The military dictatorship in Brazil was an authoritarian regime established in 1964 after a coup d’état that deposed President João Goulart. Justified by the military as a necessary action to prevent the spread of communism and maintain order, the regime quickly consolidated power by suspending democratic institutions, imposing censorship, and repressing political opposition. The military introduced a series of Institutional Acts that granted them broad powers, including the ability to arrest dissidents, dissolve political parties, and control the media.
Throughout its 21-year rule, the dictatorship implemented economic policies that led to rapid industrial growth, known as the “Brazilian Miracle,” but also deepened social inequalities and increased foreign debt. Political repression intensified, with widespread human rights violations, including torture, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings.
The regime created agencies like the National Information Service (SNI) to surveil and neutralize opposition, targeting students, intellectuals, union leaders, and journalists. Resistance movements emerged, including guerrilla groups and civil society organizations advocating for democracy, but they were met with brutal crackdowns.
The dictatorship began to lose strength in the late 1970s due to economic decline, internal divisions within the military, and growing public pressure for democratization. The process of political opening, known as abertura, was gradual, with the lifting of censorship, the return of exiled politicians, and the reestablishment of political parties.
In 1985, the military handed power back to a civilian government through an indirect election, marking the end of the dictatorship. However, the legacy of the regime remains a subject of debate in Brazil, as issues such as impunity for human rights violations and the role of the military in politics continue to influence the country’s democracy.
Essential Books on Brazil’s Military Dictatorship
Understanding this period is crucial to grasp the country’s contemporary political landscape. Here are three essential books that provide deep insights into Brazil’s military regime.
Until the Storm Passes: Politicians, Democracy, and the Demise of Brazil’s Military Dictatorship , by Bryan Pitts (2023)
Until the Storm Passes reveals how Brazil’s 1964–1985 military dictatorship contributed to its own demise by alienating the civilian political elites who initially helped bring it to power. Based on exhaustive research conducted in nearly twenty archives in five countries, as well as on oral histories with surviving politicians from the period, this book tells the surprising story of how the alternatingly self-interested and heroic resistance of the political class contributed decisively to Brazil’s democratization. As they gradually turned against military rule, politicians began to embrace a political role for the masses that most of them would never have accepted in 1964, thus setting the stage for the breathtaking expansion of democracy that Brazil enjoyed over the next three decades.
Brazilian Authoritarianism: Past and Present, by Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (2022)
Schwarcz travels through five hundred years of colonial history to consider Brazil’s allegiance to slavery, which made it the last country to abolish the system. She delves into eight elements that pervade Brazil’s problematic culture: racism, bossism, patrimonialism, corruption, inequality, violence, gender issues, and intolerance. But Schwarcz also argues that Brazil’s future is not absolutely hopeless. History is not destiny, and even as the nation experiences its worst crises ever―social, political, moral, and environmental―it has the potential to overcome them.
We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States, by James Green (2010)
In We Cannot Remain Silent, James N. Green analyzes the U.S. grassroots activities against torture in Brazil, and the ways those efforts helped to create a new discourse about human-rights violations in Latin America. He explains how the campaign against Brazil’s dictatorship laid the groundwork for subsequent U.S. movements against human rights abuses in Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and Central America.
Green interviewed many of the activists who educated journalists, government officials, and the public about the abuses taking place under the Brazilian dictatorship. Drawing on those interviews and archival research from Brazil and the United States, he describes the creation of a network of activists with international connections, the documentation of systematic torture and repression, and the cultivation of Congressional allies and the press. Those efforts helped to expose the terror of the dictatorship and undermine U.S. support for the regime. Against the background of the political and social changes of the 1960s and 1970s, Green tells the story of a decentralized, international grassroots movement that effectively challenged U.S. foreign policy.
