In an early 1947 letter to his country’s embassy in Rio de Janeiro, the Chilean Foreign Minister Joaquín Fernández highlighted the relevance of his ambassador’s role, describing it as ‘one of the most important and sensitive positions’ in the nation’s diplomatic relations. Fernández highlighted how Brazil had walked hand in hand with the United States during World War II.Footnote 1 The diplomacy of President Getúlio Vargas – in power since 1930 – and his star Foreign Minister Oswaldo Aranha had skilfully leveraged Brazil’s geopolitical situation – closeness to Africa and its strategic raw material production – aiming toward aggressive industrial development at home.Footnote 2 Initially, this led them to adopt an ambiguous stance toward the Allies at the onset of the war, using this strategy to negotiate financial, economic and military support before formally siding with the Allied cause and severing ties with Axis countries. Vargas and Aranha’s strategy was known as ‘equidistância pragmática’, and was highly praised by his Latin American peers.Footnote 3 In the post-war period, as the United States promoted continental unity to serve its global strategic interests, Fernández expected that Brazil would assume a leading role.
But Brazil’s post-war policies also sparked concerns and reservations. Fernández pointed out its stark anti-communism, in both domestic and foreign policy. A new government under former Minister of Defence General Eurico Dutra (1946–51) escalated an anti-communist narrative and rapprochement with authoritarian governments. The Chilean government itself included the local Communist Party in its ruling coalition,Footnote 4 which Fernández highlighted as a potential source of both continental and bilateral tensions.Footnote 5 Dutra – described by the Mexican ambassador in Rio as ‘decidedly anti-communist and pro-Catholic’ – was the only minister in the Vargas administration who had opposed the eventual decision to support the Allies.Footnote 6
Yet Dutra was not the central power figure in post-war Brazilian politics. Vargas and, to a lesser extent, communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes were the political heavyweights.Footnote 7 However, Dutra operated skilfully in the background, playing a role in Vargas’ downfall in late 1945 while simultaneously securing his endorsement to win the presidency at a critical moment in global and continental affairs.Footnote 8 Dutra’s rise to power at such a pivotal historical juncture marked an interregnum between the two Vargas governments (1930–45 and 1951–4), characterised by distinct features in Brazilian foreign policy that significantly shaped continental dynamics. Chilean Foreign Minister Fernández’s concerns were well founded.
This article examines why, beginning in 1946, the Dutra government pursued a policy of supplying arms to one of the most influential figures in Caribbean Basin politics, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, thereby fuelling an arms race in the region. It argues that the Dutra years marked a distinct phase in Brazilian foreign policy, characterised by a partial departure from conventional diplomatic strategies and protocols – allegedly involving bribery – and a pronounced radicalisation of Brazil’s anti-communist stance, which reinforced its alignment with authoritarian regimes on the international stage. While Itamaraty – the nineteenth-century palace in Rio de Janeiro that housed Brazil’s Foreign Ministry – had long maintained an anti-communist foreign policy, Dutra’s administration intensified this position.Footnote 9 Dutra’s stance involved members of the administration who held distinctly radical anti-communist views, including Dutra himself, military officers and politicians close to him, and the Brazilian ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Gastão Paranhos do Rio Branco, and reflected the extreme ideological stance within certain segments of Brazil’s elite. Their positions were so extreme that they even sparked protests from other Brazilian diplomats in the region, as discussed below.
Although Dutra’s foreign policy is often seen as closely aligned with US priorities – centred on desarrollismo Footnote 10 and global Allied alignment – his administration’s actions in the Caribbean Basin challenge this notion. This article further argues that Dutra’s manoeuvres not only directly defied US post-war strategies but also had tangible regional consequences, positioning Brazil as a pivotal yet often overlooked actor in the early Cold War. At the time, the US and British governments sought to curb arms supplies to authoritarian regimes like Trujillo’s Dominican Republic, aiming to weaken dictatorships while reinforcing democratic coalitions.Footnote 11 However, as Trujillo faced mounting opposition from governments such as those of Guatemala, Cuba and Venezuela – first diplomatically with support from Chile and Uruguay, then militarily through the so-called Caribbean Legion (an irregular armed force that changed name multiple times) – Brazil’s policies contributed to shifting regional power dynamics and escalating tensions.Footnote 12
The escalating Brazilian arms sales to the Dominican government directly undercut US and British policies and indirectly accelerated the Caribbean Legion’s military offensive. As part of the broader escalation of tensions in the early global Cold War, the United States and the United Kingdom began openly supplying arms to Trujillo that ultimately reinforced anti-communist authoritarian regimes and non-state actors in the region. This shift played a role in the downfall of democratic governments in Venezuela (1948), Cuba (1952) and Guatemala (1954) – countries that later became central to both continental and global Cold War dynamics. It formed part of the well-documented process of democratic backsliding that began in 1948, widely recognised as marking the end of the immediate post-war period and the consolidation of Cold War alignments across the Americas.Footnote 13 This often overlooked episode in regional historiography underscores that the political transformations of 1948 were not purely domestic developments but were deeply shaped by regional and continental dynamics.
The Spanish-speaking Caribbean Basin – encompassing Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Central America, Mexico and Venezuela – held little geopolitical significance for Brazil. Economic ties remained relatively weak, and the support Brazil received from these countries for securing key positions in the emerging global multilateral order was limited.Footnote 14 Brazilian diplomats in the region frequently voiced concerns to Itamaraty about the country’s lack of a strong presence, particularly in contrast to the growing influence of Mexico, Argentina and Chile.Footnote 15 Even Caracas, a key ally due to its oil wealth, was sidelined in favour of Brazil’s priorities in Europe and the United States.Footnote 16 Why, then, did Dutra pursue this course? And what does this episode reveal about Brazilian foreign policy and the Caribbean Basin’s political dynamics at the onset of the Cold War?
This article aims to deepen the understanding of Brazilian Cold War foreign policy within a broader continental framework, challenging earlier perspectives, such as Leslie Bethell’s, which depict Brazil as minimally engaged with its Latin American neighbours. It also responds to Tanya Harmer’s provocative argument that President Emílio Garrastazu Médici’s interventionist policies in the 1970s were merely exceptional, rather than part of a longer tradition of regional engagement.Footnote 17 Brazilian historiography, sometimes overlooked in these discussions, reveals a continuous interest in Latin American affairs, further evidenced by Brazil’s involvement in the 1954 Guatemalan coup and military strategies following its own coup in 1964. Brazil also used multilateral institutions – first the Pan-American Union and, after 1948, the Organization of American States (OAS) – as well as the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) to project its influence. While not always active interventionism, these actions demonstrate Brazil’s ongoing interest in the continent during the Cold War.Footnote 18 This article seeks to enrich this narrative of Brazil’s long-term strategic interests in Latin America.
