Antônio Cândido da Câmara Canto

Antônio Cândido da Câmara Canto (born September 25, 1910 in Montevideo , † 1977 in Rio de Janeiro ) was a Brazilian diplomat .

Life

Antônio Cândido da Câmara Canto was a Brazilian citizen according to Article 69 n. 3 of the Constitution of Brazil, as his father was a Brazilian citizen. He entered the foreign service in 1938. From 1955 to 1956 he was chargé d'affaires at António de Oliveira Salazar in Lisbon . From 1958 to 1960 he was Chargé d'affaires at Francisco Franco in Madrid , where he was ambassador from July 2, 1963 to June 8, 1966.

Antônio Cândido da Câmara Canto was influential in the torture regime of the Brazilian military and commanded the persecution of the communists in the regime of Artur da Costa e Silva .

Cassações

The official description of the career of Antônio Cândido da Câmara Canto of Itamaraty does not mention the fact that in 1969 he headed two inquiry commissions on the subject of Cassaçoes . In 1970, after 15 colleagues had been removed from the diplomatic service by the Cassações , the torture regime decorated him with the Grand Cross of the Rio Branco Order ( Ordem de Rio Branco ). The expulsion of 15 diplomats from the diplomatic service in 1969 was the largest cleansing of the Itamaraty in terms of number of expulsions. In 1954, as part of Carlos Lacerda's anti-communist campaign, five diplomats, including João Cabral de Melo Neto and Antonio Houaiss, were excluded from the diplomatic service as subversively slandered. The 1954 exclusions were declared illegal and invalid by a court order of the Supremo Tribunal Federal . The exclusions had been challenged by Evandro Lins e Silva, Sobral Pinto and Luiz Gonzaga do Nascimento Silva.

In 1964, the torture regime excluded Antonio Houaiss and Jayme Azevedo Rodrigues from the diplomatic service again after Houaiss attacked the dictatorship of the Estado Novo (Portugal) of António de Oliveira Salazar at the United Nations General Assembly under the government of João Goulart . The Cassações were based on a norm of the torture regime that was decreed two months after the Operação Brother Sam in 1964.

In addition to the 13 diplomats directly excluded by the Cassações Inquiry Commission headed by Câmara Canto, another five diplomats were excluded from service by the Ato Institucional nº 5 (AI-5) from 1969 to 1975 .

Among them, the cases of the embassy secretaries Mário da Graça Roiter and Miguel Darcy de Oliveira, who were accused of anti-patriotic behavior, gained some prominence.

Ambassador of the torture regime in Santiago de Chile

From 1969 to September 22, 1975 he was ambassador to Santiago de Chile .

Câmara Canto was a member of the Divisão de Segurança e Informações do Ministério das Relações Exteriores (DSI / MRE), which monitored and persecuted the opposition, which migrated mainly to Uruguay and Chile after the Operação Brother Sam in 1964 .

Câmara Canto repeatedly criticized Salvador Allende and protested several times to the government of Salvador Allende over reports by Televisión Nacional de Chile of allegations that the Brazilian authorities used torture against political prisoners. He asked that the programs be stopped and that action be taken against those responsible for the program.

To golpista militants

In the 1973 coup in Chile he was assigned a central role. To finance the coup in Chile, outside the budget control of the Brazilian parliament, money was collected from state-owned companies. For this purpose, front men like Manuel Pio Correia Júnior had previously been positioned on posts with procuration in the company.

When the Fuerza Aérea de Chile set La Moneda on fire on September 11, 1973 , Antônio Cândido da Câmara Canto solemnly announced “Ganhamos” (We win!) On the phone. Also on September 11, 1973, Câmara Canto was the only Brazilian who was present at the swearing-in of the military junta under Augusto Pinochet . Important meetings in preparation for the conspiracy had taken place in the Brazilian mission.

He is described as the fifth man in Augusto Pinochet's junta . He denied asylum to Brazilian citizens who were in the crosshairs of the Chilean putschists . The embassy regularly and unconditionally forwarded the data of Brazilian citizens who had applied for visas to Chile to the coup regime. The coup regime used this data to research the political attitudes of the applicants and issued or refused visas, including the data of the employees of the Brazilian state-owned company Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD) who are employed in Chile .

In his book A ditadura derrotada Elio Gaspari characterizes Câmara Canto as um golpista militante (member of the putschists). He draws the profile of a conservative, of whom the Itamaraty announces that he has served seriously with the abilities of a gentleman in his post. Câmara Canto called his frequent interlocutors "military friends of mine". He organized dinners for members of the military junta, at which Pinochet praised the "traditional friendship" between Brazil and Chile and declared that both states would wage an "uncompromising struggle" against "communism" in the world.

When Câmara Canto left Chile in 1975 he was honored by the members of the military junta and Augusto Pinochet invited to a dinner in his honor.

Itarmaraty was aware of these events and praised Câmara Canto for making his mission a perfect means of success. He was retired in 1975 , when in Brazil the coup regime in Chile was barely described as fascist. His telegrams from the embassy in Santiago de Chile show his affinity with the prominent Chilean putschists, above all Augusto Pinochet . He died of cancer .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ismara Izepe de Souza, Caminos , que se crzam: relacóes históricas entre Brasil e Eshanha (1936–1960), 317 S, p. 305.
2. ↑ Folha de S. Paulo , Ato Institucional nº 5 , de 13 dezembro de 1968.
3. ↑ Bernardo de Mello Franco in pt: O Globo , June 28, 2009, in Embaixador chefiou caça às bruxas (PDF; 953 kB), p. 79 f.
4. ↑ documentosrevelados, February 6, 2012, Embaixadas do Brasil à serviço da ditadura civil-militar
5. ↑ Opera Mundi May 26, 2012, Fontes brasileiras e chilenas indicam que o papel do Brasil em 11 de setembro de 1973 foi crucial
6. ↑ Folha de S. Paulo , December 12, 2011, Embaixador brasileiro era amigo de Pinochet
7. ↑ veja, 24/07/2012, Antônio Cândido Câmara Canto

predecessor	Office	successor
Olegário Mariano	Brazilian Chargé d'Affaires in Lisbon from 1955 to 1956	Alvaro de Barros Lins
João Pizarro Gabizo Coelho Lisboa	Brazilian Chargé d'affaires in Madrid 1958 to 1960	João Pizarro Gabizo Coelho Lisboa
Gil Guilherme Mendes de Moraes	Brazilian ambassador in Madrid July 2, 1963 to June 8, 1966	Manoel Emílio Pereira Guilhon
Antonio Méndes Vianna	Brazilian ambassador to Santiago de Chile from 1969 to September 22, 1975	Rodrigo Amaro de Azeredo Coutinho