Bolsonaro allowed the army to celebrate the coup of 1964 | Chronic

The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, allowed the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defense to celebrate March 31 as a festive date commemorating the beginning of the military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985.

"The president does not consider the military coup of March 31, 1964, but the civil society and the military, aware of the danger that the country lived at that time, unite to reposition the course", said the presidential spokesman, the general Otavio Rego Barros. He added: "Otherwise, we would have a government that would not be good for anyone", he said in statements to reporters.

Bolsonaro "has already decided with the Ministry of Defense to make the commemorations scheduled for March 31, 1964, including the agenda", he added.

Commanders can perform acts that "consider within their respective garrisons"responded to the presidential spokesman on the type of commemoration that will be organized.

The decision of Bolsonaro returns to that prepared in 2011 by the president of the time Dilma Rousseff, a former political prisoner and tortured for 22 consecutive days under the military regime, who had banned any justification for the anniversary of the coup of 1964. It also prompted the rejection of family members from over 400 people missing or died under the last Brazilian military regime.

Eight ministers of the Brazilian government are members of the armed forces and more than 100 officials are between the second and third levels of public administration.

Jair Bolsonaro, elected president with more than 55% of the vote in October 2018, publicly congratulated dictators Augusto PinochetChile and Alfredo Stroessnerfrom Paraguay.

The president, a former army captain who has been a deputy for three decades, said he was considering the coup of the military state that began March 31, 1964 and unfolded on April 1 to overthrow the then president. Joao Goulart it was a "brake on communism".

The decision to allow the commemoration of the 1964 coup made Bolsonaro the first president of South America to claim a military coup since the restoration of democracy in the region.

After the overthrow of Goulart, more than 434 political or missing people were murdered, more than 10,000 were tortured and, according to the 2014 Truth Commission, about 8,000 indigenous people were murdered in order to finalize their plans for the death of their loved ones. infrastructure and agriculture in the Amazon region.

Human rights organizations, such as the group "Tortura Nunca Más", called Sunday, March 31, for the repudiation of the coup d'etat that put in place a regime led by successive dictators. Humberto Castelo Branco, Arthur Costa e Silva, Emilio Garrastazú Médici, Ernesto Geisel and Joao Figueiredo over 21 years old.

In 1967, the Brazilian dictatorship suspended all public and political freedoms, resulting in the largest wave of exiles in the history of Brazil, although unlike other countries in the region tolerated the functioning of Congress with an official party and another opponent. moderate

After the restoration of democracy in 1985, several military and police barracks celebrated the 1964 coup, until this practice was suspended with the arrival of Dilma Rousseff as head of state.

The retired military campaigned against Rousseff, who in 2014 created the Truth Commission on what happened in the country during the 21 years of the last dictatorship, although it is without sanctions, since in Brazil the amnesty law of 1979 governs the return of the exiles and prevents the prosecution of police officers and army officers for crimes against humanity, a norm ratified by the Federal Supreme Court in 2009.