The most dangerous area in the Western Hemisphere: The Northeast of Brazil as a political problem of the USA (1961-1963)
Northeast Brazil; Alliance for Progress; United States Government; John F. Kennedy Administration;
This paper investigates the U.S. government's strategies for the Northeast of Brazil at a time when the region was considered the most politically unstable area in the Western Hemisphere. During the John F. Kennedy administration (1961-1963), there was a proliferation of discourses about this space. Northeastern Brazil was inscribed as a Cold War battlefield between the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This area became the subject of diplomatic dispatches, intelligence reports, memos, public statements, and interviews granted later by some of the most important characters involved with the U.S. diplomatic service. We used this material, now available for public consultation under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, to analyze how the U.S. government sought to use the Alliance for Progress, one of its main foreign aid policies, to transform Northeastern Brazil into a space of control.