This book is a well-researched and well-written account of several key episodes in the relationships among politicians, Brazil's military dictatorship of 1964–85, and popular mobilizations in the waning years of the dictatorship (1979–85). Bryan Pitts argues that the “political class” was decisive in the dictatorship's demise, as politicians increasingly turned against the military. By clamoring for a coup in March 1964, and largely supporting the dictatorship until 1984, conservative pro-regime politicians provided crucial legitimacy and support. By supporting strikes in 1978, 1979, and 1980, opposition politicians gave cover to a wave of popular mobilizations that altered Brazilian sensibilities about the potential for mass involvement in politics. Pitts argues that the “dictatorship reshaped Brazil's political class” (2).
The original research for the book is impressive, including sources from nineteen archives in five countries, newspapers, biographies, memoirs, oral histories, digitized materials from Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, and records from the US State Department and the dictatorship. The book offers original and interesting research on politicians’ reactions toward repression during the dictatorship's turn to tighter authoritarianism in 1968; the military's purges of politicians after the repression became more severe; the 1973 presidential campaign, which began rebuilding the partisan opposition to the dictatorship; the growth of the only legal opposition party in the 1970s; the 1974 electoral campaign and elections, which began a slow process of turning the tide against the military regime and the military's strong reaction to its setbacks in those elections; the massive strikes by auto workers in greater São Paulo from 1978 to 1980 and the positioning of opposition politicians to support those workers; the massive mobilizations in 1984 to restore direct popular elections for president; and the indirect election of an opposition leader for president in 1985. All of this is well done; the book is a valuable contribution to work on the military dictatorship and the transition to democracy.
The book could have offered a punchier overall statement about the ways in which politicians were central to sustaining and eventually undermining the dictatorship. Pitts emphasizes conflict between politicians and the military dictatorship more than collaboration between pro-regime politicians and the regime leadership. Although he does not ignore the contributions of pro-regime politicians in sustaining the dictatorship, in my view, he underestimates how much power pro-regime politicians had from 1974 on, how much they benefitted (often in material terms) from supporting the regime, and how central these politicians were in generating and sustaining support for the generals. Politicians were central in the regime's demise—though I would have focused more on the effects of the pro-regime schism in 1984, when legions of erstwhile pro-regime politicians defected to the opposition and formed a new, center-right party. This schism in the pro-regime party led to the indirect election of an opposition politician in early 1985 and to the end of the dictatorship on March 15, 1985.
One of Pitts's central concepts is the “political class.” Although the concept has a long tradition, it can obscure competition, conflict, and heterogeneity among politicians. In the Brazilian dictatorship, the divide between politicians of the pro-regime party, who mostly supported the dictatorship and often benefitted greatly from it, and those in the opposition party/parties, who mostly opposed the authoritarian regime and sometimes suffered brutal consequences, was often stark. The concluding chapter states that the dictatorship involved “twenty-one years of traumatic and humiliating tutelage,” for politicians (177), but pro-regime politicians usually staunchly supported the dictatorship and often benefitted handsomely from doing so.
Pitts writes that in 1985, “in many respects, the political class was the same as that of 1964: self-interested, rich white men motivated by the desire to keep their privileges, more comfortable making backroom deals than coexisting with popular mobilization” (170). In his rendering, by 1984, most Brazilian politicians wanted to restore democracy because of their desire to reclaim prerogatives and “their de facto impunity as members of Brazil's socioeconomic elite” (175). These statements and others about politicians’ motivations (e.g., 177) understate the ways in which many opposition politicians fought courageously, took great personal risks, and sometimes incurred very high personal costs in the struggle for democracy.
