Controversy in Brazil over the release of ‘sensitive’ documents from imperial past
Members of the Brazilian government have expressed concern about the possible release of secret documents dating back to 1864/70 Paraguay war, the taking over of the state of Acre from Bolivia in 1903, current military exercises along the Brazilian border, nuclear research, among other issues.
Brazilian diplomats have warned that revealing the archives of the Triple Alliance (Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay) war against Paraguay could affect current relations, according to the influential Folha de Sao Paulo.
At the time the Paraguayans virtually fought to the last man, with almost all the male population 10 to 60 years killed during the war and forcing the Brazilians to leave behind the Army. Brazil at the time was an empire, and Dom Pedro II ruler.
In recent years the construction of the world’ largest operational hydroelectric dam, Itaipú, shared between Brazil and Paraguay could also expose alleged ‘dealings’ between the dictatorships of both countries at the time (1970).
Similarly members from the current administration of President Dilma Rousseff fear that the arguments in support for recent military exercises along its borders (Brazil has borders with all South American countries but Chile and Ecuador) and ‘potential conflict situations’ could surprise many of ‘our neighbours’.
The Brazilian military are also concerned that disclosures could expose agreements reached by the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964/1985) and other countries of the region referred to the Plan Condor, which enabled the kidnap, exchange and killings of alleged opponents of the military regimes of the time in South America.
The debate over the partial or total disclosure of government documents and the time-table for such decisions has become a dominant issue of the Brazilian political agenda.
Former presidents and currently senators Jose Sarney and Fernando Collor de Mello have called for caution and recommended that some documents should remain undisclosed for another fifty years.
Besides the historic issues affecting neighbouring countries the former leaders warned about documents referred to nuclear research and ‘tests’, particularly when Argentina and Brazil, not so long ago, were competing for the leadership of the continent.
Another most sensitive issue pointed out by diplomats and the military refers to the state of Acre, which originally belonged to Bolivia, but in a several decades process was finally incorporated to the Brazilian union in 1920. Earlier in 1903 Brazil convinced Bolivia to take £ 2.5 million sterling in gold and a gift of two white stallions for the Bolivian president.
According to Folha de Sao Paulo, the Baron of Rio Branco, a former Brazilian Foreign Affairs minister and considered the father and reference of Brazilian diplomacy is attributed with having handsomely bribed several Bolivian officials so to confirm the Amazon basin Acre was finally ceded to Brazil.
However Catholic priest Frei Betto, one of Latin Americas’ promoters of the so-called Liberation Doctrine criticized hiding what he described as the “historic massacre and plundering” of Paraguay and their people.
“Non disclosure pretends to cover up the shameful participation of the Duque de Caxias, patron of the Brazilian Army who commanded our troops when that war”, said Frei Betto.
During that conflict “Brazil took over 40% of Paraguayan territory”, said Frei Betto who has no political militancy but for the fact he was once an advisor of former president Lula da Silva.
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People so inclined can have very long 'racial memories' if it suites the politics of the moment.
Interesting for us, bad news for brazil ??
Nothing that Brazil's done can be compared to the UK's past as an empire and present as the US's mad poodle.
“...a war that, even conceding that it provoked an exaggerated reaction from Brazil, had been initiated by the Paraguayans?”
The war began when Brazil invaded Uruguay and installed a puppet government. Paraguay then expected Argentina to help throw the Brazilians out of Uruguay, because Buenos Aires had been Brazil's main rival in Uruguay for decades. Paraguayan troops entered Argentina expecting to join with an Argentina army, not fight Argentina. The diplomat sent by the Paraguayans was locked up incommunicado in Buenos Aires and no message on what was really happening ever got back to Paraguay until too late (remember what communications were here in 1864!). -
In fact, it appears that the leader of Argentina had made a deal with Brazil because he wanted to consolidate control of rebellious provinces that are today part of Argentina but in those days did not accept the supremacy of Buenos Aires. It is also possible that after Uruguay was finished Paraguay would be next on the menu for one or both of the giants. The instinct of politicians to be imperialistic is not restricted to Europe - people with an unnatural hunger for more power are those who most consistently rise in politics.
