April 2016
Opening the Archives Project is a joint effort by Brown University Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Paraná, Brazil to digitize and index 100,000 U.S. government documents on Brazil from 1960-80 and make them available to the public on an open-access website.
President John F. Kennedy meets with former President of Brazil Juscelino Kubitschek (right) and State Department Interpreter Jose de Seabra (left) at the West Wing Colonnade, White House, Washington, D.C. 15 September, 1961. JFK Presidential Library and Museum.
Organized by James N. Green, Director of Brown University’s Brazil Initiative, this multi-year project will substantially increase open access to an important source of primary documents, facilitating the reconstruction of the history of U.S.-Brazil relations for researchers around the world.
According to Green, The Opening the Archive Project is an effort to support international researchers interested in U.S.-Brazilian relations during two very difficult decades in the nation’s history.
“This material is important for historians looking at the everyday details of relations between the two countries. We don’t expect to find any ‘smoking guns.’ Rather this project will allow scholars in Brazil access to U.S. government archives on Brazil without having to travel to the United States,” Green explained.
By the end of this project – which should be in 2018 – the organizers hope to also make available to the public all of the documents on Brazil at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In a final stage will we tackled the Nixon and Reagan Presidential Libraries in Southern California.
