This semester, I was involved in a book club and we read the book “We Cannot Remain Silent” by James Green. In the book, Green looks at the U.S. grassroots activities against torture in Brazil, and the ways those efforts helped bring attention to the human-rights violations in Latin American countries. He explains how the movement against Brazil’s dictatorship laid the groundwork for later U.S. action against human rights abuses in Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and Central America. While this book is not solely about Brazil but rather the U.S. action that resulted from the abuses on the people there, it is still an international book worth reading.
It took us about 8 weeks to get through the book and we managed to wrap up before dead week which was really nice. I had learned about the Brazilian dictatorship previously but I had not heard about it how other countries looked at it. It may be somewhat circular for me, an American, to learn about a crisis in another country by reading a book written by an American about the perspective of American citizens. Every perspective here is from an American! Regardless, it was eye opening as the Brazil dictatorship was a good example as to how the U.S. treated Latin American countries: if they be communist, they be evil; they be alright otherwise. However, this attitude was not shared by the the U.S. citizens, they continually showed support for those being oppressed, once they were made aware of it of course.
