Click here to read telegrams between the American Embassy and the State Department, regarding Decree 447 and the ensuing purges.

Philippe Schmitter, then a young political scientist at the University of Chicago, was in Brazil during the academic purges. He wrote an urgent report to “Officials of the Latin American Studies Association and other Scholars Interested in Brazil.” Read it here. The report was instrumental in mobilizing opposition among Latin Americanists in the United States.

Read a short bio and an interview with Philippe Schmitter here.

Schmitter wrote again about the persecution of academics in Brazil once he returned to the United States. It was published in the journal Political Science in the spring of 1970. Read it here.

When Schmitter’s report and other news of academic persecutions reached Latin Americanists in the United States, the academic community organized a collective response to the actions of the Costa e Silva government. Seventy-eight specialists in Latin American studies signed and sent a cable to Costa e Silva in protest of the academic purges. The effort was headed by Charles Wagley, an anthropologist and Brazil specialist at Columbia University, and John Johnson, a Latin Americanist at Stanford University and president of the Latin American Studies Association. The petition was signed by former U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Lincoln Gordon. Another petition signed by 283 scholars was also sent to Costa e Silva at this time, urging him to end the government’s policy of forced retirement. Gordon’s participation in the petition campaign caught the attention of the New York Times, which ran an article about academic persecution in Brazil and Gordon’s change of heart toward the Brazilian government. Read it here.

Click here to read telegrams showing the repercussions of the New York Times article in the U.S. State Department and the Brazilian government.

Amid the academic purges, Caio Prado Jr., a prominent Marxist intellectual, was indicted in March 1969 due to an interview he had given to the University of São Paulo newspaper in 1967. In the interview, he alluded to the theoretical possibility of a proletariat revolution in Brazil. The military government declared this evidence of incitement to subversion and used the interview as a pretext to charge the renowned scholar. Click here to learn more about his case and read documents about the efforts of American academics to protest Prado’s arrest.