The U. government had been dissatisfied with the leftist, nationalist and neutralist policies of Brazil’s civilian leaders for at least ten years before it organized the military coup against President Joao Goulart in April 1964. From Washington’s viewpoint, this problem grew especially acute after the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the refusal of the Brazilian government to join enthusiastically in the covert and overt campaigns to remove Fidel Castro from power. There was precedent for the military and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) actions against President Goulart, including the removal of President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in Operation Success in 1954. Certainlt the U.S. had a long history of supporting ‘friendly dictators’ of the right-wing variety in Latin America, such as the notorious Somoza families. After the coup in Brazil, it would also conduct a similar operation against President Salvador Allende of Chile in 197, and support the other military police states in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay with military aid and training for their police and intelligence services. All of this occurred in Brazil after the 1964 coup as well, along with a shift in economic policies that was much friendlier to foreign investment and the free market/monetarist ideology of the Wall Street banks and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Brazil did experience rapid economic growth for a time under military rule, at least before it stalled out during the 1970s oil shocks, but it was badly distributed by region and social class, and government policy neglected education, land reform, literacy, poverty reduction and other programs that would have aided the country’s impoverished majority. In short, the U.S. government obtained the exact type of domestic and foreign policies it desired in Brazil in 1964-85, and even considered it a ‘model’ for the rest of South America, but at a very high cost to the majority of the country’s people.
Other Brazilian presidents before Goulart had followed economic and foreign policies that were highly displeasing to the U.S. government and it took steps against them. Jucelino Kubitschek, who was president in 1955-61, had run up a large debt in order to finance industrialization and economic development as well as the construction of the new capital of Brasilia, and much of the money was lost to flagrant corruption. By 1960, the national debt accounted for 40% of Brazil’s exports, so his successor Janio da Silva Quadros, vowed to follow more conservative economic policies and signed a new agreement with the IMF to cut spending and subsidies and devalue the currency (Henry 132). Yet he also displeased the U.S. by refusing to support the Bay of Pigs operation and covert war against Castro, and in fact traveled to Havana in 1961 to present Che Guevara with a medal (Henry 133). Even though he was offered a bribe of $300 million by U.S. Ambassador John Cabot and the White House Special Assistant for Latin America Albert Berle, he indignantly refused the offer. At the time, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara warned that neutralism in Brazil’s foreign policy or any sign of sympathy for Castro were intolerable to Washington (Blum 163). In August 1961 da Silva was forced to resign the presidency, for which he always blamed Cabot, Berle and the U.S. government in general (Henry 133).
As his vice president and successor, the leftist Goulart proved even more unacceptable to Washington, which is why the military and CIA finally overthrew him on April 1, 1964. Not only did he continue with a neutralist and pro-Castro foreign policy, but domestically his program included “land reform, boosting taxes on foreign investors, nationalizing utilities and oil refineries, and even encouraging enlisted men in the army to organize a union” (Henry 133). Washington’s reaction to all this was perfectly predictable, as it had been with Arbenz in Guatemala or would be with Allende in Chile, and as David Rockefeller told a secret conference of military officers at West point in the fall of 1964 “it was decided early on that Goulart was unacceptableand would have to go” (Henry 134). Attorney General Robert Kenendy was sent to meet with Goulart in 1962, and later admitted that he disliked him and his policies, and also warned him about the leftist direction that he was taking, both domestically and internationally (Blum 163). Washington cut off all aid to Brazil in the period and also organized a mass media campaign against Goulart, orchestrated by the CIA. At the same time, it also conferred with business and military leaders to lay the groundwork for his removal. General Humberto Castello Branco led the coup against Goulart, in close consultation with U.S. Ambassador Gordon Lincoln and the high-level CIA officer Vernon Walters. In fact Walters, who was the military attaché in Brazil in 1962-67 and spoke Portuguese fluently, had been a close friend of Castello Branco since World War II. Another of his friends was Gen. Emilio Medici, head of the Black Eagles military school and later of the Servicio Nacional de Informceos (SNI), and finally Castello Branco’s successor as military dictator (Henry 134). As the coup went forward, the U.S. Navy and Air Force were also standing by to provide whatever assistance might be required.
Like Gen. Pinochet in Chile in 1973-89. Castello Branco and his successors followed free market and monetarist economic policies that reduced government spending, opened the country to foreign investment, cut back on domestic subsidies and credit, banned strikes and labor unions, and eliminated taxes on foreign profits. They created private investment banks, jailed, tortured and executed student and labor leaders, and eliminated elections at all levels, state local and federal (Henry 134). Congress was suspended as were the state legislatures and city councils, and no elections were held again until 1982. As in other countries, the CIA established the SNI, which had 50,000 employees and served as the secret police and surveillance arm of the military regime, tasked with repression of dissent at home and abroad (Henry 125). Only two sham political parties were allowed to exist, the ARENA and the ‘official’ opposition PCB, both controlled by the military and SNI and known to Brazilians as the ‘yes’ and ‘yes sir’ parties (Henery 136). As in other right-wing dictatorships in Latin America, the press was censored, habeas corpus suspended permanently, and mass arrests and detentions without charges were commonplace. In return, Brazil received over $2 billion in direct U.S. aid during the first six years of the military regime, as well as a loan of $214 million from the IMF, which had loaned Brazil nothing at all in 1959-64. Literacy programs were eliminated, the minimum wage fell by 25% and malnutrition and infant mortality increased dramatically (Henry 135). Although there was economic growth and an increase in exports under the early years of military rule, wealth and incomes were very unequally distributed by region and social class, which even many military and intelligence officers realized (Skidmore 90). This was an economic program designed to benefit U.S. and other foreign investors rather than the country and its people as a whole.
This is not the type of story that will ever be found in the mainstream media and academia in the U.S., although none of the information is really secret and the general details were well known at the time. It is simply that this subject is not widely publicized and most of the public has never been aware of it, but the fact remains that the U.S. overthrew the democratically-elected government of Brazil in 1964 and replaced it with a right-wing military dictatorship that remained in power for over twenty years. It supported this dictatorship with massive economic and military aid and also trained its police and intelligence services in the methods of repression. This policy was hardly atypical or unusual at the time but was in fact the norm, and was put into practice in many countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. It was done in Iran after the CIA coup there in 1953 (Operation Ajax), in Guatemala after the 1954 coup and in Chile after the overthrow of Allende in 1973. It would have been done in Cuba in the 1960s had U.S. covert operations against Castro been successful, and more recently in Venezuela against Hugo Chavez. Once the researcher becomes aware of the basic pattern in these coups and the policies that are put in place in their aftermath, the guiding hand behind them is not at all difficult to detect. In this case, the majority of the people of Brazil suffered twenty years of political repression and economic inequality on a massive scale, but that was by no means unusual after any of these coups either.
WORKS CITED
Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II. London: Zed Books, 2004.
Henry, James. The Blood Bankers: tales from the Global Underground Economy. NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003.
Skidmore, Thomas. The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-1985. Oxford University Press, 1988.
