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To what extent was the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) able to serve as an instance of legitimization of the military dictatorship established in Brazil after the 1964 coup? This article aims to examine a specific aspect of the daily life of this institution during the military dictatorship: the investiture ceremonies. We believe that this approach allows us to analyze how politics could operate “apolitically” within the ABL. We argue that ceremonies may have become political events because it showed, first of all, the proximity and networks of sociability between the conservative intelligentsia and the regime. Secondly, we identified the transmission of values in some speeches that were, at that time, those of the conservative environment. The examination of the investiture ceremonies indicates that the ABL contributed to legitimize the regime which was established in Brazil in 1964. However, this legitimization did not take place through an open “collaboration”, but by the behavior of all its members, their proximity to the representatives of the regime and the diffusion and circulation of a conservative discourse.

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The aim of this article is to analyze the relationship between intellectuals and power from the perspective of the interests and rewards that both sides were able to obtain from a collaboration. To do so, we analyze a specific case, which occurred during the military dictatorship (1964-1985), and involves the donation of a piece of land, as well as a loan to construct a building granted by the military regime to the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL). The analysis enables us to shed new light on the relationship between conservative intellectuals and the Brazilian military regime. In the first segment, we retrace the trajectory of Austregésilo de Athayde, a journalist who presided over the institution between 1959 and 1994 and played a vital role in this donation and in financing the construction of the building. In the second segment, we detail how this process took place and how it provides a new angle with which to analyze the relationship of conservative intellectuals and the military dictatorship in Brazil.