ABSTRACT
This study addresses the debate on the détente project prior to the Ernesto Geisel government in Brazil (specifically from 1972 to 1974) among the organic elites of the military-corporate regime installed in 1964. We will show how the development of a gradualist strategy involved from conservative intellectuals linked to the US establishment (such as Samuel Huntington) to figures such as the Brazilian political scientist Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos. To this end, we used the Annals of the Senate, the press, and documents researched in the CPDOC/FGV-Rio collection. This study concluded that the elaboration of controlled decompression shows the rationalized nature of the liberalizing project of the last military governments as part of the long tradition of preventive and permanent counter-revolution in Brazil.
KEYWORDS:
Political transition; 1964 business-military coup; Political détente; Samuel Huntington; Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos; Preventive counterrevolution