Secret Dialogues: Church State Relations, Torture, and Social Justice in Authoritarian Brazil

Serbin, Kenneth S. Secret Dialogues: Church State Relations, Torture, and Social Justice in Authoritarian Brazil. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. 312 pp.

The Brazilian military regime (1964-1985) has been studied from various perspectives. Kenneth Serbin's book has the merit of focusing on a new feature of that period: secret meetings between the Church and the high echelon of the armed forces. Those dialogues were known as the Bipartite (1970-1974). The Church and the armed forces had one main interest in common: anticommunism. They diverged only on a secondary matter: the scope of political repression. Both institutions, therefore, had enough incentives to not let their differences in the short term damage their long-term interests.

Secret Dialogues is serious and meticulous work based on excellent research. Serbin is accurate in describing and analyzing the talks between clergymen and generals. Nonetheless, he missed an opportunity to explain to readers in detail what the Church's political plans were before 1964. Understanding these plans would help readers better understand the role of the Church in the Bipartite.

We should remember that Pope Pius XI stated that the great scandal of the 19th century was how the Church lost the hearts and minds of the workers to the communists in Europe. The Church did not grasp how attractive the timely and powerful message sent by Marxists was to many members of the working class. Therefore, something had to be done to avoid the same mistake in Africa and Latin America, where the number of poor people was increasing dramatically, especially in the countryside. Pope Pius XI published, in the 1950s, the Fidei it Donun encyclical. His aim was to fight not only communism but also spiritism and Protestantism in the Third World. After his death, Pope John Paul XXIII confirmed and maintained this policy through the encyclical Mater et Magistra.

In the Brazilian northeast, Francisco Julião, the head of the Ligas Camponesess, had revolutionary ambitions. He was ready to launch an agrarian reform within or outside the law, starting in the state where he lived, Pernambuco. His wife was sent to Cuba to receive military training to help him in achieving his purpose. Julião's behavior produced a rift between the conservative and progressive clergy. Julião promised a better world for the campesino who lived in poor material conditions. For this reason he was described in the literatura de cordel (popular poetry) as a new Jesus Christ, because he had come to this world to announce the redemption of those in despair. Like Jesus, he was ready to fight the oppressors, and he cultivated the myth of a messianic leader. He got the support of progressive clerics. On the other hand, for the conservative clergy, there was no difference between Julião and the communists.

The 1964 coup caught the Church in this deep division. As an institution, the Church, as well as the media, supported the coup. Civilian leaders thought that the military would soon return the government to civilian hands, as it had in the past. But a surprise happened and the military decided to continue in power to favor its own policies. When it became clear that General President Castelo Branco's term was not temporary, many political actors who had supported the coup started to criticize the armed forces. The path to urban guerrilla warfare was then opened. The military responded with increasingly harsh repression. This repression eventually reached members of the Church. The National Confederation of Brazilian Bishops started to denounce the government. The relationship between the Church and the armed forces quickly deteriorated. The Church's criticism was voiced outside the country, and this annoyed military leaders; they did not want to be perceived as dictators but as saviors of a democracy threatened by communism.

Neither institution stood to benefit from this fight. As Serbin explains, it was time for elite conciliation. The military worked to avoid public censure by Pope Paul VI of its practice of torture. The Church wanted to protect the lives of its members as well as to continue to exercise its influence in Brazilian politics.

The process of building this conciliation reaches its peak in Serbin's book. The Bipartite was the solution to avoid disrupting the relationship between both institutions, as well a forum in which to solve their differences, far from the public eye. Given that, when the military regime began a process of political liberalization, headed by General Ernesto Geisel, the Bipartite lost its reason for being. The elite conflict disappeared.

New research partially challenges some of Serbin's conclusions. For example, the Church had a channel of communication with the armed forces aside from the Bipartite. The military government, through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its embassy in the Vatican, maintained a dialogue with the Vatican State secretariat. It negotiated the selection of bishops and priests to be sent to Brazil. The military demanded that the Vatican send no leftist clerics, arguing that if this sort of priest arrived in Brazil he would probably be repressed, and the relationship between these two institutions could get worse. More information on these dialogues can be obtained in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brasilia.