Latin America and the Global Cold War

Thomas C. Field, Stella Krepp, Vanni Pettinà, Thomas C. Field, Stella Krepp, Vanni Pettinà

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781469655703
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'America Latina e dei Caraibi

Latin America and the Global Cold War analyzes more than a dozen of Latin America's forgotten encounters with Africa, Asia, and the Communist world, and by placing the region in meaningful dialogue with the wider Global South, this volume produces the first truly global history of contemporary Latin America. It uncovers a multitude of overlapping and sometimes conflicting iterations of Third Worldist movements in Latin America, and offers insights for better understanding the region's past, as well as its possible futures, challenging us to consider how the Global Cold War continues to inform Latin America's ongoing political struggles. Contributors: Miguel Serra Coelho, Thomas C. Field Jr., Sarah Foss, Michelle Getchell, Eric Gettig, Alan McPherson, Stella Krepp, Eline van Ommen, Eugenia Palieraki, Vanni Pettina, Tobias Rupprecht, David M. K. Sheinin, Christy Thornton, Miriam Elizabeth Villanueva, and Odd Arne Westad.

Part I Third World Nationalism

1 Brazil and India

A Brave New World, 1948–1961

MIGUEL SERRA COELHO

This chapter explores the relations between Brazil and India during the first fifteen years of the Cold War era. Encompassing four Brazilian presidencies (Eurico Gaspar Dutra, 1946–51; Getúlio Vargas, 1951–54; João Café Filho, 1954–55; and Juscelino Kubitschek, 1956–61), it explores the diplomatic, economic, and cultural interactions between Brazil and India during a period characterized by a growing global interest in the Third World project. Although lacking a clear policy toward the Afro-Asian world, Brazil recognized the increasing importance of newly independent nations and thus expanded its diplomatic network, especially in the late 1950s under Kubitschek.¹ Conversely, the chapter also considers India’s foreign policy toward Brazil and the Western Hemisphere more broadly, during a period that has been described as one of “distant acquaintance” between New Delhi and the countries of Latin America.²

Although Brazil and India established diplomatic ties in 1948, their early relations remain understudied. Language barriers, continental distances, and nearly closed archives in the case of India surely contributed to this outcome. In addition, the alleged absence of interactions between the two countries during this period contributed to driving historians away. The few existing studies of Brazilian-Indian relations, though useful, tend to be based on sources of only one country, as is the case with the work of Varun Shani and Anaya Chakravarti.³ For their part, Jerry Dávila and Williams da Silva Gonçalves approach Brazilian-Indian relations indirectly, through Brazil’s support for Portuguese efforts to retain Goa, Daman, and Diu and Brazilian representation of Portugal’s official interests in New Delhi.⁴

Based on research in Brazilian, Indian, and Portuguese archives, this chapter aims to shed light on Brazilian foreign policy toward India and ultimately seeks to understand why early ties failed to develop. Particularly, it aims to unveil Brazilian perceptions of, apprehensions about, prejudices against, and interests in India—and, to a certain extent, the Third World—during a period that preceded the country’s so-called independent foreign policy. Additionally, it aims to shed light on India’s foreign policy toward Latin America, particularly through New Delhi’s efforts to initiate dialogue with the region’s largest nation.

Initial Postwar Formalities, 1948–1953

Brazil embraced democracy after World War II. The military leaders deposed the popular dictator Getúlio Vargas, in power since the Revolution of 1930, free and fair presidential and congressional elections took place in 1945, and a liberal-democratic constitution came into force a year later. While maintaining the social gains of the Vargas government, the nascent regime ensured basic civil rights, the rule of law, free and direct state and local elections for the executive and legislative branches, and a free press. Although with several restrictions, such as limitations to the right strike and the denial of the right to vote to illiterate adults (approximately 50 percent of the population), Brazilian society was about to experience a twenty-year period of political and social mobilization that was termed experiência democrática (democratic experience).⁵

With a few exceptions, Brazil’s postwar foreign policy was aligned with that of the United States. The governments of Eurico Gaspar Dutra (1946–51), Getúlio Vargas (1951–54), and João Café Filho (1954–55) positioned Brazil firmly in the Western sphere of influence led by Washington. Brazil became a member of the Tratado Interamericano de Assistência Recíproca (Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance) in 1947 and signed a military assistance agreement with Washington in 1952. The country also repressed domestic communism and actively supported U.S. global interests at the United Nations (UN) as well as in the Organization of American States (OAS). Although it declined to send troops to fight in the Korean War during the years 1950–53, the Brazilian government offered political and diplomatic support and provided the United States with strategic minerals.⁶

