Banca de DEFESA: WANDERSON WILLIAM ALVES SILVA

Surveillance and the diplomat. The National Security Doctrine and diplomacy in Bolivia in 1980.

National security, dictatorship, bolivia, diplomacy

The present work was developed to understand the construction of the National Security Doctrine (NSD) and its operation within the institutions of the Brazilian state during the dictatorship, specifically within the surveillance institutions, when they began to persecute and catalog individuals labeled as subversives. This action, carried out by institutions through the National Security Doctrine, aimed to catalog potential insurgents who could pose a threat to the dictatorship, from the military's perspective, so they could be pursued if necessary. To do so, it was necessary to understand the origin of the NSD, which derived from the US strategy to deal with Latin America during the Cold War after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, when the Pentagon identified a new revolutionary modus operandi: guerrilla warfare. After recognizing this guerrilla strategy, it became evident that conventional warfare tactics were not the most suitable for dealing with the Americas. Thus, strategies involving psychological operations were employed to reinforce capitalist ideology in the region through coups and propaganda starting from 1960. However, to accomplish this, it was necessary to have knowledge of the region, and therefore, surveillance and information gathering became integral parts of the strategy, involving both military personnel in the region and intellectuals from American universities funded by the US military. The main outcome of these efforts to maintain capitalism in South America was the NSD, which entailed a complex surveillance apparatus spanning various state institutions, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty), which extended this surveillance system beyond national borders. However, a diplomat would act on behalf of this dictatorial state, using the prerogatives of their informant role in a controversial manner.