← New Books Network
New Books Network
Mila Burns, "Dictatorship Across Borders: Brazil, Chile, and the South American Cold War" (UNC Press, 2025)
00:46:27
Loading summary
Transcript33 lines
- [00:01]
A
What? I bought a new Blink Mini 2K smart security camera.
- [00:05]
B
What?
- [00:05]
A
I got 2K clarity sharp enough to see every detail of home when I'm away. Plus audio like I'm in the room, not with my bestie traveling to another city. Plus easy plugins set up to install. Faster than skipping through podcast ads. But you'd never skip ads, right? Plus, I got all of this for just $49.99. Blink Mini 2K mini camera max performance shop now@Amazon.com Blink.
- [00:31]
C
Ordinary checking just a place to park your money. Our checking a $300 head start. As a member of Oregon State Credit Union, you'll feel the benefits from day one. Open a new checking account, set up direct deposit, and we'll add 300 bucks to get you going. Oregon State Credit Union Human to Human banking insured by NCOA equal housing lender. $25 minimum balance required. Subject to change terms and conditions.
- [01:01]
D
Kay Jeweler's early Black Friday sale is happening now. Get up to 50% off Black Friday deals and up to 40% off everything else. Don't miss this sale. Start your season with savings only at Kay. Exclusions apply. See kay.com exclusions for details.
- [01:16]
E
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:21]
B
Hello, and welcome to New Books in Latin American Studies, a channel of the New Books Network. I'm Rachel Newman, a host on this channel. Today, I'm excited to talk with Mila Burns about her new book, Dictatorship Across Brazil, Chile and the South American Cold War, published by the University of North Carolina Press. Mila is Associate professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College and of History at the CUNY Graduate center, where she is also the Associate Director at the center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies. Mila, welcome to the program.
- [01:57]
E
Thank you so much, Rachel. I'm so happy to be here. Really. Like, it's amazing. I'm a big fan of the podcast. I really never miss it, so it's great to finally be part of it.
- [02:08]
B
Well, lucky us. Could we begin by hearing the story of how you came to this topic?
- [02:15]
E
Well, the research for this book began back in 2012, if I'm not mistaken, during my very first year as a PhD student at the Graduate Center. At that time, many of my mentors were unsure if the project would be feasible, really, because it was not clear if I would ever find the documents and sources I needed. I remember particularly a conversation with Professor James Green, who at the time was following closely the Brazilian Truth Commission, and that conversation concluded with us thinking, mila, you should just go right away to the archives and figure out if you have anything or if you will have to look for another topic. So off I went to Brasilia, to the Brazilian National Archive. And at that point, the files from the Brazilian Truth Commission were still being organized. So every day I would sit and go over brown box after brown box, none of them cataloged. It was really overwhelming. I had no idea even where to start. I remember opening really the very first box and finding random stuff, memos, cables, reports, newspaper articles, things that had been sitting there untouched for decades. And many of them, of course, were redacted or really hard to read because they were faded, handwritten, written. So I was there looking at the sources and still questioning myself about my choice of a topic for a dissertation. At that point, just so you know that I'm not crazy. And I came up with an idea without any evidence. I had as evidence of what I was looking for the denounces of Brazilians who had been exiled in Chile during the Allende presidency. Many of them wrote memoirs, books about their experience there. And many of them accused the Brazilian government of trying to interfere in Chile, of planting spies to follow the exiles. And they also complained a lot about Brazilian Ambassador in Santiago, Antonio Canjo do Camaracanto. So there was, of course, a thrill for me when I saw that the documents started to really point to the fact that Brazil had had a fundamental role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende. So, yeah, finally replying to your question, that's how it started. The central point that I was trying to make, something that Brazilian exiles had been making, that Brazil had interfered in the Salvador Allende administration, acted alone and in partnership with the United States, but also alone. And of course, again, it's important to reinforce that by arguing this. I'm not trying to dismiss the role of the United States, which has been demonstrated by many incredible scholars, but I'm trying to also include the role of Brazil to this equation. And with that, I'm hoping not only, you know, to bring accountability to some extent to. To the Brazilian government, but also to invite readers and historians to think of Brazil as an independent power who made its own decisions. And at this time, we. We think of the US influence of the Soviet Union's influence, but influence. But Brazil was profoundly bothered with a democratically elected socialist in the neighborhood. Of course. Right. Brazil had been a. A civilian military dictatorship since 1964. One that was built things with the message of anti communism. So, yeah, there's that too, I think. I'm in dialogue with other scholars who have been trying to do that only to cite one Attorney Harmer kind of inaugurated this conversation, this idea of an inter American Cold War. And I propose that we look to the South American Cold War, to what was happening among these countries, as I said, not necessarily in response to the United States or the Soviet Union.