Furthermore, Brazilian historiography has its own priorities and consequent gaps. Dutra is often depicted merely as a transitional figure of little significance, at times even mocked for his ‘proverbial simplicity’.Footnote 19 The phrase ‘alinhamento sem recompensa’ – literally ‘alignment without reward’ and coined by Gerson Moura – aptly summarises how Brazilian historiography views the Dutra years.Footnote 20 While this may be true for developmentalism and military affairs in Brazil’s relations with the United States, it does not apply to its anti-communist policy. Brazilian anti-communism was not simply a situational stance. Gaining force in the 1930s, anti-communist policy persisted into the post-war period, embodied by figures who were noted for their strong ideological positions.Footnote 21
Lastly, the historiography on the tensions in the Caribbean Basin during the post-war period and the onset of the Cold War has clearly highlighted the agitating role of the Trujillo government and its efforts to network with both state and non-state authoritarian actors.Footnote 22 These accounts emphasise his aggressive anti-communist rhetoric and interventions. However, they often overlook a critical factor: the sources of Dominican arms and their connection to the broader continental arms market. This article seeks to address this gap by examining the military tensions of the period through Brazil’s engagement, shedding light on the role of one of Latin America’s most influential countries in shaping these dynamics.
The challenge of accessing sources, noted by Shiguenoli Miyamoto and Harmer regarding Brazilian archives, persists but has improved recently.Footnote 23 This article is based on diplomatic sources from the Itamaraty archives in Rio de Janeiro. While most communications between the embassy in the Dominican capital – Ciudad Trujillo – and Rio de Janeiro are available, about ten critical documents in Brasilia (where the diplomatic archives from 1960 onwards are stored) remain classified. To deepen our understanding of Dutra’s support for Trujillo, I explored diplomatic and personal archives from neighbouring countries, including Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, as well as newspaper articles from across the region, including Cuban sources located in Berlin and available online. Allied positions were further clarified through the analysis of US and British diplomatic documents.
The Post-War Arms Market and the Case of the Dominican Republic
After World War II, the Latin American arms market underwent a transition, shifting from a diverse supplier base to US dominance through its Lend–Lease programme, which sought to consolidate the market under its control for strategic and political leverage. Previously, the supply of weaponry to ground forces had been segmented: Germany provided arms to Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia and Venezuela; France to Peru, Mexico and Brazil; while the United States dominated the Caribbean and Central America. Meanwhile, Great Britain maintained a stronghold on the naval market.Footnote 24 Since 1942, Washington had pushed for armament standardisation to bolster continental defence and monopolise regional arms sales. The Inter-American Defense Board, established at the 1945 Chapultepec Conference, played a key role in advancing these efforts.Footnote 25
US efforts to standardise arms sales faced internal resistance within the State Department, where a faction of bureaucrats and diplomats, led by Undersecretary Spruille Braden, pushed for an arms embargo on authoritarian regimes. Argentina and the Dominican Republic became focal points of this policy. In Argentina’s case, its military governments (1943–6) had refused to fully support the Allied cause during World War II, leading to their diplomatic isolation.Footnote 26 With the Dominican Republic, the focus was on preventing the regime from using military resources to repress political opposition or to threaten neighbouring democratic governments such as Cuba, Guatemala and Venezuela, with which it maintained tense relations. For Braden and his allies, the best strategy to contain potential communist influence in the region was to strengthen democratic governments through social policies rather than supporting dictatorships.Footnote 27
While US interventionism in Latin America is often associated with the backing of right-wing dictatorships to contain communism or radicalisation, the immediate post-war period saw an effort to support democratic regimes as the best line of defence. In this context, the Truman administration sought to limit arms sales to repressive regimes like Trujillo’s, marking a notable departure from both earlier patterns of accommodation and the later Cold War embrace of authoritarian allies, as explained below.
Although Trujillo’s dictatorship (1930–61) initially emerged with strong US backing following years of military occupation (1916–24), the relationship began to shift after World War II. The arrival of Braden and other diplomats at the State Department, amid the Allied offensive against the Nazis in Europe, reinforced this change in stance. The same was true for other dictatorships, such as those of Nicaraguan leader Anastasio Somoza García and Honduran President Tiburcio Carías Andino. However, Trujillo’s repression of Haitians in 1937 and his particularly brutal domestic policies caused great discomfort within US diplomacy.Footnote 28
The US ambassador in Ciudad Trujillo described Trujillo’s dictatorship as ‘the negation of many of the principles to which the United States subscribes’.Footnote 29 When Trujillo requested armaments, the State Department’s response was unequivocal: rejection. Undersecretary Braden and his team, pressed to justify the decision, conveyed it to Dominican diplomats in Washington. Both in an official statement and a private meeting with the Dominican ambassador, they asserted that the shipment would not promote regional peace and that the US government had ‘been unable to perceive that democratic principles have been observed there in theory or in practice’.Footnote 30 Meanwhile, the US ambassador concurred with his predecessor’s opinion that he should ‘avoid giving the false impression that our relations with President Trujillo are cordial’.Footnote 31
The State Department pressured the British to withhold arms from the Caribbean dictator. In September 1945, a general agreement on restricting sales to ‘troublesome nations’ was proposed and accepted two months later in the case of the Dominican Republic.Footnote 32 The Foreign Office endorsed the measure ‘in the interest of tranquillity’ and avoiding an arms race but internally stressed the need to maintain a presence in a region that remained important ‘on financial and trade grounds’.Footnote 33 Regarding the embargo on Trujillo specifically, British officials expressed concern over the potential strain on relations, particularly given their dependence on Dominican sugar amid ongoing shortages.Footnote 34
Following initial rejections from the United States, Trujillo turned to various countries to meet his pressing military needs, with the United Kingdom serving as a key channel for many of his requests. In January 1946, for example, British officials reported that his government was ‘anxious’ to acquire a million rounds of handgun ammunition and over 1,500 rifles of various types.Footnote 35 However, bound by its agreement with the United States, the Foreign Office debated how to decline the request, mindful that Britain was negotiating to purchase the entire 1947 Dominican sugar harvest.Footnote 36 Ignoring warnings from other ambassadors, including the US representative, the British ambassador assured London that Trujillo’s request was ‘a perfectly innocent one which should have been granted’.Footnote 37 Yet, repeated rejections raised concerns in London, where they were seen as an ‘embarrassment to good relations with Santo Domingo’.Footnote 38 By late 1946, the British government was actively reconsidering its commitment to the US arms embargo.Footnote 39 A memo from the Foreign Office’s United Nations Department advised that withholding weapons was not a viable long-term strategy, as countries like Sweden and Switzerland could easily step in to fill the gap in the market.Footnote 40 The report, however, overlooked another key player: Brazil.
