Helpful books
Alvarez, Sonia E. Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women’s Movements in Transition Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Alves, Márcio Moreira. A Grain of Mustard Seed: The Awakening of the Brazilian Revolution. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1973.
Alves, Maria Helena Moreira. State and Opposition in Military Brazil. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.
Archdiocese of São Paulo (Brazil). Torture in Brazil: A Shocking Report on the Pervasive Use of Torture by Brazilian Military Governments, 1964-1979 / secretly Prepared by the Archdiocese of São Paulo. [Brazil, Nunca Mas] Jaime Wright, trans.; edited with a new preface by Joan Dassin. Austin: University of Texas, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1985
Atencio, Rebecca J. Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014.
Bacchus, Wilfred. A. Mission in Mufti: Brazil’s Military Regimes, 1964-1985. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.Bacha, Edmar L. and Herbert S. Klein. Social Change in Brazil, 1945-1985, The Incomplete Transition. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.
Baden, Nancy T. The Muffled Cries: The Writer and Literature in Authoritarian Brazil, 1964-1985. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999.
Black, Jan Knippers. United States Penetration of Brazil. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977.
Calirman, Claudia. Brazilian art under dictatorship: Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio, and Cildo Meireles. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.
Dunn, Christopher. Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2001.
Green, James N. We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. (click here for the website)
Hanchard, Michael George. Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, 1945-1988. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Huggins, Martha. Political Policing: The United States and Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.
Huggins, Martha K. Mika Haritos-Tatouros and Philip G. Zimbardo. Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002.
Keck, Margaret E. The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Kinzo, Maria D’Alva Gil. Legal Opposition Politics under Authoritarian Rule in Brazil. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.
Langguth, A.J. Hidden Terrors. New York, Pantheon Books, 1978.
Leacock, Ruth. Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961-1969.
Kent State University Press, 1990.
Maybury-Lewis, Biorn. The Politics of the Possible: The Brazilian Rural Workers’ Trade Union Movement, 1964-1985. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.
Page, Joseph A. The Revolution that Never Was: Northeast Brazil, 1955-1964. New York: Grossman, 1972.
Parker, Phyllis. Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, 1964. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979.
Pereira, Anthony, W. The End of the Peasantry: The Rural Labor Movement in Northeast Brazil, 1961-1988. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.
Serbin, Kenneth P. Secret Dialogues: Church-State Relations, Torture, and Social Justice in Authoritarian Brazil. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000.
Skidmore, Thomas E. The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-85. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Smith, Anne-Marie. A Forced Agreement: Press Acquiescence to Censorship in Brazil. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.
Stepan, Alfred, The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.
Weschler, Lawrence. A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers. With a new Afterword. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Helpful films
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, in Portuguese O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias: The story of a young boy, Mauro, whose politically active parents must go underground in 1970 to avoid political persecution. They leave their son with his grandfather in the Jewish neighborhood of São Paulo. It is a touching coming-of-age story that incorporates Brazilians’ attitudes about the World Cup in 1970. Click here for the trailer.
Four Days in September, in Portuguese O Que É Isso, Companheiro? Nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, this film is based on a book by a former guerrilla, Fernando Gabeira, who recounts the kidnapping of the U.S. ambassador in September 1969 and the demand of the release of fifteen political prisoners. Click here for the trailer.
The Day That Lasted 21 Years, in Portuguese O Dia que Durou 21 Anos: A documentary film made by Camilo Tavares, the son of one of the fifteen political prisoners released in exchange for the freedom of the U.S. ambassador, it focuses on U.S. involvement in the 1964 coup and Operation Brother Sam. Click here for the trailer.
Brazil: A Report on Torture: This is a documentary made by two U.S. filmmakers who interviewed in Santiago, Chile, some of the political prisoners who were released after the kidnapping of the Swiss ambassador in December 1970. It contains scenes of the reenactment of torture, and can be disturbing. Click here for the full movie on YouTube.
Batismo de sangue: The story of the involvement of Dominican brothers in the revolutionary underground movement in the 1960s. Contains torture scenes that can be disturbing. Click here for the trailer.
Céu Aberto: Documentary about the transition to democracy and the sudden illness of Tancredo Neves, selected by Congress to be the first civilian president in twenty years, who dies before being inaugurated.
Diário de uma busca: Fascinating documentary made by the daughter of a revolutionary who accompanies her parents into exile and deals with the effects of having lived underground as a child. It also addresses her relationship with her father who dies under strange circumstances when he returns to Brazil during the democratic period. Click here for the trailer.
Vlado: Thirty Years Later: Documentary about Vladimir Herzog, a journalist linked to the Communist Party, who is arrested and then dies under torture. The military claimed that he committed suicide in prison. The film looks at the story of his arrest and death thirty years later. Click here for the trailer.
Topografia de um desnudo: Film about a series of deaths of street people in 1968 at the time that Queen Elizabeth visiting Brazil in late 1968. Are they training sessions by Death Squads or an effort to “clean up” the city before the arrival of the British monarch? Click here for the trailer.
Zuzu Angel: Based on the true story of internationally recognized fashion designer Zuzu Angel, whose son Stuart Angel, a member of MR-8 is arrested by the military in 1971 and disappears. The film follows her attempts to find his whereabouts and her mysterious death in a car accident that subsequent commissions have determined was actually caused by the military. Click here for the full movie.