Carlos Martins Pereira e Souza

Carlos Martins Pereira e Souza began as a lawyer, prosecutor, and local judge in Rio Grande do Sul before entering diplomacy in 1906. European postings preceded ambassadorships in Japan and Belgium. He married the sculptor Maria Martins in 1926 and took charge of Brazil’s Washington embassy in 1939, at the beginning of the negotiations that drew Brazil and the United States into a wartime alliance. ¹

Building a Brazilian steel industry was one of his central assignments. In January 1940 he told Secretary of State Cordell Hull that President Vargas was deeply disappointed by United States Steel’s withdrawal from the proposed project. Martins presented it as a test of the Good Neighbor policy and warned that Brazil might seek assistance elsewhere. American officials agreed to examine alternatives. Subsequent negotiations produced Export-Import Bank financing for the steelworks at Volta Redonda, and Martins helped secure American made equipment for it. ^{2, 1}

He also negotiated military assistance as hemispheric defense turned into wartime cooperation. In October 1941 he signed a $100 million lend-lease agreement; after Brazil entered the war, his embassy continued work on equipment and strategic coordination. In 1945 he signed the protocol restoring diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and joined the Brazilian delegation at the United Nations founding conference. He left Washington in 1948 for Paris and, after retirement, returned to Japan on a special peace treaty mission in 1952. He died in 1965. ¹