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The present special issue originated from the VII International Symposium on History and Culture of Brazil: Struggles for Freedom in the 200 Years of Independent Brazil, which took place online every Monday, from June 22 to August 31, 2020. The symposium was part of the annual program of the Rui Barbosa Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture of the Casa de Rui Barbosa Foundation (IRBaec/FCRB), which counted on the partnership of a long list of academic institutions: the Watson Institute of B...

An Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer (LGBTQ) movement emerged in the late 1970s during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–1985), as the country slowly moved toward democracy. The “Homosexual Movement,” as it was called at the time, along with feminist and black organizations that formed during the same period, fought for an end to discrimination, equality, and full rights. Since then, LGBTQ activists have challenged stereotypes about lesbians, gay men, and trans people and won some important victories, such as same-sex marriage, legal recognition of trans people’s rights to legalize their gender identity, and constitutional protection against hate speech, although discrimination and violence against LGBTQ people is still widespread. The movement challenged traditional Catholic Church notions of homosexuality as a sin, medico-legal discourses that considered same-sex and nontraditional gender performances as sicknesses, conservative political ideologies that privileged the heteronormative family, and sectors of the Left that considered homosexuality a product of “bourgeois decadence.” Built upon a long history of resistance to impositions of compulsory heterosexuality and normative gender roles, lesbians, gay men, and trans people formed diverse communities during the second half of the 20th century that offered important support networks. They also appropriated public spaces for dissident sexualities and gender performances. Carnival became a privileged site for subverting traditional gender roles. Gay activists pushed the government to change initial conservative policies dealing with HIV/AIDS, and Brazil became an international model for effectively combating the disease. Lesbians fought within the feminist movement for acceptance and against social norms that marginalized them. Trans people gained considerable respect and certain rights. The LGBTQ movement remains diverse in practice, composition, and ideologies. A recent reactionary backlash, which has united conservative Catholics, evangelical Christians, and right-wing political forces, is trying to undo the advances made since the late 1970s in favor of social toleration, respect, and equality.

The Opening the Archives Digital Collection on the history of US–Brazilian relations contains 50,000 documents about the two countries during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–1985) at the height of the Cold War. Student researchers, under the leadership of James N. Green, Professor of Brazilian History and Culture at Brown University, have scanned and indexed thousands of records from the presidential libraries of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan, as well as from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Department, among other institutions and organizations. This digital archive affords researchers access to U.S. sources that register the decisions of Washington policymakers as they responded to the rise of radicalism in the early 1960s and the establishment of an authoritarian regime in 1964, which lasted twenty-one years. Materials include documentation on U.S. economic and military aid programs, analyses of the political situation in Brazil, and evaluations of the opposition to the generals in power. Other archives record U.S. labor organizations’ programs directed toward Brazilian trade unions. A collection of dossiers registering information on high-ranking Brazilian military officers, which was compiled by the U.S. Defense Department, provides insights into the relations between the Pentagon and the Brazilian Armed Forces. With the ultimate goal of publishing 100,000 records, the project reflects Brown University’s deep commitment to fostering collaborative relationships in international research projects while strengthening the university’s goal of becoming a leading center for the study of Brazil in the United States. Designed to give universal open access to these archives for researchers, the project is sponsored by Brown University Libraries in partnership with the State University of Maringá, Paraná, and Bem-te-vi Diversidade in São Paulo.

The Latin American Travelogues Digital Collection is composed of 327 travel accounts, most written in English but some in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian. All were produced between the 16th and the early 20th centuries. The digital collection, organized beginning in 2006 under the direction of James N. Green, the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History at Brown University, and Patricia Figueroa, the Curator of the Iberian and Latin American Collection, is a project of the Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship. The site is an open-access visual and research tool for students and scholars alike. The Latin American Travelogues Digital Collection was created to encourage students to use primary sources about Latin America and the Caribbean for research projects and essay assignments and to facilitate access to rare books through the Internet. It has proven successful in integrating Brown’s Latin American Special Collections into classroom pedagogy and promoting these works as a research tool for both undergraduate and graduate students. The project is also designed to make these travelogues freely available to researchers worldwide and to preserve these works for future generations of scholars.

Soon after NACLA’s founding in late 1966, 85 activists and specialists on Latin America met for a day-long conference to discuss the nature and direction of the new organization in New York. Among ...

Comprendre ce qu’a été la dictature qui a pris le pouvoir au Brésil le 31 mars 1964 et s’y est maintenue pendant vingt-et-un ans, ne va pas de soi. Ce putsch militaire, soutenu par des civils et une partie des couches populaires, a été le premier d’une vague de régimes autoritaires qui se sont installés en Amérique du Sud comme en réponse à la révolution cubaine de 1959. Deux ans après que João Goulart, le leader du Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro [Parti travailliste brésilien] (PTB), ait été ...

