Impunity Still an Issue in Brazil, 50 Years After Military Coup

A small protest turned tense outside Rio de Janeiro’s military club this week, as police dispersed demonstrators with tear gas after a memorial marking 50 years since Brazil’s 1964 military coup was inaugurated at what’s widely considered the epicenter of ongoing sympathy for the country’s former dictatorship.

A Coup Remembered, and Contested

The demonstration came on the anniversary of April 1, 1964, when a U.S.-backed military coup ousted Brazil’s democratically elected president, João “Jango” Goulart, ushering in a 21-year authoritarian regime. Police moved to break up Tuesday’s protest after a demonstrator threw a can of red paint at the military club building, a site long regarded as a gathering point for those who continue to view the dictatorship era with nostalgia rather than condemnation.

Among those reflecting on the anniversary was Jean Marc, who was 18 years old and in downtown Rio with a friend on the day of the coup in 1964. He recalled watching an officer fire directly into a crowd of protesters gathered outside the city’s naval club — a formative memory for a young man who, at the time, actually supported the coup. Jean Marc’s own politics would shift dramatically in the years that followed: he was later arrested and imprisoned for participating in activities opposing the military government he had once welcomed.

A Truth Commission Without Teeth

Brazil’s government established a National Truth Commission in 2011 to formally investigate human rights abuses committed during the dictatorship — testimony-gathering work that has surfaced harrowing, detailed accounts of torture and state violence in the years since. But unlike some of its South American neighbors, Brazil has yet to translate that documentation into accountability. Argentina, by contrast, has already overturned its own amnesty law and successfully prosecuted a number of former officials and torturers for dictatorship-era crimes, according to reporting from the World Socialist Web Site on the anniversary.

Brazil’s own amnesty law, passed in 1979 by the military regime itself as it began ceding power, has functioned for 35 years as a durable shield against prosecution — protecting not just the officials who ran the dictatorship, but also, under its broad terms, the torturers who carried out abuses on their behalf. The Truth Commission’s work has occasionally produced chilling glimpses of exactly what that shield has protected: just days before this week’s anniversary, a retired army colonel named Paulo Malhães gave commission testimony describing in graphic detail the torture methods used at a clandestine facility known as the “House of Death,” testimony delivered with the apparent confidence that Brazil’s amnesty framework would never expose him to prosecution regardless of what he admitted.

A Persistent, if Marginal, Nostalgia for Authoritarian Rule

Despite the Truth Commission’s steady accumulation of testimony documenting torture and disappearances, a small but measurable current of Brazilian public opinion continues to view the dictatorship favorably. A survey published in the week leading up to the anniversary found that 14 percent of respondents said they believe dictatorship is the best form of government — a minority position, but a persistent and organized one. The fringe Brazilian Military Party is expected to field candidates in Brazil’s 2016 municipal elections, and several prominent Facebook groups dedicated explicitly to restoring military rule have gained traction online, typically framing their position as opposition to Brazil’s governing Workers’ Party, which they characterize as covertly communist.

That undercurrent of authoritarian nostalgia was visible in Brazil’s own Congress this week as well. A scheduled special session marking the coup’s anniversary descended into chaos, forcing its suspension after a physical altercation broke out between supporters and opponents of the 1964 coup among members of the public in attendance, according to wire coverage of the disorder. Amid the disruption, Brazil’s Defense Minister Celso Amorim did agree, in a call with Truth Commission officials, to establish inquiry units within the armed forces tasked with investigating military installations believed to have served as torture sites — a modest but concrete step the commission had been requesting for months.

A Reckoning Still Deferred

Whether that concession from the defense ministry represents genuine momentum toward accountability, or simply another gesture designed to manage the anniversary’s political optics, remains to be seen. What’s clear five decades after the coup is that Brazil’s transition to democracy, unlike those of several neighboring countries that endured their own military dictatorships in the same era, has never been paired with a reckoning that actually reaches the individuals responsible for the abuses the country’s own Truth Commission continues to document in painstaking, harrowing detail.

For related coverage of unresolved political violence in Latin America, see our piece on Mexico’s Ayotzinapa student disappearances, or browse our full International archive.