Brazil had been a primary beneficiary of the Lend–Lease programme, receiving more than two-thirds of the armaments provided to the continent.Footnote 41 Itamaraty’s fully cooperative stance remained intact after the war, despite domestic political shifts following the fall of Vargas and the rise of his Minister of Defence, Eurico Dutra. From the day following Vargas’ ousting, Itamaraty declared that its foreign policy would remain unchanged.Footnote 42 Dutra’s government reinforced this position in its inaugural speech, offering ‘flatter[y] and praise’ to the United States and affirming ‘solidarity with that great Power’.Footnote 43 Brazil’s commitment to continental security, including widespread rearmament in coordination with the United States, was met with little resistance from Dutra.Footnote 44 At the same time, Dutra aligned with US policy regarding the defence of British colonies in the Americas. Although during the war Itamaraty had advocated for the end of European colonial rule, Dutra’s diplomacy adjusted to the new post-war context, opposing the territorial claims not only of Argentina and Chile but also of Venezuela and Guatemala.Footnote 45
However, Dutra’s alignment with US policies found its limits in the post-war context, as the shifting global order no longer favoured an exclusive US–Brazilian partnership. In this new landscape, Dutra took more independent positions on certain non-priority issues.Footnote 46 His opposition to US efforts to isolate Spain and Argentina exemplified this shift.Footnote 47 Brazil also asserted itself in the debate over the arms embargo against Trujillo’s government, signalling a more flexible foreign policy approach.
The first rumours of a possible arms sale by Dutra’s government to Trujillo emerged in February 1946. Reports indicated that a Dominican delegation had travelled to Dutra’s inauguration seeking to secure arms, allegedly as part of a prior agreement after Trujillo had contributed to the electoral campaign of the newly elected Brazilian president – an early claim made by the US embassy in Rio and later highlighted independently by the Mexican and Argentine embassies.Footnote 48 Although impossible to verify, the fact that the rumour surfaced from three independent sources at the very least underscores the political alignment between the two leaders.
Concerned, the US State Department instructed its ambassador in Rio de Janeiro that it would be ‘desirable if Brazil could follow the same course of action’ as the United States and the British in denying military support to Trujillo.Footnote 49 In response to this pressure, the Brazilian Minister of War, General Pedro de Góis Monteiro – noted during the war for his pro-Nazi leanings – temporarily postponed the sale of arms and ammunition. However, negotiations quietly resumed just weeks later. The State Department reiterated its concerns, warning that it ‘would view with anxiety [the] purchase’, yet Góis Monteiro proceeded with the sale regardless.Footnote 50 The Argentine government had also hosted a Dominican commission seeking arms and faced US pressure not to sell. Yet no document confirms that any transfer actually occurred, which suggests that President Juan Domingo Perón finally complied with US pressure.Footnote 51
The Brazilian decision came as a surprise to the Allies, but within Brazilian diplomacy it had been championed for months by their ambassador in the Dominican capital, Gastão Paranhos do Rio Branco, one of the heirs of the renowned early twentieth-century Foreign Minister Barão do Rio Branco. According to Ambassador Rio Branco the arms they sought were only to ‘carefully look after the elements of the country’s defence’.Footnote 52 The Dominican Foreign Ministry asked Ambassador Rio Branco to intervene against US pressure to deny them arms. Rio Branco concurred, requesting that his government make ‘every effort, as an exception, in favour of this armament [transaction]’.Footnote 53 His lobbying efforts appeared successful, as Brazil proceeded with the sale despite opposition from abroad.
Itamaraty approved the sale, providing Trujillo with 6,000 rifles and 3 million rounds of small arms ammunition.Footnote 54 Two Brazilian frigates (named B5 and B6) were tasked with making the delivery in late April 1946, as reported by the British embassy on the island.Footnote 55 Once the news became public, Itamaraty limited its response to stating that the arms were Brazilian, and not those purchased from the United States through the Lend–Lease programme.Footnote 56
Both the United States and the British were dismayed by the Brazilian decision, especially since they had received assurances from Itamaraty that such a sale would not occur. The British were particularly upset, after months of rejecting Dominican pleas as part of their deal with their main ally. The British embassy in the Dominican Republic called it a ‘blow to the prestige of us both’. A more reflective report by the Foreign Office later stated that the embargo policy ‘cannot prevent and has not prevented the entry of arms into the country’. The Brazilian case would not be the only one, they argued. For them, ‘it becomes increasingly difficult for us and embarrassing … to be obliged continually to refuse these requests’.Footnote 57 Finding a path to ending the general embargo, as well as Braden’s isolation policy, then became urgent.
