Médici was recorded as saying that “he did not believe that the Soviets or the Chinese were interested in giving any assistance to these countries’ communist movements; they felt that communism would come all by itself because of the misery and poverty in these countries.” The problem for both men, in other words, was not an international communist conspiracy. The problem was that they thought the Soviets and Chinese might be right. The impoverished people in Brazil’s neighboring countries might choose “communism” all by themselves, and they had to be stopped.
