Brazilian Involvment in Portuguese Colonial wars

Cuba played a pretty major role in the independence of Angola and Guinea Bissao, what POD would make it that Brazil was the patron of these revolutions.

The US took the Cuban expeditions as a huge breach of international law. Cuban-US relations really deteriorated after that, but no definite actions were taken. So if a country as big as Brazil participated in those wars, perhaps having even more success. What would the US respond with. Would the two cultural connections between Brazil and Portuguese colonies forge a firmer alliance perhaps an EU type government or even a Warsaw Pact type situation?
 
Brazil along with Spain was one of the countries that remained firmly allied to Portugal throughout the 1961-74 period and there was close cooperation between the two countries.

President Jucelino Kubitschek summed up Brazil's policy to "O Globo" in 1961 when he said the following "Personally I feel that Brazil can have only one foreign policy: whatever best suits Portuguese interests". The two countries became even closer after the 1964 coup in Brazil. This brought about a cultural accord in 1966 and finally a formal treaty of alliance in 1971 that among other things granted equal rights to citizens of both countries in each others territory. Meaning after two years of residence a Brazilian citizen living in Portugal could vote or run for office (except for the post of President) without being naturalised as a Portuguese citizen.

In 1972 the Portuguese Premier paid his second official visit to Brazil and an agreement to open free trade between the two countries was signed. In 1973 this went into effect, opening Portuguese Africa to Brazilian industrial exports. In 1974 the Portuguese government ordered 100 Embraer aircraft that were to be used in COIN operations in Africa.

Perhaps the most interesting thing at the time was the talk of forming a formal alliance for the South Atlantic called SATO. This would have been a formal alliance between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Portugal, South Africa and Uruguay with its headquarters in Montevideo. However, the Portuguese revolution of 1974 derailed such plans.
 

Lusitania

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Cuba played a pretty major role in the independence of Angola and Guinea Bissao, what POD would make it that Brazil was the patron of these revolutions.

The US took the Cuban expeditions as a huge breach of international law. Cuban-US relations really deteriorated after that, but no definite actions were taken. So if a country as big as Brazil participated in those wars, perhaps having even more success. What would the US respond with. Would the two cultural connections between Brazil and Portuguese colonies forge a firmer alliance perhaps an EU type government or even a Warsaw Pact type situation?


Brazil along with most of the Southern American countries (except Cuba) were for the most part right oriented and would not of been a supporter of any leftists group in Africa. But I wonder could they have sent troops or could of Brazilian of formed anti-comunist brigades and fought alongside the Portuguese in these wars.

One more thing, it may well of been that USA was upset that Cuba was there but really it could not wait for Portugal to be kicked out so it could be exploit the region. They were just disapointed that it was not their cronies who won the war.
 
Brazil along with most of the Southern American countries (except Cuba) were for the most part right oriented and would not of been a supporter of any leftists group in Africa. But I wonder could they have sent troops or could of Brazilian of formed anti-comunist brigades and fought alongside the Portuguese in these wars.

One more thing, it may well of been that USA was upset that Cuba was there but really it could not wait for Portugal to be kicked out so it could be exploit the region. They were just disapointed that it was not their cronies who won the war.


You're correct in that I don't think the Brazilians would have provided troops to Portugal. The main objective of a SATO alliance was to safeguard the region from Communism. After the closure of the Suez canal in 1967 the Cape Route became vital to safeguarding trade from Asia/Middle East to Europe. Argentina and South Africa as well as Portugal and Brazil did take part in joint naval and military exercises throughout in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Brazilian help would have come in the form of selling arms to Portugal and sending military advisers not only to help with COIN activities but to also learn how to protect Brazil's vast interior regions from an insurgency.
 
I can see a myriad of problems with the SATO point, though. It would force Brazil, Argentina and South Africa into Portugal colonial wars, which doesn't do anybody any favors, and if it had existed it could have been used to help the Argentines in the Falklands, which between that and apartheid would rapidly make the whole idea a bunch of nations not liked by anybody, which isn't good.
 
Thanks for the replies. I am clueless about Brazil and Portugal during the 20th century so this is good information. :)

You both bring up interesting alternatives, and it seems like the question is whether Brazilian aid to Portugal would be enough to defeat the independence movements.

The thing is SATO would likely be an agreement between regimes that were Authoritarian and on their way out. If the alliance is made up of the Estado Novo, Apartheid rule, and Junta rule in Argentina; then it seems like in the long term it will be overthrown by more liberal movements.
 
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I can't explain too much now, but in short until the 1970's we were allied to Portugal regarding the colonies, except for a short period between 1961 and 1964, when the governments of Jânio Quadros and João Goulart pursued the so called "Independent Foreign Policy". This came not only due to the cultural links between the countries, but also due to the influence of the huge community of Portuguese immigrants and their descendents living here. Then with the military dictatorship the Brazilian government started to see the colonial wars in the context of the East/West conflict, but they couldn't really afford to send any support to the Portuguese as our dictators had much more important issues here.

Finally in the 1970's the government started to look for new commercial partners in the Third World, and they had some success in many countries in Africa. With this they realised that the future Lusophone countries could actually be economically interesting to Brazil, and in 1974 we started talks with the anticolonial movements there. Finally, when independence came, Brazil became the first country to recognize Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau, aiming to replace the Portuguese presence in their markets with the Brazilian one.
 
I can not see Brazil helping anibody to make war against Portugal.Here in my state,PE,we have a lot of portuguese influence and there are alot of people with portuguese relatives.
 
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Seeing that there are a lot of knowledgeable people on the board. What would be the likelihood of Brazil turning to the Eastern Bloc and be similar to Cuba?

I know there is often the meme of pin the ideology on South America, but is there any plausibility of a Leftist pro-decolonization Brazil say in the 1950's-1980's?
 
Seeing that there are a lot of knowledgeable people on the board. What would be the likelihood of Brazil turning to the Eastern Bloc and be similar to Cuba?

I know there is often the meme of pin the ideology on South America, but is there any plausibility of a Leftist pro-decolonization Brazil say in the 1950's-1980's?

Well, personally I think it would be hard to make Brazil Communist, but it could very well go to a Leftist-Populist style of government in the 1960's if João Goulart had managed to keep the power. The problem is that even under Goulart our foreign policy supported Portugal at the same time that was favourable to decolonization movements of other colonial empires.

Interesting enough, apparently the first government when was made some kind of criticism to Portuguese actions in Africa was the one of crazy Jânio Quadros. But that only happened (at least according to the source I've found) because Quadros relied on the support of coffee farmers of São Paulo, and at the time we were starting to suffer international competition of coffee produced in the Portuguese colonies.
 
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