the U.S. consul, Curtis C. Cutter, during a botched kidnapping attempt.
The kidnappers asserted that they were acting to undermine oppressive governments and to free imprisoned compatriots. The kidnappings usually involved a negotiation for the release of political prisoners. (In Cutter’s case, the would-be captors had written a false confession in which Cutter “admitted” he was a CIA agent instructing Brazilians in methods of torture. The note also sentenced Cutter to death.)131 Such acts did not endear insurgent groups to foreign publics. Among the most sensational cases was the Tupamaros’ kidnapping and murder of the USAID police adviser Dan Mitrione in Uruguay in 1970. His death has been the source of much controversy because of his possible role in training military and police in torture methods.132 But at the time of his death, Americans heard a simpler story of a public servant whose murder at the hands of Marxist terrorists left his nine children without a father. Simply put, the guerrillas were unlikely to win friends in Washington by killing U.S. citizens. These groups’ other acts of violence against the state, civilians, and businesses got less attention from the American public than did diplomats’ kidnappings, but they were great fodder for military juntas that wanted to justify their repression. Perceptions mattered. Human rights activists saw right-wing governments and militaries as the sources of many South American problems, while conservatives and practitioners of realpolitik pointed out that much of South America was embroiled in undeclared civil wars. How one perceived these civil struggles said much about one’s perception of the human rights movement and of human rights as a goal of American foreign policy.
Nixon followed many of Rockefeller’s recommendations on Brazil. He sought to bolster the relationship by restoring the suspended aid and accepting the generals’ claim that there was no torture. In the meantime, Brazil’s economic growth—upward of 9 percent in 1970 alone—strengthened the regime’s domestic and international legitimacy and deflected some attention from its excesses. Observers began to refer to the Brazilian economic “miracle.” Thomas E. Skidmore has correctly concluded that American policymakers made “at most a half-hearted attempt” to pressure the Brazilians in 1968–1969, during which the generals successfully waited out the bad publicity.133 The Nixon administration routinely argued that Brazilian political evolution would come about with further economic growth, and also claimed to be using private diplomacy to nudge the dictators toward reforms. But since America’s traditional business and security interests were arguably being met, the administration was unwilling to go much further. Not only was there no consensus that Washington must promote political development, but Brazil was merely one among many authoritarian states in the world. Nixon could count on minimal domestic resistance considering the American public’s limited awareness of Brazilian affairs.
A small number of academics, clergy, exiled Brazilians, and liberal Catholics responded by building a network to publicize the junta’s violations. This movement became a groundbreaking part of the human rights push in Latin America and beyond.134 Using information they received from their contacts in Brazil, these activists wrote articles and submitted testimony to congressional committees and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR). They also formed an NGO, the American Committee for Information on Brazil, as a means of collecting and verifying victims’ testimonies.135 Established NGOs also became active. The International Commission of Jurists released a scathing criticism of the junta’s tactics in 1970, and Amnesty International soon had nearly two hundred active prisoner cases in Brazil.136 At a time when torture was not widely reported in the mainstream press, activists’ legwork led to numerous reports on Brazilian torture in 1970–1971, including dozens of articles in the New York Times and Washington Post. Critics highlighted not only the self-evident immorality of the junta’s tactics, but also America’s guilt by association. A Washington Post editorial stated that the United States was “in danger of getting itself caught up on the side of the oppressors, forced to choose wrong.”137 Two syndicated columnists similarly lamented the “tragedy” that America’s support of Brazil was “keep[ing] in unchecked power the most repressive regime in the Western Hemisphere.”138
The burgeoning movement against torture might have had more resonance in Washington had it not been for the November 1970 election of the left-wing reformer Salvador Allende as president of Chile. Not only did this event throw a new wrinkle into Nixon’s approach to South America, but as Tanya Harmer has argued, the 1970–1973 Allende presidency was a watershed in hemispheric affairs in that it augmented the “inter-American Cold War” at a time when the Washington-Moscow relationship was at its most agreeable. Following Allende’s accession, it soon became clear that there would be no North-South parallel to the East/West détente. Instead, Allende aligned with Cuba, while the United States aligned with Brazil and the Southern Cone regimes. As Harmer has suggested, these right-wing leaders were hardly pawns of the United States, but rather increasingly took “ownership” of the Cold War in their region.139
The Nixon administration offered mild, private encouragement for a parliamentary transition in Brazil, and they acknowledged that the torture allegations were at least partially true. But if there was any indignation about torture in the administration, it took a backseat to the desire for stability. “An aroused [Brazilian] public could well give rise to a deep division within the government on how to deal with the [torture] problem,” suggested the State Department, “in the process possibly weakening the government’s hold on the country.”140 Nixon summarized his approach in a December 1970 meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, William Rountree. In a world filled with undemocratic states, argued Nixon, the United States would have to be “realistic and deal with governments as they are.” He wanted Rountree to ensure that the Brazilian government and military “do not get the impression that we are looking down our noses at them because of their form of government.”141 The administration would consult with Brazil on political developments, but Nixon drew a clear line at addressing the status of individual Brazilians. When the U.S. embassy received requests to inquire about imprisoned Brazilians, they turned these down as interventions in Brazil’s internal affairs.142 The Nixon administration considered economic development to be America’s chief long-term interest in Latin America. Meanwhile, Brazil’s economic growth and its diminishing reliance on U.S. aid meant a concurrent decrease in U.S. leverage.
While the administration strengthened relations with Brasilia, congressional liberals grew increasingly vocal. As chair of the Senate subcommittee on Latin America, Senator Frank Church built a reputation as one of the chief political gadflies of the era on the subject of military aid. In 1969, he suggested the unprecedented step of cutting such assistance to Brazil, arguing that military aid fueled anti-Americanism, alienated the American public, and “raise[d] the question of what the United States really stands for.” Church also assailed the Alliance for Progress, to which the United States had contributed $8 billion while nine nations in the region had suffered military takeovers.143 President Emílio Médici’s enduring grip on power encouraged more legislators to shed the spotlight on Brazil in 1970, including Senator Edward Kennedy, who embarked on a public campaign against U.S. support to human rights abusers. “Reports of official terrorism and torture [in Brazil] are mixed with incidents of violence committed by opponents of the regime who are denied access to legitimate political channels,” said Kennedy on the Senate floor. America’s support for the regime, he argued, was laying bare the gap between America’s ideals and Washington’s policies. In so arguing, Kennedy was making a clear leap from America’s Vietnam experience to its support of other anticommunist regimes. “We now face a deep crisis in the spirit of the American people because of our support of an unpopular government in an unjust cause in Vietnam,” he asserted. “Our unquestioning endorsement of a government that accepts torture of political prisoners can only exacerbate this crisis.”144 In retrospect, Kennedy was on the cutting edge in his attempts to loosen America from its Cold War assumptions, though he oversimplified events in Brazil. In reality, many of the victims he championed were also willing to use violence against civilians.
The Brazilian junta lashed out at Senator Kennedy, “international agents of subversion,” and the “morbid and sensationalist” foreign press. Regime representatives admitted that there had been instances of mistreatment, but they pledged that this was not official policy