XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Ethically-Minded Boy Scouts? US Academic Support for Lava Jato and Brazil’s Long Coup

• In Event: From Anti-Communism to Anti-Corruption: US Meddling in Brazil, Past and Present

Abstract

During the years-long process that saw Dilma Rousseff impeached, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva imprisoned, and Jair Bolsonaro elected to the presidency, many US Brazilianists denounced the “long coup” that was set in motion by Operation Lava Jato. Through professional organizations such as LASA and BRASA, and through new organizations such as the US Network for Democracy in Brazil and the Washington Brazil Office, Brazilianists from many disciplines acquitted themselves admirably as defenders of democracy and opponents of United States imperialism.

But only some of them. For there was another faction of US scholars who opined on Lava Jato and the long coup – to defend them. Led by legal scholars and political scientists, these scholars took for granted that the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) was corrupt, that Lava Jato was a morally pure crusade against corruption, and that US involvement was that of an “ethically-minded Boy Scout,” in the words of one particularly effusive “expert.” Even after hacked Telegram chats revealed in 2019 the political agenda of the taskforce, some of these scholars continued to defend Lava Jato and the long coup.

This paper provides an overview of these scholars’ support for the long coup and identifies the blind spots that enabled them to justify their support for the politicization of anti-corruption and the interference of the US in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. More broadly, it is an indictment of the imperialist and positivist underpinnings of legal scholarship and political science.

Author

• Bryan Pitts, UCLA