Allied frustration caused by the sale of Brazilian arms to the Dominican Republic continued throughout 1946 and much of 1947.Footnote 58 The British Foreign Office pushed to stop restraining itself from selling arms, while carefully observing how the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance Bill, advanced by President Truman to defend against extra-continental threats, was faltering in Congress: it had minimal support and was neither discussed not approved in the Senate.Footnote 59 This legislative struggle, noted during a dinner attended by British Ambassador Lord Inverchapel and US War Department officials, was largely attributed to Braden’s isolating policies towards Argentina and Caribbean and Central American dictatorships. These policies delayed the pivotal Inter-American Conference in Rio, where the United States aimed to establish a continental security pact.Footnote 60
The deadlock persisted until James Byrnes left the State Department and was replaced by General George Marshall in January 1947. Marshall’s tenure marked a shift towards containing communism as per the Truman Doctrine and aimed to resolve the impasse at the Rio Conference.Footnote 61 Marshall resolved the deadlock after visiting Europe in early 1947. Braden’s departure as Undersecretary for Latin America months later, following his unsuccessful campaign against Perón’s election, opened the way for the Rio Conference.Footnote 62 Following discussions with Dutra, the Conference was set for August 1947, after Brazil had received nearly 100 low-cost fighter planes without an explicit payment agreement.Footnote 63 The Rio meeting solidified continental security boundaries but failed to agree on armament standardisation, with delegates preferring instead European arms, especially from Great Britain.Footnote 64 In the meantime, Britain formally notified its Latin American embassies in May 1947 that it was withdrawing from the agreement on the arms embargo to Trujillo.Footnote 65
Despite the rejections throughout 1946 and early 1947, Trujillo had not ceased requesting arms from Great Britain and its dominions.Footnote 66 In June 1947, Trujillo petitioned for a ‘fairly formidable order’ of US-made Sherman tanks, machine guns, rifles and ammunition. The British were aware that Marshall had promised Trujillo that he could purchase arms to defend his nation without challenge. By October 1947, the issue of arms sales to Trujillo was reopened, leading to the fulfilment of the accumulated orders and the start of talks about tanks and warplanes.Footnote 67 Although the British diplomacy knew that Trujillo was regarded by different countries as a ‘semi-fascist dictator’, they did not see themselves as having an ‘obligation upon us to refrain from supplying arms’.Footnote 68
Brazilian Cold War in the Caribbean Basin
Dutra’s government aligned with US policies on security, arms standardisation and multilateralism while downplaying anti-colonial demands and a Latin American ‘Marshall Plan’.Footnote 69 However, despite criticism, Dutra independently supported Trujillo’s arms requests, adopting a more strident anti-communist stance than the United States or the United Kingdom at this stage.Footnote 70 Brazil’s 1946 arms sale to the Dominican Republic contributed to accelerating British and US arms sales to the region as part of the broader strategic realignment that marked the onset of the Cold War in the continent, shaped in large part by General Marshall. What fuelled this particularly aggressive strain of anti-communism within Dutra’s administration?
President Dutra found himself at the centre of both a domestic and international offensive against ‘international communism’. At least two years before it became a continental trend, the early months of his administration in 1946 were marked by a pressing need to counter the growing influence of Prestes and the Partido Comunista Brasileiro (Brazilian Communist Party, PCB).Footnote 71 Right-wing anti-communist organisations actively supported this effort, deploying a strategy that, in the eyes of the Mexican ambassador in Rio, echoed a flawed historical pattern of ‘encouraging fascists to neutralise communism’.Footnote 72 Concerns escalated following Prestes’ declarations of support for the Soviet Union in the event of a European war.Footnote 73 By early 1947, Dutra’s government had initiated a systematic campaign to ban the PCB, block the emergence of a communist-affiliated youth organisation promoted by Prestes, purge bureaucrats linked to communism, and develop formulas to expel elected communist politicians from federal and regional offices. These measures underscored the deeply entrenched anti-communism among Brazilian elites. While this ideological stance had been somewhat moderated during World War II, it remained a powerful force in shaping Dutra’s domestic and foreign policy.Footnote 74 A Chilean diplomat rightly viewed Dutra’s policy as both rooted in domestic concerns and as an effort to align with the growing anti-communist sentiment in US politics.Footnote 75
Additionally, Itamaraty harboured resentment toward the Soviet Union for its firm opposition to Brazil’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. In October 1947, the Dutra government officially severed diplomatic relations with the USSR, citing not only ideological incompatibility but also the ‘inequitable and sometimes demeaning’ treatment of Brazilian diplomats in Moscow, along with anti-Dutra campaigns in the Soviet press.Footnote 76 Itamaraty sought clarification from Soviet officials, yet the note was returned without a response – Brazilian diplomats suggesting that Moscow had considered their note unfriendly in tone. In the opinion of the Mexican ambassador in Rio, this was merely a pretext for the rupture, though it was likely the result of a combination of factors.Footnote 77
Within this framework of ideological and geopolitical interests, as well as the onset of the global Cold War, it is not surprising that Dutra perceived Trujillo’s pleas as those of an ally in danger. The role played by Ambassador Rio Branco in shaping Dutra’s view of Trujillo – alongside whatever Dutra knew from his own sources – was crucial. Throughout much of his correspondence, Rio Branco consistently praised Trujillo’s leadership in the anti-communist struggle, framing it not just as a domestic battle but as part of a broader crusade. In late 1946, for instance, he stated unequivocally that ‘the influence of Soviet imperialist expansion’ in the continent was being effectively countered by Trujillo, who handled it with ‘preventive measures’. His report focused on the country’s labour organisations, making no distinction between those with communist affiliations and those without – both were portrayed as part of a broader ‘systematic campaign’.Footnote 78 Much of Trujillo’s anti-communist propaganda was sent to Itamaraty without clarification or commentary, effectively reinforcing a one-sided narrative.Footnote 79
After the 1946 arms sale, relations between the two countries had deepened. In October of that year, Ambassador Rio Branco requested six decorations for politicians from Trujillo’s government who had ‘shown themselves to be friends of Brazil’. Those to be decorated included the dictator’s brother, his foreign minister and the Dominican Secretary of State.Footnote 80 Trujillo reciprocated. A wide avenue in Ciudad Trujillo was named ‘Tiradentes’ by the Dominican dictator in honour of the Brazilian liberal independence hero.Footnote 81 In addition, Brazilian merchant and warships found safe haven in the Dominican Republic, whether for refuelling or during emergencies. Such was the case in April 1947, when some Brazilian sailors in the Caribbean required medical assistance. They were quickly hospitalised without charge, and the ships were refuelled at no cost.Footnote 82
Trujillo’s re-election campaign for the 1947 elections, widely condemned across the continent, further revealed the extent of Rio Branco’s support.Footnote 83 Since 1946, the Brazilian diplomat had been reporting that, despite more than 15 years in power, Trujillo remained ‘quite popular’ and faced no serious opposition. Rio Branco repeatedly reported to Itamaraty that Trujillo’s efforts to defend the continent against the ‘Stalinist creed’ in the Caribbean took precedence over re-election concerns.Footnote 84 Notably absent from his reports was any mention of the lack of alternative candidates in the election.Footnote 85 In contrast, the Chilean ambassador in the Dominican Republic emphasised that political freedoms in the country were ‘more fictitious than real’.Footnote 86
Trujillo maintained close communication with Ambassador Rio Branco, regularly providing reports on the governments he considered adversaries, particularly emphasising their ties to local communist parties – which indeed they were in some cases, though he erroneously claimed that they were directly aligned with Moscow. He extended this practice to monitoring the arrival of Spanish Republican exiles in Guatemala and Venezuela, presenting them as a subversive threat – an assessment that was somewhat removed from reality.Footnote 87
Similarly, Dutra’s government did not maintain entirely cordial relations with the main democratic governments of the Caribbean Basin, as differences in strategic interests were reinforced by critical assessments from Itamaraty’s diplomats regarding these administrations. This ideological divergence was not merely circumstantial or slightly exaggerated, as in the case of Rio Branco. As Alessandra Beber Castilho explains, anti-communism was explicitly embedded in the very constitution of Itamaraty, shaping the training and world-view of its diplomats accordingly – a trait further reinforced by the elitist origins of Brazilian diplomacy.Footnote 88 While in general relations were cordial, Brazilian support for Argentina and Francoist Spain created tensions, as did Brazil’s decision not to support a stance against British colonialism in the Americas and its severance of diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union.Footnote 89 All these measures stood in contrast to the positions adopted, though with variations, by countries like Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Cuba.
