a civic–military dictatorship (1973–1985); such dictatorships came to power in various Southern Cone countries at that time: Brazil (1964), Bolivia (1971), Uruguay (1973), Chile (1973), and Argentina (1976). In Uruguay, the roots of political violence were present before the dictatorial period, though such violence was consolidated during this time (1973 to 1985). In 1968 a state of exception was established in the country through the implementation of what were called the Medidas Prontas de Seguridad and the pro-military actions of the Jorge Pacheco Areco administration (1967–1972). Subsequent years were characterized by the consolidation of the regime under the democratically elected president Juan María Bordaberry, who commanded the dissolution of the legislature on June 27, 1973. Due to the persecution, kidnapping, imprisonment, and disappearance of a large proportion of the population resulting from this, many Uruguayans went into exile. The experiences of a group of teatreros and teatreras, or theater workers, belonging to the El Galpón theater company, who went into exile in Mexico in 1976, are of particular interest. Exile interpellated this group of teatreros and teatreras in various ways, by examining the cultural context, the political context, and the material conditions in which the Galponeros lived in Mexico. It also takes into account that the experience of exile led to different forms of theater work for the group. Throughout, it is necessary to understand the relationship between “the national” and “the Latin American,” to distinguish them in some way, in reference to aspects that influenced the group’s theatrical production and construction both in Mexico and on its return to Uruguay. Similarly, members’ private lives are of interest, since the experience of exile, in addition to resignifying the theatrical work of the group, meant that the teatreros and teatreras experienced the rupturing of their daily lives and their “life world,” including the disintegration of families and their reconstruction in the countries of exile, in which the exiles formed new ties and family groups.

Article

Neoliberalism in Chile  

Alison J. Bruey

Chile was one of the first countries in the world to undergo a transition to neoliberalism. Neoliberalism became official state policy in 1975, during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), during which time it generated two deep economic crises and historicall high unemployment. Since 1990, civilian administrations have continued to administer the neoliberal model, popularly referred to as el modelo, with selective reforms. Despite economic growth and reductions in poverty rates since 1990, el modelo has become ever more controversial. In the 21st century, public protest has increased as broad sectors of society negatively affected by the privatization of education, healthcare, and pension systems, among other ills, have organized collectively to express their discontent.

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The Murder of the Mirabal Sisters in the Dominican Republic  

Eric Paul Roorda

At the highest point on the winding highway over the Dominican Republic’s northern mountains, there is a place that is called what it is: La Cumbre, The Summit. In the daytime, in the sunshine, or under a soft tropical rain, it is a beautiful spot, with the impossibly green mountainsides falling away on both sides of the crest. But on the night of November 25, 1960, it was the scene of unutterable horror, witness to an automobile rolling and tumbling down the cliff, with the violated and mutilated corpses of three women inside. They were three of the four sisters of the Mirabal Reyes family, who were murdered for their political involvement: Patria Mercedes (born on February 27, Dominican Independence Day, in 1924, and accordingly named “homeland”), María Argentina Minerva (born March 12, 1926), and Antonia María Teresa (born October 15, 1935). Their driver, Rufino de la Cruz (born November 16, 1923), was murdered with them. The fourth Mirabal sister, Bélgica Adela “Dedé” (March 1, 1925–February 1, 2014) who was not directly involved in her sisters’ opposition activities, survived to be their witness. The brutal murder of the charismatic Hermanas Mirabal was the most notorious, and the most widely reviled, of the countless crimes committed by the regime of Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until 1961. The Mirabal Sisters’ demise mobilized international censure of the Trujillo regime and contributed to its downfall, because they were the most charismatic of his victims, and because their kidnapping and murder constituted the most outrageous of the crimes committed during his lengthy dictatorship. In 1999, the United Nations designated November 25, the date of the Mirabal Sisters’ murder, to be memorialized as International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which it has been ever since.

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Women’s History and Movements in 20th-Century Brazil  

Maria Lygia Quartim de Moraes

In the early twentieth century, Brazil depended on coffee exports, its slave regime had just been abolished, and most of its inhabitants lived in the countryside. The Catholic Church exercised the moral direction of society, and White landowners virtually established the rules of sociability and controlled economic and political life. A woman’s social position was fundamentally determined according to their social class. Wealthy and White middle-class women had access to some form of education, and when they left the family home, it was to marry and raise a family, being completely dependent on their husbands, with no political rights, and only allowed to work upon marital authorization. With rapid urbanization, wretched working conditions, as either a domestic servant or a textile worker (the two female labor niches), worsened the lives of poor women in the city. Access to education, the struggle for labor rights, and the right to vote were the pillars of the long women’s emancipation process that was in progress. In 1964 a military coup plunged Brazil into a long dictatorship that only ended in 1985 with the return of democratic institutions and the election of a civil president. The conquest of democracy was made with the broad participation of the various women’s groups and movements, especially the feminist movements.

