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“Persecution and Farce”: The Origins and Transformation of Brazil's Political Trials, 1964-1979

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Anthony W. Pereira*
Affiliation:
New School for Social Research
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      The containment of communism
      was for the United States a
      problem of external defense;
      for the underdeveloped countries
      like Brazil, it was a problem
      of internal development.
    Roberto Campos, A lanterna na popa

The authoritarian regimes that in recent decades ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, Brazil from 1964 to 1985, Chile from 1973 to 1990, and Uruguay from 1973 to 1984 all used violence to crush dissent and the law to regulate and legitimate that violence. Repression under the Brazilian regime was particularly legalistic in the sense that the number of killings was relatively low but the rate of judicial prosecution high. Available evidence suggests that more individuals were brought into military courts for political crimes in Brazil than in any of the other authoritarian regimes in the region.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

I would like to thank the New School for Social Research for granting me leave time to do this research; the Fulbright Commission and the Einstein Institution for grants; and the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions and Cultural Survival and the Center for International Affairs, both at Harvard University, for a fellowship. I am also grateful to Ann Dirsa, Lauro Locks, and Colin Naughton for research assistance and to Jorge Domínguez, Jack Hammond, Roger Karapin, William Nylen, Mark Osiel, Pablo Policzer, Sanjay Reddy, Jennifer Schirmer, Charles Tilly, the members of the New School's Proseminar on Political Mobilization and Conflict, and six anonymous LARR reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this article.

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