In 1957 Rodolfo Walsh published the first edition of Operación masacre, a thoroughly researched book that denounces the execution by the military régime of a group of civilians a year before. In the next few decades until his disappearance in 1977, Walsh would publish new expanded versions of the text that included documents that supported the veracity of his own investigation. Operación masacre is a rare case of where a political event engenders a new type of writing designed to tell the very story that has inspired it, and in so doing creates a new literary genre. In Operación Masacre, we read a text that is both a new writing and a new genre, produced in the urgency of political intervention, and with the desire to affect it and interpellate it. The relationship between literature and politics is dramatized in this text, as it will soon be dramatized in Walsh´s life. This chapter addresses the constitution of nonfiction in Walsh´s text, the relationships with his other works, and his legacy after his kidnapping and ensuing disappearance in 1977 at the hands of the military dictatorship.

Brazilian novelist, playwright, and journalist Antônio Callado (1917-97) became, in the second half of the twentieth century, synonymous with cultural resistance against the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-85). Documents and scripts found in 2014 at the BBC Written Archives unveil Callado’s experience as a writer working for the BBC Latin American Service in Britain, broadcasting anti-fascist propaganda in Portuguese to Brazilian audiences during World War II. In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas’ dictatorial regime Estado Novo (1937-45) was still emerging from internal clashes between pro-fascist and pro-Allies political factions, which preceded Brazil’s entry into the conflict in August 1942. In Britain between 1941 and 1947, Callado was able to engage with cosmopolitan intellectual networks and to explore literary influences that were not part of the aesthetic and political vocabulary of Brazilian modernists in the 1920s and 1930s. Callado’s socialist turn – which resulted in his political arrests in the 1960s and 1970s – was considerably influenced by his formative war-years. His experiences during World War II also deeply informed the political aspects of his writing, which denounced and derided Brazilian authoritarianism.

Brazilian novelist, playwright, and journalist Antônio Callado (1917-97) became, in the second half of the twentieth century, synonymous with cultural resistance against the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-85). Documents and scripts found in 2014 at the BBC Written Archives unveil Callado’s experience as a writer working for the BBC Latin American Service in Britain, broadcasting anti-fascist propaganda in Portuguese to Brazilian audiences during World War II. In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas’ dictatorial regime Estado Novo (1937-45) was still emerging from internal clashes between pro-fascist and pro-Allies political factions, which preceded Brazil’s entry into the conflict in August 1942. In Britain between 1941 and 1947, Callado was able to engage with cosmopolitan intellectual networks and to explore literary influences that were not part of the aesthetic and political vocabulary of Brazilian modernists in the 1920s and 1930s. Callado’s socialist turn – which resulted in his political arrests in the 1960s and 1970s – was considerably influenced by his formative war-years. His experiences during World War II also deeply informed the political aspects of his writing, which denounced and derided Brazilian authoritarianism.

The fourth chapter deals with the complicated history of public land in Brazil. Weak federal control of public land before the 1960s allowed the illegal settlement of hundreds of families inside the Brazilian Iguaçu National Park. In the 1970s, however, Brazilian park officials had decided to evict all the 2,500 settlers. The shift was partly a reaction to the same international discourse that had influenced Argentine park authorities, as discussed in Chapter 3. However, in Brazil, the early 1970s eviction coincided with the harshest years of the military dictatorship that ruled the country for two decades. The generals were obsessed with suppressing political dissent and feared the settlers living inside the Iguaçu national park could fall prey to left-wing radicalism. The Iguaçu evictions anticipated the authoritarian agrarian reform and population resettlement programs later implemented further north in Amazonia, designed by the military to remedy peasant unrest.

The Bengal delta now became part of Pakistan, a uniquely complex post-colonial state: founded upon religious nationalism; administering two discrete territories, separated from each other by about 1,500 km of Indian terrain; and not heir to any of the colony’s central state institutions. Tensions between West and East Pakistan immediately surfaced. East Pakistani grievances crystallised around the question of the national language (Urdu or Bengali), leading to the language movement. After a decade the army stepped in, establishing a military dictatorship that would dominate the remaining years of ‘united Pakistan’.

In the conclusion, I discuss the contribution of the book and its implications for the study of authoritarian regimes, development, and democratization. In the long run, government policies that tax the agricultural sector lead to rural poverty, urbanization, and political instability. On the other hand, regimes that implement pro-farmer policies increasing agricultural prices are more likely to lock their countries into a long-run development trajectory that significantly decreases the risk of political instability and authoritarian regime collapse. By bolstering the incomes of rural farmers they mitigate poverty, slow rural-urban migration, promote economic growth, and decrease inequality. Rulers confronted with significant threats from both large concentrations of urban food consumers and landed elites cannot effectively use agricultural policy to address rural-urban conflict, because measures that are in the interests of the rural sector run invariably counter to those of the urban sector. These leaders are thus faced with unique challenges to their rule and a high likelihood of political instability. One likely outcome of this situation is a military dictatorship.