The Guatemalan Revolutionary Junta’s efforts to isolate Trujillo and other dictators such as Nicaraguan Somoza and Honduran Carías were described by the Brazilian embassy, under the leadership of Ambassador Carlos Silveira Martins Ramos, as ‘more aggressive and more leftist’ policies than those espoused by other governments in the region. When Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo broke diplomatic relations with Trujillo, he was labelled by the Brazilian diplomat as a ‘sick man suffering from megalomania’.Footnote 90 The situation with Venezuela was similar. Venezuelan communists had protested against attacks on Prestes and the PCB in front of the Brazilian consulate in Caracas, which irritated Itamaraty.Footnote 91 The Brazilian ambassador in Caracas, Mário de Saint Brisson, did not rule out a Soviet intervention in Venezuela’s internal affairs to take control of its oil, something that, as is now known, was far from the truth.Footnote 92
Faced with the Venezuelan government’s complaints about Trujillo’s support for Venezuelan exiles, Ambassador Saint Brisson chose to emphasise President Rómulo Betancourt’s origins in the October 1945 revolution, indirectly justifying Trujillo’s actions.Footnote 93 By mid-1947, with Trujillo’s efforts to find arms suppliers, Saint Brisson continued to label Betancourt’s government as a ‘dictatorial regime’, even though his party (Acción Democrática) had won the Constitutional election earlier that year by a landslide.Footnote 94 Thus, when Trujillo approached Dutra again to obtain more arms, Dutra was quick to show support.
The 1947 Arms Sale
One of the most tangible expressions of regional reactions to what appeared to be the onset of the global Cold War was the shift in strategy by the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Guatemala, moving beyond diplomatic efforts to isolate dictatorships and instead focusing on their military overthrow. The so-called Caribbean Legion embodied this strategic transformation.Footnote 95 To achieve their goal, these countries had been stockpiling arms and other military and logistical resources since the post-war period, precisely while the region’s dictatorships faced an arms embargo. The failed invasion of the Dominican Republic, known as the ‘Cayo Confites affair’, in the latter part of 1947 was the Legion’s first major venture. The lifting of the arms embargo on Trujillo coincided with this failure, underscoring both the urgency of his pleas for military support and the key role played by allies such as Dutra in responding to them.
In this sense, the alignment of the global Cold War with Caribbean and continental politics in late 1947 – marked by escalating military tensions and Trujillo’s arms race, supported by Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States – unfolded as a process of intensifying regional conflicts that shaped both political and military trajectories. This broader dynamic complemented the well-documented anti-communist domestic political developments within each Latin American country, as outlined in the classic compilation by Bethell and Ian Roxborough.Footnote 96
By the end of 1947, then, tensions between Venezuela and the Dominican Republic had escalated significantly, largely due to President Betancourt’s involvement in the failed Cayo Confites invasion. Aware of the risks that an arms race with Trujillo posed to Venezuela’s young democratic regime, Betancourt and his diplomats made concerted efforts to curb the flow of weapons to the Dominican dictator. To this end, they exerted diplomatic pressure on Brazil, raised the issue in multilateral forums, and sought support from allied countries such as Cuba and Guatemala.
Rumours of a new sale of arms by Dutra to Trujillo emerged in November 1947. The Betancourt government sought reassurance from the Dutra government through two channels. The first was through Saint Brisson in the Brazilian embassy in Caracas. There, they were informed that it was just a ‘batch of arms’ intended for police purposes.Footnote 97 Meanwhile, the newly appointed Brazilian Minister of War, General Canrobert Pereira da Costa – a close ally of Dutra who had shared his ideological positions since the Vargas years – assured the Venezuelan military attaché in Rio that reports of arms sales to Trujillo were mere rumours and that no such operation was under way, a claim later relayed by the Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Mexican embassy in Caracas.Footnote 98
However, conflicting accounts persisted over the following months, prompting the Venezuelan government to take proactive measures to counter the potential sale. On 14 November, the Venezuelan government formally addressed Itamaraty, with Betancourt stressing that the weapons would ultimately reach prominent Venezuelan exiles residing in Ciudad Trujillo. He urged Brazil to ‘terminate the negotiations and not allow the shipment of this materiel’ now that Brazilians officials had become aware of the conspirators’ intentions.Footnote 99 Simultaneously, Betancourt dispatched his ambassador in Havana, José Nucete Sardi, to New York to coordinate a protest against the arms sale with the Venezuelan delegation at the United Nations. Another mission was sent to Washington to lodge a similar protest at the Pan-American Union headquarters.Footnote 100
An initial communication was also made with the Cuban government of Ramón Grau San Martín, which was particularly interested in preventing its Dominican neighbour from arming for a possible attack. The Cuban government was to exert diplomatic pressure in Washington and Rio de Janeiro to stop the arms shipment. Additionally, Guatemalan President Arévalo was contacted by Betancourt himself. He informed Arévalo that Trujillo had become a ‘true danger to peace and the peaceful democratic evolution’ of their countries. He called on him to ‘initiate a defined international action against the Trujillista regime’ before an ‘armed incursion on our coasts’ was organised.Footnote 101
Early press releases mentioned a shipment of 12 75 mm cannons with 50,000 projectiles and 40,000 mortar projectiles, 800 machine guns and 10,000 rifles with 30 million cartridges.Footnote 102 The Dominican Foreign Ministry hurried to respond to the rumours. It confirmed the purchase but noted that Betancourt, with Arévalo’s and Gran San Martín’s support, was organising a subversive movement against it comprising ‘brigades’, the statement tendentiously assured, which were communist inspired and supported from outside the continent. The arms purchase was solely for the defence of the Dominican Republic’s territory and not for invading Venezuela. Although its support for Venezuelan dissidents was well known, Dominican officials asserted that they would ‘never support any revolutionary movement’.Footnote 103
Facing a lack of clear responses from the Dutra administration, the Betancourt government sent a delegation to Rio de Janeiro, consisting of former Foreign Minister Carlos Morales, the secretary of the Revolutionary Junta Raúl Nass (‘Naas’ in the Argentine source) and a new ambassador, Colonel Esteban Chalbaud Cardona, cousin of the Defence Minister Carlos Delgado Chalbaud. According to the counsellor of the Argentine embassy in Rio de Janeiro, Chalbaud met with the Secretary-General of Itamaraty, Hildebrando Pompeu Pinto Accioli – who, as ambassador to the Holy See, had been critical of Nazi atrocities during the war – to discuss the export of arms. Pinto Accioli denied such exports, later adding that there were only ‘five thousand old rifles’. Chalbaud also questioned him about shipments that that might not have gone through the normal diplomatic channels and about the dispatch of more powerful weapons than those specified in the contract, cited in press reports, which the Brazilian diplomat vehemently denied.Footnote 104 The fact that Pinto Accioli – a career diplomat far removed from the radical anti-communist-leaning tendencies of Dutra’s inner circle – was either unaware of or provided contradictory information about the purchase suggests the extent to which details of the arms sale were compartmentalised within government circles.
