Secret Dialogues

This original and well-documented book makes a major contribution to the history of two of Brazil's most important institutions: the military and the Catholic Church. It also documents for the first time the genesis of Brazil's crucial, ongoing public debate over human rights. The argument is clear, lucid, and accessible. Anyone interested in the church and/or the military in Latin America will want to read this book.

Secret Dialogues is a major contribution to our understanding of the complex relations between the Brazilian Armed Forces and the Catholic Church, the two main protagonists in the authoritarian regime between 1964-85. Drawing on previously unavailable archives, supplemented by interviews, Serbin analyzes the efforts by sectors of the elite of both institutions to confront authoritarian excesses and human rights violations, and avoid a rupture in church - state relations. He provides insights into the actions of the individuals and the institutions whereby we can better understand the nature of the authoritarian regime and the subsequent transition to democracy.

Serbin's painstakingly documented work should be of interest not only to scholars and Brazilophiles but to anyone concerned with human rights and the relationship between religion and politics.

Kenneth P. Serbin provides fresh and illuminating insights into the Bipartite drawn from both archives and interviews.

Serbin has produced a valuable study of Brazil's Bipartie Commission, a small secret group of progressive Roman Catholic bishops and army generals who ought to reduce church-state conflict during the military regime of 1964-85.

... crticially important work of scholarship ... carefully and painstakingly researched and written ... Serbin writes with grace...lucid and jargon free.

One of the merits of Serbin's book is to have succeeded in retrieving the complexity and ideological ambiguity that marked the time of the Cold War in Brazil and in Latin America, avoiding the common tendency to demonize all those who in any way supported the military regine.

Kenneth P. Serbin has written a marvelous book on the little-known but much-suspected dialogue between the Brazilian military regime and the Catholic Church. . . . thoroughly researched in three continents, full of insightful comments, and highly readable. . . . It is a pathbreaking book that sets a new standard for contemporary Brazilian political history.

Sheds important new light on the history of the dictatorship and of the Church. . . The revelations [are] often fascinating.