
A Tale of Two Coups
Brazil and the United States
By James N. Green
In October 2018, the election of former army captain and extreme-right politician Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of Brazil alarmed political observers around the world. Following in the footsteps of his ideological compatriot occupying the White House at the time, Bolsonaro was quickly dubbed by journalists the “Trump of the Tropics.” His virulent attacks on Indigenous peoples, environmentalists, and Black, feminist, and LGBT+ activists, among other targeted groups, represented yet another electoral victory for the extreme right. Using fake news, employing a right-wing populist, anti-corruption discourse, and relying on support from evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics, Bolsonaro seemed to imitate Trump’s every political position, from Covid-19 vaccination denial to his refusal to wear a mask. Tragically, Brazil followed the United States in the number of pandemic deaths, estimated at more than 600,000.
As the 2022 Brazilian presidential elections approached, former trade-union leader and two-time left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010) surged ahead in the polls. In response, Bolsonaro borrowed another chapter from the Trump playbook: he began criticizing Brazil’s electronic voting system and suggested a possible military intervention should he lose the election.
The threat of a military coup was no empty promise. Since 1889, when the Brazilian army ousted Emperor Pedro II and established a republic, the armed forces initiated nine attempted takeovers, five of which were successful. The last military intervention into Brazilian politics took place in 1964, with the explicit support of the US government. It led to a 21-year-long military dictatorship.
When Lula da Silva won the presidential race in October 2022 with a tight two-point margin, Bolsonaro’s supporters moved into action to protest the election results. They blocked major highways and camped out in front of barracks throughout the country, demanding that the military intervene and overturn the election results. Despite these articulations, Lula da Silva was duly inaugurated as president on January 1, 2024. A week later, thousands of Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed the headquarters of the three branches of government—the presidential palace, National Congress Palace, and seat of the Supreme Court— breaking windows, damaging property, and destroying valuable national treasures. Taking place two years and two days after the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, the attempted coup d’état was subdued by the new government, which arrested thousands of insurrectionists and restored order to the streets. Subsequent investigations have revealed that sectors of the armed forces were poised to seize power but in large part were halted by international articulations, civil society organizations, and government officials, especially those coming from the Biden White House and the US Congress, warning the military that it would become a global pariah should it overthrow the democratically elected president.
This moment in US foreign policy vis-à-vis recent Brazilian history echoes in reverse the role the Kennedy and Johnson administrations played in supporting Brazilian forces involved in the 1964 military takeover sixty years earlier. The following considers what role Cold War ideologies and practices played in shaping national politics in the largest country of Latin America during the early 1960s and the ways in which the recent rise of the extreme right globally has contributed to a markedly different approach to Brazil by Washington policymakers.
The 1964 military coup d’état
In May 1958, Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek (1955–60), who oversaw the construction of the modernist capital of Brasília, wrote a letter to US president Dwight Eisenhower (1953–60) proposing a comprehensive $10 billion US-sponsored development program for Latin America, named Operation Pan-America. The Republican administration responded by arguing that “trade not aid” was the solution for Latin American socioeconomic problems. Eight months later, a ragtag guerrilla army of Cuban revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro seized the Cuban capital of Havana, toppling the dictatorial government of Fulgencio Batista (1952–59).
The radical left-wing turn of the new Cuban regime alarmed Washington policymakers. In March 1961, recently inaugurated President John F. Kennedy proposed a bold new aid program for the continent, known as the Alliance for Progress. In large part, it was designed to head off communist influence in the region by combining economic aid and development programs with police and military assistance and counter-insurgency training to undermine new guerrilla organizations that had emerged throughout the continent inspired by the victory of the Cuban insurgents.
Among the architects of the Alliance for Progress was Harvard economist Lincoln Gordon, whom Kennedy appointed ambassador to Brazil with the mission of preventing a second Cuban revolution. The mainstream press contributed to a Cold War panic that swept Washington regarding Brazil and Latin America and the Caribbean more generally. To cite one example among many, an October 23, 1960, front-page piece in the New York Times, with the alarmist title “Northeast Brazil Poverty Breeds Threat of a Revolt,” proclaimed: “The makings of a revolutionary situation are increasingly apparent across the vastness of the poverty-stricken and drought-plagued Brazilian Northeast.” A follow-up editorial, “The ‘Fidelistas’ of Brazil,” advocated for a new approach to Latin America: “It is time that the United States took a far more positive part in aiding our neighbors south of the Canal. We can fight the ‘Fidelistas’ everywhere in Latin America, not with armed force but with the kind of economic aid that proceeds from science and proper understanding.”
