International Law and Order Enforcement: Police Assistance Programs and Politics in US-Brazil Relations

Abstract

Police Assistance programs have been a permanent part of US foreign policy towards Latin America, with Brazil being one of the most important beneficiaries. Throughout their history, they have been oriented according to changing agendas, from anticommunism to the war on drugs. Based on documentary sources and specialized literature, we analyze the politics of US policing in Brazil, reconstituting agendas and interests that motivated police assistance programs through the lens of critical police studies in IR. In doing so, we demonstrate that police cooperation is historically a crucial part of US-Brazil bilateral relations, despite the unfrequent prominence in the literature.

police cooperation; international policing; foreign policy; United States of America; Brazil

Introduction

Training and assistance programs for foreign police forces have been a permanent part of US international policy vis-à-vis Latin America since the early decades of the 20th century. As an alternative means of intervention, the practice has been regarded as instrumental for the dissemination of social control mechanisms in the light of the US’s own national interests and security agendas. Throughout history, many challenges and narratives have oriented these programs. In this paper, we seek to understand how the US government formulated its police assistance programs in Brazil as a means of universalizing its perspectives and realizing its interests.

Since the 1930s, one of the key missions of the crusade against communism was the development of programs to modernize Latin America’s police forces, Brazil’s included, with a view to developing their capacity to contain the expansion of the insurgent groups that were destabilizing governments in the region ( Huggins 1998 ). The aim was to disseminate a hardline anti-communist stance in Brazilian police institutions, build an intelligence network oriented towards internal security, and guarantee the longevity of allied governments that could safeguard US hegemony over its zone of influence ( Kuzmarov 2009 ).

In the 1970s, such programs gained a new impetus, replacing or overlapping their predecessors, when Richard Nixon and his successors declared the so-called “War on Drugs,” whose battlefields extended internationally. Latin America occupied a prominent place in this context, as it is home to key countries involved in the production and transit of many of the illegal drugs consumed in the US. Brazil was a relevant recipient of police assistance throughout this period. It was initially seen as a focus for insurgent groups; later, as a route for international cocaine trafficking. Since then, other “threats”, such as terrorism, money laundering and corruption have also been added to the list.

There is a lean but dense literature devoted to studying US foreign police assistance programs ( Nadelmann 1993 ; Kuzmarov 2009 , 2012 ; Schrader 2019 ), some of which focus on Latin America (e.g., Becker 2017 ; Ricart 2018 , 2019 ), including those with a specific focus on Brazil (e.g., Black 1977 ; Huggins 1998 ; Villela 2022). This literature argues that the US, as a dominant regional power, has made use of its ability to spread policing and social control discourses, agendas, and practices internationally ( Andreas and Nadelmann 2006 ). It describes campaigns against left-wing insurgents ( Huggins 1998 ; Friesendorf 2016), and transnational crime ( Andreas and Nadelmann 2006 ), especially drug-related crimes ( Ricart 2018 ; Villela 2022).

What makes the US unique in this process is the extent to which successive governments have striven to globally disseminate their policing norms, procedures, and imperatives, which makes it a state policy. No other country has devoted so much diplomatic effort and financial largess to the collection of evidence, the investigation of corruption and other types of crime in foreign countries by training and funding their police forces and pressuring their governments to criminalize certain practices by adapting their justice systems to align with its own ( Andreas and Nadelmann 2006 ).

Scholars have sought to understand the rationale underlying this process. For some, the US hegemonic position has allowed it to internationalize its priority security agendas by building an international consensus in harmony with its worldview ( Andreas and Nadelmann 2006 ; Bowling and Sheptycki 2012 ). For others, cooperation with the police has been leveraged by US governments for political and economic ends, sometimes behind a mask of benevolent and generous discourse ( Huggins 1998 ; Kuzmarov 2009 ; Schrader 2019 ). A third, smaller group cites an alignment of interests with local political and economic elites, who are interested in the same agenda as the US and keen to receive assistance from it (Hönke and Müller 2012).

We seek to contribute to the area of study in two ways: first, demonstrating the relevance that police cooperation occupies in the historic bilateral relationship between the US and Brazil. Professionalizing, training, assisting, and connecting with the Brazilian police was evaluated by the US as a way of influencing local politics, keeping aligned governments in power and a security policy consistent with their agendas and interests. Second, this paper aims to contribute to the still lean literature dedicated to policing at an international level, bringing a historical description that aims to demonstrate a continuum from the war on communism to the war on drugs in Brazil, as a typical case, indicating some paths for the understanding of US interests and its ability to spread its presence among foreign police forces.

Our hypothesis is that the US was seeking to diffuse and promote social order in Brazil, aiming at guaranteeing its own national interests, such as keeping allied governments in power as well as promoting an institutional environment favorable to international trade and investment. That said, we aim to understand how the US “uses the police to police the world” ( Schrader 2019 ). To understand how that project was received, we are also interested in understanding to what extent the US police found permeability at the governmental level and among such Brazilian police institutions, as they were also interested in accessing gains by means of such cooperation.

