On May 24, 1965, nearly a month after the first U. S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo, an inter-American military force under the command of a Brazilian general took over peacekeeping activities in the Dominican Republic. Although the first Brazilian contingent to arrive comprised only 300 troops, it later reached a total of 1,250, the largest contribution by a single Latin American nation. While Brazil's participation in the Dominican crisis was a clear indication that the independent foreign policy of Quadros and Goulart had been discarded in favor of a realignment once again with the United States, it also signified an abrupt departure from one of the basic tenets of Brazilian foreign policy—nonintervention. The case study of Brazil's role in the Dominican Republic in 1965 which follows provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of traditional forces and contemporary events on Brazilian foreign policy at a critical juncture in that nation's history.