- [06:05]
B
I think one of the big contributions of this book, and it's something that you flag in the work as well, is that indeed you're bringing a different perspective on the Cold War, in which we're not putting the central focus on the US or the Soviet Union. And I think one of the things that's going to mean for readers, especially if they're not specialists in the Southern cone, is that there's a whole other geopolitical landscape that we need to get familiar with. So maybe we could take a moment if you could just map out for us a little bit about the balance of power between Chile and Brazil, the different relationships they have with the United States. I noticed too, that there's sort of the public facing side of what each of these countries are trying to achieve and then other covert things they're doing. Tell us a little bit about the context in which your story takes place.
- [06:56]
E
Oh, that's, that's such a great point. Rachel and I. Yeah, I do think that to some extent we are more. I've heard that a lot when I'm talking about the book, when I'm now doing book talks and traveling and talking to students and scholars about it and readers who are not necessarily in academia, I hear a lot the question of, oh, so you're excusing the United States, so the Soviet Union was not part of this conversation. That's not true. That's absolutely false. I don't want to give that impression. And I think when you read the book, you don't really get that impression. But from talk sometimes, because I'm trying to make a point, that it is important for us to look at this dynamics, this transnational but also regional dynamics, that I'm excluding these two big powerful nations. That's not the case. So we're talking about the period of the Cold War in which of course, we tend to think of US versus Soviet Union, capitalism versus Communism. You can create whichever pair you want there. But the fact is that in South America, a lot was going on during the Cold War in Latin America in general. Right. We are think now, I think even in the classrooms have been correcting this a little bit when teaching by saying, well, the Cold War was not that cold. See what happened in many of the countries in Latin America, where there were really very violent interventions and actions from external actors from other countries, including the United States, but also reactions from the population from political actors inside this country. So in the case of the region I'm working with, Brazil had been a dictatorship since 1964, as I said, and a dictatorship that also removed from power. Then President Joan Gould, who was someone who had connections and had traveled and was more open to conversations with Cuba and China, someone who didn't see Brazil as a country that should be diplomatically aligned with the United States, he thought of South America as a very important region. He thought of Brazil as a powerful nation on its own. And of course, he had an agenda that included agrarian reform, which was not very well perceived by many other leaders around the world. So when Brazil becomes a dictatorship in 1964 and Joo Angola is ousted from power, many people point to that day as a day that was incredibly easy, let's say, for the. The military to really remove Gula from power, because Gula simply leaves the country and goes to exile in Uruguay. And that's really important for the book. That's why I appreciate so much your question. Because, for instance, the intelligence service that the Foreign Ministry of Brazil created to spy on political enemies of the regime that after that was heavily used and implemented in Chile during the Salvador Allende administration, was created right then specifically to spy on Jo Angoula in Uruguay and other political enemies of the regime who had gone into exile in countries in the region. So you see the birth of cx, which is this intelligence service right there in Uruguay following the fall of Joo Angular. In the meantime, from 64 to 1970, Chile remained a democracy, was a country in a lot of conversation with the United States, but also doing a lot of. Of business with Brazil. We see many inter American events in which conversations about the role of Cuba, and I again recommend Harmer's book on that. But Cuba becomes an essential part of the conversation among these countries. So you have preoccupation with this idea of communism gaining ground in the region, but you also have those countries with very different agendas and very different political moments at the time.
- [11:10]
B
So let's talk a little bit about the Brazilian exiles in Chile. And you explained to us it's not a homogenous group. So we can't talk about one singular Brazilian exile experience. But maybe you could tell us about some patterns that we can see in terms of which Brazilians end up in Chile and what happens to them after they arrive.
