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Military Resistance to the Brazilian Coup: The Fight of Officers and Soldiers against Authoritarian Rule, 1964–67
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2020
Abstract
This article traces resistance among members of the armed forces who opposed the military dictatorship in Brazil during the first four years of the regime, 1964–67. I show that despite scholars’ efforts to depict the 1964 coup as a project supported by the armed forces as a strategic and ideological unit, there were battle lines within those forces along which hard-liners and moderate interventionists battled for government control. There were, in fact, hundreds of officers and soldiers who opposed the coup and organized against it. To contain resistance efforts inside the armed forces, the generals who orchestrated the coup labeled opponents to intervention as communists and expelled them from the institution, in many cases under considerable duress. This article discusses the first opposition efforts of officers and soldiers, particularly the Nationalist Armed Resistance (RAN) and the Caparaó Guerrilla Movement. Members of the military who were opposed to the coup shared an anti-interventionism and nationalism that united them against the regime. After 1964, their efforts to oppose military interventionism, previously carried out inside the military barracks, became the fight of all its opponents, members of the armed forces and civilians alike.
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2020
Footnotes
I am deeply thankful to Jerry Davila and Marc Hertzman who provided feedback on multiple versions of this manuscript. I thank Mary Karasch for her comments, Robert Rouphail for detailed edits and suggestions, and Heidi Tinsman, who gave me comments on an earlier version of this article at the annual meeting of the Conference on Latin American History in 2018. Additionally, I thank the two anonymous reviewers for The Americas whose comments helped me refine the arguments of this article. Lastly, I thank all of the officers and soldiers who agreed to share their histories with me. Research for this article has benefitted from generous support of the Department of History, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
References
1. For more on leftist political militancy inside the military during the twentieth century up to 1964, see da Cunha, Paulo Ribeiro, Militares e militância: uma relação dialeticamente conflituosa (São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2014)Google Scholar.
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3. de Carvalho, José Murilo, “Armed Forces and Politics in Brazil, 1930–45,” Hispanic American Historical Review 62:2 (May 1982): 193–223Google Scholar.
4. Throughout this manuscript, I call officers and soldiers who were opposed to military intervention in politics “anti-interventionists.” Within the armed forces, they advocated that the institution and its members be responsible for defending the country against external threats and work under democratically elected governments. They were against the idea circulating among officers who supported a military coup that when the country was threatened by communism the military had the duty to intervene in politics.
5. Smallman, Shawn C., Fear and Memory in the Brazilian Army and Society, 1889–1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Smallman, Shawn C., “A profissionalização da violência extralegal das forças armadas no Brazil (1945–64),” in Nova história militar brasileira, Castro, Celso, Izecksohn, Vitor, and Kraay, Hendrik, eds. (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 2004), 389–408Google Scholar.
6. Interventionist generals had already attempted to take power in 1955 and 1961. See Stepan, Alfred, The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.
7. For a deeper discussion on the ideological explanations for cleansing the armed forces of communist infiltration, see Cláudio Beserra de Vasconcelos, Repressão de militares na ditadura pós-1964 (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional [hereafter AN], 2018).
8. See Stepan, The Military in Politics; Parker, Phyllis R., Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, 1964 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Moreira Alves, Maria Helena, State and Opposition in Military Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Skidmore, Thomas E., The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Soares d'Araújo, Maria Celina, Dillon Soares, Gláucio Ary, and Castro, Celso, Visões do golpe: a memória militar sobre 1964 (Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará, 1994)Google Scholar; Chirio, Maud, A política nos quartéis: revoltas e protestos de oficiais na ditadura militar brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2012)Google Scholar; and Napolitano, Marcos, 1964: História do regime militar brasileiro (São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 2014)Google Scholar.
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11. See Castello Parucker, Paulo Eduardo, Praças em pé de guerra: o movimento político dos subalternos militares no Brasil (1961–1964) e a revolta dos sargentos de Brasília (São Paulo: Editora Expressão Popular, 2009)Google Scholar; Rodrigues, Flávio Luís, Vozes do mar: o movimento dos marinheiros e o golpe de 64 (São Paulo: Cortez Editora, 2004)Google Scholar; and Cunha, Militares e militância.