Mathew Carey's first encounter with a famous American took place when he met Benjamin Franklin in Paris in 1781, and his first experience of America when he emigrated to Philadelphia some three years later was shaped largely by his efforts to win Franklin's patronage. The ties that bind a patron to a protege can be very strong, but this article is less about the links that joined Carey and Franklin and more about their inability to connect. They were separated by age, religion, nationality, and social status, but Franklin had easily overcome such barriers many times before. Theirs was more a difference of personality, and by exploring it, we learn something interesting about Carey, and also something new about Franklin, who has been the subject of many biographies and whose autobiography is in other ways so self-revealing.Carey's encounter with Franklin came about almost by accident. In 1781, while still an apprentice, he wrote a pamphlet called The Urgent Necessity of an Immediate Repeal of the Whole Penal Code Candidly Considered,\ which is known only from the copy he bequeathed to the Library Company of Philadelphia. It got him into serious trouble, and his father packed him off to France to escape it. In his autobiography, written in 1833, Carey said that he brought with him "a letter to a Roman Catholic priest, by whom I was introduced to Dr. Franklin, who had a small printing office at Passy ... for the purpose of reprinting his dispatches from America, and other papers. He engaged me, and I officiated in his office for some months, when, not having occasion for me any longer, I went to work with Didot le jeune, who was then engaged in printing some English books, where I did not remain long-for in about twelve months from the commencement of my exile, the storm having blown over, I returned to Dublin'Xo).1The only other event in his French sojourn recorded by Carey was his meeting with the Marquis de Lafayette. He wrote, "During the time I was at Passy, an invasion of Ireland was contemplated by the French; and the Marquis de la Fayette, who was then in Paris, and was probably intended to take part in the enterprize, called on me to make inquiries on the political state of that country [Ireland]. But I was utterly unable to give any information on that subject. ... I was as complete a green horn, as ever was brought into trouble by the crude productions of his pen"(6).In the autobiography he wrote that The Urgent Necessity was published in 1779, when he was nineteen years old, thus shifting the whole sequence of events back two years (4). At that moment the Volunteer movement was at its height, and Lafayette was indeed discussing with Franklin an invasion of Ireland.2 This mistake, whether deliberate or not, improves the story, because by November 1781, when the pamphlet was actually published, Cornwallis had surrendered, and by early 1782, when Carey was in Paris, Lafayette had dropped the idea of invading Ireland.3 But it seems unlikely that Carey was trying to add to the drama of his presence in Paris, because his account is so remarkably undramatic.These encounters changed the course of his life, and he might be forgiven for dwelling at length on them, perhaps recalling how deeply he impressed the great men with his potential. Instead, what is most striking about Carey's account of his Paris sojourn is how vague and self-deprecating it is. He was vague about how and why he was introduced to Franklin and how long he stayed with him, and he went out of his way to portray himself as useless to Franklin, Lafayette, and Didot and to suggest that they were far from impressed with him. Later in the autobiography (as we shall see in a moment) Carey realized that Lafayette's impression had been more favorable than he thought; but it seems clear that Didot and Franklin really did have little use for him. There are only two known books he could have set in type for Didot, small-format editions of the fables of Edward Moore and John Gay;4 and Ellen Cohn of the Franklin Papers has discovered only a couple of broadsides printed at Passy during the two months or so Carey was there. …

Several thousand students joined small clusters of soldiers, workers, and others in revolutionary opposition to the Brazilian civilian-military dictatorship that came to power in 1964 and controlled the government for two decades. Operating underground, these left-wing activists engaged in diverse efforts to organize an effective guerrilla opposition to the authoritarian regime. Within their ranks, some militants who had homosexual desires faced a hegemonic culture of the left that considered same-sex sexuality a reflection of “bourgeois decadence,” an immoral aberration, and an affront to proper revolutionary behavior. This article explores how leftist Brazilians with homoerotic desires negotiated norms of compulsory heterosexuality and constructions of revolutionary masculinity in the 1960s and 1970s as they lived in the underground, among members of different political organizations while imprisoned, or in political exile.

THE TRIBUTE OF BLOOD: ARMY, HONOR, RACE, AND NATION IN BRAZIL, 1864-1945. By Peter M. Beattie. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. Pp. 390, $18.95 paper.) CULTURE WARS IN BRAZIL: THE FIRST VARGAS REGIME, 1930-1945. By Daryle Williams. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. Pp. 346, $19.95 paper.) BRAZILIAN PARTY POLITICS AND THE COUP OF 1964. By Ollie A. Johnson III. (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2001. Pp. 176, $55.00 cloth.) BRAZIL IN THE 1990S: AN ECONOMY IN TRANSITION. By Renato Baumann, ed. (New York, N.Y.: Palgrave, 2002. Pp. 314. $75.00 cloth.) BRAZIL'S SECOND CHANCE: EN ROUTE TOWARD THE FIRST

The Brazilian gay liberation movement emerged from the interaction of the international gay movement and the changing political situation in Brazil, which provided the catalysts for the organization of gay men and lesbians to fight for their political, social, and democratic rights. The focus of the historical analysis to follow is the gay movement as it developed in Sao Paulo, the political, economic, and cultural center of the country. It is a contribution toward a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of the development of the movement that has not yet been written. Joao S. Trevisan (1986) discusses the movement in "Gay Politics and the Manipulation of Homosexuality," but his work, in addition to being extremely partisan toward the conservative wing of the movement and hostile toward the left, is not a systematic historical account of the events of 1976 onward. Sonia Alvarez (1990) presents an overview of the Brazilian women's movement that emerged at the same time as the gay liberation movement but mentions lesbian groups only in passing. Her work does, however, provide an excellent account of the political debate within the women's movement over the issue of autonomy vs. partisan politics that was also to polarize the gay movement. Because I was a participant in that movement from 1977 to 1981 and a leader of its left wing as the movement polarized, the obvious problems of overcoming bias must be balanced against the advantages of an inside view. This essay should be seen not as a definitive analysis but rather as a first step toward a more comprehensive study that remains to be undertaken. In the period discussed here, an independent lesbian movement had not yet developed. An excellent complement to this work would be an analysis of the development of lesbian organizations fighting against sexism and homophobia in Brazil.