- [11:32]
E
Yeah, maybe we can talk about some patterns. Indeed I also think it's important for us to make it clear that not every Brazilian exile in Chile became a very prominent, famous figure in Brazilian politics afterwards. Because when we think of those Brazilian exiles, especially for us Brazilians, we think of, let's say, educator Paulo Freire, movie director Glaube Hosha, even former President of Brazil Fernando Ricardo. All of them went into exile in Chile. But we also see different waves of exiles, and those different waves had different people going. So you have people who were just like working class Brazilians who moved to Chile, but you also have a lot of people who are students, university professors who lost their jobs because of the dictatorship in Brazil and had to look for jobs elsewhere and then migrated to different countries. But specifically in this case that I'm writing about to Chile. So, yeah, so maybe I can actually go back a little bit just to acknowledge the fact that a lot of this book comes from oral histories, too. I interviewed many of those exiles, and they shared with me a lot of their experience in Chile. And many of them actually reinforced the fact that there's this myth of exile as a period of creativity, freedom, fighting against the power. And in some cases, we have exiles who went to Chile and had no documents, had no authorization to work in Chile, didn't feel like asking Salvador Allende for favors, so really had a hard time, struggled a lot in Chile. So, for example, I spoke to Wilson Donacemento Barboa, who became a professor of history at the University of Sao Paulo later. But he talked a lot about this experience as a very challenging one in Chile. And not only challenging because of the documentary, a lack of documents or visa or job authorization, or even lack of a job. But he also remembers how unsettling it was to live surrounded by suspicion, like they couldn't ask for help from the Brazilian Embassy, he recalls, for instance, I find it curious that he mentioned Geraldo Vandrea, who was a Brazilian musician and was also someone persecuted by the dictatorship, who ended up in exile in Chile, who was. Was always accompanied by three friends who were clearly military men, so clearly people who were spying on them. New St. Peters, another exile that told me about being robbed, for instance, by a thief who didn't take money or anything, but a folder with papers that he carried. Another, like Amarillo du Vasconcellos, was closely tracked by spies because of his proximity to Allende. And I know that now, not only because they claim that in the oral histories, but in some cases, the documents that I found would confirm their assumptions. Right. So Amarito Vasconcelos had the feeling that he was being followed. But then we have documents of people reporting back to Brasilia. And I say people because they're not necessarily signed, but clearly someone reporting Spice with details of private conversations between Vasconcelos and Allende, for instance. So someone was there with him, pretending to be another Brazilian exile and following him. So I'm citing all these names so that we don't have this myth of the exile as a kind of joyful, almost experience. Which some of us carry in Brazil. Because many of our biggest idols were victims of the Brazilian dictatorship. And therefore ended up exiled in different places. So in the case of London, for instance, we have Caetan Veloz and Gilbert Gilles. We have a big wave of exiles who go to Algeria, who go to Mexico, to Italy. But in the case specifically of Chile, we have a first wave that goes to Chile in 1964. Then we have a very, very big number of Brazilians who moved to Chile in 68. After the Institutional act number five, which is the darkest period of Brazilian dictatorship. A very violent period in which many of them are expelled from the country. And in this, this second wave, we have a lot of intellectuals, artists. This is kind of the pattern or kind of the profile. But then in 1970, we have not only people who decide to move to Chile. Because they feel that there's something happening there. With this new democratically elected socialist government. And feel very excited about that. But we also see the curious case of the setenta, the 70, which were political prisoners who were freed by the Brazilian government in exchange for an ambassador. And that was something that happened a lot, the kidnapping of ambassadors. We saw that with the ambassador of Japan, of Switzerland and the United States. In which the kidnappers asked. Or the guerrilla groups who kidnapped those ambassadors asked for the release of political prisoners. And the Setenta were a group of very prominent Brazilians that became known and even in Chile, as people who were fighting against the Declaration dictatorship, were arrested, were tortured, and then were later freed in exchange for the ambassador and moved to Santiago. So it's different stories, it's different cases. There are cases of people who end up marrying Chilean people and staying there, cases of people who leave before 1973. But what we see is mostly that these are people who are perceived as enemies, all of them, of the Brazilian government. And look for a house elsewhere.
- [17:36]
B
So in terms of Brazilian diplomacy, what is the foreign policy agenda. That Brazil is trying to advance in Chile? Why are they spying on Brazilians in Chile? How are they trying to achieve Their goals in Chile.
