This clipping, published in the Brazilian Information Bulletin, was adapted from a Washington Post article written by Dan Griffin.
As President Médici prepared to visit the Nixon White House, U.S. journalists and activists against the Brazilian regime published critiques of the president’s repressive policies. To read the full Brazilian Information Bulletin about the visit, go here.
Activists, both Brazilian and American, planned a protest for the day of the visit (see the invitation sent to sympathizing groups). They set up a clothesline with posters that detailed torture taking place in Brazil, as well as U.S. financial complicity with the repressive government. A local theater group, Earth Onion, staged a play mocking the close relationship between the two leaders.
“On both days of Medici’s visit, along with the banner, CARIB strung 30 posters between trees in Lafayette Park–a display of the ‘dirty wash’ of the U.S.-Brazilian relationship. It included statistical data of American commercial activities in Brazil, U.S. government-aided police programs in Brazil, distribution of Brazil’s income, political cartoons from Latin America, and photos of reenactments of actual tortures suffered in Brazilian jails accompanied by case histories of Brazilian political prisoners. More than 1,500 fact sheets on Brazilian repression were distributed to passersby during the two-day demonstration.”– Brazilian Information Bulletin
The dirty laundry included “photos of reenactments of actual tortures suffered in Brazilian jails accompanied by case histories of Brazilian political prisoners.”
During the two-day protest, a “local group called the Earth Onion put on a guerrilla theater performance depicting the Medici government’s puppet relationship to Nixon and U.S. interests and the tortures suffered by political prisoners in Brazilian jails. The conclusion of the performance portrayed the various sectors of the Brazilian people struggling, organizing, and uniting to overthrow their brutal oppressors.”