Chapter 9: Denouncing the Dictatorship

As resistance to the military dictatorship grew in Brazil, efforts in the United States were also expanding.
Brazil: A Report on Torture

Photo of journalist and filmmaker Saul Landau. Image courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.

Filmmakers Saul Landau and Haskell Wexler were in Chile making a film about the recent election of socialist Salvador Allende, when they heard that 70 Brazilian hostages had been released to Chile in exchange for the Swiss ambassador. Their interviews with these young Brazilians, most of whom had been arrested for participating in leftist organizations and tortured extensively, were then made into a film released in the United States: Brazil: A Report on Torture.

Newsletters and Action Groups
The American Friends of Brazil group began to publish the Brazilian Information Bulletin in 1971. The publication was distributed across the country with the goal of increasing awareness of human rights violations and political developments in Brazil. 
Read an interview with Paul Silberstein by James Green.
The Living Theater Imprisoned
On July 1, 1970, members of the New York avant-garde theater troupe the Living Theater were arrested by DOPS under the pretense of marijuana possession in Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais. The group was planning a street performance of the Legacy of Cain in the form of 150 separate plays that would be performed in various areas of the small mining town over a three-week period. Three members of the troupe who had evaded arrest returned to the United States and mounted an international campaign for the release of Julian Beck, Judith Malina, and other members of the Living Theater. Covered by the American and European press, the Living Theater’s arrest, two-month detention, and trial called attention to the situation of political prisoners incarcerated in Brazil. Members of the U.S. artistic elite such as Allen Ginsberg, Mick Jagger, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and Jane Fonda mounted a campaign for their release, formed the American Association for the Defense of the Living Theater, and sent a petition to President Médici.
Protests in the Nation’s Capital
When President Médici visited the White House in December 1971, U.S. and Brazilian activists organized a protest to accompany his visit, decrying U.S. support for the Brazilian military regime and calling out the Brazilian government’s use of censorship and torture.

a farcical play mocking Médici and Nixon, staged at the 1971 demonstration

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Going National and International
Read a pamphlet on the Bernard Russell Tribunal.
Indigenous Rights in Brazil
Activists and academics in the United States, like Shelton Davis, also picked up on a new cause: indigenous rights in Brazil, and mistreatment of Indian populations by the military government. Read Supysáua: A Documentary Report on the Conditions of the Indian People of Brazil and Report of a Visit to the Indians of Brazil on Behalf of the Primitive Peoples Fund/Survival International. British playwright Christopher Hampton also produced a play, Savages, that criticized not only current government policy toward indigenous people, but a centuries-long legacy of exploitation.
Amnesty International’s Indictment
Amnesty International published their Report on Allegations of Torture in Brazil in September 1972; the 28-page document detailed human rights abuses and political repression under the successive military governments. Ivan Seixas, a political prisoner whose case was adopted and advocated for by Amnesty International, was released from prison soon after the campaign began. When he was released, he was handed hundreds of letters written to Brazil on his behalf, including a postcard by folk singer Joan Baez.