Brazil

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3

Descent into Chaos

By the 1960 presidential election, a new figure had emerged on the national political scene. Jânio Quadros, the governor of São Paulo, was the National Democratic Union candidate for the presidency. Quadros vowed to sweep government clean of corruption and even brandished a broom as his symbol while campaigning. He won the presidential election. However, because the presidential and vice presidential candidates were elected separately in Brazil, the Brazilian Workers Party candidate, João Goulart, was elected vice president.

Just seven months after his inauguration in January 1961, Jânio Quadros suddenly and unexpectedly resigned the presidency. No one, including Quadros, has ever offered a satisfactory explanation for the resignation. Whatever the reasons behind Quadros’s resignation, it provoked a crisis. The constitution called for Vice President João Goulart to succeed Quadros, but powerful figures in the military high command quickly declared him unacceptable. Many Brazilians saw Goulart as a Communist or Communist sympathizer, whose political ideas were too far to the left of center. The Congress, and many political leaders, rejected the military’s position and called for respect for the constitutional process.

For nearly two weeks, the military and Congress negotiated a solution to the impasse. Goulart was sworn in, but his presidential powers were curtailed. New legislation created a prime minister, who would be responsible to the legislature and who would share many of the political powers held by the president. This legislation was reversed in 1962, when Goulart held a national referendum in which voters restored the presidential system of government.

The military’s hatred of Goulart must be seen in the context of the Cold War, an intense economic and diplomatic struggle between the United States and its allies and the group of nations led by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). By the 1960s many Brazilian military officers had come to see Brazil as a front-line nation in the Cold War struggle between Communism and capitalism. This vision was fostered by Brazil’s alliance with the United States and by ideas circulated in courses and specialized schools for the officer corps. Many officers feared a revolution in Brazil, and they viewed Goulart, with his support for leftist causes, as the leader of Communist forces in Brazil.

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Goulart was also confronted with problems that sprang from the gradual disintegration of the economy. Inflation continued to increase, and the government faced large debt payments on foreign loans taken out to finance economic development during the Kubitschek administration. Goulart’s economic advisers devised a plan to stabilize the economy by controlling wages and reducing government spending. Goulart followed this policy for several months, but then abandoned it. He feared that the imposition of wage controls would cost him the support of workers, who were his strongest political supporters, and that concessions to foreign bankers would alienate Brazilian nationalists. By early 1964 inflation approached 100 percent a year, foreign loans came to a halt, and the economy neared collapse.

Following the advice of his most radical advisers, Goulart attempted to strengthen his support among the masses. In the first months of 1964 he staged huge rallies in several of Brazil’s major cities. He also signed decrees setting low-rent controls, nationalizing petroleum refineries, seizing unused lands, and limiting profits that could be taken out of Brazil by foreign investors. In a final, desperate move to check the power of his enemies in the military high command, Goulart made a televised speech to a group of sergeants. He told them to disobey their superiors if they believed their orders were not in the best interest of the nation. Conspirators in the military had been contemplating the overthrow of Goulart for months; on March 31, after Goulart’s speech to the sergeants, the army took control of the government. Goulart fled the country, never to return.

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Military Rule

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1

Moderate Leadership

The military intervened with two primary objectives: to eradicate the left and to rebuild the collapsing economy. Military leaders split between political hardliners and moderates over how to achieve these goals. Led by General Humberto Castello Branco, who was named president, the moderates dominated the early years of the regime. Rather than shutting down civilian politics completely, the military attempted to purge the system of “undesirable” elements. They arrested and imprisoned people they perceived as opponents of the regime. Many fled the country. The military dismissed thousands of civil servants, military personnel, and politicians from their jobs and prohibited suspected political opponents from voting or holding office.

The military hoped that these actions would be enough to silence their opponents. This was not the case. By 1968 growing political opposition—even from former supporters of the military government—increasingly called for a return to civilian rule. Even the Supreme Court and the Congress, whose membership had been approved by the military leaders, began to exhibit signs of independence. The Supreme Court ordered the release of three students who had been detained by the government, and the Congress refused to allow the trial of one of its members who had criticized the military. University students in Brazil mounted huge demonstrations against the generals in 1967 and 1968. In addition, a small guerrilla movement developed, based largely in the cities. Its members kidnapped U.S. ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick and demanded a ransom and the release of political prisoners held by Brazil’s military government. Over the next four years guerrillas continued their campaign against the government by kidnapping foreign diplomats, bombing government buildings, and robbing banks to finance their activities.

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Hardliners Take Control

The growing opposition provoked a sharp response from the hardliners, who launched a coup within the regime and took the upper hand in the military high command. The coup was triggered when General Artur Costa e Silva, who had been voted president by the legislature in 1967, suffered a series of incapacitating strokes in 1968. The three military cabinet ministers (army, navy, and air force) then took charge.

The generals saw chaos and Communists all around them, and they cracked down, initiating intense repression to crush the opposition. In December 1968 they shut down Congress. The military leaders issued a new constitution that concentrated power in the executive and they named a new president, General Emílio Médici. Between 1968 and 1974, Médici and the hardliners unleashed the systematic and widespread use of torture and repression to silence their opponents. Thousands suffered at the hands of the torturers, and hundreds died.

The regime took control of labor unions and silenced anyone who criticized the regime. Within a few years the guerrillas had been entirely wiped out. The government eventually shut down the national student union, and universities purged their faculties of those suspected of supporting leftist ideas. Large numbers of prominent Brazilian academics and artists went into exile in other Latin American countries, the United States, and Europe.

The years of repression coincided with the years of the so-called Brazilian miracle when the economy grew faster than any other economy in the world. During this period manufactured goods replaced coffee as Brazil’s leading export. The staunchly nationalistic military wanted to make Brazil a world power and understood that a strong industrial economy held the key to their goal. They welcomed foreign investment, attracting billions of dollars. The regime channeled that investment into sectors of the economy considered critical for development. Among other things, these included the Trans-Amazon Highway, a large hydroelectric dam at Itaipú in southeastern Brazil, and a nuclear power program.

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Return to Civilian Government

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Abertura

By 1973 the economy was expanding at an extraordinary pace, and the military appeared to have control over the political system. Moderate forces within the military brought General Ernesto Geisel to the presidency in 1974. The son of German immigrants, Geisel initiated abertura (opening), a series of reforms that gradually allowed limited political organization and elections. The legal opposition party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), began to win important elections.

Geisel handpicked his successor, General João Baptista Figueiredo. Figueiredo’s presidency began in 1979 by furthering abertura with the declaration of a general amnesty for all political crimes since 1964. The government also allowed exiles to return home. Figueiredo released the last few political prisoners, and official censors finally left the pressrooms and television studios. The Figueiredo government also issued guidelines for the formation of new political parties and for open election of governors in 1982.

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Economic Problems

Abertura was complicated by growing economic problems with roots going back to the enormous industrial and economic expansion of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This expansion had made the country heavily dependent on petroleum, much of which was imported. When Arab nations began limiting oil exports in October 1973, the price of oil skyrocketed, seriously crippling the Brazilian economy. The regime had already borrowed heavily to finance the so-called Brazilian miracle. To keep the economy going, and to avoid a recession, the Brazilian government borrowed billions from international agencies and banks to finance continued growth. The Brazilian foreign debt went from about $25 billion in 1974 to more than $100 billion in the early 1980s—at that time the largest foreign debt in the world. Inflation continued its upward trend, reaching levels far higher than during the crisis of 1963 and 1964. In 1982 Brazil halted all payments on the principal of its huge foreign debt, and the economy entered a severe recession.