Upon the arrival of Morales and his entourage in Rio, the Brazilian army tried to downplay the operation. According to the Mexican ambassador – ‘interpreting silences, collecting and then linking isolated phrases and words’ – army members said the materiel was outdated, and that similar sales had been made to Uruguay and Paraguay ‘without the scandal that this operation is causing’.Footnote 105 Morales initially sought an interview with Brazilian Foreign Minister Raul Fernandes – a prominent member of the União Democrática Nacional (National Democratic Union, UDN), a right-wing party known for its staunch anti-communist stance – who took four days to accept the request. Fernandes informed Morales that the transaction had already been completed and that the arms were currently being loaded at the docks on the Ilha das Cobras, a strategic Brazilian Navy base located in Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro. It was impossible to stop the operation, although he suggested that Morales could speak with President Dutra to ask him to halt the shipment. Fernandes received from Morales photostatic copies of an official memorandum from the Trujillo government to its embassies abroad, indicating to Venezuelan exiles that they could settle in the Dominican capital, where they would be ‘supported and sponsored’ by the Dominican dictator. The information did not move Brazilian officials.Footnote 106
Itamaraty attempted to corroborate the information Morales had provided. Between Morales’ meetings with Fernandes and Dutra, Itamaraty contacted Ambassador Rio Branco requesting ‘urgent’ information about the number of Venezuelan political asylum seekers in the country. Rio Branco took a week to respond with a brief message stating: ‘There are only eight political asylum seekers here, including two pilots.’ According to the available records, Itamaraty did not seek to verify the accuracy of the data through other means, although it seems clear based on other reports that the number ‘eight’ was a severe underestimate.Footnote 107 Dutra took that one week to receive Morales, choosing finally not to comply with the Venezuelan requests.Footnote 108 Trujillo celebrated. According to a public statement by the Trujillo government, Morales’ visit to Rio de Janeiro was a diversionary tactic regarding the supposed Venezuelan invasion and the legitimacy of the Dominican Republic to arm itself as a ‘normal exercise of legitimate right … for its own defence and security’. Ambassador Rio Branco emphasised later that Trujillo did not support Venezuelan exiles. The Venezuelan government’s criticisms were part of a ‘communist tactic’.Footnote 109
According to the Argentine ambassador in Rio de Janeiro, Morales left the country dissatisfied due to the limited success of his mission. He also made threats about his fears regarding the reaction of the oil unions and the possibility of halting the shipment of oil to Brazil. Upon his return to Caracas, he explicitly asked the oil companies to additionally join an embargo against the Dominican Republic, but did not receive any help.Footnote 110 Morales’ failed mission sparked multiple reactions, both diplomatically and in the press.
The Mexican ambassador in Caracas reported that, within Venezuelan diplomatic circles, there was talk of investigations by Morales and his entourage into those behind the sale and the operation. Venezuelan diplomats claimed that radical anti-communist elements within the Brazilian government were conducting operations without informing Fernandes. Venezuelan Ambassador Chalbaud in Rio de Janeiro reported that several Dominican military officials who arrived with the frigates distributed ‘large sums of money’ to Brazilian army officers, who loaded more military materiel onto the ships than was officially purchased. While no official records exist to confirm these reports, their simultaneous circulation in diplomatic circles in Rio suggests that the perception of bribery was shared by multiple actors.Footnote 111
Furthermore, Brigadier-General Isidro Martini, the military attaché to the Argentine embassy in Rio de Janeiro, supported by his naval attaché, conducted an investigation commissioned by the Argentine Army’s General Staff during the course of which he interviewed many of his Brazilian fellow officers. His report is filled with details that corroborate and expand upon the information obtained by Venezuelan and Mexican diplomats. According to Martini’s interviewees, the transaction was part of a ‘deal’ (negociação) between the Brazilian and Dominican governments that had been ongoing at least since the beginning of Dutra’s administration, something that would seem to corroborate US and Mexican suspicions about a similar agreement back in 1946.Footnote 112 The Argentine officer confirmed that Itamaraty had been aware of the operation since September, contradicting what top Brazilian officials had told Morales. Aware of the uproar they had faced in 1946, the Brazilian government sought to keep the sale under ‘the utmost secrecy’. However, they did not have an agreed story, so when they received the multiple Venezuelan requests for information, each of the officers and diplomats had different answers regarding prices, types of materiel and dates of order and delivery. Lastly, Martini confirmed the Mexican diplomat’s report: the number of weapons loaded was higher than what the Brazilian government had officially indicated, and as reported in the press. This was why Trujillo sent a Dominican ship, the MV San Rafael, to transport some of the cargo, and why the loading took longer than expected.Footnote 113
More reactions followed the official 1947 transaction between Brazil and the Dominican Republic. The confirmation in December 1947 that more arms had been purchased, despite Venezuelan pressure, led Cuba to also engage in diplomatic efforts in Brazil to halt it. However, they too failed. The Brazilian ambassador in Havana, Carlos Alves de Souza Filho, recorded an increase in press articles criticising his government, summarised as representing ‘alarm and disgust against our country’. In Guatemala’s political circles, the news was received ‘like a bomb’, according to Ambassador Silveira Martins.Footnote 114
The situation escalated to the point where Alves de Souza and Silveira Martins openly criticised Dutra’s actions. In Havana, Alves de Souza questioned the ‘moral support’ underpinning the arms purchase for Trujillo, noting his immense unpopularity in the region.Footnote 115 More critically, Ambassador Silveira Martins condemned the arms sale to the Dominican Republic as ‘an ill-conceived operation’ that aligned Brazil with ‘one of the most hated tyrannies in the Americas’. He denounced the contradiction of Brazil making ‘professions of democratic faith’ while supporting Trujillo, calling it ‘a shame for our civilisation’. He warned that Brazil, ‘whether we like it or not, becomes complicit in his tyrannical policies’ (cúmplices da sua política tirânica), and would be ‘judged by history’. Additionally, he feared that Brazil’s complicity would be ‘fatally exploited by our adversaries’ and emphasised that his opposition was not ‘an act of rebellion’ but rather that of ‘a sincere collaborator’ unwilling to be ‘a vulgar “yes-man”’.Footnote 116
These reactions indicate that, despite the shared anti-communist training and a conservative Weltanschauung among Itamaraty diplomats, which shaped their perception of developments in the Caribbean Basin, Dutra’s actions were met with unease. The critiques from Silveira Martins and Alves de Souza highlight not only a departure from diplomatic protocols but also a significant break with Brazil’s broader continental strategy at the onset of the Cold War. Regardless, the regional arms race would have political effects at the beginning of 1948.
