Brazilian Propaganda

"Highly original. Skillfully employs and interprets a variety of important sources including oral history interviews, documents from the military regime, photographs, and especially films."--Kenneth P. Serbin, author of Needs of the Heart: A Social and Cultural History of Brazil's Clergy and Seminaries

"An outstanding contribution to our understanding of recent Brazilian politics and history. A thorough, much-needed, and relevant study of political propaganda."--Ollie Andrew Johnson III, author of Brazilian Party Politics and the Coup of 1964

Brazil's military dictatorship (1964-1985) launched seemingly apolitical official campaigns that were aesthetically appealing and ostensibly aimed to "enlighten" and "civilize." Some were produced as civilian-military collaborations and others were conducted by privately owned media, but undergirding them all was the theme of a country aspiring to become a developed nation.

In Brazilian Propaganda, Nina Schneider examines the various modes of both official and unendorsed propaganda used by an authoritarian regime. Focusing primarily on visual media, she demonstrates how many short films of the period portrayed a society free from class and racial conflicts. These films espoused civic-mindedness while attempting to distract from atrocities perpetuated by the regime.

Mining a rich trove of materials from the National Archives in Rio and conducting interviews with key propagandists, Schneider demonstrates the ambiguities of twentieth-century Brazilian propaganda. She also challenges the notion of a homogeneous military regime in Brazil, highlighting its fractures and competing forces. By analyzing the strategies, production mechanisms, and meanings of these films and reconstructing their effects, she provides an alternative interpretation of the propagandists' intentions and a new framework for understanding this era in Brazil's history.