To support our argument, we carried out documentary research using primary government sources that proposed, described, and evaluated the assistance and training programs promoted by the US. Complementarily, we also drew on documentary research previously carried out by scholars in the area, which served as secondary sources in understanding the evolution of US police assistance programs ( Huggins 1998 ; Nadelmann 1993 ; Kuzmarov 2009 , 2012 ; Schrader 2019 ; Ricart 2018 ). With this, we seek to systematize data already collected in the literature and make them dialogue with new data collected from primary sources with the objective of historically reconstituting the process at stake, focusing on their expressions in Brazil.

From an analytical point of view, we mobilized the field of police studies in International Relations. From them, we instrumentalized tools to interpret policing politics, its dimensions of power and the role that assistance programs play for foreign policy agendas (e.g., Andreas and Nadelmann 2006 ; Neocleous 2000 Schrader 2019 ). We support the critical perspective offered by Reiner (2000) , for whom policing is a form of governing the social order. Therefore, we cannot interpret police training programs uncritically as problem-solving solutions,but identify the underlying power relations and political purposes ( Schrader 2019 ).

Following the same line, we understand that power relations permeate the knowledge and practices of policing diffused through the circulation of police forces internationally. By promoting the interaction of its police forces with their foreign peers through assistance and training programs, the US has sought to join international politics and local police power ( Schrader 2019 ). This is not without resistance and internal conflicts, which means that the US intention has not always been successfully achieved, in the sense of obtaining loyalty from those beneficiary police officers. Even so, we conclude that forming foreign police is a permanent strategy of US foreign policy, which historically reinforced Brazilian police’s dependence on knowledge and technologies produced by the US.

The paper is organized into three sections, besides this introduction. First, we reconstruct the historical process of formulating foreign police assistance programs by US governments in the light of the US’s foreign policy agenda for Latin America. We demonstrate how such programs are aimed at the fabrication and maintenance of a stable social order aligned with US interests in the hemisphere. In the second section, we focus on Brazil, reconstructing the role that police assistance programs played in the realization of US interests and bilateral relations between both countries, considering the reaction of different governments to them. In addition to highlighting intergovernmental relations, we seek to demonstrate how connections between the police forces are part of a strategy to internalize US priority agendas. In the third section, we conclude the work by summarizing the main points made in the article and indicating paths for potential future research

Shaping the social order in Latin America

Policing is essentially aimed at ensuring social order ( Reiner 2000 ), which historically means that “the history of police is the history of state power” ( Neocleous 2000 , XI). From this notion, international policing can be understood as a tool for certain states to exercise power internationally, fabricating and maintaining social order over other governments and societies (Bowling and Sheptycki 2002). That is, exercising some type of control or influence over the police forces of other states through training and assistance can be a key element for the exercise of international hegemonic power (Dezalay and Garth 2011). Huggins (1998) recalls that, although US governments have historically presented their police assistance programs as modalities of technical and depoliticized cooperation, such programs were formulated as another front in the US’s dominant presence in Latin America. That means, “in every sense, all policing is political” ( Huggins 1998 , 17).

Especially when there is an inequality in the distribution of international power between both countries, Huggins (1998 , 20) states, “the beneficiary country has a subordinate position in relation to the nation that provides the training”. That means police assistance can be an instrument to “shape the policy of the host nation”, although in many cases the country providing the training can benefit from lessons learned abroad. In US-Brazil relations, the asymmetry of power is clear, as resources and assistance and training programs are unilaterally directed.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the international presence of US law enforcement agencies was still small, but not non-existent ( Nadelmann 1993 ). As their country emerged as a dominant regional power, US authorities began to look to Latin America as their zone of influence and a strategic market for international trade. The fabrication and maintenance of a capitalist and business-friendly social order became paramount. In other words, ensuring that police power was fully exercised in Latin American countries became a fundamental objective of US interests.

This was also a reaction to the growing presence of other disputed police influences in Latin America and Brazil. At the beginning of the century, French forces had a relevant presence in São Paulo and other cities in Uruguay and Peru, offering assistance and training. In this same period, German forces helped in the reformulation of the Chilean and Bolivian police and Italian military sent training missions to Ecuadorian and Bolivian police ( Huggins 1998 ).

In this period, Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) formulated a foreign policy directive known as the “Roosevelt Corollary”, a reinvention of the Monroe Doctrine that positioned the US as the only “police” in the Western Hemisphere. The aggressive speech and interventionist approach that the US directed towards Latin America was also known as the “big stick policy.” Roosevelt had the US take on the responsibility of protecting the hemisphere against aggressions or advances from Europe. Brazil in that context was evaluated as a stable country that could contribute as a guarantor of the Monroe Doctrine and was not merely one of its objects ( Teixeira 2014 ).

Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) reaffirmed the importance of ensuring “security for commerce” in Latin America, which included keeping it free from European interference and able to guarantee its own order and police power ( Gilderhus 1980 ). Likewise, strengthening the internal security forces of Latin America was seen as a strategy for guaranteeing US interests. To this end, the War Department installed and developed police forces in Caribbean countries, which were considered an unstable and strategic region ( Teixeira 2014 ). Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Nicaragua received US assistance to develop police forces, ensuring stability and security for US investments ( Huggins 1998 ).

This experiment progressively expanded throughout Latin America, incorporating new agendas prioritized by the US government. In Brazil, the rise of communist movements and parties – such as that led by Luís Carlos Prestes – boosted the US government’s involvement with the Brazilian police, at the request of officials from the Vargas government itself during the “Estado Novo” period (1937-1945). On the eve of WWII, pro-Nazi groups emerged in the US and in the rest of the Americas, which also began to worry government officials.

In 1940, the Roosevelt administration gave the FBI responsibility for intelligence in the Western Hemisphere. The FBI then became responsible for developing secret service organizations and establishing close ties with key figures in law enforcement ( Huggins 1998 ). To this end, the Special Intelligence Service (SIS) was created in 1940, as an FBI agency purposed with penetrating the police systems of Latin American countries to monitor the activities of communist and Nazi groups in the region, once the Germans established espionage networks in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico ( Becker 2017 ). Its role was to collect information, investigate possible German infiltrators or spies, and establish ties with local law enforcement agents, without necessarily relying on the support of the highest echelons of the host government ( Federal Bureau of Investigation 2005 ).

In the same period, Roosevelt formulated the so-called “good neighbor policy,” with the objective of guaranteeing support from political authorities and winning “hearts and minds” in Latin America, the effect of which was the marked cultural and economic penetration of the US in the hemisphere ( Moura 1991 ). The assistance programs for the police and the effort to sensitize Brazilian agents to Nazi and communist threats were part of the plan. The experience and lessons learned from SIS would set the stage for future programs in the context of the Cold War ( Federal Bureau of Investigation 2005 ).

The end of WWII not only reconfigured the international system, now shaped around the bipolar dispute between the US and the USSR, but also consolidated and reinforced the importance of Latin America as a US zone of influence. In this period, police assistance programs grew in density and scope with the aim of exporting Western-style institutions and ensuring the continuity in power of allied governments ( Kuzmarov 2009 ). The Cuban Revolution (1959), particularly, warned the Eisenhower and Kennedy governments, which then intensified anti-communist efforts in the Americas ( Bandeira 2011 ). The US focused on strengthening the military and police capabilities of pro-Western regimes, seen as fundamental to maintaining the stability necessary for capitalist economic development ( Kuzmarov 2009 ).

To that end, in 1962, the most important police training program of that period was created under the aegis of the Office of Public Safety (OPS), an entity subordinated to U.S. Aid and CIA, which coordinated the foreign police officer training. The objective was to develop foreign police forces’ ability to detect criminal or insurgent individuals or organizations and to neutralize them (Seigel 2018). Led by a former CIA agent who had directed similar programs in Japan, Byron Engle, the operation’s mission was to ensure law and order in the beneficiary countries, “without unnecessary bloodshed and an obtrusive display of the bayonet” (cited in Kuzmarov 2009 ). Nonetheless, it was seen as “the first line of defense against those influences which seek to destroy free societies through the erosion of public order” (cited in Schrader 2019 , 20). Despite the aspired discretion, the US simultaneously supported a series of coups and right-wing dictatorships in Latin America, aiming to ward off Soviet influences.

During this period, President Kennedy also ordered the creation of an International Police Academy (IPA) in Washington DC, through which the OPS provided training in technical innovations and skills such as fingerprinting, intelligence gathering, interrogation and criminal investigations, counternarcotics, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism ( Schrader 2019 ). The learning and modernization acquired in such training meant, in the dictatorships of Latin America, a reinforcement of repression and violations of the human rights of movements considered subversive ( Huggins 1998 ).

The exercise of order maintenance in Latin America was a fundamental part of the US hegemonic presumption in the hemisphere. Through the training of foreign police forces, the US sought to influence the passage of legislation and policies within the jurisdiction of foreign countries, while passing domestic laws with extraterritorial scope; this process was not disinterested ( Weissman 2013 ). In the opinion of critics, policies to guarantee and maintain the social order, which presupposed control over certain social groups and illicit activities, aimed to guarantee better conditions for private investments and the expansion of US multinational corporations ( Paley 2015 ; Avilés 2008 . In the evaluation of Schrader (2019 , 14) “counterinsurgency was imperial. It occurred in dozens of countries that fell into the national-security purview where no US troops ever fired a gun”, but it produced prisons, killings, and disappearances.

