1964 Brazilian coup d'état

The Brazilian military coup of 1964 was a bloodless coup d'état held against left-wing President Joao Goulart by the Brazilian military on the night of 31 March1964. The military and its civilian political allies claimed that the coup was a preemptive measure taken to deter an inevitable communist revolution. Some historians, including Jarbas Passarinho, argue that the threat of both global and local communist movements was real. However, other historians have argued that

the crisis had much more to do with elite fears of a mass uprising, supposedly instigated by international communism, than with the reality of social revolution. They, rather than the masses, believed the fiery rhetoric of leftist-populist politicians. What elites elsewhere might have seen as popular democratic mobilization, the Brazilian elites saw as revolutionary change that threatened their well-being. Because they portrayed their well-being as the same as the national well-being, and because they controlled the state and the instruments of power, they responded with a counterrevolution, what historian Joseph Page labeled "the revolution that never was."

The political climate prior to the coup

By the 1961, the left-right political divide had split the country and its institutions to the point where many feared the outbreak of civil war. As the political climate had become more divisive under the populist left-wing administrations of Juscelino Kubitschek, Jânio Quadros and João Goulart, the divided legislative branch agreed to a political compromise which would limit the President's powers through an amendment to the constitution.. While this amendment passed, Goulart successfully challenged it in 1962 by plebiscite, and the presidential system was restored on the first day of 1963. Regardless of the plebiscite, which Goulart openly embraced as a "personal mandate", the military "began to sympathize more openly with the moderate and conservative opposition" with each passing month.

In early 1964, Leonel Brizola, the President's brother-in-law and the Governor of Rio de Janeiro, boasted "that he had a 200,000-strong peoples' militia organized in groups of eleven" which was prepared to defend President Goulart and the constitution from a military or conservative led civilian opposition movement. This statement inspired the conservative civilian opposition to charge "the government with arousing a 'state of revolutionary war'". In March of 1964,

Goulart opted for a series of public rallies to mobilize pressure for basic reforms. In a huge rally in Rio de Janeiro on March 13, 1964, Goulart decreed agrarian reform and rent controls and promised more. A counter rally against the government, held six days later in São Paulo, put 500,000 people marching in the streets. Sailors and marines in Rio de Janeiro, led by an agent provocateur of the anti-Goulart conspiracy, mutinied in support of Goulart. However, Goulart mishandled the incident by agreeing that they would not be punished and that the navy minister would be changed. The uproar was immediate. Rio de Janeiro's Correio da Manhã published an unusual Easter Sunday edition with the headline "Enough!" It was followed the next day, March 30, with one saying "Out!" In the next two days, the military moved to secure the country, and Goulart fled to Uruguay. Brizola's resistance groups proved an illusion, as did the supposed arms caches of the unions and the readiness of favela residents to attack the wealthy.

The coup

Under the command of General Olimpio Mourão Filho , the armed forces overthrew the government of President Goulart and installed the Brazilian military dictatorship. 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."

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.

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." 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 leftist populist supporters of Goulart and Brizola who had faced fifteen years of persecution, and the state had returned to a multi-party political system. 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.

See also

• History of Brazil (1945-1964)
• History of Brazil (1964–1985)
• Revolutions of Brazil

External links

• Declassified documents from US Department of State and CIA about the 1964 coup (National Security Archive)
• Image database of the Brazilian military regime (Portuguese)
• Political songs of the Brazilian military regime (Portuguese)