US president Richard Nixon discussed with the Brazilian president a cooperative effort to overthrow the government of Chilean president Salvador Allende, recently declassified documents that reveal deep collaboration between the US and Brazil in trying to root out leftists in Latin America during the Cold War showed.
The formerly secret memos, published on Sunday by the National Security Archive in Washington, show that Brazil and the US discussed plans to overthrow or destabilize not only Allende, but also Cuban president Fidel Castro and others.
Nixon, at a meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 9, 1971, said he was willing to offer Brazil the assistance, monetary or otherwise, it might need to rid South America of leftist governments, the White House memorandum of the meeting shows.
Nixon saw Brazil’s military government as a critical partner in the region.
“There were many things that Brazil as a South American country could do that the US could not,” Nixon told Brazilian president Emilio Medici, the memo said.
“Even by the standards of what is already known about the extensive contacts between the United States and Latin American allies in the context of the Cold War, these documents reveal a higher level of collaboration than was believed to be the case,” said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Latin American policy research group in Washington. “They indicate that Washington resorted to extreme lengths in this period to combat what was viewed as the spreading communist menace in its backyard.”
Nixon was openly hostile to Allende and previously released documents have shown that his administration financed efforts to destabilize Allende’s government and backed the coup that overthrew him in 1973.
The newly disclosed memos shed no light on whether Brazil ultimately played a role in the coup.
At the Oval Office meeting, Nixon asked Medici whether the Chilean military was capable of overthrowing Allende.
“President Medici replied that they were, adding that Brazil was exchanging many officers with the Chileans, and made clear that Brazil was working toward this end,” the memo said.
Nixon offered his support for Brazil’s efforts, saying that if “money were required or other discreet aid, we might be able to make it available.”
Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive’s Chile and Brazil projects, said the documents revealed “a hidden chapter of collaborative intervention.”
He called on Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to make public his country’s military archives.
“The full history of intervention in South America in the 1970s cannot be told without Brazil coming clean about a dark past that is not previously acknowledged,” Kornbluh said.
The 1971 memo showed that the two leaders also discussed intervention in Cuba.
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