Caffery and Ingram were keen to discuss the ten-page memorandum that Aranha had written for Vargas to help the president prepare for his meeting with Roosevelt.10 The importance of the memorandum had been clear to Caffery as soon as he had glimpsed the document, for it contained details of exactly what Brazil expected to get in return for its support of the Allied war effort.11 What Caffery didn’t understand, however, was that the document represented the first attempt by Aranha to try to formally set out a series of detailed strategic goals for Brazil during World War II. The fact that he had felt able to share the document with Caffery before Roosevelt met with Vargas would have shocked many members of the Brazilian cabinet—most notably Dutra, who surely would have felt that the foreign minister should have been more circumspect in dealing with his American “allies.” Aranha’s decision was a reflection of his close working relationship with Caffery—but it was also a testament to his keen diplomatic skills, which were now working on overdrive.
Over dinner Aranha explained the contents of the document in more detail. From time to time Caffery interrupted in order to seek clarification on a specific point or to ask a direct question.12 Aranha followed the same subject order of the memorandum. “Brazil must continue to support the United States in the world in exchange for its support in South America,” he told Caffery, “and this should be maintained until the American victory in the war.”13 The Brazilian went on to predict: “The United States will lead the world when peace comes, and it would be a grave error on the part of Brazil not to be at its side.”
As the foreign minister spoke, it became apparent that he had a grand vision for how Brazil’s partnership with the United States would reshape his country. Brazil was still a weak country, Aranha knew, but in the future it would have the chance to play a much larger role in both continental and global politics.14 Economically the country would benefit from rapid postwar growth and a major increase in the size of its population, which might very well make Brazil one of the most important economies in the world. In order to cement its position on the international stage, however, Aranha felt that Brazil should seek to attract American and British capital and should not introduce nationalistic economic policies that might endanger such foreign investment in the country.15 Rather, Brazil should accept as an inevitable but temporary nuisance the economic difficulties that Caffery had mentioned before his guests sat down for dinner. “By ceding in war, we will gain in peacetime,” Aranha quipped.16 In the postwar period, he went on, the Brazilian economy would become ever more closely linked to that of the United States, and the country would undergo a program of industrialization and liberalization that would enable the movement of capital and immigrants, further propelling its economy.17 Its present military weakness, moreover, would soon end thanks to the supply of American weapons, which would transform the Brazilian armed forces into a modern well-equipped army.
In terms of international politics, Aranha argued that Brazil should join the notional United Nations and seek a seat in the supreme military councils of the combined Allied powers. He also had his eye on specific regions that Brazil might influence in the postwar era. The future of the Portuguese colonies in Africa and the Atlantic, Aranha knew, would be complicated. If the Portuguese empire were to collapse due to an Axis invasion, Brazil must be ready to help defend territories such as the Azores—a role that Aranha understood would guarantee Rio a strong hand in such far-flung places.18 He concluded that as Africa’s security was related to Brazil’s security, Brazil should also have a say in the future of that continent.
Aranha was calling for a partnership between the United States and Brazil not only on bilateral and continental affairs, but also on global geostrategic politics.19 And for the foreign minister, the prospect of a Brazilian expeditionary force could be a means of deepening this strategic cooperation between the United States and Brazil. By showing the United States that it could count on Brazil’s support in the war, Brazil hoped to be able to count on the United States’s support on South American issues in return.20 The price of Brazil’s support, in effect, was US help in making Brazil the dominant power—politically, economically, and militarily—in South America. Aranha suggested that the break with Argentina at the conference of foreign ministers almost exactly one year prior had created the opportunity for Brazil to achieve all these aims.21
Caffery was intrigued and impressed by the scale of the vision that Aranha outlined over dinner and that he had described in the memorandum for President Vargas.22 He was likely concerned, too, because the foreign minister’s lofty aims appeared to go far beyond anything Washington had authorized the ambassador to offer to the Brazilians. Instead of replying to Aranha’s outline of his vision, therefore, Caffery zeroed in on two important points regarding the future of Brazil: its relations with Argentina, and the fate of the Estado Novo in the postwar era.
