1964 Brazilian coup d'état
The Brazilian military coup of 1964 was a bloodless coup d'état by the Brazilian military on the night of 31 March1964, held against left-wing President Joao Goulart.[1] The military and its civilian political allies claimed that the coup was a preemptive measure taken to deter an inevitable communist revolution.[2] This claim was never substantiated.[citation needed].
The coup
Under the command of General Olimpio Mourão Filho [3], the armed forces overthrew the government of President Goulart and installed the Brazilian military dictatorship.[1] Governor José de Magalhães Pinto of Minas Gerais and Field Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, the chief of staff of the army, "emerged as the chief coordinators of the conspiracy."[4]
International support for the coup
In the United States, the Kennedy administration had been anticipating the coup since 1962, and had prepared contingency plans in the event of such an eventuality. The succeeding administration of Lyndon Johnson tacitly supported the coup.[5]
Life after the coup
The BBC has noted that "the coup led to two decades of strict military rule, and Brazilians born during the 1960s and 1970s were brought up in a country heavy with censorship."[1] Regardless of this censorship, the general public rallied for a restoration of democracy, and the reestablishment of a multi-party republic. The spirit of this movement stemmed from a historic tradition of resistance in the face of the absolute monarchy that began with Pedro II of Brazil, and was manifested in social movements and conflicts, particularly those of the regency era. Notable examples include: the fight for liberty from Portuguese colonizers; the republican struggle against the Brazilian monarchy; and the fight for democracy in the face of Getúlio Vargas' Estado Novo dictatorship.
In 1974, a decade after the coup, Ernesto Geisel began to slowly force the government to accept a number of democratic reforms. By 1979, amnesty had been granted to the communists and populist socialists[6] who had faced fifteen years of persecution, and the state had returned to a multi-party political system[7]. In 1984, the 1.5 million activists in Diretas Já, the nation´s largest pro-democracy social movement, finally forced the government to respond to the popular demand for direct presidential elections, and by 1989, Brazil democratically elected its first president since the 1964 coup, the right-wing candidate Fernando Collor de Mello.
References
- ^ a b c "Brazil remembers 1964 coup d'etat". BBC News. Retrieved 2007-05-08. (Portuguese)
- ^ O golpe militar e a instauração do regime militar (Portuguese)
- ^ Olimpio Mourão Filho´s Biography (Portuguese)
- ^ "Brazil: Military intervention and dictatorship". Britannica. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
- ^ White House Tapes
- ^ Political persecution was not limited to communists, and personal associates of President Goulart. The moderate socialist sociologist, and future President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso "was banished from the classroom at the University of São Paulo after the 1964 coup," and, shortly thereafter, fled into exile in Europe. (For more, see: Newsweek: 'Che Guevara In Tweed' and A dependence on politics: Fernando Henrique Cardoso and sociology in Brazil
- ^ Lei da Anistia acelera abertura (Portuguese)