10.

1177/0094582X03252297
BOOK
REVIEW REVIEW
Book Reviews
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

A Brazilian Nationalist’s
Studies of Revolutions
by
Steven Topik

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira O governo João Goulart: As lutas sociais no Brasil
1961–1964. 7th edition, revised and enlarged. Rio de Janeiro: Revan and Brasília,
D.F.: Editora Universidade de Brasília, 2001. 320 pp.
Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira De Martí a Fidel: Revolução Cubana e a América
Latina. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1998. 687 pp.
Two recent books by one of Brazil’s most prolific scholars are much more similar
in intent than their titles—O governo João Goulart and De Martí a Fidel—suggest.
Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira has written about Brazil’s reaction to the Russian Revo-
lution, the United States’s role in Brazil and in Latin America, social democracy and
its leaders in Brazil, and the reunification of Germany. His work is characterized by
his political engagement as a socialist, a nationalist, and an internationalist. O
governo João Goulart was originally published in 1978, toward the end of the military
dictatorship, when the discussion of redemocratization was intensifying. Bandeira
entered this discussion because he had been closely involved in the Goulart regime of
1961–1964 as a journalist—he was head of the politics section of Rio de Janeiro’s
Diário de Noticias and an aide to Sérgio de Magalhães. Magalhães was vice president
of the federal Chamber of Deputies and a leading member of the Partido Trabalhista
Brasileiro (Brazilian Workers’ party—PTB). Through Magalhães he became friends
with other leading social democratic nationalists whose testimonies form much of the
basis of this book. As a defender of the Goulart regime, Bandeira was sentenced to five
years in prison, of which he served ten months.
His book was among the first to argue that the events of April 1, 1964, were not a
“revolution” as the military alleged but a coup d’état that succeeded not because of the
weakness of the Brazilian left but because of U.S. efforts to overthrow a democrati-
cally elected and popular government. Bandeira was one of the first historians of the
period to suggest that Janio Quadros had resigned the presidency in 1961 not because
he was emotionally unstable but in the hope that either a popular reaction or a military
coup would award him dictatorial powers. When neither happened in the short run,
João Goulart, a former minister of labor under Getúlio Vargas, undertook what
Bandeira considers the most radical reforms in Brazil’s history.

Steven Topik teaches history at the University of California, Irvine, and is an Associate Editor of
Latin American Perspectives.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 130, Vol. 30 No. 3, May 2003 102-112
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X03252297
© 2003 Latin American Perspectives

102
 BOOK REVIEW 103

The book is intended as an attack on military authoritarianism, a defense of the

Goulart regime, and an effort to preserve the historical memory of the period. Arguing
against the view that Goulart was an indecisive populist, Bandeira maintains (2001:
22) that “the 1964 coup represented . . . an episode of class struggle in which the busi-
ness class, especially the foreign sector, tried to contain and repress workers, whose
interests for the first time in Brazilian history were directly conditioned by the deci-
sions of the President of the Republic because of Goulart’s ties to the unions.” He sug-
gests that Brazil’s industrialization and urbanization in the 1950s and 1960s meant
that the PTB—his party—resembled the European social democratic parties after
World War I, when workers’ parties exercised substantial political power. He argues
against the proponents of rural guerrilla warfare in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolu-
tion, calling instead for organization of the urban working class. He points out that the
coups that upset all of Latin America after the Cuban Revolution occurred not only
because of endogenous factors but equally because of international politics whose
epicenter was in the Pentagon’s continental security strategy.
The book was reissued on the 25th anniversary of Goulart’s death in a substantially
enlarged format. The original was by Brazilian standards a best-seller, selling some
40,000 copies. This seventh edition is 320 pages rather than the original 188 pages and
relies on the many studies and interviews done in the past 25 years.
Bandeira clearly has a political and personal agenda in writing the book, but his
documentation is substantial and his position clearly argued and transparent. It is a
valuable addition to our knowledge of the overthrow of Brazil’s most progressive
regime by a politician and scholar intimately involved in that regime.
The first foreign action taken by the Castelo Branco regime after overthrowing
Goulart was withdrawing Brazil’s support for Fidel Castro. Brazil had been one of five
major Latin American powers that charted independent foreign policies and con-
strained U.S. interventionism. In De Martí a Fidel, Bandeira’s Brazilian nationalist
perspective allows us to appreciate more fully the impact of the Cuban Revolution for
Latin America where for years it was a model and a beacon of hope. Bandeira is con-
cerned primarily with explaining the success, failings, and global ramifications of the
Cuban Revolution in the international context. He sees the revolution as shaped much
more by U.S. Latin American policy and the cold war than by internal Cuban
dynamics.
Having met with and spoken at length with Che Guevara when he visited Cuba
with João Goulart in 1962, Bandeira is taken with Che’s vision and the possibilities of
Cuba’s sparking a pan–Latin American nationalist and socialist revolution. He
sweeps through post-1930 Latin America to remind us of its many nationalist regimes
(e.g., Perón in Argentina, Vargas, Kubitschek, and Goulart in Brazil, Arbenz in Guate-
mala, Torres in Panama, the MNR [Movimiento Nacionalista Revolutionario] in
Bolivia, Allende in Chile, the Acción Democrática in Venezuela, José Figueres in
Costa Rica). The twentieth century was neither 100 years of solitude nor a century of
dependence, nor was there any steadily building revolutionary fervor. There were
numerous moments at which the course of history could have taken a different turn.
The triumph of capital and reaction were neither constant nor inevitable. Political
organization and leadership were as important as national and international material
104 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