Trujillo and the Fall of Democracies
From late December 1947, Dominican ships departing from Rio de Janeiro had been transporting part of the arms purchased from Brazil in the November 1947 transaction. A meeting between the Argentine ambassador in the Dominican capital and Ambassador Rio Branco revealed, that in mid-January 1948, a Brazilian frigate had returned to Brazil after delivering hundreds of rifles, howitzers and three artillery batteries.Footnote 117 In February 1948, Trujillo was still seeking means of transporting more shipments from Rio de Janeiro. Early that month, the Dominican president asked the Argentine ambassador to facilitate transportation of an additional 10,500 tonnes of armament acquired in Brazil. Although the representative of the Argentine merchant fleet in the Dominican Republic initially agreed, the Argentine Foreign Ministry later requested the cancellation of the agreement to ‘avoid inconvenient situations’.Footnote 118 This was a second setback, as the Trujillo government had initially contracted a Colombian steamship company to transport the arms, according to the Chilean ambassador in the Dominican Republic.Footnote 119
Despite these challenges, Dutra continued to send support. In July 1948, seven Brazilian aviators and two aviation engineers arrived to work as instructors on fighter planes purchased from Brazil.Footnote 120 Two months later, in September 1948, a Dominican informant collaborating with Guatemalan President Arévalo reported the arrival of Dominican army officers in Rio de Janeiro seeking to buy 15 bombers and 3,000 bombs, causing the Dutra government to hesitate for weeks.Footnote 121 The news was published in Guatemalan newspapers, prompting Ambassador Silveira Martins to press for the prevention of the shipment, stating it would be like ‘adding fuel to the fire’ while supporting a ‘medieval tyrant’.Footnote 122 It is unclear if Dutra ultimately conceded to the sale of the bombers. However, around the same time, the Dominican ship the MV San Rafael was docked at Ilha das Cobras, loading military materiel. The Argentine naval attaché in the Brazilian capital noted it was ‘possible that they are bombs’,Footnote 123 but no other document conclusively confirms this.
In addition to that of Brazil, the British and US governments, now unrestrained by political or moral concerns (as seen above), increased military support to Trujillo. The Truman administration provided aircraft, patrol vessels and bombers, strengthening the Dominican military. The Brazilian ambassador noted that the Dominican navy had become the ‘strongest among the Antillean countries’.Footnote 124 Early in 1948, Trujillo sought additional British artillery, destroyers and personnel. Meanwhile, he attempted to attract European refugee scientists for atomic research and secured the construction of a Beretta firearms factory in the country.Footnote 125 Requests to the United Kingdom for fighter aircraft, bombers and ammunition were granted after internal Foreign Office debates, further escalating the regional arms race in the Caribbean.Footnote 126
The arms purchases were accompanied by an intensification of anti-communist rhetoric. Once again, Ambassador Rio Branco served as a conduit for Trujillo’s propaganda, forwarding to Itamaraty much of the publicity material produced in the country. In his reports, he further asserted that the Trujillo government was committed to the defence of the continent, which was threatened ‘by the sectarians in Moscow’. Trujillo was not the only one adopting ‘exaggerated’ anti-communist rhetoric – as described by Rio Branco himself; Nicaragua under Somoza was doing so as well. According to Rio Branco, both were preparing for ‘the defence of the continent’, seeking ‘closer cooperation between them and Brazil … in the face of the threat from Moscow’.Footnote 127
It was amid this arms race that governments and exiles associated with the Caribbean Legion attempted to invade Nicaragua early in 1948. After this failure, they became involved in Costa Rica’s civil war (March–April 1948), with domestic rebel forces pledging to attack Somoza afterward – a promise they ultimately did not fulfil.Footnote 128 The Legion’s aggressive stance must be understood within the broader context of the fear articulated by Betancourt regarding Trujillo’s arms race, a concern shared by Presidents Arévalo and Grau San Martín.Footnote 129 Guatemala’s military support for Costa Rica and its threats against Nicaragua ultimately led to an arms embargo against the Guatemalan government. The sequence of events – from Brazil’s arms sales to Trujillo, to the United States and the United Kingdom shifting their stance to supply his government, followed by the military response of the governments backing the Caribbean Legion, and ultimately the arms embargo on the Guatemalan government – suggests a clear pattern of escalating tensions and strategic realignments on the onset of the global Cold War.
The repercussions of these regional political upheavals were profound for Venezuela, Cuba and Guatemala. While Trujillo was not the primary force behind these crises, his strengthened position as a regional strongman allowed him to exert considerable influence, directly or indirectly supporting authoritarian actors – both state and non-state – to advance his strategic interests. In each case, Brazil also played a role in recognising the new military governments, adhering to an alleged policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of Latin American nations.
