![]() In both countries, the Soviet Union was barely involved. And the dictatorship in Brazil, currently the world’s fifth most-populous country, played a crucial role in pushing the rest of South America into the pro-Washington, anticommunist group of nations. In just a few months, the US foreign policy establishment achieved there what it failed to get done in ten bloody years of war in Indochina. They knew that Indonesia, now the world’s fourth most-populous country, was a far more important prize than Vietnam ever could have been. Officials in Washington and journalists in New York certainly understood how significant these events were at the time. Both countries had been independent, standing somewhere in between the world’s capitalist and communist superpowers, but fell decisively into the US camp in the middle of the 1960s. As such, they are among the most important events in a process that has fundamentally shaped life for almost everyone. What happened in Brazil in 1964 and Indonesia in 1965 may have been the most important victories of the cold war for the side that ultimately won-that is, the United States and the global economic system now in operation. In the wake of that apocalyptic slaughter in Indonesia, a young nation littered with mutilated bodies emerged as one of Washington’s most reliable allies, and then largely disappeared from history. After that, the new Indonesian immigrants in Brazil received messages from home describing the most shocking scenes imaginable, an explosion of violence so terrifying that even discussing what happened would make people break down, questioning their own sanity. Two years after they arrived, the military overthrew Brazil’s young democracy and established a violent dictatorship. If they thought they could escape the violence of the cold war, they were tragically mistaken. ![]() Suffering through anxiety and seasickness for forty-five days, they made their way past Singapore, across the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, down past Mozambique, around South Africa, and then all the way across the Atlantic to São Paulo, the largest city in South America. Brazil was just an idea for them, and it was very far away. They set sail for Brazil, having heard from other Indonesians who had already made the journey that this place offered freedom, opportunity, and respite from conflict. Her country, one of the largest in the world, had been pulled into the global battle between capitalism and communism, and her parents decided to flee the terrible consequences that conflict had wrought for families like hers. In May 1962, a girl named Ing Giok Tan got on a rusty old boat in Jakarta, Indonesia. Suspected communists under armed guard, Jakarta, Indonesia, December 1, 1965
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