Caio Prado Jr. was a Marxist academic of international stature. His persecution therefore alarmed Latin Americanists and human rights activists in the United States. Four of the most well-known Brazil experts in the United States sent a letter to the editor of the New York Times protesting Prado’s trial. It was published on March 8, 1970, with 97 prominent Latin Americanists signing on to the statement. Read it here.
At the same time, Ralph Della Cava, a professor of Brazilian history at the City University of New York highly committed to exposing human rights violations in Brazil, and Ivan Morris, a literature professor at Columbia University, began a campaign to protest Prado’s arrest. Morris had links with Amnesty International and used his connections to involve the human rights organization with Prado’s case.
Prado was tried and sentenced, at 63 years old, to a four-and-a-half-year prison term soon after the protest letter was published in the New York Times. Amnesty International, spurred by Morris and Della Cava, adopted Prado as a prisoner of conscience and began a letter-writing campaign on his behalf. Read the Amnesty International letters here.
Della Cava, along with Amnesty International and Latin Americanists, organized a demonstration outside the Brazilian consulate on June 13 to protest Prado’s arrest.
Another letter to the editor was published in the New York Times on June 14, 1970, this time by Harvard Law School Professor Henry J. Steiner and Yale Law School Professor David. M. Trubeck. Read it here.
Media coverage of Prado’s case as well as the Amnesty International campaign caught the attention of Senator J. William Fulbright, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He requested information about Prado from the State Department. Read their correspondence here.
The Supreme Military Tribunal reduced Prado’s sentence to one and a half years in September 1970 and overturned the case a year later. Prado was released after serving one year and five months of his sentence.