Military dictatorship in Brazil

The military dictatorship in Brazil (ditadura militar) occasionally referred to as the Fifth Brazilian Republic, was a governmental structure established on 1 April 1964, after a coup d'état by the Brazilian Armed Forces, with support from the United States government, against President João Goulart. The Brazilian dictatorship lasted for 21 years, until 15 March 1985. The coup was planned and executed by the most senior commanders of the Brazilian Army and received the support of almost all high-ranking members of the military, along with conservative elements in society, like the Catholic Church and anti-communist civil movements among the Brazilian middle and upper classes. The military regime, particularly after the Institutional Act Number Five in 1968, practiced extensive censorship and committed gross human rights abuses, including institutionalized torture and extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances. Despite initial pledges to the contrary, the military regime enacted in 1967 a new, restrictive Constitution, and stifled freedom of speech and political opposition. The regime adopted nationalism, economic development, and anti-communism as its guidelines. The military coup was fomented by José de Magalhães Pinto, Adhemar de Barros, and Carlos Lacerda (who had already participated in the conspiracy to depose Getúlio Vargas in 1945), then governors of the states of Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Guanabara, respectively. The United States State Department supported the coup through Operation Brother Sam and thereafter supported the regime through its embassy in Brasilia. The dictatorship reached the height of its popularity in the 1970s with the so-called "Brazilian Miracle", even as the regime censored all media, and tortured and exiled dissidents. João Figueiredo became president in March 1979; in the same year he passed the Amnesty Law for political crimes committed for and against the regime.

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Related concepts (4)

Brazilian Army

The Brazilian Army (Exército Brasileiro) is the land arm of the Brazilian Armed Forces. The Brazilian Army has fought in several international conflicts, mostly in South America during the 19th century. In the 20th century, it fought on the Allied side in World War I and World War II. Aligned with the Western Bloc during the military dictatorship in Brazil from 1964 to 1985, it also had active participation in Latin America and Southern Portuguese Africa during the Cold War, as well as taking part in UN peacekeeping missions worldwide since the late 1950s.

Military dictatorship in Brazil

Anti-communism

Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in an intense rivalry. Anti-communism has been an element of many movements and different political positions across the political spectrum, including anarchism, centrism, conservatism, fascism, liberalism, nationalism, social democracy, socialism, leftism, and libertarianism, as well as broad movements resisting communist governance.