- [17:53]
E
Yeah, so there are so many different branches of that diplomatic espionage. And I think this is also important because we only refer to the dictatorship as a military dictatorship. And the diplomatic espionage was fundamental. So this diplomatic branch is an important one. But it goes from Antonio Canaracanto, who was then the ambassador of Brazil in Chile, who was someone very, very close to Augusto Pinocchio later on, and was someone who really facilitated coup. The Chilean coup plotters lives, even offering a space in the embassy for them to talk and organize when needed. But you also have the spion itself coming from the cx. So, for example, I talked to one of the exiles that I talked to was not renowned or famous. One was more likely an infamous exile. And he was a double agent. His name was Jose Anselmo dos Santos, but he's known in Brazil as Cabo Anselmo or Corporate Anselmo. He was mentioned by many of the exiles that I interviewed. Aluiso Palma, for example, One of the exile reported that he was there. Cabo Anselmo was there among exiles who until then actually considered him to be a hero. That's why he was a very successful double agent. He was one of the leaders of the 1964 sailors revolt. Which asked for better salaries, better work conditions for Navy personnel. And it was really one of the things that started the dictatorship in Brazil. Back then, Joan Goula was the president and he pardoned the participants of this revolt, the sailors revolt. And Cabo Anselmo was one of those. Then he went to Cuba for guerrilla training, was openly against the dictatorship. So, you know, you could not be suspicious of this man. But at some point he switched sides, we don't really know. And when he moves to Chile, supposedly as an exile, he's actually moving to Chile already as a spy. And he was spying on many of the Brazilian exiles there. He would send back Brazil things that he called flirt reports. And write them back to Sergio Fleury, who was the chief of dobbs, the Brazilian Department for Political and Social Order. He would write really like step by step documents with what was going on in the exiles lives. Where did they go, if they went to the Cuban Embassy, what they were planning on, passwords, many different things. And the fact that he reported directly to Dobbs with information about those exiles suggests to us that, yes, this branch of the Ministry of Foreign Relations. Was actively working to spy on civilians, but that the Brazilian government was worried about what they were doing. If they were planning to do anything against their government, if they were working in connection with Chilean groups, we now know, as I said, the details of that, of what was going on. But we can also look at the. This as kind of a dialogue between what the Brazilian government expected in terms of its diplomatic services and what was going on in Chile, but also as a kind of rehearsal for Operation Condor, which would start later in the 1970s with Pinocchio already in power in Chile. And we know that Chile kind of was the leader of Operation Condor. And Brazil didn't have a position as prominent as one could expect in Operation Condor. This really network of terror and violence that was a coordinated effort among many of those countries in South America and the United States to track and trace the routes of political enemies of those dictatorships now installed in many countries in South America. But we also also see that as a kind of something that doesn't really interest Brazil as much as the other countries or as Chile. But I think the reason for that was that they already had been doing a kind of Operation Condor with their own exiles for a very, very long time. So, yeah, this is, I think, an important part of that. It's also important to say, Rachel, that I'm not claiming that I found out all of those things. As I said, Brazilian exiles had been denouncing the interference of the diplomat branch of the Brazilian government and even U.S. ambassador in Santiago during the Allende administration. Nathaniel Davis wrote a book in the 80s, in the very early 80s, about the Brazil connection, and he pointed to Brazil's Ambassador, Antonio Canto do da Camaracanto, as a key figure in Chile during those years. So I would say that this diplomatic actions were coming from individuals like Antonio Canji do da Camaracanto, but also from a very, very well established intelligence service that was happening before Condor to really track political enemies of the Brazilian regime all over, and with that, gathering information about Allende and other enemy administrations in the region.
- [23:33]
B
So shifting a little bit from a focus on the state, you have a really interesting chapter on these organizations, which you call reasonably think tanks. They're producing ideas, but your chapter also shows that these institutions do a lot of things. They're not only producing thought. So what exactly are the sort of ideas or material resources that are getting exchanged between Brazil and Chile during these years? And why are they so important?