In Venezuela, Trujillo actively financed exiled opposition groups, contributing to the broader climate of instability.Footnote 130 However, other influences were equally significant. Venezuelan officers were deeply shaped by Argentine and Peruvian military traditions: Peronist propaganda promoted centralised governments and strong armies, while military training in Peru reinforced institutional ties. In mid-1948, Venezuelan Army Chief of Staff Marcos Pérez Jiménez visited Perón in Buenos Aires before stopping in Lima to meet General Manuel Odría, who launched his own coup weeks before Pérez Jiménez followed suit in Caracas.Footnote 131 Ambassador Saint Brisson advocated for recognising the new junta promptly, emphasising its break from the ‘communist elements’ of the Betancourt government.Footnote 132 In early 1949, Itamaraty formally recognised the military junta, citing the need to maintain ‘good harmony and solidarity’. This decision aligned Brazil with other right-leaning regional governments, despite protests from Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Guatemala and Cuba.Footnote 133
Cuba followed a similar authoritarian trajectory. By late 1951, after years of political instability, Cuban intelligence uncovered an extensive conspiracy network orchestrated by Trujillo to target key regional leaders. These plans included an assassination attempt on Costa Rican President José Figueres, coordinated through Dominican diplomatic channels with operatives stationed in Havana. The network extended across Venezuela, Nicaragua and Honduras, while a meeting in Mexico City focused on undermining Guatemalan President Arévalo.Footnote 134 This escalating regional tension culminated in a coup by Cuba’s Fulgencio Batista on 10 March 1952, a meticulously executed seizure of power that swiftly secured recognition from NATO countries and Brazil. When the United States followed with its recognition, it notably omitted any pro-democracy rhetoric or adherence to its traditional non-recognition policy, signalling a clear shift in diplomatic priorities.Footnote 135
Finally, as Roberto García and Aaron Moulton have documented, Trujillo – alongside other regional dictators – played an aggressive role in undermining Guatemala’s democratic government, which by the early 1950s was internationally isolated.Footnote 136 Since 1949, Trujillo had openly backed military action, exemplified by the 1951 capture of the Guatemalan vessel SS Quetzal in Cuban waters.Footnote 137 Brazil also played a key role in shaping Guatemala’s fate. At the 1954 Caracas Conference, the United States sought regional backing to label Guatemala as a communist threat and justify intervention. Behind the scenes, Washington engaged in extensive diplomatic negotiations, securing Brazil’s support in exchange for US concessions on coffee pricing policies. At the UN Security Council, Brazil aligned with US interests, advocating for the matter to be transferred to the OAS rather than debated at the UN. When the coup took place in Guatemala June 1954, Itamaraty swiftly recognised the new regime.Footnote 138 By early 1955, only Costa Rica – and to some extent Mexico – remained democratic in the Caribbean Basin region. The authoritarian anti-communism promoted by both Trujillo and Dutra since 1946 had become a concrete political reality.
Conclusions
In late 1948, Ambassador Rio Branco concluded his tenure in Ciudad Trujillo. The Dominican government held multiple ceremonies in his honour, with official newspapers publishing extensive tributes acknowledging his support. As a mark of gratitude, Trujillo’s regime awarded him the Grand Cross of Christopher Columbus, the second-highest distinction granted by the Dominican government.Footnote 139 The Chilean ambassador in the Antillean nation remarked that Rio Branco had played a pivotal role in strengthening bilateral relations, thanks to his ‘enthusiastic support [for] … and close friendship’ with Trujillo.Footnote 140
The fierce anti-communism of Ambassador Rio Branco, President Dutra and other Brazilian diplomats and officers aligned with the narrative of similar figures like Trujillo and regional dictators such as Somoza and Carías. This also resonated with much of the conservative opposition to the democratic regimes in Venezuela, Guatemala, Cuba and other Latin American countries. Latin American conservative opposition effectively harnessed domestic and continental anti-communist traditions, using them as leverage to gain political spaces and benefits amid the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Brazil’s role was particularly significant, providing both political and military support during the critical period of 1947–8 – a pivotal juncture in the history of the region and the continent. These years witnessed multiple governments shifting to the Right, coups d’état and the isolation of democratic governments. A few years later, the Caribbean Basin and the continent as a whole would become what John F. Kennedy called ‘the most dangerous area in the world’ in terms of the global Cold War, with Cuba and the rise of guerrilla groups in Venezuela, Guatemala and other countries in the region.Footnote 141
In this regard, Dutra’s foreign policy played a significant role in multiple ways, as this article has sought to establish. It is evident that his rise to power marked a notable shift in Brazil’s relationships and responses to key developments in continental politics, particularly in the Caribbean Basin. While his foreign policy remained largely unchanged and yielded limited results in areas such as industrial financing, multilateral participation and military expansion, his staunch anti-communist stance in support of authoritarian governments proved central. His backing of Trujillo during the crucial 1947–8 period pressured the Allied powers to abandon their arms embargo policy and had a direct impact on the Caribbean Basin politics.
The arms sale to Trujillo also underscores how Dutra’s policy mirrored shifts in other Latin American countries – such as Mexico and Argentina – where key foreign policy decisions were influenced by developments within the Caribbean Basin, often triggering internal divisions and realignments. In Mexico, various state and non-state actors, including President Miguel Alemán, challenged post-revolutionary efforts to strengthen the nation’s Foreign Ministry as an independent and professional body, engaging instead in contrasting multinational networks that pursued both domestic interests and broader international solidarity.Footnote 142 Meanwhile, in Argentina, Perón leveraged regional tensions to promote a pragmatic yet authoritarian vision of his ‘Third Way’ – looking to be an alternative between the United States and the Soviet Union – providing diplomatic, logistical and strategic support to coup plotters in democratic nations.Footnote 143 Similar patterns emerged in subsequent regional crises, situating Dutra’s actions within a broader web of reciprocal continental networks.
Brazil’s role provides valuable historiographical insights, not only illustrating the ongoing engagement of South American countries in Caribbean Basin conflicts at the onset of the global Cold War but also revealing long-term geopolitical dynamics. Just as in 1947, Brazil supported right-wing anti-communist governments and alliances during the Guatemalan crisis of 1954 and later in the Chilean crisis of 1973, leveraging its status and resources. While not always central to its foreign policy, Brazil’s influence on continental developments was substantial and, in some instances, decisive in shaping the trajectory of anti-communist forces.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Maximiliano Jara, Rafael Ioris, Roberto García Ferreira, Felipe Loureiro, João Sausen, Julieta Rostica, Ilana de Macedo Vaz, Walter Koppmann and Alexandre Moreli for their thoughtful readings of earlier drafts of this article. Preliminary versions were presented at the Seminario de Historia Internacional – organised by Coordinación Latinoamericana Ca’ Foscari (CLAC), El Colegio de México, and other Mexican institutions – as well as at the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) Amsterdam Conference and the Forschungskolloquium zur Geschichte Lateinamerikas at the Freie Universität Berlin, all in 2024, where I benefited greatly from the feedback received. Special thanks to Prof. Dr. Stefan Rinke and to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for their generous support.
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