Despite its alleged “discretion”, the systematic human rights violations committed by police officers trained and supported by such programs had repercussions in the US Congress, which decided to enact the Foreign Assistance Act (1973) prohibiting US agencies from using military or economic assistance funds to finance foreign police forces, citing the main ongoing programs. On the other hand, there were exceptions to the rule, such as programs aimed at combating drugs and terrorism ( US Government Accountability Office 1992 ). President Richard Nixon increased the Department of State’s anti-drug budget while breaking with police training programs associated with torture and murder practices ( Kuzmarov 2009 ).

This was the moment at which Nixon announced the “war on drugs.” The OPS experience contributed to the internationalization of drug control efforts, as the US police were already internationalized ( Schrader 2019 ). Since then, the US assistance was mainly focused on Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and later Mexico, major illicit drug producers ( Seelke et al. 2011 ). At this turning point, we can observe the overlapping and progressive replacement of the agendas that underpinned police assistance programs. A federal police force was created and exclusively dedicated to this purpose, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which began to lead the training and interactions with foreign police. By then, the use of the police and repression to guarantee public order was already part of the US repertoire in Latin America, a laboratory for the antidrug policing implemented in US cities ( Schrader 2019 ).

Following this trend, Ronald Reagan developed the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), whose task was to “provide international development assistance that supports both national security and foreign policy objectives” ( Justice Department 2021 ). In this context, the “war on drugs metamorphosed into the Cold War” ( Marcy 2010 , 84). During this period, the term “narcoterrorism” was coined. It suggested a link between Latin American insurgent groups and drug traffickers, along the lines of the FARC, the Sendero Luminoso or even some leftist governments, such as Nicaragua’s Sandinistas. Media-reported scandals revealed that the CIA had aided the right-wing paramilitary group known as the Contras in illegal drug transactions aimed at raising funds ( US Congress 1987 ).

At the end of the Cold War, the space that communism occupied as an imperative of US foreign policy was replaced by a preoccupation with drug trafficking and other transnational crimes ( Andreas and Price 2001 ). The 1990s represented a transition from a national security agenda based on State threats, to a broader field of possibilities, which could include such non-State threats as drug trafficking (Pereira 2015). Thus, the decline of geopolitical conflict led to a revision of US security interests, which, according to Andreas and Price (2001) , came to be defined more in terms of crime fighting than war fighting.

From the 1980s to the 2000s, the counterdrug assistance to Latin America rose significantly, specially to the Andean Region, Mexico, Central America, but also Brazil, a major transit country (Seelke et al 2011). As a consistent literature attests, the US agencies influenced all aspects of drug policies and enforcement institutions in countries such as Mexico (2018), Colombia ( Viana 2022 ), Brazil (Villela 2022) and other Latin American countries ( Ricart 2019 ), which developed emulating aspects of the US experiences according to its own backgrounds, although not without resistance and conflict of interests.

Since then, antidrug programs have become the main front of US international policing in Latin America. This transition of agendas required a bureaucratic reorganization on the part of the US – but it guaranteed the continuity of programs seen as fundamental to US strategic interests. On the one hand, this transformation allowed the US to give a new sense of legitimacy to programs that had been widely derided, incorporating new concerns that had gained prominence in society. On the other hand, it also allowed the US governments to disseminate new agendas around social problems of interest.

In a first sense, it is possible to interpret the transformative lexicon that legitimized assistance programs to foreign police forces but sustained over the same US foreign policy interests. In Kuzmarov’s (2009 , 221) assessment, “the war on drugs served the same primary function that the OPS did during the 1960s and early 1970s, namely, to promote counterinsurgency and social control in the developing world under the guise of humanitarianism.” In a second sense, it is worth emphasizing the US capacity to disseminate its security agendas, which have greatly changed over time. As observed by Andreas and Nadelmann (2006 , 157) “where once anticommunism represented the principal moral imperative of U.S. foreign policy, drug enforcement and other criminal justice objectives emerged as the new moral imperatives in the last decade of the twentieth century.” Both movements reveal a dimension of power and dominance, demonstrated by the ability to shape the police missions and practices of other countries according to their own interests and concerns. This reinforces our view that these programs cannot be understood as mere problem solving, but as an active effort to build consensus at an international level (Hönke and Müller 2012).

During this period, the US turned to Latin America on basically two fronts: the expansion of the economic liberalization model and investment in the “war on drugs” (Andreas 1990). According to President George H.W. Bush “the source of the most dangerous drugs threatening our nation is primarily international. Few foreign threats cost the US economy more” ( Federal Government of the United States 1989 , 61). President George W. Bush sought to “adjust economies, strengthen laws, defeat terrorist organizations and cut the supply of drugs” in Latin American countries ( Federal Government of the United States 2002 ). As Delgado-Ramos et al. (2011) argue, both agendas aimed to promote “good order” in transnational economic interests. For this reason, Dawn Paley (2015) defines the “war on drugs” as a “neoliberal Trojan Horse.”

