As Latin America’s largest and most influential nation, Brazil shapes regional tendencies extra considerably than typically perceived on the worldwide stage.
In March 2024, we mark 60 years since Brazil initiated a wave of navy dictatorships that swept by way of South America till 1990.
The 1964 Brazilian coup, with U.S. help, sparked authoritarian rule throughout the continent. Solely in 1985, after 21 years, did Brazil return to democracy.
The U.S. performed a big position on this period, aiming to thwart communist influences through the Chilly Battle.
Its involvement was partly motivated by occasions just like the Cuban Revolution, which had shifted Cuba nearer to the Soviet Union, resulting in tensions exemplified by the Cuban Missile Disaster.
A Look Again: 60 Years Since Brazil Sparked South America’s Period of Dictatorships. (Photograph Web copy)
Following Brazil’s instance, nations together with Bolivia, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina fell into dictatorship.
These regimes, typically brutal, engaged in state terrorism, leading to over 85,000 deaths and disappearances.
Every nation’s fact commissions meticulously documented the regime’s actions.
Operation Condor, a infamous marketing campaign within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, noticed these nations, with U.S. backing, goal dissidents and subversives.
This operation concerned covert actions to surveil, abduct, torture, and remove political opponents, even these in exile.
Earlier than this, in 1968, Brazil’s AI-5 decree allowed the federal government to dissolve legislative our bodies and droop political rights, making it an indicator of state repression.
This era noticed the abolition of habeas corpus for political crimes, tightening the regime’s grip on energy.
A Look Again: 60 Years Since Brazil Sparked South America’s Period of Dictatorships
By the Nineteen Eighties, Brazil’s dictatorship started to crumble amidst financial turmoil and a clamor for direct presidential elections, symbolized by the Diretas Já motion.
The regime led to 1985 with Tancredo Neves’ election, though he by no means took workplace; his vice, José Sarney, succeeded him as a substitute.
Brazil’s lengthy dictatorship, one of many longest in South America, concluded whereas Chile was nonetheless beneath Augusto Pinochet’s rule, ending in 1990.
This chapter in historical past underscores the profound impacts of political upheaval and the enduring battle for democracy within the area.
