Word: goulart
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This week Goulart was thrown out by the military which had deposed Vargas and Quadros before him. Getulio Vargas, a reforming dictator, committed suicide in 1954 when the army foiled his attempt at land reform. Quadros had been forced out in 1961 for a "pro-Communist" foreign policy. Now Goulart had favored both land reform and an independent foreign policy. Since he knew from the experience of his predecessors that one could only institute reforms from a position of total power, he undoubtedly planned to grasp that power before the army dispensed with him. He lost, however...
These, roughly, are the facts, and one can do whatever one wishes with them. One can argue that the army acted to save democracy, and to banish Communism from Brazil. The argument is supported by the probability that Goulart planned to rule, at best, by Gaullist plebiscite and by the fact that in its first two days the army regime has arrested two thousand Brazilians which it has labeled Communists...
Governor Carlos Lacerda of Guanabara (Rio de Janiero), a bitter enemy of Goulart who backed the coup, insists this is not enough. He wants the Congress purged of its "pro-Communist elements," namely the Labor Party congressmen. If he and his allies gain ascendancy as the new government takes shape--it must select a new President within thirty days--Brazil will have a period of repressive anti-leftism which could set off, in turn, a bloody and popular leftist revolution...
While the army did act to save democracy, the motive was far from pure: it also acted to avoid the reforms the country needs. The new government is not going to be popular with the peasants, the workers, and the students, all of whom supported Goulart from the left. The anti-Communist purge will make them unhappy, and if the economic situation continues to deteriorate during the eighteen months that the congressionally appointed president will serve, the new rulers will face a tremendous crisis in 1965. An election would probably bring in a candidate at least as radical as Goulart...
...theoretically possible that the new government will take a progressive president and give him the power to push the reforms through which Goulart was powerless to achieve; this is the liberal justification for U.S. support of the coup. But given the political complexion of the new regime, and the past history of the man who made up its leadership, such reform is not likely to take place...