conditions in deciding the course of events. Winners and losers were neither total, per-
manent, nor predetermined. The author clearly favors socialist equality, but he has his
eyes wide open to the trials and shortcomings of Fidel’s regime.
Basing his study on years of research in the archives of the foreign offices of the
United States, Germany, and Brazil (though not in those of Cuba), Bandeira asserts
that the Cuban Revolution was really just one of many nationalist movements in Latin
America and in the Third World in general. What made it special was the leadership of
Castro and to a lesser extent Guevara and its timing. The international context allowed
Cuba to remain a challenge to the United States despite its efforts to overthrow Fidel in
Operation Mongoose, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the blockade, sabotage, and assassi-
nations. Castro succeeded not just because he answered many Cubans’ hopes
(Bandeira thinks he would still win an open election in Cuba today) but because he
was able to win Soviet support. No other Latin American country has ever had such a
powerful ally in its struggle against the United States.
The Soviets came to Cuba’s rescue, he says, not because of any historical ties and
not because of the strength of the Cuban Communist Party—which would never be
much involved in Cuban-USSR relations. Instead, Bandeira points to the clash
between the United States and the USSR over Berlin and the Sino-Soviet split. The
Soviets were seeking a site to enhance their prestige in the capitalist and socialist
spheres. Krushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and the launching of Sputnik induced
him to take the unprecedented action of extending Soviet power into the Western
Hemisphere. Bandeira rejects the idea that Castro allied himself with the Soviets
because he had been a secret communist before assuming power. In fact, he says, Castro
was driven into the Soviet camp by Eisenhower and Kennedy; though he was a revolu-
tionary and had socialist sympathies, he was not a communist. Indeed, one of the
book’s main themes is Cuba’s different road, particularly in its aid to revolutionary
groups in Latin America, Africa, and even the Middle East. Although increasingly
constrained by the Soviets, Fidel and particularly Che exercised substantial freedom
of action, turning Cuba into an important international player.
But while Bandeira appreciates Cuba’s assertion of sovereignty and an independent
foreign policy, he also recognizes its eventual dependence on the USSR. It remained a
sugar export economy, even less diversified than before, and concentrated its trade in
the Eastern block. The U.S. boycott and pressure on its allies had forced Cuba into this
dependent position, and the consequences were grave as Castro adopted increasingly
Stalinist policies to protect Cuba from the constant threat of U.S. invasion and sabo-
tage. It continued to be a beacon of hope for reformist regimes such as the Sandinistas
in Nicaragua, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador, and
Maurice Bishop in Grenada but could not sustain them in the face of overwhelming
U.S. hostility. And Cuba itself has had to move slowly toward capitalism by allowing a
private sector, establishing tourism, with its casinos, gambling, and prostitution, and
attracting private corporations, to which some state enterprises have been sold.
In the end, the lesson that Bandeira draws from the Cuban Revolution for reform-
minded nationalists throughout Latin America is that although Fidel and Che inspired
other revolutionaries and the regime retained its sovereignty even after the collapse of
communism in Eastern Europe and the end of their trade relations and subsidies, there
 BOOK REVIEW 105

could be not be, as Regis Debray hoped, a revolution within the revolution. There is
equality in Cuba, but it is an equality of poverty. He concludes that Cuba’s example
proves that (1998: 648) “the effort to liquidate class differences and implant socialism
before the forces of production are sufficiently developed to provide . . . abundance . . .
brings with it not only stagnation but even decay in the mode of production and in the
society.” As in his study of the overthrow of Goulart, Bandeira advocates organizing
the urban working class and developing the forces of production through social demo-
cratic policies that protect national sovereignty while being aware of the imperialist
threat, especially of the United States.
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