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President Kirchner has vaguely admitted to learning the above information, and officially apologized to Paraguay; in fact, documents purporting to reveal this chain of events (presaging Wikileaks) were published in London during the war.
Today, no Paraguayan dreams of taking revenge on Brazil or Argentina. The individuals who did wrong have been dead for a century or more. However, knowing more of the truth will be enlightening for us today - it will help us to understand how often popular beliefs about how one country or the other became large and powerful are the fruit of propaganda, not truth, and that we must be more alert to watch for that in our own time.
Reveal the truth, whatever it is.
You say:
”However, knowing more of the truth will be enlightening for us today - it will help us to understand how often popular beliefs about how one country or the other became large and powerful are the fruit of propaganda, not truth, and that we must be more alert to watch for that in our own time. Reveal the truth, whatever it is.”
I say:
Seems that an intelligent poster has joined MercoPress……..
A pleasure to read your info about an angle of our shared history that is absolute obscure for us ”Curepas”.
The guilty are always trying to stop the innocent making a comment,
Are you guilty,,,,,,,
It was a reply to the article, and if there are any secrets to come out,, they will come out,
It has sod all to do with Britain or the usa,
it’s about brazils past, and the people are interested,
As news is news, and gossip is gossip .
Just a thought .
It seems it is not only the populations of bigger nations tha are subjected to state propaganda. For I at least learned in school that behind the hostility against Solano López was the British Empire's desire to suppress his admirable economic nationalism and the developmentalist policies in that had been inaugurated by López's predecessor and that he continued and deepened.
You, on other hand, don't seem to know that, his virtues aside, López also presented a threat to countries nearby as he planned to expand Paraguay's boders at the expense of Brazil and Argentina (and even Bolivia). He intended to create a new Paraguay, a Gran Paraguay, which would no longer be a landlocked nation. It's ridiculous to believe that Paraguay would have sent troops to Argentina without the latter's consent if López's intentions were not aggressive. And to explain away Paraguay's aggression by adducing Brazilian interference in Uruguay.
I have been taught about Duque de Caxia's brutality in Paraguay. You, on the other hand, completely ignore López's expansionim. No wonder that even today Paraguayans suffer from victim complexand deeply resent events from more thana centur ago.
@MiguelQuemaduras, this is what I mean:
Don't presume that, by attributing the war to Paraguayan aggression, I'm under some state propaganda. Currently Brazilian textbooks take quite an independent, non-nationalistic, view on that war. For example, in school classes I've been taught that López had quite some qualities as a statesman, that the British Empire intended to suppress his government because of its economic nationalism and that it apparently influenced BR and Argentina to assume a hostile stance towards López. And neither do textbooks ignore Duque de Caxia's brutal occupation of Paraguay.
But on the other hand, PY education seems to ignore that, his virtues aside, López harbored expansionist hopes that made him a threat to neighboring countries, specially to BR, ARG and Bolívia. He planned to create a new PY, a Gran PY, which would no longer be a landlocked nation. Finding an exit to the sea was the main reason he waged war on BR. Just ask yourself why PY, by any means a small nation, had the largest and most well-prepared military force of the region at the beginning of the war: something that guaranteed for PY a temporary advantage over BR? As for BR, that it had no hostile intentions towards Paraguay is indicated by the fact that it had a small army (considering the total population) made up of mostly miserable, unprepared combatants. The BR army had to be reformed in the course of the war against PY.
Moreover, it's quite naive of you to believe that, by sending troops to ARG without the latter's consent, PY had no hostile intentions. That just doesn't happen. And neither is ARG's refusal to allow Paraguay to pass by the country - an understandable refusal by a sovereign nation - a legitimate excuse to invade it, plunder its goods and wage war against it as López did.
but you never know what the real truth is,
remember [jack the ripper] and still today, the london archives wont let the whole truth out,
i still think they are hiding things,
but their you go, just a thought .
Have the Paraguayans accepted this?
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