Like many military dictatorships in Central and Latin America during the Cold War, Brazil’s military coup in 1964 was heavily influenced and supported by the United States despite its human rights violations. The intervention, however, was subtle making it difficult to analyze just how much power the United States had in installing and maintaining Brazil’s military dictatorship.
When I spoke to Professor James Green who teaches Brazilian history at Brown University about the amount of influence that the United States had in establishing the military regime, he revealed to me that his opinion is not common among Brazilians: “This is a big debate in Brazil and in this regard I disagree with many of my Brazilian colleagues on this. I believe that the military was prepared to overthrow Goulart and would have done that independently of whether the United States would have intervened,” said Green.
Since military interventions are common in Brazilian history, it was likely another one would have happened with or without support from the United States. “They did that many times before so they had a feeling that it was almost their right to do that,” said Green referring to the military coup. Military intervention has been part of Brazil’s government since its origins from its first emperor, Pedro I, giving himself the power to intervene to its second emperor, Pedro II, using the military in response to popular revolts to the institution of the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship in 1937 and finally to the coup in 1964.
Pedro I, gave himself the “poder moderador” or the power of the moderator which gave the emperor or the fourth branch of government, the right to intervene whenever he deemed necessary. Pedro II, Pedro I’s son, worked to continue this legacy. “In the 19th century where there were a series of popular revolts, Pedro II gave a lot of power to the person who became Duque de Caixas who was a very powerful head of the military who then went in and repressed all these regional revolts and then developed a notion that the army ultimately would be the arbitrator. This led the army to overthrow the empire in 1889 and then intervene successfully,” said Green. In 1937, Vargas issued the Estado Novo or the New State which marked the beginning of a dictatorial period from 1937 to 1945 where he dissolved the congress and elections pronouncing himself a permanent leader.
However, despite how recurrent military overthrows are in Brazil’s history, there is no doubt that United States support sped up the process of the coup. Brazil’s economy was on a downward trajectory and both President Kennedy and Johnson refused to lend money to Goulart’s government. The United States, however, promised the military that this would quickly change if they took power. “The fact that the United States government reassured them that they would give immediate military and economic assistance probably encouraged some of the military leaders that were vacillating and not sure that they could pull it off to decide to go ahead with the main military conspirators and overthrow Goulart,” said Green.
At the time, the United States worried about Brazil as a second Cuban Revolution. “There was a general notion that Latin America was being threatened by communists,” said Green. In 1964, the New York Times published a series of articles suggesting that 40 million peasants from the Northeast of Brazil were preparing themselves to revolt. One article written by New York Times correspondent and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Tad Szulc, is titled, “Marxists are Organizing Peasants in Brazil,” and refers to the peasant league as, “the closest thing to an organized “Fidelista” movement in Latin America outside Cuba.” Szulc indicates that a revolution in the Northeast was inevitable and bound to be detrimental: “the Northeast will go Communist and you will have a situation ten times worse than in Cuba if something is not done.” In another New York Times article titled “The ‘Fidelistas’ of Brazil” that responds to the reports conducted by Szulc, the writer writes, “Mr. Szulc’s findings do suggest that it is time that the United States took a far more positive part in aiding our neighbors south of the Canal.”
These articles most likely incited fear into the minds and chills down the backs of intellectuals or political leaders reading the New York Times at a time where mentions of Cuba and Fidel Castro called for instant repulsion. It was these articles and the anti-communism paranoia at the time that made it reasonable for the United States to meddle in Brazil’s political affairs.
The United States infiltrated by funding political candidates and oppositionists of Goulart’s government. Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling wrote in their book, Brazil: A Biography, about the Brazilian Institute of Democratic Action that worked with the Central Intelligence Agency to finance 250 candidates for federal deputies, 60 candidates for state deputies and 8 candidates for governors in 1962. Furthermore, the authors write of how the United States was responsible for investing in the conspiracy against Goulart in the hopes of preventing a leftist dictatorship. “The objective of the large-scale sponsorship was strategic: to build an opposition in congress, stop the government, and give way to the coup,” wrote Schwarz and Starling in Portuguese. The growing fear of communism from Goulart’s government eventually results in the success of this objective.
In a telegram written by Lincoln Gordon, the United States ambassador for Brazil from 1961-1966 on March 28, 1964 to the Department of State, it says, “my considered conclusion is that Goulart is now definitely engaged on campaign to seize dictatorial power, accepting the active collaboration of the Brazilian Communist Party, and of other radical left revolutionaries to this end. If he were to succeed it is more than likely that Brazil would come under full Communist control.” In his evidence, he cites the repression towards Goulart’s oppositionists through media censorship and withholding of federal funds. He argues that Goulart’s true intentions are not social and economic reforms but to get rid of the existing constitution and the Congress.
In the same telegram, Gordon also writes of his support for Castello Branco as a leader for organized resistance groups against Goulart’s government. “Castello Branco is a highly competent, discreet, honest, and deeply respected officer who has strong loyalty to legal and constitutional principles,” wrote Gordon. He further assures the Department of State that Castello Branco will only act in response to, “unconstitutional provocation,” and uses the example of closing congress which is ironic given that the military dictatorship ultimately does exactly that.