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Contemporary Art in Brazil, 1960s and 1970s: Forging the “New”  

Elena Shtromberg

The history of exhibitions in Brazil during the 1960s and 1970s provides a key reference point for understanding how artistic vanguards and contemporary art unfolded in direct relationship to social and political contexts. The seminal exhibitions during these pivotal decades elucidate how the contemporary in Brazilian art stages and reframes conceptions of the “new” vis-à-vis the art object. The exhibitions in question trace the development of Ferreira Gullar’s não-objeto (non-object, 1959) and its path toward the idea-based artwork, an impulse that was prevalent throughout the 1960s in the United States and Europe as well. Inaugurated by the emergence of Brasília, Brazil’s new capital city in the formerly barren hinterlands of the state of Goiás, the 1960s witnessed a new model of artistic practice that pushed the boundaries between art and life, actively seeking out the participation of the viewer. This is most evidenced in the canonical work of artists Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark. By the 1970s, challenges to the utopian undertakings from the previous decades had become imbricated with political activism, as artists and intellectuals alike pronounced a commitment to the quest for democracy after the military coup of 1964. The 1970s also witnessed heightened artistic engagement with new information and communication technologies, including the use of video equipment and computers. Constructing the history of Brazil’s contemporary art via the most important moments of its display will not only historically and politically contextualize some of the groundbreaking artists and artworks of these two decades, but also introduce readers to the challenges that these artworks posed to the more traditional methods of institutional display and the criteria used to interpret them.

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The Galíndez Case in the Dominican Republic  

Elizabeth Manley

On March 12, 1956, Basque National and Columbia University lecturer Jesús María de Galíndez Suarez disappeared from New York City never to be seen again. While no conclusive evidence was ever uncovered, it has been widely accepted that he was taken by functionaries of the regime of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, flown to the island, tortured, and killed. Galíndez, who had worked for the Trujillo regime after fleeing Spain in 1939 and subsequently immigrated to the United States in 1946, had just completed a dissertation on the Trujillato at Columbia. The regime did not look kindly on his chosen perspective and set in motion a plan to have him disappeared. Following his abduction, many U.S. solidarity activists joined forces with Dominican exile groups to push for greater attention to the atrocities of the Trujillo regime as well as for a closer investigation into Galíndez’s disappearance. While Trujillo had similarly disappeared a number of individuals in the United States and other Latin American countries, the Galíndez case is unique for several reasons. First, Galíndez’s life offers a prime example of a transnational identity, of someone who juggled multiple identities and causes, crossed physical and ideological borders, and operated daily with conflicting alliances and allegiances. Second, the murder of the Basque national mobilized a significant collective of solidarity activists in the United States, garnered considerable national press, and built a foundation for future activism. Moreover, as Galíndez had been working as a U.S. intelligence operative since before his arrival in the United States, his story complicates the traditional nexus of solidarity work. Finally, the case offers a unique window onto the geopolitics of the early Cold War (prior to the Cuban Revolution) and the intricacies of the second half of the Trujillo regime.

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Rock Nacional in Argentina during the Dictatorship  

Timothy Wilson and Mara Favoretto

In the 20th century Argentina experienced a series of dictatorial regimes of varying intensity, but the last dictatorship stands apart. The Process of National Reorganization or Proceso (1976–1983) was not only the most brutally repressive, “disappearing” 30,000 of its own citizens into concentration camps, but also the most ambitious in terms of ideological mission. Its campaign, officially called “the war against subversion,” was committed to the total eradication of leftist ideas from the political landscape of the country by any means necessary. This radical transformation was to be brought about not only in the torture chamber, but in the media as well. The regime planned an Orwellian redefinition of words: the systematic creation of a national vocabulary that would exclude certain ideas and parties. In order to achieve its overt project of the appropriation of language, the junta maintained obsessive control over the media, instituted strict censorship reinforced by terror, and bombarded the airwaves and newspapers with official communiqués. In the face of this repression, most journalists and writers and many artists could not express dissent of any kind. Yet singers of a new Argentine music genre that came to be known as rock nacional developed codified and oblique metaphorical expression in their lyrics that allowed them to evade censorship and to continue to criticize the military regime with relative impunity. Moreover, many Argentine youths found solace in the music and used it to create communities in which they could meet and express themselves. The regime had sought to deny young Argentines a forum for public speech; however, together artists and listeners created a rock nacional culture that provided community for the isolated and lent a voice to the silenced.