Colombia and Mexico are certainly the most relevant beneficiaries of the US international “war on drugs”. As Paley (2015) critically points out, the focus on protection of strategic areas on Colombian territory, such as minerals and oil reserves, resulted in a significant increase in foreign direct investment, especially from US corporations. The plan is nowadays evaluated as a success story, especially after the Peace Agreement (2016). Not by accident, the president’s adviser for “post-conflict” affairs was a police officer trained by the DEA and the FBI throughout his career ( Viana 2022 ). This same experience was replicated in Mexico through the Merida Initiative, launched in 2006. Most of these funds, also denounces Paley (2015) , were intended for the purchase of manufactured equipment and contracting with private security companies in the US. Meanwhile, that effort has not effectively reduced crime-related violence in those countries. Thus, both plans also highlight a political component in the US war on drugs.

Once again, police assistance programs sought to bring about the internal pacification of countries in the region, guaranteeing a stable and inviting economic environment for international investments and the expansion of multinational corporations benefiting from free trade structural economic reforms. In this assessment, the US played a key role in the creation and maintenance of order in these countries by promoting reforms in the field of justice, promoting democracy, implementing the free market and important economic reforms for the entrance of transnational corporations ( Avilés 2008 ).

Thus, assistance to the police aimed at exchanging technical and specialized knowledge, promoting the reproduction of recommended practices and the emulation of codes of conduct by the receiving country. All this was aimed at guaranteeing the interests and priority agendas defined by the US. As an important formulator of the “problem” of drugs as a threat to international security, the US police have also become those who think and formulate the “answers” for their control, spreading their models of policing in other countries (Edwards and Gill 2002). This process did not take place only in the form of coercive imposition, but recurrently at the request and interest of local elites and authorities who demanded this cooperation, evaluating their peers as holders of advanced knowledge.

Financial aid packages, training of police and justice professionals, development of police institutions, the proposing of joint operations, political pressure for the approval of norms aimed at controlling transnational crime and drug trafficking were some of the initiatives led by the DEA in the hemisphere. The aim was to harmonize the justice and policing system in the region, which, despite their national contexts and the diverse interests of local actors, had as its goal the creation and maintenance of a social order in line with US security imperatives.

The politics of US policing in Brazil

Until the 1930s, the Brazilian state police offices constituted themselves as small armies, called “public forces”, whose function was not only to maintain local order but to counter authoritarian aspirations from the federal government. São Paulo organized the most developed police force in the country, whose contingent exceeded that of the federal armed forces. Its professionalization was aided by the French Army, which shared the most modern lessons on policing at that time. When Getúlio Vargas installed an authoritarian government in 1937, his plan was to centralize power under the command of the federal government. This plan included the creation of a Federal Police and standardization of the “Military Police” subnationally ( Bicudo 2000 ). It is precisely the moment the US policing becomes relevant, especially in the formation of the so-called “political police”.

The first assistance programs for the Brazilian police were inaugurated precisely during this period. Along the 1930s, US officials were concerned that Latin American leaders did not recognize the dimensions of the communist danger. Vargas himself was accused of prioritizing internal security, delegating the fight against communism to the background ( Huggins 1998 ). For this reason, working to raise awareness of local law enforcement authorities was seen as fundamental. Hugo Bethlem, an army major appointed to head the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS), was supported by the US embassy and counted on its help in collecting material for the publication of a thousand copies of an “anti-communist bulletin,” with the purpose of raising awareness and training local agents ( Huggins 1998 ).

During this period, the US embassy cooperated with the DOPS in the capital, ever attentive to the actions of the Brazilian Communist Party, led by Luís Carlos Prestes. His arrest was celebrated and rewarded by the embassy. The Brazilian officers responsible for his capture, Henrique de Miranda Correia and Francisco Jullien, were praised for their cooperation. They were invited by President Roosevelt to visit the Washington D.C. and New York police departments ( Cancelli 1993 ). Later, Jullien was also rewarded with stays at the Chicago and NY police departments and a visit to the FBI headquarters in Washington. Such trips were seen as unique opportunities for these police officers, professionally and personally, meaning prestige and power among its peers ( Motta 2010 ). The same captain was also in charge of the arrest and delivery of Olga Benário Prestes, Prestes’ wife, to the German Gestapo, with US knowledge ( Huggins 1998 ).

Brazil was recognized by the US as one of the main centers of Nazi activity in Latin America ( Federal Bureau of Investigation 2005 ). Concerned about the situation, Brazil’s 1938 foreign minister, Oswaldo Aranha, asked the FBI for help in the training and organization of a Brazilian secret service, directly subordinated to his ministry. At his request, the FBI sent Brazil Edgard K. Thompson, who had already performed a similar service in Puerto Rico, and who would later be sent to Ecuador and Colombia ( Becker 2017 ).

