They knew everything, including that secret meeting in November 1971. At the time, General Humberto Sousa Melo, head of the 2nd Army in , read a letter in which the dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici asked for financial help for the dictatorship. The objective, Melo clarified, was to build a torture room in the capital of São Paulo, along the lines of Doi-Codi do , and acquire new vehicles and weapons.
Attending the meeting, called by Fiesp (Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo), figures from the São Paulo oligarchy and a representative of the American business community — the president of General Electric, Thomas Romanach. The group contributed to the cause: each company made a contribution of “a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.” To disguise it, they created an educational fund through Fiesp, issuing receipts and everything.
Thus, Yankee companies recorded expenses with the dictatorship and avoided the practice of slush funds. The scheme is revealed by historian and professor of International Relations at USP Felipe Loureiro, in his newest book, entitled “Olhares Ianques: A Ditadura Brasileira nos Arquivos Norte-Americanos”, which is now available in bookstores.
In a note to the report, Fiesp reaffirmed “its unshakable commitment to the Democratic Rule of Law and the transparency of its relations with society”. And he highlighted: “the documents cited by the report refer to alleged events that occurred more than 50 years ago.”
For a decade and a half, Loureiro pored over official documents from those who alluded to the military regime. The objective of the research, he says, was to show the American vision and clarify relations between Brazil and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, rejecting reductionism.
The central theses of the work derive from this: the United States played an important role in the coup, but had a minor influence on structuring the regime; the USA had free access to everything that was happening in Brazil, with informants in different segments of society; military relations were not at all harmonious, and the regime was disorganized.
“Previous works did not benefit from the opening of archives from the 2010s onwards, which occurred mainly due to the efforts of the National Truth Commission”, says Loureiro, in a videoconference interview. “I was shocked by the informational capillarity of the USA in Brazil. The American diplomatic representation was able to talk to whoever they wanted, from the economic and political elite to the main journalists working in Brazil.”
The materials date mainly from the first three governments of the dictatorship. From 1977 onwards, the flow of documents became scarce because some of them were leaked.
The author researched different collections in the USA, in particular the National Archives And Records Administration, the National Archives there, and documents dedicated to presidents who served in office while there was a dictatorship here. At the National Archives, Loureiro found telegrams from the US Consulate in São Paulo proving the involvement of American businessmen in the Fiesp scheme.
In addition to Romanach, members of the American Chamber of Commerce participated, including its president, Mack Verhyden, from Catterpillar, the representative of DuPont in Brazil, Lou Rossi, and the representative of Anderson Clayton, Trajano Pupo Neto. The documentation from the American State Department received the confidential seal.
Fearing public exposure, the US Consulate in São Paulo tried to dissuade the American business community from making the contribution.
The book shows that Romanach rebutted the Consulate, highlighting that the meeting had been called by the president of Fiesp himself, Teobaldo de Nigris, “a long-time friend and someone he considered to have the highest integrity.”
“Olhares Yankees” goes against common sense by showing that the USA maintained an ambiguous stance towards the Brazilian dictatorship. Certainly, Ambassador Lincoln Gordon did everything he could in 1964 to secure the Lyndon Johnson government’s support for the coup. The book itself concludes that the prospect of US membership, with Operation Brother Sam on the Brazilian coast, was fundamental to exciting the barracks.
At the same time, the White House apparently hoped that democratic normality would be restored soon after the military uprising. “The US regretted not having been more emphatic at the beginning of the regime against growing authoritarianism and human rights violations,” says Loureiro.
According to the book, the Yankees wanted to expose themselves little and were concerned with maintaining an institutional appearance for the dictatorship. Not surprisingly, Gordon said he was perplexed by the imposition of AI-1, which was followed by Operation Cleanup, against “subversives”. The action resulted in thousands of arrests — and a lot of violence.
Later, in 1968, Washington temporarily suspended the sending of resources to Brazil, when Costa e Silva announced AI-5, closing the regime once and for all. The White House, however, did not publicly condemn the dictator’s decision. During the Geisel government, a figure gains importance in the book: the US consul in São Paulo, Frederic L. Chapin.
The diplomat, says Loureiro, knew the entire Brazilian elite and reported human rights violations that were occurring here to Washington. In fact, Chapin reported to the USA the death of journalist Vladimir Herzog in 1975, quickly concluding that the suicide thesis was a hoax.
In “Olhares Yankees”, the military are not examples of suitability and efficiency, an idea revived with his ascension to the Presidency. On the contrary, the files document the botched functioning of the dictatorship, with internal disputes for power capable of shaking hierarchies, and also provide evidence of widespread corruption.
According to Washington, the IPMs (Military Police Inquiries) and the CGI (General Investigations Commission), arms of repression, often overlapped and acted without coordination. The Yankees still portray the permanent tension between the hard-line segment of the Army, made up mainly of low-ranking officers, and the top generals, in a way that gives the impression that the tightening of the regime was due to pressure from the barracks.
“This feeling is partially true. The generalship was also extremely authoritarian, but it believed that authoritarianism could impose itself in other ways”, says Loureiro. The historian preaches caution, but does not rule out an intervention in 2026. “If it is an intervention against organized crime, Lula will be in a difficult situation to oppose a public security agenda.”