The US ambassador was troubled by the rivalry between the two most powerful nations in South America.23 Yet Caffery also dismissed Brazilian hand-wringing over Argentine aggression. Writing to Washington later in 1943, he would describe Brazilian fears of an Argentine invasion as “cockeyed.”24 He admitted, however, that he had found it difficult to gather enough evidence to allay or confirm Brazilian fears of this potential threat.25
The Americans felt that the Brazilians had three major motives for emphasizing the danger of an Argentine attack in 1943. For one thing, the balance of power in South America had been shifting away from Argentina and toward Brazil in the years immediately prior to World War II, and if anything, this trend had continued at a faster rate during the war itself. Brazil had experienced rapid economic development in recent years, and the majority of its population had enjoyed some improvements in their living conditions (although the gains were not as great as Vargas had promised).26 But Brazil’s big advantage was its military. In 1943 alone, the size of the Brazilian army increased to about 130,000 officers and men, compared to Argentina’s strength of about 68,000 men.27 The Brazilian army had begun to reequip itself, moreover, with the large quantities of new materials it was receiving from the United States under the lend-lease agreement, and the Brazilian air force and navy were also growing.28 (Indeed, Washington suspected that the Brazilian government was stressing the Argentine threat in order to obtain more weapons than it would have otherwise received from the United States under the lend-lease agreement.)29 In an assessment of the Brazilian-Argentine rivalry, however, the United States concluded that:
despite these recent changes, the Brazilians are still fearful of an Argentine attack. They have not yet completely adjusted their mental processes to the new distribution of power in Latin America. While they are in command of human and material resources, which appear superior on paper, they still lack the confidence that would be acquired by a practical test of their own strength. The feeling of insecurity is reflected in at least one basic agreement between Brazil and the United States providing for United States assistance if Brazil is attacked by a pro-Nazi American state. Brazilian anxieties are stimulated by receipt of possibly exaggerated Argentine military preparations.30
Militarily, Brazil held a great advantage over Argentina by the beginning of 1943. The great irony was that this had not had the effect of making Brazilians feel any safer.
The United States also suspected that Brazilians’ nationalistic aspirations were behind their constant and vocal preoccupation with a possible Argentine invasion. The Americans felt that there were many prideful Brazilians who would oppose the idea of enlarging the country.31 By 1943 Argentina was effectively cut off from any foreign arms supplies, and some Brazilians might be inclined to seize this golden opportunity and deal with the Argentine threat once and for all.32 The Americans, however, admitted that there was no evidence that such views were widely held in Brazil, and ultimately concluded it was highly improbable that the country would launch a war of conquest against Argentina in 1943.33
The final motive that th
e United States ascribed to Brazil’s claims about the Argentine menace had to do with internal Brazilian politics.34 Relations between Góes Monteiro and other senior officers were under great strain due to the general’s increasingly public criticism of the army for its poor performance. While Caffery believed that Aranha’s statements were intended to extract more weapons from the United States, the statements of other senior figures in the Vargas regime, particularly Góes Monteiro, were much harder for the ambassador to interpret.35 Caffery sensed that the chief of staff’s frequent comments about the Argentine threat might have been intended to disrupt the cooperation between the United States and Brazil, and to assert Góes Monteiro’s authority over the Brazilian army at a time when he found himself in competition with other senior officers.
Over dinner, Caffery ran through this American interpretation of Brazil’s preoccupation with the Argentine threat. Aranha listened, and said little in reply. After Caffery finished his lecture, he, Aranha, Ingram, and Walsh all moved outside to the shaded patio, where drinks were served. The heat of another summer day was receding, but all four men nevertheless removed their white cotton jackets.
Aranha lit a cigarette and sat in a deck chair, as Caffery pressed him further for the details of his memorandum to Vargas. The ambassador noted that Aranha and Vargas appeared to be laying the groundwork for the postwar era, and he asked Aranha whether he thought the Estado Novo would survive past the end of the war. Surely, with Brazil committed to the war against tyranny abroad, Brazilians would not accept anything short of full democracy at home once the war ended.
Caffery wasn’t the only one who harbored doubts about the regime’s future. Aranha’s memorandum made it clear that the foreign minister was aware that Brazil would need to embrace free trade if it were to compete in the postwar economy, and Aranha knew too that any fiscal liberalization in Brazil would have to be accompanied by political reforms. Now, as he spoke with Caffery, the foreign minister confirmed that he was considering how Brazil might return to the democratic system it had enjoyed before the establishment of the Estado Novo.
The postwar period was also a topic of great interest to both Admiral Ingram and General Walsh, who held distinctly different ideas of what the partnership between Brazil and the United States ought to look like after the war. Ingram, who frequently met privately with President Vargas during his tenure in Brazil, argued that no US solider would remain in Brazilian territory once the war ended. General Walsh, on the other hand, was of the opinion that the United States should continue using the air bases and facilities it had built in Brazil even after the war was over, and he felt that the United States should start negotiating with the Brazilian government as soon as possible to ensure that it would have this right.36 Walsh saw clear military and commercial value in such an arrangement, and as the war went on—and the potential for another war between the West and the Soviet Union grew—the idea of an American military outpost in South America became only more appealing.
As the group on Caffery’s patio mulled over these questions about Brazil’s future, the informal discussions wound down, and the dinner party broke up. It had been a cheerful affair, and the good humor and frank exchange of views had been all but guaranteed due to the warm afterglow from the recent meeting between Roosevelt and Vargas. Aranha’s elaboration on his views about Brazil’s developing relationship with the United States—and his vision of Brazil’s role in the postwar world—had given Caffery, Ingram, and Walsh much food for thought.
Yet a critical observer of the dinner might well have concluded that Aranha’s conception of his country’s future relationship with the United States was not remotely close to that of the Americans. What Aranha craved most was a partnership, while the United States essentially wanted to dominate the Brazilians—though of course American officials never would have acknowledged this goal. These two divergent aims would guide the policy of both governments until the end of the war, and indeed had already laid the groundwork for future tensions between the two countries.
