Brazilian coup of 1964

Between 31 March and 1 April 1964, a military revolt backed by opposition governors, business leaders and much of the press removed João Goulart, the elected president of Brazil. Almost no shots were fired, and within days Goulart was in exile in Uruguay. The coup ended the democratic republic founded in 1946 and opened a military dictatorship that lasted until 1985. Its supporters called it a "revolution"; historians today describe it as a coup.

Goulart, known as Jango, was elected vice-president in 1960 on a separate ballot from President Jânio Quadros. When Quadros resigned in August 1961, the military ministers tried to stop Goulart from taking office. A "Legality Campaign" led by Leonel Brizola, governor of Rio Grande do Sul, defeated the veto, but Goulart had to accept a parliamentary system that cut his powers. A referendum in January 1963 restored full presidential rule.

The economy was in trouble: inflation rose from about 30 per cent in 1960 to nearly 80 per cent in 1963, while growth almost stopped. Trade unions, peasant leagues, students and some low-ranking soldiers and sailors rallied behind Goulart's "base reforms", including land reform and the vote for illiterates. Much of the elite and the officer corps, the Catholic Church and the urban middle class saw in these demands a threat of disorder and communism. Congress rejected land reform, and Goulart's attempt to rule by conciliation collapsed.

The Cuban Revolution made Washington anxious to prevent "another Cuba" in Latin America, and coups in Argentina, Peru, Guatemala and Ecuador in 1962 and 1963 were accepted by the United States. American relations with Goulart soured over his independent foreign policy and his opposition to sanctions on Cuba. The United States funded opposition candidates in the 1962 elections, as its ambassador Lincoln Gordon later admitted, and prepared a naval and logistical operation, codenamed Brother Sam, to support the rebels if fighting broke out. Many historians see the crisis as fundamentally Brazilian, with American influence weighing in on the opposition's side, as part of the wider Cold War.

In March 1964 Goulart chose confrontation. A rally at the Central do Brasil railway station on 13 March launched a campaign of pressure on Congress, and on 20 March opponents answered with the "March of the Family with God for Liberty". A sailors' mutiny, and Goulart's amnesty for the mutineers, outraged officers who saw military discipline collapsing.

On 31 March General Olímpio Mourão Filho marched his troops from Minas Gerais towards Rio de Janeiro. Both sides prepared for civil war, but Goulart did not want bloodshed, and loyalist commanders defected one after another. Goulart flew from Rio to Brasília and then to Porto Alegre. In the early hours of 2 April the president of the Senate declared the presidency vacant, though Goulart was still in Brazil, and Ranieri Mazzilli, speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, was sworn in. The United States recognised him that night. Goulart reached Uruguay on 4 April. The journalist Elio Gaspari counted seven deaths during the coup itself, all civilians, and 20 in 1964 as a whole.

Real power lay with a junta of the three armed services. An Institutional Act of 9 April laid the basis for political purges and brought forward the choice of a new president, and on 15 April General Humberto Castelo Branco, one of the coup's leaders, took office as president. Thousands were arrested, union leaders and student activists were targeted, and torture was used from the start. Politicians who had expected a quick return to civilian rule were disappointed: five generals governed in turn until 1985.

Our 1960 map shows Brazil under its democratic republic, and the 1985 map shows it in the year military rule ended.