- [24:03]
E
Oh, thank you so much for asking this question. I really like this chapter because I think it unveils this kind of network and connection that we don't necessarily acknowledge. Sometimes we're looking for the documents and everything, but there's an interchange of ideas, ideas that is as important and as powerful sometimes as sending objects or weapons, like we know now that the Brazilian government did. So the institutions you're referring to are ipes, the Instituto Dipesquis Economica Esocial and ibagi, Instituto Brasileiro de San Demok. And those were really key players much earlier than the period I'm talking about, because they were key players in destabilizing Joo Goular's government. They were very, very important sources of inspir for Chileans. So there's a person that I interviewed in the book, Orlando Sanz, who was the director of sofofa. He's a kind of Robert Moses in Chile, you know, this person who is not an elected official or anything, but he was extremely influential because he was the president of sofofa, which was the kind of organization that connects all of the industries in Chile. So a very, very powerful man. And I interviewed him too, and he confirmed that after the coup, Chile received tremendous support from Brazil, including a line of credit, something that we now can also confirm from documents. But not only that Brazilian businessmen and institutions provided financial and logistical support. Much before the coup, Chileans would go to Brazil and fled in some cases to Brazil after Allende's election, only to find jobs in companies in Brazil, build networks with Brazilian elites and really learn from them. So, for instance, the far right Chilean group, fascist group Patrea Libertad was also inspired by IPES and ibagi. So for instance, the Campania da Mule Aela Democracia campaign that IPEZ organized in Brazil, which was a campaign that mobilized women to take to the streets and ask for the end of the Joan Goulad government in Brazil, it's basically, basically the same thing. When they did that in Brazil, they called it the March for the Family with God and for Freedom. It's very, very similar. If you look at pictures, it's almost the same thing that happened in the Marcha de las Casterolas Vasillas, the Empty Pots, the March of the Empty Pots in Chile and other protests against Allende mobilizing women. And you see in the documents that that was really part of the agenda, part of the manual, if I can use this word that they use to really destabilize those. And now one area in which people really rarely think about Brazil's influence on Chile is the economy. And that's of course, because when we think of the Brazilian economy during the dictatorship, we usually think of an interventionist, of developmentalist, model, nationalist. But when we think of Chile, we think of neoliberalism. Basically, and what often gets forgotten is that Roberto Campos, that would later become known as Bob Fields because he was so aligned to the United States that in Brazil people call him by his nickname, which is a translation of his names into English. Roberto Campus was very aligned with free market ideas coming from the United States. And I'm talking literally about Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys and what they would later do in Chile, much later than what Bobby Fields, Roberto Campos, as Minister of Planning in the early years of Brazil's civil military regime, was doing in Brazil. He was Minister of Finance of planning from 64 to 60, of planning from 64 to 67. And the Minister of Finance was then Otavio Gove de Bulloins. And they both shared this same kind of liberal, really, economic outlook. Campos worried that their proposals would be very unpopular because he called for austerity and measures that were very similar to what the Chicago Boys would later implement in Chile. And Castello Branco, then president, said, that's what dictatorships are for. Do whatever needs to be done so that we can make the economy stronger. And it doesn't matter if this is going to hurt people or not. But Castello Branco was the first president of the dictatorship, and that actually later became a problem. So we tend to forget this very brief period of liberal experience for the Brazilian dictatorship. But I claim that it actually deeply influenced the Chicago Boys. Later, Roberto Campos go to Brazil several times. And the Ladrillo, which is the brick, the plan that the Chicago Boys implemented in Chile is very similar to the Paegi, the Plano Economica, the economic action plan that Roberto Campos and Bulliones proposed in Brazil. So there are many different avenues in which those think tanks, Ibagi and Ipes, and the people behind those think tanks like Gouvet, Boulogne and Roberto were thinking for Brazilian economic agenda and influence, ended up influencing Chile a lot.
- [29:35]
B
Let's talk a little about the 1973 coup that brings an end to the Allende regime. This is one of the better known episodes in Latin America's Cold War. But you have a different version of the story that features Brazil. Could you sort of give us a short version of the way you tell this story and why it's so important to bring Brazil into the picture?
