Brazil’s new defense minister assured that the 1964 coup must be “celebrated”

The new Brazilian Minister of Defense made his first official statement in office: the coup d’état which, on March 31, 1964, established a military dictatorship must be “celebrated” as a “movement” making it possible to “pacify the country”.

57 years ago, in the middle of the cold war, there was “a real threat to peace and democracy”“, The so-called General Walter Braga Netto, named the day before by President Jair Bolsonaro, in an” Agenda referring to March 31, 1964. “

“The armed forces They assumed the responsibility of pacifying the country, of facing the wear and tear of its reorganization and of guaranteeing the democratic freedoms we enjoy today.“, He added.

For Braga Netto, “the movement of 1964 is part of the historical trajectory of Brazil” and “this is how the events of March 31 must be understood and celebrated”.

Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has tried to revive the coup celebrations since coming to power in 2019. Last year, then defense minister Fernando Azevedo e Silva, replaced on Tuesday by Braga Netto, asserted that “the movement of 1964 is a framework for Brazilian democracy”.

Analyst Tales Faría, from the portal Uol, considered that this year’s “agenda” was “moderate” compared to 2020 and that it could “be the result of an agreement between military commanders to try to pacify the internal environment, after it became clear that the president’s insistence on praising an exceptional regime was not without motivations“.

It remains to be seen who the commanders in question are, since Bolsonaro replaced the heads of the army, navy and air force on Tuesday and has not yet named his successors.

Analysts believe that the relay is linked to commanders’ dissatisfaction with Bolsonaro’s attempts to politicize the role of the armed forces in the South American giant.

The 1964 coup, which overthrew President Joao Goulart, established a regime that lasted until 1985. According to a report published in 2014 by the National Truth Commission (CNV, an official body), the dictatorship is responsible for 434 murders and disappearances and hundreds of arbitrary detentions and torture. This balance does not include the many deaths of indigenous people and peasants resulting from land disputes.

Unlike its neighbors, Brazil has never tried state officials accused of committing crimes during the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s in Latin America, invoking the 1979 amnesty law.

U.S. documents declassified in 2018 revealed that the elimination of dissidents was sometimes decided at the presidential palace.

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