Kinlore
31 March 1964 – 15 March 1985

The military dictatorship

Generals overthrow President João Goulart and rule for twenty-one years, presiding over an economic "miracle", censorship, torture and the killing or disappearance of hundreds of opponents, then hand back power under an amnesty that protects them.

  • The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85 — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (1988)
  • 1964: História do Regime Militar Brasileiro — Marcos Napolitano, Editora Contexto (2014)
  • Relatório da Comissão Nacional da Verdade — Comissão Nacional da Verdade (2014)
  • Brasil: Nunca Mais — Arquidiocese de São Paulo, Editora Vozes (1985)
  • Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
  • A Concise History of Brazil — Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, Cambridge University Press (2014)

Well established militaryrepressionmemorydemocracy

By the early 1960s Brazil was polarised. President João Goulart, a Vargas heir, promised land reform and closer ties with organised labour; inflation was soaring; and, in the climate of the Cold War and the Cuban Revolution, much of the middle class, the Catholic hierarchy, business and the big newspapers feared a slide to communism. In March 1964 hundreds of thousands marched in São Paulo in the “March of the Family with God for Liberty”.

  • 1964: História do Regime Militar Brasileiro — Marcos Napolitano, Editora Contexto (2014)
  • The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85 — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (1988)
On 31 March troops moved; by 1 April Goulart had fallen and soon fled to Uruguay. The United States, which had prepared a naval task force to support the plotters if needed, quickly recognised the new government.
  • The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85 — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (1988)
  • Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)

Hardening

Many civilian backers expected a brief intervention. Instead a succession of generals ruled as president, chosen by the army and rubber-stamped by a purged Congress. Political parties were abolished and replaced by two permitted ones. In December 1968, after student protests and strikes, Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5) closed Congress, suspended habeas corpus for political crimes and imposed censorship on the press, theatre and music. Singers such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were jailed and sent into exile.

  • 1964: História do Regime Militar Brasileiro — Marcos Napolitano, Editora Contexto (2014)
  • The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85 — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (1988)

The years after AI-5, the anos de chumbo (“years of lead”), were the most violent. Some young leftists, including a future president, Dilma Rousseff, joined armed groups; the state answered with secret police units that tortured systematically. Military court records, secretly copied and published by the Archdiocese of São Paulo in 1985 as Brasil: Nunca Mais, documented the methods: electric shocks, the “parrot’s perch”, near-drowning.

  • Brasil: Nunca Mais — Arquidiocese de São Paulo, Editora Vozes (1985)
  • 1964: História do Regime Militar Brasileiro — Marcos Napolitano, Editora Contexto (2014)

The “miracle”

At the same time the economy grew at around 10% a year between 1968 and 1973, the “Brazilian miracle”, and Brazil won the 1970 World Cup, a triumph the regime eagerly used. The growth was financed by foreign debt and widened inequality; when oil prices spiked, the debt became a crisis that crippled the 1980s.

  • The Brazilian Economy: Growth and Development — Werner Baer, Lynne Rienner (2014)
  • The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85 — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (1988)

The slow opening

From 1974 the generals began a “slow, gradual and secure” opening. The 1979 Amnesty Law freed political prisoners and let exiles return, but it also covered state agents, and Brazil’s Supreme Court upheld that reading in 2010. Huge rallies in 1984 for direct presidential elections, Diretas Já, failed in Congress, but in January 1985 an electoral college chose the civilian Tancredo Neves. He fell ill and died before taking office, and his vice-president José Sarney became the first civilian president in 21 years.

  • 1964: História do Regime Militar Brasileiro — Marcos Napolitano, Editora Contexto (2014)
  • The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85 — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (1988)
  • A Concise History of Brazil — Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, Cambridge University Press (2014)

Counting the cost

The National Truth Commission, created in 2011 and reporting in December 2014, confirmed 434 people killed or disappeared by the state, 210 of whom remain missing, and named 377 people responsible. A separate chapter estimated that at least 8,350 Indigenous people died through the direct action or neglect of the state, a figure it said was surely too low.

Compared with Argentina or Chile the death toll was smaller, which some Brazilians use to call it a ditabranda, a “soft dictatorship”; survivors and historians reject the term. Unlike Argentina, Brazil never put its torturers on trial.

How it's seen
Victims, the left and most historians

It was a dictatorship that destroyed democracy, jailed and tortured thousands, killed or disappeared hundreds, and caused thousands of Indigenous deaths through its development projects. The amnesty guaranteed impunity. The National Truth Commission of 2014 documented these crimes in detail.

  • Relatório da Comissão Nacional da Verdade — Comissão Nacional da Verdade (2014)
  • Brasil: Nunca Mais — Arquidiocese de São Paulo, Editora Vozes (1985)
  • 1964: História do Regime Militar Brasileiro — Marcos Napolitano, Editora Contexto (2014)

Supporters and parts of the right

The military intervened at the request of much of society, the press and the church to stop Brazil going communist during the Cold War. They delivered rapid growth and order, and violence was a response to armed left-wing guerrillas. Some call 1964 a "revolution", not a coup.

  • The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85 — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (1988)
  • 1964: História do Regime Militar Brasileiro — Marcos Napolitano, Editora Contexto (2014)

Why it matters today

Brazil

The dictatorship is the most contested memory in Brazilian politics. Many Brazilians see it as a dark time of torture and censorship; a significant minority remember order, growth and safety, and some still celebrate 31 March. Because the 1979 amnesty shielded the torturers, nobody was ever tried, and the argument over what the regime was has never been settled.