12. Exceptions are Maciel, Wilma Antunes, O capitão Lamarca e a VPR: repressão judicial no Brasil (São Paulo: Alameda Casa Editorial, 2006)Google Scholar; da Silva Almeida, Anderson, Todo leme a bombordo: marinheiros e ditadura civil-militar no Brasil: da rebelião de 1964 à anistia (Rio de Janeiro: AN, 2012)Google Scholar; and da Silva Almeida, Anderson, Como se fosse um deles: almirante Aragão - memórias, silêncios e ressentimentos em tempos de ditadura e democracia (Niterói: EDUFF, 2017)Google Scholar. This also seems to be the case for other Latin American nations governed by similar dictatorial regimes; there are few studies on persecution within the military during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, for example. Officers and soldiers who opposed other military regimes in Latin America were also persecuted by the military authorities who took power, as Jorge Magasich and Leith Passmore show in their study of the armed forces in Chile during the Pinochet regime. Magasich examines the case of the sailors who opposed the 1973 coup and claims that the armed forces did not act as one block in support of the Pinochet regime: many soldiers with leftist tendencies showed support for president Salvador Allende. Magasich, Jorge, Los que dijeron ‘no’: historia del movimiento de los marinos antigolpistas de 1973 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2008)Google Scholar. Passmore studies the cases of conscript soldiers deployed in the front line of Chile's internal war. He shows that these men were at times perpetrators, witnesses, and victims of human rights abuses, and that their experiences were silenced and remained absent from the history of the dictatorship in Chile. Passmore, Leith, The Wars Inside Chile's Barracks: Remembering Military Service under Pinochet (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017)Google Scholar.
13. I was able to contact most of my interviewees through the work of the Brazilian National Truth Commission, which opened in 2012. In Rio de Janeiro, I contacted members of the commission, who introduced me to a group of soldiers from the Air Force. Professor Paulo Ribeiro da Cunha, who worked with the commission studying the specific cases of expelled members of the armed forces, helped with the names and contact information of several interviewees.
14. This archive, opened to the public in 2011, documents the vast resources spent by the government to neutralize opposition to the coup inside the armed forces.
15. José Caldas da Costa, for example, interviewed a few officers who participated in the Caparaó guerrilla movement. However, his book was published in 2007, and he did not have access to military intelligence records. The interviews he collected with former members of the Caparaó Guerrilla Movement and then published in his book serve as a great resource for historians. Despite the quality of his journalistic work, he did not analyze the interviews at length. da Costa, José Caldas, Caparaó: a primeira guerrilha contra a ditadura (São Paulo: Editora Boitempo, 2007)Google Scholar. Beserra de Vasconcelos examined the juridical proceedings of the armed forces against expelled non-interventionist soldiers to understand how the generals in power determined who would be purged from the forces in the wake of the coup. de Vasconcelos, Cláudio Beserra, Repressão de militares na ditadura pós-1964 (Rio de Janeiro: AN, 2018)Google Scholar. Machado Burlamaqui examined the involvement of non-interventionist expelled officers in the amnesty movement at the end of the 1970s. Burlamaqui, Flávia Machado, “As forças armadas, a anistia de 1979 e os militares cassados,” Militares e Política 6 (June 2010): 114–140Google Scholar. Both written in 2010, these works do not rely on documents from the dictatorship's surveillance agencies, and also do not examine these soldiers’ opposition to the regime in the wake of the coup.
16. Schneider, Nina, “The Forgotten Voices of the Militares Cassados: Reconceptualising ‘Perpetrators’ and ‘Victims’ in Post-1985 Brazil,” Brasiliana: Journal for Brazilian Studies 2:2 (November 2013): 313–344CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17. Schneider, “The Forgotten Voices,” 326.
18. Schneider also did not use any documentation from the archives of the Centro de Informações da Aeronáutica [hereafter CISA] and lists only one document from the Serviço Nacional de Informações [National Information Service; hereafter SNI] in her primary sources. That document is from an intelligence agency archive of the military government that I have also examined. Therefore, I am the first to make a comprehensive examination of the CISA and SNI archives with a focus on non-interventionist officers and soldiers.
