This article examines the ways in which Brazil's African foreign policy during the Ernesto Geisel administration (1974–9) utilised notions of ‘racial democracy’ and the nation's Africanity in framing itself as an intrinsic partner to the continent across the Atlantic. It does this through an analysis of Brazil's involvement at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC’77, 15 January–12 February 1977), hosted in Lagos, Nigeria. The international event celebrated past and present contributions of Black and African cultures to global civilisation. An assessment of the Brazilian government's delegation to FESTAC’77 shows how the Geisel administration attempted to depict Brazil as a harmoniously integrated society, where, through a historic process of mixing, the nation's racial identity was united into an equitable whole. In contrast, the propagation of these ideas at FESTAC’77 left the regime's racial ideology vulnerable to attack from international and domestic audiences.

Scholars have paid considerable attention to the connection between Washington's withdrawal from intervention and the emergence of dictatorship in Central America during the 1930s. The current article seeks to enhance our understanding of those interconnected developments through the investigation of the US Foreign Service and its role in the early 1930s presidential campaigns in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. It shows that the dynamic interaction between actors in both Washington and Central America set in motion a process that would produce decades of authoritarian rule in the isthmus.