In a 1964 interview for the Kennedy Presidential Library, Gordon insisted that these articles set the idea of the Brazilian Northeast in the US public’s imagination. “They [the articles] talked about this area with its tradition of droughts, great poverty compared with the rest of the country, the development of peasant leagues, Recife as the so-called communist capital of Brazil, etc. The broad impression was an area with twenty-odd million people in it with explosive political and economic and social conditions. . . . I’m sure that most of the American public had never heard of the Brazilian Northeast until these New York Times articles appeared in 1960.”
Gordon arrived in Brazil in October 1961, at a critical turning point in the country’s history. Conservative populist President Jânio Quadros had just resigned after only eight months in office. At the time, voters could split their ticket. As a result, João Goulart, the left-wing leader of the Brazilian Labor Party, was elected vice president in the 1960 elections, after having served in the same office during the previous Kubitschek administration. Right-wing military officers attempted to prevent Goulart from assuming office, but a divided armed forces led to a compromise agreement allowing him to be sworn in with reduced presidential powers.
On March 31, 1964, the military rebellion took place, overtly backed by US policymakers. Rebellious generals marched on Rio de Janeiro.
At first, the Kennedy administration adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward Goulart. Eleven months later, Ambassador Gordon, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Richard Goodwin, and President Kennedy had made up their minds about the new government. In a White House meeting of July 30, 1962, Gordon said, “I think one of our important jobs is to strengthen the spine of the military. To make clear, discreetly, that we are not necessarily hostile to any kind of military action whatsoever if it’s clear that the reason for the military action is . . .” The President finished his sentence, “against the left.” Gordon continued: “He [Goulart] is giving the damn country away to the . . .” Again, Kennedy finished, “Communists.” A few moments later, Goodwin commented: “We may very well want them [the Brazilian military] to take over at the end of the year, if they can.” 1
Although Gordon, Goodwin, and Kennedy may have wished for Goulart’s rapid demise, it would take longer than they anticipated for the Brazilian generals to coalesce into a coherent group capable of staging a successful coup. In the meantime, Washington pursued a policy to encourage anti-Goulart forces that was wrapped in a Cold War framework in which any progressive or nationalistic government was seen as one step away from a communist takeover. US covert funding of the political opposition and overt signals to the right bolstered those favoring a military coup and were part of a plan to form a countervailing support wall to shore up the country against the supposed imminent fall of Brazil to communism.
In late 1963, Goulart turned to more nationalist postures to gain political support at home. In December, he issued a decree ordering a review of all government concessions in the mining industry, raising the fear that the government might nationalize foreign interests. The next month, he issued the regulations that enacted a profit-remittance law. Finally, at a massive March 13 rally, Goulart announced a set of measures, including a limited land reform and the expropriation of some foreign oil refineries. Gordon watched the public demonstration that afternoon on television, picking up the final speeches on the radio as he hurried to the airport for a flight back to Washington for special White House consultations.
On March 31, 1964, the military rebellion took place, overtly backed by US policymakers. Rebellious generals marched on Rio de Janeiro. Goulart flew to Brasília, then to his country estate in the south. His support among the armed forces crumbled. Left-wing, union, and other backers did not lead a coordinated or effective resistance. The Brazilian Congress declared that he had abandoned his office. President Johnson quickly recognized a provisional government. Two days later, Goulart slipped into Uruguay. The generals had come to power.
But instead of the armed forces intervening in politics for a brief time—to eliminate alleged corruption and communist influence in the Goulart government and restore democracy—five four-star generals ruled the country for the next 21 years. Yes, they retained some democratic institutions, such as political parties and a weakened Congress. But they also arrested left-wing activists, increased censorship, limited democratic freedoms, and, in a turn toward more repressive measures in late 1968, suspended habeas corpus and instituted the systematic state-sponsored torture of oppositionists.
An 11-year-long transition to democratic rule (1974–85) was in part accelerated by the human-rights policies of President Jimmy Carter (1977–80), student-led demonstrations demanding democratic freedom, and a series of labor strikes in Greater São Paulo in 1978–80, commanded by union leader Lula da Silva. This process and the subsequent thirty years in which political leaders and civil society organizations consolidated democracy were fraught with economic and political instability, the impeachment of two presidents, the imprisonment of Lula da Silva on charges of corruption, and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018.
Organized civil society and the 2023 attempted coup
On December 1, 2018, 200 Brazilians, US-based academics, and others founded the US Network for Democracy in Brazil (USNDB) at Columbia University Law School. Spurred on by the prospect of four years of right-wing rule in Brazil (after two years of Trump’s presidency), academics and Brazilian activists were motivated to denounce Bolsonaro’s policies while simultaneously advocating for the guarantee of democracy in Brazil. During the gathering, a motion was unanimously approved to establish an office in the nation’s capital to address issues related to Brazil. The Washington Brazil Office (WBO) was founded in 2020 and launched officially in January 2022.
