Communicating Human Rights to Brazil Under the Military: The Transformation of Relations With a Developing Power

• In Event: Critical/Cultural Approaches to Soft Power, Nation Branding, and Public Diplomacy

Abstract

In 1976, the U.S. was at the height of its power and its focus on public diplomacy, in the context of the Cold War. It had a close relationship with the Brazilian military, with which it had had a close military aid, training and exchange relationship since WW II. The U.S. had facilitated, if not fomented, the “anti-communist” military coup of 1964. Brazil had also received a variety of other kinds of aid, including the PhD education of most of its major economists, planning and finance ministers. The military part of this was radically transformed by the Carter government’s focus on human rights and nuclear non-proliferation. The human rights agenda also partially transformed the public diplomacy agenda as well. USAID and the Peace Corps were phasing out, as the U.S. had decided to “graduate” Brazil from the ranks of those countries needing economic aid, essentially recognizing an existing change in the development aid relationship. In a certain way, the focus on the US – Brazil official relationship was shifting from a focus on the hard power of civilian and military aid to the soft power of information, culture, education exchange and policy, which coincided with a much more tumultuous relationship. This paper will review the historical evidence on the efficacy of these initiatives and how they were received by key audiences in the press, cultural and academic worlds in Brazil, and bring in a first person ethnographic view, from the point of someone who worked on the human rights public diplomacy initiative in Brazil 1976-1979, and continued to work on research for USIS research on Brazil 1979-1983, to illuminate the inside workings of public diplomacy initiatives from within the US official mission.

Author

• Joseph D. Straubhaar, U of Texas - Austin