- [30:00]
E
Yeah, yeah. Thank you again for this question. Your questions are so good. I'm thrilled we managed to, in such a short time, cover so much ground. And I think this is actually, again, a merit of this amazing podcast and a merit of your reading of the book. So thank you so very much. Yeah. So Brazil actively worked to make the administration of Allende fragile and to remove him from power. And that happened in different ways. As I said, Brazil sent weapons, Brazil sent medicine to the Estadio Nacional, to the National Stadium in Chile. Brazil sent even torturers to the Estadio Nacional in Chile. We know about many stories and many scholars who wrote about the events that took place in September 11, 1973, the day of the coup in Chile, that many of the people who were torturing Chileans and internationals who were also in the country, but mostly Chileans, were military soldiers, people who were not trained for that, who were recruited out of nowhere, in some cases very young people coming from rural areas, who out of nowhere were, you know, acting as tortures inside the Estadio Nacional. And actually, the Brazilian government sent many professional. We can use this word now, right? Because many years after torturing, systematically enemies of the Brazilian regime, they became professionals in what they were doing. And they went to Chile to teach their Chilean counterparts how to do this in the National Stadium. And many Brazilian exiles who were arrested and taken to the National Stadium in Chile reported that said, we saw them, we recognized them, they recognized us. We saw them torturing people, and we saw them speaking Portuguese. So I think this is, again, another very important part of this narrative. The Brazilians, of course, were not the only foreigners arrested in Chile and taken to the Estadio Nacional. But they give us a picture of what was going on inside the Estadio Nacional. One of them actually died there. There was a doctor that I interviewed, Ottobrox, who was arrested and taken to the Estadio Nacional and who was following those Brazilians there and the oppression coming from the Chileans and the Brazilian torturers there. So I think what we see happening in the National Stadium is really the end of a tragic story. That is a story too, as we said before, of Brazilian independently acting, but acting also in partnership with the United States. If we come back to 1971, when President Medici traveled, Emilio Gasta zu Medici, the then Brazilian president, traveled to the United States to meet Richard Nixon. They both were talking about leadership, independence, but about their preoccupation, their common preoccupation with Chile. And they worked together, they joked, they bonded, but they also decided to open a line of communication that would be secret. And they actually said that they would only have their foreign ministers talking to each other. Not even typists, they said, would be aware of this line of communication. Because Nixon asked about Chile to Madison and said, what are we going to do about that? To which medicine replied, allende will fall. For the same reasons. Gular fell in Brazil. He emphasized that Brazil was already working toward that goal. So when the September 11th coup happens, Brazil was actually in partnership with the United States and independently had been working towards that end for a long time. Nixon even offered money or other covered assistance, insisting that the United States could help at any point. But Madisy said, no, I'm glad that our positions align, but this is taken care of. And Allende will fall for the same reasons. Gular fell in Brazil, Brazil. And that's taken care of. So when we see this structure that was already at Place on September 11, and the level of participation, unfortunately, that we had coming from the Brazilian government, it took time, but we see that as an important part of what was going on and what would happen, unfortunately, in Chile in September 11, 1973.
- [34:46]
B
So we turn to that moment after the coup has taken place in the book's final chapter. Chapter. And it's a difficult one to read because we're learning about the torture that Brazilians experienced at the hands of the Chilean dictatorship. When we're teaching modern Latin American history, and we need our students to learn about this particular moment, I think it can be challenging to explain why they need to encounter such disturbing material. So I'm wondering kind of what your take on that, on that question would be. Maybe you could tell us about how you researched and wrote about this, and what do you hope that readers are going to remember if it's not just the violent details of how the torture took place?
- [35:33]
E
This is such a hard question, Rachel, because, you know, I remember having this conversation with my mom at some point, and she's saying, why can't you just research something else? Because it's very painful to be in contact with that. I had examples of one of the exiles who didn't want to give me an interview because he saw my last name. He thought I could be a CIA agent and said, the only way I'm going to give you an interview is if you bring someone else with you. And I didn't understand the request at first, but then I realized, only when I was there, actually, I realized, oh, my gosh, he thinks I could be a spy.
- [36:13]
B
And.
- [36:13]
E
And that's so many decades after he was an exile in Chile. Right. I was conducting this research, as I said, in 2012, 2015, and yet he was afraid that I could be a spy. So the trauma is real, and these people are really generously revisiting trauma to talk to me about what happened, and that's how much they care about setting a straight record. Heard you know, making clear what really happened to them. I had one episode in which an exile was talking to me about almost being raped by Chilean soldiers in Chile. And the descriptions of torture are really, really very complicated to deal with and to revisit with them. And as a researcher, of course, it was very painful for me to do that interview and to do the interviews and to write about it. But you. It's almost pathetic for me to say how painful it was for me in comparison to the pain that these people felt at the time of the events and having to revisit them. So I had scholars telling me I would be very happy to ask my students to read only that chapter, because I think it depicts very clearly what these people went through, But I understand how hard this could be. So at the same time, I, I feel like it's really important for us to be depicting and telling the truth of what happened and being as candid as possible, but I understand how complicated it could be. So, yeah, it was not an easy book to write, to be honest. I started this project, as I said, in 2012, and it took me a very long time to finish it because I had another book published between those years, and then this other book was translated. I already had a contract for that one, so I had to put Dictatorship Across Borders on hold for a little bit and then go back to it. And every time I went back, I felt like, wow, this is just too painful. I don't know if I can go on writing the book, but I feel like I had this commitment with those exiles who had been claiming that those things happened for decades and decades and not necessarily being heard until the truth commission really, really heard them, really recorded interviews and turned it into a memory of what this terrible period was. And I felt that I owe them this, and, and writing the book with their words, you know, hearing their voices. So the process was very complicated, was very difficult. It was also hard because, as I said, it's decades after the event, so I have to rely on their memories. But at the same time, I have to look at the documents to see, you know, to complicate it a little bit and make sure that we have confirmation of what they're saying. And I, I try to be clear in the book when I don't, but. But, yeah, I, I feel like, yeah, I, I, I did the best I could to depict the stories that they told me the way they wanted them to be told and the way they wanted them to be remembered. I don't know if I answered your question, though. I. I get so emotional when I'm talking about. About those events that sometimes. Did I answer your question?