While considering itself to be intrinsically anticolonial, Brazil demonstrated little or no interest in the problems of dependent peoples in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Indeed, as Wayne Alan Selcher has noted, Brazil declined to participate in the San Francisco Conference debates on the self-determination documents that became the core of Chapters XI, XII, and XIII of the UN Charter. With few diplomatic and consular representations in the colonial territories as well as absence from the League of Nations, Itamaraty, the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations, did not foresee the demand for independence that was to emerge in the colonies of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.⁷ Though some anticolonial proclamations were made, namely during the Vargas government, Brazil maintained a rather contradictory attitude toward colonialism during these initial years. On the one hand, it sought to be consistent with its anticolonial values by declaring support for the right of self-determination. On the other hand, it supported the colonial powers, especially at the UN, on the grounds that it was necessary to achieve conciliatory solutions.

As Asian states gained their independence from the European colonial metropoles, Brazil usually recognized their sovereignty, although only after the formal recognition of the colonial power. Though with a tight-fitting budget that represented less than 1 percent of the total state budget,⁸ Itamaraty opened diplomatic representations in India in 1948, Pakistan in 1951, and both Indonesia and Afghanistan in 1953.

In 1949, roughly one year after his arrival to Rio de Janeiro, Indian Ambassador Minocher Rustom Masani surveyed Brazilian knowledge of his home country.⁹ He concluded that, with some exceptions, “India was looked on as a country of Oriental glamour and mystery, a country of maharajas and snake-charmers.”¹⁰ Brazilian interest in India was confined to the cultural, social, and spiritual impacts of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, while knowledge of India’s political aspects and challenges was “exceedingly fitful and sketchy.” Only small sections of the official class, politicians, and press had “any point of view at all” about India’s policies and international positions. And even these learned Brazilians, Masani seemed to imply, had only a basic notion of what modern India was all about or, more important for him, what it could become in the near future.¹¹

Although Masani was surveying Brazilian knowledge of his home country, his conclusions could be easily extended to other parts of Asia. General notions about this vast, distant, and diversified continent amounted to stereotypes and prejudices, and only a small section of the society had any informed vision. This is no surprise, as Brazil did not have departments or centers dedicated to Asia, and most of the information it did gather was obtained through an American or European lens. Besides, there was also a lack of interest in the continent. Except for the establishment of diplomatic legations to Beijing and Tokyo in in the late nineteenth century,¹² Brazilians had done little or nothing to interact with Asia, not least because many of its nations were still under colonial rule.¹³

When Brazil decided to establish diplomatic relations with India in 1948, Itamaraty had more in mind than just a deepening of its knowledge of Indian realities. Brazilians were moved primarily by international and regional prestige, especially vis-à-vis Argentina, with which it maintained an historical rivalry. Wanting to be the first Latin American country to establish formal relations with India, Brazil set up a legation in New Delhi, which was transformed into a full-scale embassy just a few months later. Brazil was also interested in monitoring Cold War developments in South Asia as many political and military leaders believed that the Cold War would soon turn hot and that India could become ground zero of a new conflagration. Finally, a diplomatic representation in India provided the opportunity to directly request Asian votes for Brazilian candidates in several international organizations and forums.¹⁴

Brazil’s immediate objectives were political and economic. Traditionally, Brazil was politically more linked to the United States and Europe and, to a lesser degree, Latin America, while India was essentially terra incognita for Brazilians. Itamaraty knew that the prospects for trade were limited, since Brazil and India shared similar economies, which were essentially agrarian and industrially underdeveloped. In additional to the virtual lack of large national shipping companies with direct trading routes between South America and South Asia, preference for the U.S. dollar as trade currency had a discouraging effect among Brazilians. Under the circumstances, the Brazilian embassy was essentially meant to create a cordial atmosphere in India and, more importantly, to be the eyes and ears of Brazil in Asia.¹⁵

The mission of the first Brazilian ambassador to India was thus one of courtesy and observation. Recently promoted to ambassador in 1949, Caio de Mello Franco spent his short, two-year tenure in New Delhi collecting and transmitting information regarding general topics, although without detailed analysis, reflections, or comments. Communism, however, deserved attention. A staunch conservative, Mello Franco regularly dispatched alarming cables about the “red peril,” a fact that surely contributed to raising grave concerns in Itamaraty about a possib...