During the WWII, the US launched the Special Intelligence Service (SIS), coordinated by the FBI to penetrate Latin American police forces for the purpose of collecting information and investigating Nazi and communist activities ( Becker 2017 ). In Brazil, the SIS collaborated with the DOPS investigations and interrogations and assisted in the installation of a Secret Service in Rio de Janeiro, supervised by an American attaché, giving the US the opportunity “to know everything that was happening in the Brazilian politics high echelon” (DOPS 1941 apud. Huggins 1998 ). According to Thompson, these new national police had a strong political character, whose function would be to “keep the government in power,” but without the FBI name being associated with it ( Huggins 1998 ). US agents, including Ambassador Jefferson Caffrey, were so influential that they even recommended the admission, promotion, and dismissal of RJ police officers (ibid). This program played an important role in the training of the Brazilian intelligence service.

Brazil’s participation in WWII consolidated the country’s political alignment with the US, including among the Brazilian military class, who emerged re-equipped and trained by the US Army ( Black 1977 ). As Carlos Fico (2008) recalls, General Castello Branco – the first president of Brazil’s military dictatorship – became friends with the US soldier Vernon A. Walters on the battlefields in Italy. This friendship, years later, earned Castello Branco US military support in the 1964 coup. However, immediately after the end of the war, the Dutra government (1946-51) saw itself as deserving of US recognition as a reward for sending troops. This expectation was frustrated, as Latin America was relegated to the background of US economic and diplomatic interests. Even so, weapons supplies, and training programs were maintained with the aim of cultivating political alignment, counterrevolutionary zeal, and dependence in the countries of the region ( Fico 2008 ).

Both the administrations of Dutra and Vargas shared US concern about the risks of a revolution. However, the position of delegate Francisco de San Tiago Dantas, in a meeting of foreign ministers in 1951, was that addressing poverty seemed to him a better strategy, as it could be solved with programs to stimulate economic development, which would later become the central agenda of the Pan American Operation (OPA), led by Brazil with the other countries in the region. To be able to bargain for US support in this regard, the Kubitschek government resumed trade relations with the USSR in 1958, upon receipt of an aid package for development programs. Nonetheless, anti-communism and trade relations with the US predominated in Brazilian society and government ( Bandeira 2011 ).

In these terms, the Truman administration (1949-1953) developed the Point Four Program, which aimed to allocate economic aid to underdeveloped countries, mainly in the areas of agriculture, public health, and education, with the objective of promoting US investments in the region and, at the same time, investing in their capabilities to resist communist infiltration, seen as an imminent risk in Brazil. The US government was committed to promoting the interests of US corporations in the region, promoting free trade policies that created a favorable climate for their international investments. This meant that nationalist and protectionist economic policies threatened US strategic interests and were immediately labeled communist.

In this context, the Head of the Brazilian Federal Department of Public Security (DFSP), General Amaury Kruel, visited the International Cooperation Administration (future US Aid) to request the donation of equipment, through the Point Four Program, with the aim of improving the “hunt on communists”. The US demanded, as a condition, the signing of a broader agreement that would allow the sending of technicians and specialized training to Brazilian professionals. Its objective was to give greater publicity to its willingness to aid and to pave the way for a stronger presence with Brazilian police authorities. As part of this objective, they also demanded the involvement of state police, whose alignment with the federal police was a challenge. During the negotiations, São Paulo, Minas Gerais and some other states demonstrated support, enabling the formalization of cooperation in the early 1960s ( Motta 2010 ). The case demonstrates that there is no uniformity in the way in which the US police cooperated or were accepted by the various Brazilian state and federal police forces.

The socialist revolution in Cuba (1959) required the US to heed these demands. To that end, President John Kennedy spearheaded the creation of the “Alliance for Progress” in 1961, proposing that Latin American countries prepare development plans with the aid of U.S. Aid funding. The objective was to avoid “new Cubas” and to keep the countries of the hemisphere in the US sphere of influence. In Brazil, the program was implemented by President Jânio Quadros ( Bandeira 2011 ). During this period, the president formed a working group that was sent to the UK to learn with Scotland Yard on how to organize the police nationally ( Bicudo 2000 ).

In response to the same concern, in 1963, President Kennedy created the Office of Public Safety (OPS), also implemented in Brazil, the largest recipient of assistance under this program ( Huggins 1998 ). The idea was that key police figures would later incorporate the training into their own units. Peter Costello, a Brazilian police officer at the time, told the press in 1963 that the police sought to learn

the latest methods in the field of dispersion of strikes and striking workers (…) employing the method of using dogs against crowds and clubs against their insistent members to modernize the mechanism of repression against agitators in São Paulo (cited in Black 1977 ).

