Chase Manhattan Bank

Chase Manhattan Bank was the principal financial vehicle through which the Rockefeller family exercised economic leverage in Latin America during the Cold War. Under David Rockefeller, who joined the bank in 1946, served as president from 1961, and chaired it from 1969 to 1981, Chase became the dominant US commercial bank in the hemisphere, holding major loans to Brazilian industry, financing trade across the region, and using its credit policies as an instrument of political pressure during the destabilization of nationalist governments.

Formation and Rockefeller Control

Chase Manhattan was formed in 1955 through the merger of the Chase National Bank (which the Rockefeller family had controlled since the 1920s through John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s influence) and the Bank of the Manhattan Company. The merger created the second-largest US bank by assets. David Rockefeller's rise through the institution formalized the family's control, making Chase the commercial companion to the political and intelligence networks his brother Nelson Rockefeller ran through government appointments and private development corporations.¹

Brazil Operations and the 1964 Coup

Chase's Brazilian operations were extensive and strategically important to the Rockefeller family's Latin American position. The bank held loans to major Brazilian industrial firms and maintained correspondent banking relationships across the country. In the period before the April 1964 coup deposing President Joao Goulart, Chase's management of credit conditions contributed to the economic instability that the coup required. Nelson Rockefeller's network, according to Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett's account, coordinated commercial pressure through Chase alongside the political and intelligence operations run by J.C. King, Ambassador Lincoln Gordon, and Vernon Walters.²

After the coup succeeded and the Humberto Castelo Branco military government took power, Chase's operating environment improved immediately. Castelo Branco's minister of finance Roberto Campos reversed Goulart's restrictions on profit remittances, opened Amazon land to foreign investment, and provided the political stability that made Chase's long-term Brazilian lending strategy viable. US aid poured into Brazil, and Chase was positioned to handle a substantial share of the trade finance and corporate lending that followed.³

AIFLD and Corporate Board

Chase was a corporate member of the AIFLD (American Institute for Free Labor Development), the AFL-CIO's CIA-funded Latin American labor arm. Chase's AIFLD membership placed it alongside Standard Oil, Pan American Airways, and Anaconda Copper on AIFLD's corporate board, illustrating the alignment between Chase's Latin American interests and the broader Rockefeller network's destabilization capacity.⁴

Post-Coup Amazon Investment

Following the 1964 coup, Chase financed several of the large-scale Amazon development projects that the military government encouraged. The bank's loans to ranching, mining, and agricultural operations in the Brazilian interior provided the credit infrastructure that converted the Amazon land opened by military-supervised expulsion of indigenous communities into commercially viable operations. IBEC's Brazilian agricultural programs operated in a complementary track, advancing American agribusiness methods while Chase provided capital.⁵