Coordinating users to generate the base of the national industry – CAPRE’s role in controlling imports of computers and peripherals (1976–1979)

ABSTRACT

In the 1970s, Brazil sought to establish State policies aimed at technological autonomy in the field of Informatics, resulting in the origin of a national industry of computers. This paper will explore another measure that has been little explored by historiography: the control over imports of data processing equipment. Our research intends to show the control exerted by the Commission for Coordination of Electronic Processing Activities (CAPRE) and to discuss how its technicians performed the analysis of user requests, resulting in decisions that either allowed or not the installation of the requested systems. When analysing computer purchase contracts and evaluating the intended uses for the imported systems, they defined the ‘merit' of each order and sought to raise users' awareness on the problem of technological dependence. They reveal different discourses on the technological modernization (‘efficient/lowercost' imported technologies versus ‘self–determination/autonomy' views influencing society’s perceptions on Informatics in the country.

KEYWORDS:

• History of Computing
• technopolitics
• technological modernization discourses
• technological autonomy
• DP equipment imports
• Brazilian Informatics Policy
• computer purchases
• Commission for Coordination of Electronic Processing Activities
• Brazilian Civil–Military Dictatorship
• bureaucracy history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The events of the Intergovernmental Bureau for Informatics (IBI) in the period certainly demonstrate the attempt by developing countries to build political alternatives. One of the recommendations of the IBI meeting in 1976 was that “developing countries must maintain the right to choose products and technologies better adapted to their needs and capabilities, selecting them according to a national planning and procurement strategy, rejecting equipment offered by industrial countries in the name of technology transfer” (IBI 1976, xiii). In most of the initiatives, the State had a primary role in order to obtain greater national control over initiatives in the field. For Latin America, the case of Chile (Medina 2011) and Argentina (Adler 1987) can be highlighted.

2 It is important to highlight that the development of Brazilian Informatics acquired special academic interest from the 1980s. Due to space limit, we highlight works that sought to understand the dynamics between politics, industry and technological training, sometimes from a comparative approach, such as Adler (1987), Van Ryckeghem (1992), Pedersen (1994), Evans (1995), Luzio (1996), Schoonmaker (2002) and, more recently, Beck (2012) and Seward (2016). It is also worth noting a diversification of approaches and themes of historical research, especially from the years 2010, among which are Informatics and Education (Valente 2017), software and technological autonomy discourse (Cardoso 2013), business trajectories (Bortolini 2015) and authoritarianism and technological policy (Marques 2015).

3 Part of it was microfilmed by the Special Department for Informatics and ended up integrated into the collection of the National Information Service (Serviço Nacional de Informações – SNI), now made available by the Memória Revelada (Revealed Memory) project, in the National Archives.

4 These ‘technologists’ created a technopolitical regime by bringing together technicians and politicians, technological artifacts, political programs and ideologies to define technopolitical actions, exemplified in the search for France’s nuclear technological autonomy in the 1960s (Hecht 2001).

5 Between 1967 and 1973, the country had unprecedented average growth rates (around 11% of GDP per year), with strong State incentives in the industrial productive sector, through the opening of credit lines and intervention in the labor market (decrease in wage purchasing power), in addition to foreign investments, aimed at exporting manufactures and technology acquisitions.

6 Technological nationalism was composed of a set of fragmentary ideas acting as a guiding principle for agents in the field of Brazilian Informatics. Edwards (1996) noticed the movement of these ideas in the construction of North American Informatics, a juxtaposition of anti-communist discourses, nationalism, techniques, technological artifacts that influenced technopolitical decisions. About Brazil, Adler (1987) properly observed this contradiction, between the Military Regime, guided by the National Security Doctrine, in which technologies should protect the country, and the technical-scientific community that, influenced by the ideas of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), held a more critical and social view on technological development. A somewhat complex and ambivalent relationship, as Motta (2014) realized in his study of universities in the Civil-Military Dictatorship, taking into account that, despite the strong repression, there was an expansion of graduate studies and the number of scholarships for studies abroad, something that many technological nationalists have enjoyed, expanding their expertise. For alternate pathways of technological production in Latin America, see Medina, Marques, and Holmes (2014).

7 Decree no. 70.370, of April 5, 1972, art. 2nd, item b.

8 Statement of Ricardo Saur to the Chamber of Deputies on 08.21.1975 on the occasion of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry on Multinationals (1975–1976).

9 CAPRE Newsletter, v.1. issue 3 Oct./Dec./ 1973.

10 CAPRE Newsletter, v. 3 issue 3 Jul./Sep./ 1975. p. 55–62.

11 Resolution No. 17, dated 10.31.1973. CAPRE Newsletter, special issue, Dec. 1973.

12 CAPRE Newsletter, v. 3 issue 3 Jul./Sep./ 1975. p. 55–62.

13 The degree of deterioration in the Balance of Payments, with a record deficit in the Trade Balance in 1974 (US$ 4.69 billion), and the forecast of a continuation of the deficit in 1975 (which amounted to a negative US$ 3.54 billion), demanded that the government to exercise adjustment mechanisms (Baer 2002).

14 According to Evans (1979), the tripartite model of industrialization has often proved problematic. Among them, there was the resistance of multinationals for not making local investments in R&D or not transferring technologies to national partners.