The state governments of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro, where police cooperation was concentrated, were considered strategic as key conspirators against President João Goulart ( Black 1977 ). Goulart’s labor agenda and independent foreign policy were assessed as potentially communist – a central element for justifying US support for the 1964 military coup. To provide support for a possible intervention, the US formulated “Operation Brother Sam,” which consisted of sending a naval task force to the Brazilian coast to intimidate any attempt at resistance ( Fico 2008 ). No direct intervention was necessary, but US presence via the police was fundamental. The 1964 coup is essential to understand that Brazil was not an inert victim of US interventionism. Brazilian authorities supported by economic elites, at different times in history, requested and supported US assistance in terms of police cooperation and combating possible threats to the social, political, and economic order.

The US in this period supported a series of right-wing coups and dictatorships in Latin America, including the 1964 civil-military coup and the military regime that followed it and lasted until 1985 ( Fico 2008 ). The military dictatorship in Brazil was regulated by a series of Institutional Acts (AI) that suppressed people’s rights and mechanisms of control over executive power. From then on, political persecution, censorship, murders, kidnappings, and police violence became routine practices.

The OPS played an important role in the training of the Brazilian repression apparatus during this period and participated in the First Seminar on Internal Security held in Brasília in 1969, when Oban (Operação Bandeirantes) was created, a program that included the participation of the military and civilians in the repression of “subversive” opponents of the government. The OPS also participated in the organization of the Federal Department of Public Security (DFSP), the National Identification Institute (INI), the National Information Service (SNI), bureaucracies that were fundamental to the authoritarian practices of the military government. When AI-5 was introduced, inaugurating the most authoritarian phase of the dictatorship, the US suspended economic aid to Brazil, but maintained aid programs to its police, tripling the number of Brazilian police officers sent for training in the US the following year ( Huggins 1998 ).

Such complaints led to the reconfiguration of assistance programs to the Brazilian police, which became increasingly directed towards drug repression. This transition of agendas required a bureaucratic reorganization on the part of the US, but it guaranteed the continuity of programs seen as fundamental to US strategic interests. The DEA’s and US’s drug repression apparatus ended up consolidating itself as a model to be replicated in the rest of Latin America. The new police forces reproduced the structures of US agencies, copying names, positions, and procedures ( Ricart 2018 ).

These police assistance programs were formulated in response to the emergence of the drug “threat” to the US international security agenda, but also to promote a stable social order for foreign investments (Gordon 2010; Weissman, 2013 ). Programs aimed at establishing the “rule of law” in developing countries assumed, as a matter of principle, that “markets that work well require the support of a structure of clearly defined and effectively and predictably applied rules and legal rights” (Gordon 2010, 442). It is not by chance that such programs were consolidated in the 1990s in accordance with the principles of the Washington Consensus. This combination reinforces the role of policing as an instrument of social control and the fabrication of a social order favorable to US economic interests ( Neocleous 2000 ).

The end of the Cold War had important implications for Latin America. The diplomatic capacity of underdeveloped countries was weakened. This was identified as a source of threats to international security, from which political instabilities, civil wars, nationalisms and, in the specific case of the region, drug trafficking, originated (Lafer and Fonseca Jr 1997). The idea prevailed that Latin American countries would solve their problems as they became more similar to developed countries, which implied demanding adherence to international regimes and the so-called Washington Consensus, which implemented liberalizing measures and imposed conditionalities on loans from the US and international agencies. The continuous search for the restoration of international trust, along Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luís Inácio Lula da Silva governments, implied adherence to international regimes from which Brazil had moved away during the military regime ( Lima 2005 ). Such transformations explain the ease with which Brazil adhered to the guidelines formulated by the US in relation to a set of agendas, including the “war on drugs”. To express this adherence, the transnational crime agenda was mentioned in all speeches by Brazilian foreign ministers and presidents at the UN General Assembly ( Corrêa 2007 ).

Thus, the “war on drugs” police assistance programs were intensified. Through the Bilateral Agreement on “Mutual Cooperation in Reducing Demand, Preventing Misuse and Combating the Illicit Production and Trafficking of Narcotic Drugs” (1995), the US conducted conferences, events, and training to promote knowledge transfer, such as to build intimate and trusting relationship hubs between law enforcement agencies in both countries. There was a deliberate effort to create relationships of trust between US and Brazilian authorities by building a direct channel to the police, so that they could influence police work, investigations, the formulation of laws and public policies that work to build a social order that favors their hegemonic position. To a large extent, doors were kept open as conduits for influence and to ensure a safe and favorable environment for international business.

However, there are continuities in the provision of police assistance programs. On one occasion, Federal Police delegate Luiz Zubcov declared that the “CIA was using the cooperation program with the [Brazilian] Federal Police to maintain its information collection base in Brazil,” and behaves like “the owner of the patch” ( Diniz 2002 ). This tells us that many of the efforts mobilized in the name of the “war on drugs” served other political interests defined by the U.S. Department of State.