During his four years in office, Trump had managed to polarize the US body politic. His denial of the 2020 electoral results and the attempted coup d’état had shocked the world. When it seemed that Bolsonaro intended to follow Trump’s strategy, panic spread to democratic forces within Brazil and abroad. In this regard, key members of the Biden administration understood the danger that a similar extreme right in Brazil posed to ensuring free and fair Brazilian elections. Already in 2021, the White House had begun sending behind-the-scenes messages through the CIAto the Brazilian armed forces, indicating that the Biden administration would not support any attempt to subvert the democratic process in Brazil. When Bolsonaro suggested publicly on multiple occasions that the armed forces might need to protect the nation against possible electoral fraud and repeated his lack of confidence in the electronic voting system to a gathering of ambassadors in Brasília, the White House and State Department issued public statements affirming their confidence in the Brazilian democratic process and the country’s ability to carry out free and fair elections. Given the fact that Lula da Silva led in all respected polls in 2022, this meticulously on-message campaign by US government officials clearly signaled to Bolsonaro that should Lula da Silva win the election, as observers were predicting, the Biden administration would oppose any military or civilian effort to overturn the results. In other words, despite Washington’s support of the 1964 coup almost sixty years earlier, the Biden administration, along with leaders around the world, was affirming its support for Brazilian democracy.
Nevertheless, the escalation of anti-democratic rhetoric of the Brazilian right, violence against Lula da Silva’s supporters, and Bolsonaro’s not-so-subtle overtures to the armed forces alarmed Brazilian human rights and civil society organizations, including those affiliated with the WBO. In response, the WBOorganized a delegation of representatives from 18 member organizations to visit Washington in July 2022 to talk to members of Congress, representatives of the White House and State Department, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about the on-going threat to democracy in Brazil. The mission called on US officials to “inform themselves about the situation in Brazil, where the President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro, calls into question the electoral system and the results of the polls, attacking the independence of the Powers, through actions directed against the Justice Electoral Court and the Federal Supreme Court.”
Despite Washington’s support of the 1964 coup almost sixty years earlier, the Biden administration, along with leaders around the world, was affirming its support for Brazilian democracy.
In the following months, the WBO organized the publication of an international statement in support of democracy in Brazil. It supported a group of 31 representatives and eight senators, who sent a letter on September 9, 2022, to President Biden asking him to make “unequivocally clear to Bolsonaro, his government, and security forces that Brazil will find itself isolated from the US and the international community of democracies if there are attempts to subvert the country’s electoral process.” As the delegation to Washington had requested, President Biden called to congratulate President Lula da Silva on his electoral victory less than an hour after the official results were announced.
When Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed the centers of power in Brazil a week after President Lula da Silva’s inauguration, the Biden administration immediately issued a statement condemning the attempt coup d’état. Three days later, sixty US and Brazilian lawmakers released a joint declaration in which they condemned the “authoritarian and anti-democratic actors of the extreme right.” They also asserted, “It is no secret that far-right agitators in Brazil and the US are coordinating efforts,” citing meetings between Brazilian Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, the defeated president’s son, and former advisers to Donald Trump, such as Jason Miller and Steve Bannon, who, they wrote in a January 11, 2023, press release, “encouraged Bolsonaro to contest the results of the elections in Brazil.”
Whereas in 1964 the Johnson administration had supported the overthrow of the Goulart government, this time the Biden administration and many members of the US Congress were on the right side of history, in large part because of the traumatic experiences of both Trump’s presidency and the January 6 insurrection that almost annulled the results of the 2020 US presidential elections, but also in part because of the pressure by Brazilian civil society organizations. Despite divergent geopolitical and economic interests that may exist between the two countries, the threat of a near-fascist takeover in the United States created sensibilities for US foreign policymakers in which practice coincided with rhetoric. Given the long-term close relationship between the Brazilian military and its US counterpart, the messages emanating from Washington were influential in pressuring a sector of the armed forces to pause before committing themselves to a coup to overturn the electoral results. Although Brazilian civil society organizations and their supporters in the United States had no direct channels to Biden’s inner circles to influence or shape its policy regarding the elections, its articulations in Congress leading up to the elections certainly reinforced the White House’s diplomacy.
In 1964, the US government backed the Brazilian military, which in the name of democracy ruled over an authoritarian regime for 21 years. In 2022–23, the US administration and key members of Congress got it right.
1 Timothy Naftali, et al, eds., The Presidential Recordings, John F. Kennedy: The Great Crises, v. 1, (W.W. Norton & Co., 2001), pp. 18-19.
This article appears in the 2024-25 issue of the Berlin Journal.
Photo: Brazilian military occupying downtown Rio de Janeiro, April 2, 1964. Courtesy Brazilian National Archive.