- [39:42]
B
Oh, definitely. And, I mean, I just wanted to thank you for persevering. And I think that that commitment to getting these stories told and the scholarly rigor of trying to sort of, you know, put the different pieces of the puzzle together and compare what different primary sources are telling us, that comes through as well. So thank you for writing this book and for this conversation. But before we let you go, would you tell us a little bit about what you're working on lately, now that this book's out there in the world?
- [40:15]
E
Oh, that's. I thank you so much. And I appreciate your question, and I appreciate all this conversation about the book. It's really good for me to revisit it with. Through your eyes that are so, you know, careful and generous at the same time. I have two ongoing projects. One is a little more advanced than the other. So the first one is I'm now researching Brazilian telenovelas. Teve global telenovelas in Cuba. During the Cold War, when I went to Cuba for the first time, I remember being very puzzled and surprised by the fact that people wanted to talk to me about the ending of Avenida Brazil, which was the telenovela that they were showing there at the time. And I found out walking around that the paladares, that are this big institution that the family owned, restaurants that were pretty much the first private business authorized by the Cuban Communist government during the periodo Especial, the special period, so that people could make some money, and they allowed those small restaurants to operate inside people's homes, and they were called paladares. And I always thought it was because paladares means taste in Spanish. But actually, it was the name of the restaurant. Restaurant that Regina Duarte's character, Fatima. No, Fatima was the daughter, but Regina Duarte's character owned in Brazil in this telenovela called Valitudo Valitodo in Cuba. So the influence was very big. And I started really looking at this and realizing that many discussions, including discussions of the role of women in Cuban society, LGBTQ rights, religion, race in Cuba, were informed by Brazilian telenovelas that were showing there. So those telenovelas were a kind of soft power for the Brazilian government. And I can say that because Globo was a company that was very connected to power in Brazil, is the biggest Brazilian network, so it's a very powerful network, but was very surprisingly progressive in some of the topics that they tried to discuss in their telenovela. So Malou Muller, for instance, which was not really a telenovela was more like a series showed in Cuba, was the first Brazilian product to show in Cuba. And it brought seems like a female orgasm, which is something that we hadn't seen on television before. So you have a discussion, and it's right when the family code is being discussed in Cuba. So you see the influence that those telenovelas had in Cuba. I'm really fascinated about this project. I just finished a chapter that is going to be published soon, hopefully, and I'm working on this book. And then I'm also working on the diaries of my great great great great grandmother that I found my uncle actually found when we was traveling to Spain to try to understand where our family came from. He found her notes and gave them to me. So my following after the novella's project is done, I'm gonna work on trying to understand how a woman, how her experience as a woman migrating to look for her husband who had migrated from Spain to Brazil before her, what was her experience witnessing so many changes that were taking place in Brazil at the time. So she sees the transition to the republic. She sees the end of slavery in Brazil. And I wanted to really understand, understand her perception of that. It's really, really a special project, and I'm gonna see where it takes me.
- [44:08]
B
Wow, Mila. Well, I can't wait to follow the progress of both of those amazing projects. We've been speaking today with Mila Burns, mainly about her new book, Dictatorship Across Brazil, Chile and the South American Cold War. Thanks again, Mila.
- [44:25]
E
Thank you so much, Rachel. And thank you everyone who is here with us. Congratulations on all the amazing interviews bring to us. And I look forward to talking to you about future projects as well. And I also look forward to reading your new book that I know is coming out soon. So talk to you soon.
- [44:45]
B
Thanks again.
- [44:58]
E
Limu Emu.
- [45:00]
F
And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu.
- [45:17]
B
Is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
- [45:19]
F
Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Savings. Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.