15 Dados e Ideias, issue 3, Dec./Jan. 1975/1976, p. 56

16 Resolution No. 104, dated 12.3.1975, gave CAPRE authorization to carry out this control. In summary, each buyer was obliged to submit the so-called import guides to the agencies designated by CDE to obtain consent and a priority. If priority was denied, the importer was obliged to deposit the equivalent value of the import to CACEX for a period of 360 days, forcing the importer to look for national alternatives. CAPRE would operate in 1977 with a quota of US$ 100 million, that is, it could grant priorities up to this amount without the need for a compulsory deposit.

17 Jornal do Brasil, 01.19.1976. For some nationalists, it was Ricardo Saur who had “convinced” his superiors that CAPRE should manage computer imports. “Gee Saur, you're crazy, you're going to stop this country!” – Statement by Mário Ripper to the author on 04.19.2013.

18 “In the hands of disinterested bureaucrats, CAPRE's regulatory powers could never have come to anything other than what they had been predicted for. That is, a reactionary way to limit imports of computers and machines essential to the operations of government and business users.” (Evans 1986, 18).

19 Import Process B1421079 and A0621079, request Laborgraf S/A, supplier Olivetti, on 10.03.1979.

20 DataNews, 11.01.1976.

21 Ibidem.

22 Interview with Ricardo Saur on 02.25.2013.

23 DataNews, 12.20.1976.

24 Dados e Ideias, issue 4, Feb./Mar. 1977 p.6.

25 “We fully assumed this CAPRE's unsympathetic role. And we thought it was great” – Paulo Roberto Ribeiro da Cunha, coordinator of Analysis Advisory at CAPRE. Dados e Ideias, issue 4, Feb./Mar. 1977, p. 8.

26 According to a CAPRE technician, making clear the negotiation between technicians and users: “Some guy wanted the equipment, he wanted the printer, he wanted everything … So at that time I learned to scale, to see what was needed. So I negotiated a lot with people. We did not deny a project, in fact, it was rare to deny it – it had to be a very bad project – and we were not against the development of institutions, but it was all about to measure what we really needed.” – Statement by Jorge Wanderley to the author on 01.23.2013.

27 O Globo, 05.20.1976, p. 24.

28 Dados e Ideias, issue 5, Apr./May 1976, p. 65.

29 Statement by Antônio Gil (IBM Brazil) to the author on 03.10.2014.

30 Opinion of CAPRE’s analyst on the Makro S/A project on 6.13.1976.

31 Letter from the General Management of Makro S/A to the Executive Secretary of CAPRE on 12.7.1976.

32 SUCESU Magazine, Mar. 1977, p. 23.

33 COBRA was looking to consolidate a new product that would make the company viable on the market (the Sycor 400 minicomputer) while developing the technological project of the Brazilian minicomputer ‘G-10’.

34 Letter from the Administrative Director of Montedison S/A to the Executive Secretary of CAPRE on May 13, 1979.

35 Import Process B1370778, request Labortex S/A, supplier NCR, on 07.28.1978.

36 Technical opinion of CAPRE on 01.26.1979.

37 Letter from the Executive Secretary of CAPRE to the Administrative Director of Labortex S/A on 6.19.1979.

38 Statement by Arthur Pereira Nunes to Márcia Cardoso and Vítor Barcellos on 03.25.2009.

39 It was an interface created by the SERPRO team, led by Diocleciano Pegado, which allowed resizing data entry in a system, bringing together up to 32 keyboards for a CPU.

40 Although here there could be a dissatisfaction of parts of the technical-scientific community with the low use of technologies generated by the research centers, seeming to be “uncomfortable results of the training process” for qualified labor (Dados e Ideias, issue 1, Aug./Sep. 1976. p. 5). Technological nationalists like Claudio Mammana and Ivan Marques protested this situation. It should be noted that Claudio Mammana was among the creators of PADE, a medium-sized computer from USP, while Ivan da Costa Marques had developed with his team the Floating-Point Processor, a device that increased the processing capacity of the IBM1130, a computer that was popular among Brazilian universities.

41 Dados e Ideias, issue 2, p. 58, Oct./Nov. 1978.

42 O Globo, 10.25.1978, p. 24.

43 Import Process B0780579. Opinion of the CAPRE’s analyst on the request of Chocolates Garoto on 09.12.1979.

44 Appeal by Nitro Química to CAPRE on 12.21.1979.

45 Letter from the Vice President of the Chamber of Deputies to the Minister of SEPLAN on 08.22.1979.

46 ComputerWorld did not miss the chance to instigate its readers by proposing to imagine a world in which government approval was required to buy any components for a computer. The article ‘Brazilian users face a sea of bureaucracy’ brought some criticism from users about CAPRE's procedures, protected by anonymity for fear of seeing their projects disapproved. ComputerWorld, 11.13.1978.

47 Jornal do Brasil 12.24.1977.

48 O Globo 07.09.1978.

49 Request from the Executive Secretariat to the CP on 08.13.1979. Minutes of the 32nd session of the CP on 8.30.1979. SEI Archive.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Sul [grant number 77.2019].

Notes on contributors

Marcelo Vianna

Marcelo Vianna holds a PhD in History from Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil) with doctoral stay in Institute for Latin American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. His research focuses History of Computing, Prosopography and Social History of Political and Technological Elites, analysing education background, expertise and trajectories influences on State policies and technological decisions. He is currently Director of Research, Postgraduate and Innovation at Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Sul (Osório, Brazil) and leader of research group Comparative History Laboratory of Southern Cone/National Council for Scientific and Technological (CNPq).