Eyal Weinberg

This article explores the history of family planning during the Brazilian military dictatorship by focusing on the activity of The Society of Family Welfare (Sociedade do Bem-Estar Familiar no Brasil, BEMFAM), founded in 1965 and affiliated with the International Planned Parenthood Federation. BEMFAM's campaigns were met with criticism from various fronts. The Catholic Church condemned the use of contraception methods. The military, which had ruled the country since taking power in 1964, opposed BEMFAM's efforts to curtail population growth and its international partnerships. Leftist organizations attacked BEMFAM as well, denouncing its initiatives as a form of criminal Western imperialism. The denunciations ultimately led to a parliamentary inquiry into the activities of BEMFAM. Analyzing the dictatorship's intelligence reports, state records, and BEM-FAM's publications, the article elucidates how population control models, Cold War ideologies, and gendered politics shaped health and reproduction in military Brazil.

This article explores the labor struggles of doctors in late 1970s and early 1980s Brazil, the final years of the nation's dictatorship. Health workers' protests for better salaries and working conditions were extensive and reflected a dramatic change in the way medical practitioners in Brazil perceived their professional and political identities. Fusing together histories of medicine and labor, the article shows how physicians not only led strikes and unionized by their tens of thousands but also collaborated with blue-collar sectors in a larger struggle for working rights, access to healthcare, and structural reforms. Dictatorship officials, the article reveals, were significantly concerned by hospital strikes and particularly by the emerging cross-sector alliance. In this sense, the doctors' movement played a significant role in challenging Brazil's military rule and advancing the nation's transition to democracy.

The struggle for transitional justice in Brazil has faced various roadblocks since the country’s return to democracy in the mid-1980s. The military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985 employed brutal political repression against civilians deemed “subversives.” For years, however, the state had persistently disregarded claims to hold perpetrators accountable. This was mostly the result of an extremely negotiated and military-controlled transition to democracy, marked by political continuities and legal impunity to human rights violators. Effective campaigns by civil society organizations and families of the dictatorship’s victims finally led the Brazilian state to implement constrained policies of transitional justice. Between 1995 and 2010, the state officially recognized the dictatorship’s practices of torture and forced disappearance, as well as offered reparations to the victims. A national truth commission was ultimately established in 2012, culminating in an e...

As young medical students at Guanabara State University, Luiz Roberto Tenório and Ricardo Agnese Fayad received some of the best medical education offered in 1960s Brazil. For six years, the peers in the same entering class had studied the principles of the healing arts and practiced their application at the university's teaching hospital. They had also witnessed the Brazilian military oust a democratically elected president and install a dictatorship that ruled the country for 21 years (1964–85). After graduating, however, Tenório and Fayad embarked on very distinct paths. The former became a political dissident in opposition to the military regime and provided medical assistance to members of the armed left. The latter joined the armed forces and, as a military physician, participated in the brutal torture and cruel treatment of political prisoners. At the end of military rule, Brazil's medical board would find him guilty of violating the Brazilian code of medical ethics a...

As young medical students at Guanabara State University, Luiz Roberto Tenório and Ricardo Agnese Fayad received some of the best medical education offered in 1960s Brazil. For six years, the peers in the same entering class had studied the principles of the healing arts and practiced their application at the university's teaching hospital. They had also witnessed the Brazilian military oust a democratically elected president and install a dictatorship that ruled the country for 21 years (1964–85). After graduating, however, Tenório and Fayad embarked on very distinct paths. The former became a political dissident in opposition to the military regime and provided medical assistance to members of the armed left. The latter joined the armed forces and, as a military physician, participated in the brutal torture and cruel treatment of political prisoners. At the end of military rule, Brazil's medical board would find him guilty of violating the Brazilian code of medical ethics and revoke his license.

For free preview: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/americas/article/with-colleagues-like-that-who-needs-enemies-doctors-and-repression-under-military-and-postauthoritarian-brazil/B17C6C1622B89C82E58727A634658DB1/share/95c39e97df92065e1af97ce80edd6d1e20ef71d1

Published on Human Rights Commentary, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas at Austin
https://law.utexas.edu/humanrights/projects/new-research-on-the-relationships-between-businesses-and-military-regimes-under-latin-americas-cold-war/

"אהוב אותה או עזוב אותה": כשברזיל נלחמה נגד השמצה

ניתוח מאמצי הדיקטטורה הברזילאית (1985-1964) לסכל ביקורת בינלאומית על הפרות זכויות אדם חושף משטר מוכה פחד רדיפה שראה בדיכוי, צנזורה, העלמת ראיות, וטיפוח הנאמנות למדינה אמצעים הכרחיים לשמירה על היציבות והביטחון הלאומי. פרק בסדרה "הפראנקים, היאנקים ואנחנו"
https://www.haaretz.co.il/blogs/sadna/BLOG-1.5841536

During the Brazilian military rule (1964-1985), counterinsurgency agencies apprehended and tortured tens of thousands of political activists suspected of “subversive conduct.” Trained interrogators inflicted the physical and psychological pain, but it was medical professionals who played an essential role in systemizing and legitimizing state-sponsored repression. Doctors examined detainees to determine their “weak points.” They monitored victims during prolonged torture interrogations. And they falsified medical reports to conceal evidence of abuse or extralegal executions. Yet while some doctors violated medical ethics in the name of national security, others suffered the brunt of regime’s repression when vehemently opposing human rights abuses and advocating public health reforms.
This paper follows the conflicting paths doctors undertook in military Brazil. First, it traces a process of politicization within the medical community prior to the 1964 coup d'état. Against the backdrop of social unrest and President Goulart’s attempts for large-scale reforms, essays in medical journals illuminate heated debates concerning the dire health conditions in the country, national healthcare, and medical morality. An analysis of reports produced by intelligence agencies in following years reveal how the regime’s escalating repression further intensified the rift. After the military ousted “Marxist” professors of medicine and suppressed “subversive” organized doctors, the medical sector was deeply polarized. The paper concludes with examining the sector’s reconvergence after redemocratization, when Brazil’s medical councils—responsible for supervising professional and ethical practice—conducted investigations against more than 100 doctors for violating codes of ethics under the authoritarian rule.
By unfolding the history of the embattled medical community and its complex relationships with the regime, the paper not only considers how ideological and political divergences influenced the conduct of medical practitioners, but may also elucidates other sociopolitical schisms dividing the Brazilian society prior to, and during the military rule.