The United States’s greatest need for Brazil had already passed with the landings in North Africa at the end of 1942. Although Brazilian support was still needed in the war in the South Atlantic—and in the provision of critical war materials, like rubber—this support wasn’t nearly vital enough for Washington to accept the idea of a full partnership with Rio. Aranha’s hope that the United States would help Brazil achieve its goal of regional hegemony in exchange for Brazilian support in the war also appeared to be far-fetched. Despite the anger the US State Department—especially Secretary of State Cordell Hull—felt toward Argentina, in 1943, Washington made few signals that it was willing to formally endorse the Brazilian quest for regional dominance over its longtime rival, Argentina.
While the United States and Brazil would continue to develop economic, military, and political ties throughout 1943, their relationship was becoming more and more imbalanced. The smiles, the handshakes, and the regular warm exchange of messages between Roosevelt and Vargas cannot obscure the simple reality that from 1943 on, Brazil needed the United States far more than the United States needed Brazil. It is curious, then, that Aranha was so willing to tip his hand to the United States at a time when Brazil had lost much of the strategic value it had had at the end of 1941—and when it was in far less of a position to achieve its lofty objectives than it once had been.
One American, at least, had lost none of his enthusiasm for the Brazilian-US partnership. Nelson Rockefeller and his agency, the office of the coordinator of inter-American affairs, were becoming increasingly central to the efforts of the United States to develop ties with Brazil. Yet Rockefeller was also torn between his business in Brazil and his affairs back in the United States. In 1943, Rockefeller had one eye on the development of economic and cultural links with Brazil, and the other on the expansion of his own powerbase among the key policy makers in the Roosevelt administration. It is impossible to divorce these two aims, as Rockefeller appeared willing to use all of his personal and business connections to help facilitate the projects he supported. The ostensible failure of the Orson Welles film project of the previous year didn’t dissuade Rockefeller from endorsing new cultural projects. He was still in charge of the creation and dissemination of US propaganda in South America, and believed that he could best propagandize by exporting US culture to the region.
This was not a one-way cultural effort. Rockefeller introduced the Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda to a US audience, and she became a huge overnight sensation in the United States. Rockefeller, who sat on the board of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, encouraged the museum to exhibit Brazilian artists for the first time and to sponsor US artists’ exhibitions in Rio. Rockefeller also persuaded a reluctant Solomon R. Guggenheim to help set up scholarships for Brazilians, and he tapped the Carnegie Foundation to fund similar programs and scholarships in the United States and Brazil.
There was never a better time to be a Brazilian artist, writer, or musician. The United States opened its doors to Brazilian culture during World War II in ways that it had never done for the citizens of any other country. Much of this was due to the drive and ambition of Nelson Rockefeller. Unsurprisingly given Rockefeller’s propulsive nature, he made many enemies in Washington, and felt that petty jealousies and interdepartmental rivalries got in his way. But as long as Rockefeller enjoyed the strong personal support of President Roosevelt, he was able to push the vast majority of his cultural program through.
Rockefeller was not the only famous American who traveled to Brazil to deepen cultural ties or to gather information for President Roosevelt. Other early crusaders to Rio included the Hollywood actors Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. In June of 1940 Flynn, then at the height of his fame, visited Rio and stayed at the Copacabana Palace Hotel. He took part in a radio address during his stay, and also met with Vargas, of whom he formed a favorable impression. In a letter to President Roosevelt dated June 15,
1940, Flynn wrote that he was convinced Vargas was very much in favor of developing a Pan-American friendship.37
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was a similar advocate of closer ties between the United States and Brazil. Fairbanks had been a vocal opponent of the American policy of isolationism since 1939, and Roosevelt personally authorized Fairbanks’s trip to Brazil—a reflection of the president’s latent agreement with that stance. The actor’s stated purpose for visiting Brazil was to research the state of US cinema there, but the real purpose of his trip was to investigate the alleged pro-Nazi tendencies of key members of the Vargas administration. Vargas granted Fairbanks a private meeting and extended him a warm welcome, but the highlight of the actor’s trip may well have been learning to samba with Alzira at a private party held in his honor.38 American intelligence carefully debriefed Fairbanks once he returned to the United States.
The US film director John Ford also traveled to Rio. In 1943, Ford made the trip to shoot a propaganda movie about Brazil’s contributions to the Allied war effort. The film was a stereotypical wartime propaganda short, with glowing references to the Vargas administration and the Brazilian armed forces, and tributes to Brazil for supplying wolfram—a rare, high-density metal that was used in the production of bullets and other projectiles—to the US war effort. The film also mentioned that the Brazilians had invited the US military to the north of Brazil to create new naval bases, which were vital staging posts for the US efforts in the Atlantic; it also touched on the controversial decision to put all Brazilian forces under the direct command of the Americans. This had been meant to impress the Americans, but it had the opposite effect. US political and military leaders viewed the decision as a sign of weakness, and felt that it reduced the respect that US officers in particular had for their senior Brazilian counterparts.
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