Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Brasil, Argentina e Estados Unidos: Da Triplice Aliança ao Mercosul, 1870–2003

2004; Duke University Press; Volume: 84; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-84-4-775

1527-1900

W. Michael Weis,

Brazilian History and Foreign Policy

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira is one of the best-known scholars of Brazilian foreign relations and probably the most respected scholar in that field since Jose Honorio Rodrigues. His 1978 classic, Presença dos Estados Unidos no Brasil (dois séculos de história), has been updated into a two-volume set. He has also written a history of the Cuban Revolution, one of the better single-volume histories of the João Goulart administration, and numerous other works. This latest book, covering the strategic triangle between Brazil, Argentina, and the United States, is destined to become a classic in its field.In the United States, it is common academic practice to focus on U.S. relations with individual Latin American countries. While this is fruitful and perhaps logical, U.S. foreign policy, particularly in Latin America, is also based on regional factors. Moniz Bandeira recognizes this and, particularly in reference to the post-1985 world, realizes that the relationship between Brazil and Argentina—so often filled with conflict and rivalry—is much more important to understanding hemispheric relations than U.S.-Argentina or U.S.-Brazil relations studied in isolation. In the past decade, Brazil and Argentina have attempted (through MERCOSUL) to form a regional economic counterpoint to the United States, with strategic implications.Brazil and Argentina’s rivalry began in the colonial period, as Spanish and Portuguese pioneers ran into each other. Because of this rivalry, a war was fought between the two nations shortly after independence, and the independent state of Uruguay was created. A generation later, Brazil and Argentina joined forces to ensure that Paraguay would never be able to challenge each others’ imperial designs in the region. The War of the Triple Alliance—or Paraguayan War, as it is known in Brazil—resulted in Paraguay’s near destruction and complete defeat.Bandeira picks up the story with the conclusion of the Paraguayan War and shows how the United States was able, initially, to play Brazilian and Argentine distrust and rivalry to its advantage. Throughout much of the end of the imperial epic and on through the Old Republic (1889–1930), American policy favored Brazil vis à vis Argentina. Argentine beef and wheat exports were in competition with American products, while Brazilian exports (primarily coffee, rubber, and cocoa) were not. Even though Argentina was much more prosperous, U.S. support for Brazil gave it an advantage and made it the dominant power in the region. In return, Brazil supported U.S. regional objectivesAfter World War II, however, Brazilian and Argentine influences began to coincide more closely. As Brazil industrialized, its economic interests began to run counter to U.S. desires to keep the region focused on the export of raw materials. The twin regimes of Getúlio Vargas, 1951–54, and Juan Perón, 1946–55, explored possibilities of cooperation against the United States, but there was too much mutual distrust and lack of common interests to succeed.Ironically, U.S.-assisted coups in Brazil and Argentina in the 1960s led the world toward closer approximations of those two countries. Both adopted right-wing military dictatorships and began to cooperate more completely on a whole host of regional security issues. Trade between them also began to increase. This momentum continued through the 1970s and into the 1980s, when both militaries were replaced by weak civilian democratic regimes. Both of these regimes not only found solace in each other but also used each other to try to buttress their increasingly antagonistic relations with the United States concerning debt and investment, computers, copyrights, and so on, and to buttress the fledgling democracies. All of this came to fruition with the creation of MERCOSUL, a regional trade investment organization that includes Paraguay and Uruguay, as well as associate members. According to Bandeira, it is in this recent period that MERCOSUL presented itself as an emerging rivalry to the United States and its ideas for a NAFTA-like western hemispheric bloc. While it is certainly too early to say how these efforts will go, the current regimes in Argentina and Brazil seem to be cooperating with each other, still leading opponents of the U.S. coalition at the recent WTO talks in Cancún, and seem likely to continue.Moniz Banderia’s Conflict and Integration in South America tells this story very nicely. While it is only accessible to those who read Portuguese, it is easy to understand and vital to understanding this important and increasingly more complex topic. Extremely well written, analyzed, and researched, this work is destined to become another standard text in Brazilian foreign relations.