Memories of Dictatorship in Brazil
In the months leading up to its highly consequential October 2022 presidential elections, Brazil has been gripped by deep partisan divisions and mass demonstrations. In this election, Luis Inácio da Silva, Partido Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party) candidate and former president from 2002 to 2010, challenged and beat far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. The polarization, however, did not come to an end. On January 8 2023– a week after Lula’s inauguration– Bolsonaro supporters broke into and rioted inside Congress, the Presidential Palace, and the Supreme Court in the nation’s capital of Brasilia. The protestors called for the Brazilian army to intervene militarily to remove Lula from office and to install Bolsonaro as president.
This demonstration by Bolsonaro’s supporters is unprecedented in Brazil’s recent history. In the context of the country’s military dictatorship, however, it is a troubling reminder of Brazil’s not so distant past. The January 8 riots– and the larger preference for military political intervention that they revealed– pose a threat to the further development of Brazilian democracy.
Brazil Under Dictatorship
On April 1 1964, Brazilian military officers launched a coup d’etat against the democratically elected government and president. For the next 21 years, South America’s largest country would live under a brutal and repressive right-wing military dictatorship. So-called “subversives” were routinely imprisoned and tortured in the name of national security. In 1985, however, the military allowed fair and free presidential elections and in 1988, a new Constitution was ratified, and Brazil officially returned to democracy.
Like other South American dictatorships at the time, the Brazilian military justified its grasp over the nation through the “national security doctrine”. The military painted a compelling picture that portrayed the country in a constant state of war with internal enemies– subversives– who wanted to destroy the Brazilian way of life. The military promised to combat these threats and protect the nation. Thus, the dictatorship rationalized its own existence by branding certain groups as enemies of the state that only the military was capable of subduing.
The main target of the national security doctrine was communists– the definition of which was expanded to include any leftist groups such as trade unions and Black power movements. Notoriously, the military used Institutional Act 5 to suspend habeas corpus for political crimes, arrest political opponents, and impose widespread censorship. Arbitrary arrests and torture were the norm. The worst fate for a suspect, however, was to be “disappeared”– to be captured and killed by extralegal forces. A victim’s relative would likely never know their final fate. In 1990, a clandestine grave was discovered in the city of São Paulo with 1,049 bags of human remains. From these remains, only five people have been identified.
Rebuilding Democracy
Since 1988, however, Brazilian democracy has flourished– 79% of the population participated in the 2022 parliamentary and presidential elections. In addition, the introduction of electronic voting machines in 1996 increased the number of correctly filled-out ballots in municipalities with large numbers of low-educated citizens; not even the United States has a national electronic-voting system.
Nevertheless, the road towards progress has not been without obstacles. The January 8 riots were not the first time that the Brazilian right rallied around the notion of a military intervention. In fact, calls for an intervention predate Bolsnoaro’s first presidential campaign. On March 22 2014, in the city of Belo Horizonte, 120 protestors waved a banner reading “March of Families with God Against Communism in Latin America. Military Intervention Now!”
This protest was held a few days after the 50th anniversary of the original “March of the Family.” On March 19 1964– just a week and half before the military coup d’etat– 500,000 people in São Paulo marched against the democratically elected president João Goulart for his “communist” policies. The parallels between the 1964 and 2014 protests demonstrate how the fear of communism has persevered in the Brazilian psyche. Both marches– even 50 years apart from one another– named communism as a threat to Brazil. The 2014 protest reintroduced the belief that only military intervention can destroy the specter of communism.
The fear and repression perpetrated by the state during the dictatorship deeply impacted Brazil, and these scars have been repeatedly ripped open by the right in their conflation of communism and Brazil’s modern political left. During former president Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment proceedings in 2016, then-deputy Jair Bolsonaro dedicated his vote for impeachment to Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra: head of the anti-commnuist DOI-CODI (Department of Information Operations-Center for Internal Defense Operations) torture unit. Rousseff herself was a communist guerilla fighter during the dictatorship but was imprisoned and even tortured from 1970 to 1972. She was only 23. The victims of the military dictatorship are still alive, yet their suffering is conveniently forgotten– or perhaps excused– out of reverence to figures such as Ustra. This points to the larger glorification of the dictatorship and its violence.
In that same speech, Bolsonaro declared that “[the left] lost in 1964, and now they have lost in 2016.” Again in 2019, president Bolsonaro referred to Ustra as a “national hero who prevented Brazil falling into what the left wants today.” Bolsanaro’s messaging is quite transparent: the left is a serious threat to Brazil that can only be dealt with through violence reminiscent of the military dictatorship. The further subtext is that only Bolsonaro is capable of doing what needs to be done to curb the dangers of communism. Thus, when Bolsonaro lost the presidency to Lula, there was very genuine fear among his supporters about the future of Brazil– fear that pushed them to break into government buildings in Brasília and call for a military intervention.
Looking Beyond 2023
Despite Bolsonaro's supporters’ wishes for military intervention, the army stayed out of the conflict. In addition, Lula has since replaced Bolsonaro-appointed military officers within government ministries with civilians. Even though the danger from the demonstrations seems to have faded, the January 8 riots revealed how some in the present-day remember the dictatorship not as a dark time in the nation’s history, but as a memorable past.
The glorification of the military dictatorship is deeply troubling for the future of Brazilian democracy. The January 8 rioters failed to overthrow Lula’s government, but not for lack of effort. The military remained on the sidelines this time, but could history repeat itself in the future? The current political climate on the right seems receptive to that possibility and even prefers it to Lula’s government. On the left, the challenge becomes how to enact their policy agenda without being branded as communists by the right. For now, the situation has substantially calmed down. The threat, however, remains and the memory of dictatorship continues to loom over Brazil.