Rubens the Reformer

After being born in Santos, São Paulo in 1929, the young Rubens Paiva threw himself into centre-left student politics, using his position as a student council leader to endorse Oil is Ours, an early 1950s campaign to completely nationalise Brazil’s oil industry. As a member of the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB), he was elected as a congressman under the presidency of the PTB’s João Goulart, with Paiva taking office in early 1963.

In the wake of these elections, it was uncovered that candidates opposed to Goulart — a broad left-winger — were being funded by two right-wing thinktanks, the Institute of Research and Social Studies (IPES) and the Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD). These two entities, founded by David Rockefeller at the behest of John F. Kennedy to prevent ‘more Cubas’ in Latin America, were kept propped up with millions of dollars from American businessmen through Kennedy’s umbrella Business Group for Latin America, which sought to undermine self-determination in the continent.

Almost immediately, Paiva was instrumental in organising a parliamentary committee into investigating IPES and IBAD’s activities, with particular focus on their foreign funding. And almost straight away, this investigation became mired by sabotage, with IPES and IBAD desperately destroying evidence more quickly than it could be examined.

During these investigations, parallel discussions were taking place in Washington. As Goulart proposed what he called ‘base reforms’ — the demands of which included an increased minimum wage and agrarian reform — alongside an insistence on an independent foreign policy which sought closer relations with China and the Soviet Union, heads in Washington were spinning. Bobby Kennedy — then the Attorney General — was infuriated after his meetings with Goulart, comparing him to a ‘Brazilian Jimmy Hoffa’.

In response, his president brother suggested military intervention to solve their Brazilian problem. Talking to an assembly of US military figures, Rockefeller said it had been decided by American business and financial figures Goulart was totally unacceptable and had to go. Through the Business Group for Latin America, generals were bought off, and propaganda poured into the country to create a hysteria that Brazil was on the verge of a communist takeover.

This developed the conditions for the coup which replaced Goulart with a military dictatorship in April 1964. One of the organisations Paiva was investigating, the IPES — one of the organisations he referred to in a committee speech as belonging to a ‘thriving industrial park of the anti-communist industry’ which is ‘most profitable, and with huge resources’, was repurposed into a new secret police, the SNI, which served as the backbone of the military regime’s system of surveillance and repression — and which ultimately murdered him.

Washington’s Hand

Many Brazilians take US involvement in its affairs — and its orchestration of the 1964 coup — as self-evident. Others downplay it, still following the US line dating from the 1960s depicting Washington’s strategy as distanced from events on the ground, with only generic anti-communist concern informing their detached decision-making with regards to Brazil.

This line crumbled in the late 1970s, not least by revelations from Jan K Black, a former CIA analyst. In her essential book United States Penetration of Brazil, which laid bare the extent of US funding, planning, and military planning for if Goulart’s government resisted the coup (an action Paiva himself demanded the government take). These flames were only fanned by the release of further declassified documents which revealed US military plans such as Operation Brother Sam, which saw the US send out a fleet of destroyers, tankers, and the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal to help launch airstrikes should the junta face resistance.

In the end, this force wasn’t needed. Goulart got word of a plan for the US to enforce partition of the country through the state of Minas Gerais, creating what he feared would be a Korean-style partition. For this reason, he did not resist the junta, despite allies like Paiva and Rio Grande do Sul Governor Leonel Brizola advocating for it.

The Business Group for Latin America could claim victory in taking out their Brazilian Hoffa. With over 30 corporations flooding it with cash, it rebranded itself in 1965 as the Council of the Americas (COA), where its role propping up South American fascist and putschist movements is as obvious today.

Bolsonaro’s Boys

This brazenness is seen most clearly in the role it has played in Brazilian politics in the past decade. The talk of ‘US corporations’ backing coups often comes in vague language, and the COA’s meddling can be subtle, often leaning towards grooming young liberal politicians (through its support for organisations like RenovaBR), ‘progressive’ NGOs or ‘neutral’ regional journalists.

But through meetings with such CIA-adjacent lobbies was Jair Bolsonaro — long considered a joke figure of Brazil’s right-wing lunatic fringe — relaunched as a business-friendly, traditional conservative for Washington.

For the entirety of his political life, Bolsonaro never disguised his contempt for Rubens Paiva and the thousands who were tortured and killed alongside him. The roots are deep: in the 1950s and 1960s, Paiva’s father was the Bolsonaro family’s landlord in São Paulo state, and the Bolsonaros still baselessly claim that the Paiva’s ranch was a headquarters for rebel leader Carlos Lamarca’s armed resistance against the dictatorship with the Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária (VPR).

Following the 2014 National Truth Commission’s findings over human rights abuses in twentieth-century Brazil, a bust of Rubens Paiva was installed in Congress, which Jair Bolsonaro spat on. During the ‘soft coup’ of 2016, he would dedicate his vote to impeach Dilma Rousseff to Carlos Brilhante Ustra, the hunter, torturer, and murderer of resistance figures. Another two years later, he was elected President.

During this period — which many now refer to as the ‘long coup’ of 2013-18 — what made the biggest domestic and international impact was Lava Jato, the ‘anti-corruption’ operation which undoubtedly played an instrumental role in his election. Using extremely spurious premises of corruption to mask the true political motivations of its orchestrators, Lava Jato was the backbone of the ‘long coup’ which saw the US’s Department of Justice and State Department work actively to topple left-wing President Dilma Rousseff, jail Lula da Silva, and elect Bolsonaro.

In a sudden disregard for perceptions of the situation, the US-mentored Sérgio Moro — who was awarded the highest military honours for his role in jailing Lula — took a ministerial post in the far-right, military dominated government. Even Bolsonaro’s assistant and lead on foreign policy, Filipe Martins, was previously a special advisor at the US Embassy. Following this discredited government’s collapse, the release of Lula, and his subsequent victory in the 2022 presidential elections, the failed putsch of January 2023 was a last desperate attempt by these reactionary forces to remain in power.

The Plotters of Today

The failure of this coup, the recent arrest of Bolsonaro for his involvement in it, and the Oscar recognition of I’m Still Here is giving millions of Brazilians cause for confidence and celebration. Despite all this, Brazil faces a new wave of Washington meddling in direct support of the heirs to the military dictatorship. Positioning for a potential new coup is taking place, and as right-wing politicians are desperate to re-stand Bolsonaro in next year’s elections, the political message of I’m Still Here is the last thing they need.

At the time of writing, nobody from the cultural organs associated with the Council of the Americas have mentioned I’m Still Here. With such an impressive grasp on power and media infrastructure, they presumably don’t feel the need to. That the organisation still has a powerful grasp at creating the sort of disruption that has impeded Brazilian democracy since its restoration in 1989 can’t be doubted.

But I’m Still Here, though a heartbreaking story, is also an inspiring one. Far from a simple story about the campaigning resilience of Eunice Paivas and her family, it offers up a deeper story of corporate power, imperialism, state repression, and how the US and its proxies have historically treated Brazilians who wish their country to be able to govern its own affairs. In that, it teaches us a lot about Brazil today, and will be of massive assistance to helping combat threats to the country’s developing democracy — both internal and external.