A atuação do Congresso Nacional na Política Externa Brasileira: uma análise em quatro casos de soberania territorial

Abstract

There are two main points of view in defining the advances and limits of the Brazilian National Congress's actions on foreign policy issues. On the one hand, it is said that there is a tradition of disinterest in foreign policy issues by parliamentarians, leaving this to the president's responsibility, given the evidence that the majority of proposals submitted for approval, on foreign policy issues, pass without major notes or questions that demonstrate the legislative branch's “concern” with the issue. On the other hand, there is the argument that this action is not incipient; on the contrary, it finds evidence in various mechanisms of control and parliamentary action to defend its influence on Brazilian foreign policy. Most of these analyses, however, focus on the legislative branch's actions since the 1980s, after redemocratization. Here, the objective is to consider this debate to analyze two previous moments in history and confirm the following hypothesis: the National Congress has been mobilized to act on foreign policy issues since the formation of the country as a Republic. This argument is broken down into four cases of clashes with the Executive to demonstrate how this body acted in the face of two “acts” in Brazilian democratic history: respectively, in the First Republic and in the period preceding the Military Dictatorship, between 1946 and 1964. The cases discussed analyze how legislative action mobilized issues of violation of territorial sovereignty by opposing the Executive and how this influenced the constitution of the territory that is drawn on current maps. These are: the Palmas issue, the British occupation of Trindade Island, the Acre issue and the Roboré agreements. Through the analysis of the main political forces and identities that operated in the period, taking into account the moments of greatest impact in each historical period and using Amado Cervo’s seminal work (1981) as a basis for identifying parliamentary functions and actions, the work concludes with the elucidation of points of continuity and change that confirm the importance of the National Congress for the maintenance of Brazilian sovereignty in the delimited times. Finally, other analysis themes are suggested for this research agenda.