Colonel Vernon A. Walters, the American military attaché in Brazil, then telegraphs the State department communicating that the Brazilian army generals have decided to act, thus leading the United States to prepare its support. On March 30th, the United States sent a task force of aircraft carriers and destroyers with arms as well as oil and petroleum products to Brazil. Gordon feared that a civil war would erupt between the military and popular forces which would cause the labor unions to deplete all the arms and petroleum that the military would need to fight. These measures, however, were revealed to be ultimately unnecessary. The intervention was never direct since Goulart quickly fled the country once the military threatened to take over. “When it became clear that there was not gonna be significant resistance, they ordered the task force to return… There was never direct intervention where the marines landed and occupied a city and then caused some kind of concern,” said Green.
Brazil also tried to maintain the exterior image of a democratic government to hide the reality of a right-winged dictatorship which made the support from the United States seem more justifiable. Castello Branco, the first military leader, stripped the opposition of political rights but kept political parties and the congress in session. The gubernatorial elections of 1965, nevertheless, lead the government to pivot slightly. Since the opposition wins in both the states of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, the government decides to eliminate political parties and create only a majority and minority party to preserve the illusion of a democracy but prevent the opposition from growing in power. “Brazil’s government is very concerned with creating a PR campaign to make it look like Brazil is a democracy and to allow certain institutions to continue to exist even though it’s not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship,” said Green.
When Institutional Act Number Five is passed, however, Brazil’s PR campaign wavers and the illusion of a democracy no longer stands. “That’s when they [Brazil’s government] close congress and that causes some crisis in the Johnson administration,” said Green. The United States suspended aid in December of 1968 but resumed it five months later in May of 1969.
In regards to the torture afflicted on government oppositionists, Green believes that while the United States did not train Brazil’s military to torture, they still incentivized it indirectly by supporting the military dictatorship. “Brazilians were torturing people in the 1940s or in the Estado Novo with Getulio Vargas. Brazilians were torturing slaves for 300 years. They didn’t need to be taught how to do that,” said Green, “what the United States did was reassure them that this was ok when they knew about torture and didn’t actively denounce it.”
Ralph Della Cava, who taught Latin America history at Queens College here in New York City and was a member of the Brazil seminar at Columbia University, wrote an article called ‘Torture in Brazil’ published in April 24, 1970, where he shames the United States for its involvement. “In view of the wide-scale tortures and the increasingly fascist militarization of Brazil, what explains the official silence of the United States government?… Its silence is a resounding reaffirmation of its policy of complicity in regard to Brazil,” wrote Della Cava.
In his article, Della Cava questions the silence from American newspapers as well as from the government stating how Europeans and Chileans have publicly denounced the torture in Brazil’s government while Americans have kept their mouths tightly shut. Della Cava also calls out Gordon for being responsible for this policy of complicity. He describes him as, “the architect of that policy” and blames him for convincing the Johnson administration to recognize Brazil’s government, “within 24 hours, even though the regime’s policies were largely unknown.”
In response to Della Cava’s article, Gordon claimed to have been unaware of the torture taking place. He writes that his participation as Assistant Secretary of State in official American policy-making toward Latin America ended in June, 1967 and that, “during the period before mid-1967, no cases of torture were brought to my attention.” He also writes of how he condemned the Fifth Institutional Act since he, “considered that Act an unnecessary and arbitrary reversal of the Brazilian Government’s announced intention to restore full constitutional processes.” After the act, Gordon asserts that he advised the U.S. administration to halt any aid allocations in order to refrain from endorsing the act.
Della Cava, however, refuted Gordon’s argument. In his reply, Della Cava writes that, “in the six months immediately following the military coup of 1 April 1964, the public record alone fully documented about two dozen cases of torture.” He then goes on to note various newspapers that documented torture during the time that Gordon was still actively participating in his position. Della Cava further proves how the dictatorship stripped myriad individuals of political rights and freedoms in 1966 whilst Gordon was still in his position meanwhile the United States doubled its monetary support, rather than acknowledging the government’s fascist behavior.
I find it difficult for Gordon to have been fully uninformed and short-sighted to the point where he was unable to predict that granting the military with power would not have led Brazil’s government into the opposite of a democracy. Green attributes Gordon’s lack of foresight to the cold war climate. “To a certain extent he kind of had a notion that the military was honest and was going to be democratic but the military had no intentions of doing that… He really was caught up and blinded by cold war ideas and therefore made the wrong decisions not based on fact but based on the ideology,” said Green.
In his statement against Della Cava’s claims, Gordon writes of his concern of Brazil’s leftist tendencies at the time thus proving Green’s point about the ideology. “There were several candidates who openly spoke of themselves as would-be “Fidel Castros” of Brazil. Given the size and location of Brazil, such a course of events – evidently hypothetical, but not implausible – might have made all of South America an area of left-wing totalitarian regimes,” wrote Gordon.
Regardless of whether Gordon was cognizant of the human rights violations and of how the cold war ideology blinded him, it remains true that he persuaded the United States to support a fascist dictatorship. The consequences of this persuasion have been proven fatal and both Gordon as well as the United States should have been held accountable.
It is often the case that the United States intervention in Brazil is forgotten since it can seem harmless when compared to other United States’ interventions where they invaded, created civil wars and maintained a large presence militarily. However, we cannot disregard the fact that the United States supported a government that tortured its citizens, took away their freedoms, and governed with terror.
