Beyond Ideology. The “immortals”, the military and the palace

The aim of this article is to analyze the relationship between intellectuals and power from the perspective of the interests and rewards that both sides were able to obtain from a collaboration. To do so, we analyze a specific case, which occurred during the military dictatorship (1964-1985), and involves the donation of a piece of land, as well as a loan to construct a building granted by the military regime to the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL). The analysis enables us to shed new light on the relationship between conservative intellectuals and the Brazilian military regime. In the first segment, we retrace the trajectory of Austregesilo de Athayde, a journalist who presided over the institution between 1959 and 1994 and played a vital role in this donation and in financing the construction of the building. In the second segment, we detail how this process took place and how it provides a new angle with which to analyze the relationship of conservative intellectuals and the military dictatorship in Brazil.