PALÁCIO ITAMARATY
Address: Marechal Floriano Avenue 196, currently 1,426 Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Theme: Regime structure
Translated from the Portuguese by Benjamin Brooks
The Itamaraty Palace had a central role in the espionage and repression practiced during the Brazilian military regime (1964-1985), where the Foreign Information Center (CIEX) operated as a division of the Ministry for Foreign Relations (MRE) tied to the National Information Service (SNI). The principal function of this body was to produce information about foreign issues, and its employees were diplomats at various levels based in several countries. The National Intelligence System (SISNI) was launched in 1964 with the creation of the National Intelligence Service (SNI). Based on a project by Golbery do Couto de Silva, it grew in order to consolidate the new military regime. The SNI quickly gained powers and became a key agency in the regime. Its first leader was Golbery himself, who earned the title Minister of the State. In addition to having broad resources at his disposal, Golbery led an organization that could act without publishing reports on its actions, unlike other prominent public agencies. To summarize, the Service did not have any external checks.
In the following years, the SNI started to branch out, inserting itself into all areas of public administration. As part of this strategy, the CIEX was created in 1966 through a secret decree signed by the Secretary General of Itamaraty, Manoei Pio Corrêa. It was not part of the MRE’s official organizational chart, and even though it was associated with the ministry, it fell under the SNI’s supervision. Similarly, the former Department of Security for Civil Ministries changed its name to the Security and Intelligence Divisions (DSI) and would be installed across all thirteen existing ministries. The various divisions served under the titular directors of the ministries as well as under the SNI itself. The military ministries also contained intelligence agencies. Among them, the Army Information Center (CIE), the Aeronautical Information and Security Center (CISA) and the Naval Information Center (CENIMAR) all undertook security operations, unlike the other intelligence agencies mentioned. Together, these State agencies came to be known as the “intelligence community.”
After the 1964 coup, Pio Corrêa, took over the Brazilian embassy in Montevideo. He would directly participate with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations surveilling exiled Brazilians and receive support from the CIA base in Montevideo to infiltrate groups of exiles. In January of 1966, Pio Corrêa was named as the Secretary General of Itamaraty during the Juracy Magalhães administration, a position he remained in until March 1967. As secretary general, he managed matters related to international security. In his memoir, he recounts his various meetings with the National Security Advisor held during his tenure and stayed in close contact with General Golbery do Couto e Silva.
During the military dictatorship, the exchange of diplomatic information, through telegrams, ordinances, and memos, came to serve as one of the regime’s instruments in combating international communism. The Itamaraty started acting as an intelligence agency for the State. The CIEX monitored the actions of Brazilian exiles abroad, and reported back to the Brazilian authorities. At the same time, they collected strategic political, economic, and military information about nations that interested Brazil. It typically followed the foreign press and the publications written by Brazilians of their own exiles. Nevertheless, publications written by Brazilians abroad are noteworthy in their condemnation of the regime’s use of torture and other repressive practices. The main function of CIEX and of DSI-MRE was to produce information to feed into SISNI. These groups routinely produced reports about international organizations, monitored the regime’s opponents (Brazilian or foreign), controlled the issuing of passports and visas, spied on foreigners within Brazil, the regulation of land and air migration, incorporating its own functionary body, investigated international crimes – in sum, its purview included everything that could put national security at risk. Diplomats collaborated with the system, conducting routine activities like writing classified reports about the day-to-day of exiles abroad. Beyond this, in international forums, they defended the need for such repressive actions against the supposed “communist threat.”
In this way, the importance of CIEX’s observations about a given country were directly proportional to the presence of Brazilians in that place. This is seen, for example, in the increase of intelligence on European countries as a function of Brazilian migration to the continent, primarily after the Chilean coup on September 11, 1973, and then a decrease after migration lessened with the passing of the Amnesty Law, and exiles gradually returned to Brazil. The organization steadily developed a sophisticated system for the collection, analysis, and distribution of relevant political information, and of exiles’ intimate relationships. Foreigners that took action against the regime were also surveilled, and one of the forms of control used against them was the manipulation of visas by Itamaraty.
The confidential documents of the Brazilian intelligence agencies – the result of specially trained professionals – are mostly concise, analytical reports aimed to help government authorities make decisions, and were even used by the president of the republic. One of the primary functions of these agencies was to record the current statuses of opponents to the regime with the supposed goal of guaranteeing national security. Reading the documents reveals the methodical practices of the individuals who made this system work, a system designed not only to gather information but also to produce information that would justify the persecution of its adversaries.