Investigations indicated that the Operational Data Center (CDO) opened in 1988 at the Federal Police had been funded by the US government since its physical and operational construction (“Polícia Federal explica parceria com o FBI.” 2004). It was from the CDO, and using CIA equipment, that the Brazilian president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, was wiretapped while discussing the bidding process for the SIVAM (Amazon Surveillance System) project. The objective was to obtain privileged information for the US corporation that participated in the competition, Raytheon. To authorize the wiretapping, it was alleged that the person of Júlio César G. Santos, who had access to the president, was involved in drug trafficking (Diniz 2012).

Later, new assistance programs were justified by the major events of the World Cup and the Olympics, and the need to promote riot, crime, and terrorism prevention ( Viana 2014 ). Furthermore, the security of the large cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro was seen as an opportunity for FBI and DEA cooperation with state police officers. In a telegram sent by the US embassy and later released by Wikileaks, it was stated that

in addition to preparing for the commercial opportunities that the games will offer to US companies, the US government should take advantage of Brazil’s interest in Olympic success to make progress in bilateral cooperation in security and information exchange ( Dip 2012 ).

As part of the desired goals, antidrug assistance programs promoted relative harmonization of drug policing objectives, strategies, practices, and repertoires throughout Latin America, albeit adapted to local contexts and interests. For this same reason, the results of the “war on drugs” model have been similar in the US and Latin America: mass incarceration, high rates of violence related to drug trafficking, police violence, and the growth of the global illegal drug market. If, on the one hand, joint solutions seemed to have failed, on the other, they enabled a direct channel with the local police in the promotion of law and order as sought by the US. This process was not free of resistance and conflicts, as indicated by reports leaked in the press or the opening of parliamentary commissions of inquiry to investigate the FBI and DEA activities in Brazil. According to a statement by the president of the National Federation of Federal Police, Francisco Garisto, “this money from the USA is cursed”, putting national sovereignty and security at risk ( Santana 2004 ).

As we argued in the paper, assistance programs and efforts to work with the Brazilian police were conceived by US governments as “technical, apparently apolitical, solutions to political problems” ( Schrader 2019 , 195). However, such a strategy was more discreet than direct and coercive interventions, but was seen as potentially capable of shaping the police and political institutions of allied countries. We have sought to demonstrate that the “professionalization” programs targeted at Brazilian police forces formed a fundamental part of US influence on national politics, which is normally analyzed from the point of view of the governmental and diplomatic spheres of power, and less from relations between State agencies such as the police.

Conclusion

The article seeks to demonstrate that US assistance programs targeted at Brazilian police forces were formulated and promoted to diffuse priority agendas defined by the US governments and to guarantee a social order aligned to its own interests. More specifically, police cooperation was part of its hegemonic aspiration in Latin America. Thus, the hegemonic position of the US determined its capacity to train Latin American police, and its influence on police forces in Latin America reinforced its position of dominance. We emphasize that these programs were part of an active effort to build consensus to guarantee US hegemony in the hemisphere, including Brazil ( Schrader 2019 ).

The historical perspective demonstrates that the same guideline runs thought different governments from different parties along US foreign policy. From that, we conclude that assisting foreign polices was consolidated as a state policy, associated to pretenses of hegemonic power over its most direct zone of influence. This paper sought to systematize and organize data regarding this dynamic in Brazil, but future works should continue to invest in understanding other relevant cases in the region.

Although the assistance programs were politically announced as technical and benign cooperation, their historical trajectory reveals that the “professionalization of the police” had above all political content and goals. In this process, the US supported dictatorial regimes and repressive police practices that still characterize Brazilian police institutions, whether to fight communism or drugs. Quiet, discreet, and inexpensive, such a strategy was evaluated by authorities as being as efficient as a military intervention, as pointed out by Huggins (1998) and Schrader (2019) .

Taking this into account, this article sought to reconstitute US police assistance programs targeted at Brazil in the light of the bilateral relations between the two countries. In so doing, we sought to demonstrate that such programs were evaluated as strategic for the realization of US interests in Brazil, by keeping allied governments in place, demobilizing opponents and insurgents, and fighting illicit activities or any other form of disturbance to the established order. Promoting Brazilian political and economic stability was fundamental to maintaining the US’s zone of influence in the region, as well as guaranteeing favorable conditions for investments by US corporations.

This paper focused on the transition from the fight against communism to the war on drugs. The process does not end there, however. The diffusion of anti-terrorism and anti-corruption norms and institutions are topics of central political importance, which is why they should be addressed in future academic research. Such themes reinforce the opacity of international police connections and the impact they can have on national political scenarios.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  28 Nov 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  16 June 2022
• Accepted
  30 Sept 2022