The reports, in general, begin with a standard heading that states the document’s degree of confidentiality, the date, the subject, the agencies to which it would be distributed, and even an assessment of how credible the information was. The circulation of these papers amongst the agencies within the SISNI 一 and even among other repressive states agencies 一 captures the meaning of the expression “intelligence community,” a term that many agents closely identified with.
During the military dictatorship, there were two major waves of emigration by Brazilian exiles. The first took place in the wake of the coup and was composed mostly of leftist political figures, as well as journalists and intellectuals who shared certain proximity to leaders of the deposed government in the previous democratic government. These were, in general, older men with clearly defined professions, associated with political parties or unions, who identified with the agenda of broad-based reforms that the coup halted. Respected politicians and intellectuals were in this group, and they viewed their exile as the defeat of the plans they had for Brazil.
Although some of the exiles from this first phase went directly to France, they mostly concentrated in Montevideo, which became, initially, an exile-capital. Their decision to exile themselves was also tied to the possibility of continuing their activism and planning their return.
After the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) was established in 1968, resulting in the reorganization of the regime’s repressive apparatus, another group of Brazilians began to exile themselves. This group was composed mostly of young activists who started out in the student movement and who then left those groups to join the armed resistance. These individuals were very critical of traditional party practices, above all the positions that the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) [05] defended, and wanted to institute new forms of political participation closely linked to revolutionary operations. For them, the exile was a fundamental moment in their professional and personal formation.
Chilean socialism, under the Popular Unity (UP) government of President Allende beginning in 1970, made Santiago extremely attractive for Brazilian exiles. The military coup in Chile spawned the departure of a second wave of Brazilians to Europe, particularly to Paris, and to Lisbon after the Carnation Revolution. The expulsion to another continent represented a new phase of the exile. The idea of returning was less present than in the first wave of exile, and Brazilians abroad faced clear challenges regarding language and culture, making it difficult for them to engage with European society. With the beginning of the decolonization processes across Africa, new possibilities emerged for Brazilians. Essentially, it was uncommon for exiles to stay in just one country, in large part due to their challenges adapting socially and professionally.
When the slow process of political opening began in Brazil during the Ernesto Geisel government, the activities of CIEX remained largely unaffected, and continued functioning without interruption, reporting directly to other branches of the intelligence community. This was despite the fact that there was a gradual dismantling of the agencies within the regime’s repressive apparatus. CIEX operated with considerable independence within Itamaraty and, despite being staffed by officials of the MRE, it remained under SNI’s control.
A large part of the government saw the maintenance of a robust intelligence service as indispensable. One of the first measures taken by Geisel was to appoint the former director of the Military Cabinet under President Médici, João Figueiredo, as head of the SNI. Figueiredo understood the inner workings of the regime more than anyone, and although his job was to lead a secret organization out in public, he consistently acted to preserve and prioritize the intelligence community.
The documents that spies produced suggest their commitment to multiply the possible threats to security in Brazil. They worked to stimulate increased repression and to legitimize their own existence as an organization. Thus, the SNI kept its important role during the Figueiredo administration. However, the radical elements of the intelligence community had already been substantially discredited. Even so, it was only in 1985 that the CIEX stopped functioning, and five more years would pass before the SNI went defunct under the Fernando Collor de Melo administration.
The self-legitimizing espionage that the CIEX carried out even had repercussions within the intelligence organization itself. In 1969, the then first secretary Vinicius de Moraes was forced to retire from active service after alleging that he was a nightclub singer for more than a year and then, for another year and a half, showing up to the ministry only to collect his paycheck. Charged with “bohemian excess and lack of diplomacy,” and shortly after, as a “little vagrant poet,” he was definitively cut from the ranks of the Itamaraty. This was one of the first forced resignations after the issue of AI-5.
The Vinícius de Moraes Space opened in 2006, in the Itamaraty Palace, as part of a ceremony that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) held to bestow him with posthumous reintegration into the ranks of the Foreign Relations Ministry. This recognition came almost four decades after he had been cleared of the charges brought against him as part of the “witch hunt” that followed the passing of AI-5, in December 1968.
During the ceremony, the Alexandre de Gusmão Foundation (FUNAG) published the book Embaixador do Brasil (Brazil’s Ambassador), with testimony from diplomats about Moraes’ life and work. In the book’s introduction, Minister of Foreign Relations Celso Amorim (2003-2010) declared the principal aim of the reparation act was to:
Reverse the injustice perpetrated by the military regime that prematurely expelled the former first secretary as part of the “witch hunt” in public service. […] Even though he was a competent diplomat who diligently fulfilled his functions in Itamaraty, he was a victim of the intolerance that characterized the regime (Brazil’s Ambassador, 2010, p. 7-8).