19. Proença, Ivan Cavalcanti, O golpe militar e civil de 64: 40 anos depois (Rio de Janeiro: Oficina do Livro, 2013), 199Google Scholar.
20. Ivan Cavalcanti Proença, interview with author, Rio de Janeiro, June 25, 2015.
21. Paulo Pinto Guedes II, depoimento, 1984 (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas/ Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de História Contemporânea do Brasil [hereafter FGV/CPDOC]-História Oral, 1989), 439.
22. Guedes, depoimento, 496.
23. Francisco Teixeira, depoimento,1983/1984 (Rio de Janeiro: CPDOC, 1992), 264.
24. Teixeira, depoimento, 266–267.
25. The brigadier used the term ‘demitido,’ which translates as fired, or dismissed. Teixeira, depoimento, 274.
26. Rui Moreira Lima, depoimento, March 11, 2014, CNV, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuY1K7_hIZA&list=FLXk2ZyG_JFyJdH9yoqEOrOg&index=10, accessed December 11, 2019.
27. Audiência com militares perseguidos pela ditadura, Coronel Roberto Baere. June 13, 2013, CNV, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkXjiaRiGvY&index=5&list=PL9n0M0Ixl2jfu8pdAYm7iHaxbaq0yR9qI, accessed December 11, 2019.
28. Astrogildo José Deponti, July 3, 1998, Santiago, RS, Arquivo Público do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul [hereafter APERS], Secretaria da Justiça e da Segurança, 4846-1200/98-2.
29. Arlindo Mendes da Rosa, August 17, 1998, Porto Alegre, RS, APERS, Secretaria da Justiça e da Segurança, 6320-1200/98-6.
30. Isenta de formalidade a expulsão dos marinheiros e cabos indisciplinados, O Globo, Rio de Janeiro, October 1, 1964, Departamento Estadual de Ordem Política e Social/Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo [hereafter DEOPS/APESP], 50-D-7-204.
31. Norberto Batista Simões, interview with author, Rio de Janeiro, June 18, 2015.
32. Ataíde de Moura Lemos, interview with author, Rio de Janeiro, May 23, 2017.
33. Wilson da Silva was also able to escape imprisonment for a few years. He went into exile in 1964, but returned to Brazil during the dictatorship's most violent period, the Médici years. In 1971, in frustration with the failures of the resistance movement and the financial hardships he faced in Uruguay, Da Silva returned to Brazil and was imprisoned. da Silva, José Wilson, O tenente vermelho (Porto Alegre: AGE, 2011), 70Google Scholar; José Wilson da Silva, Porto Alegre, RS, March 26, 1998, APERS, Secretaria da Justiça e da Segurança, 2152-1200/98-1, 21, 27.
34. Wilson da Silva, O tenente vermelho, 195–200.
35. Emígdio Mariano dos Santos, Porto Alegre, RS, August 27, 1998, APERS, Secretaria da Justiça e da Segurança, 6763-1200/98-4, 3.
36. Atos da Revolução de 1964, vol. 1, 1964, APERJ, Ministério da Aeronáutica, 32–46. On page 46, the document uses the term ‘expulsar,’which means to expel; elsewhere, it uses the terms ‘reformar,’ meaning to retire, or ‘transferir para a reserva,’ meaning that certain men would retire but could still be summoned in the future if the armed forces needed additional manpower. Sometimes, the documents use the term ‘demitir,’ which means to fire, for both military and non-military public servants. The military government issued 17 Institutional Acts (AIs) between 1964 and 1969, decrees that allowed military rulers to implement unconstitutional policies. The most resounding AIs changed the constitution, suspending elections and the right of habeas corpus for political crimes. The military government consistently used these acts to expel members of the armed forces seen as “subversive,” as can be seen in the Institutional Act of 1964 cited here. See also Atos institucionais, Portal da Legislação, Planalto, http://www4.planalto.gov.br/legislacao/portal-legis/legislacao-historica/atos-institucionais, accessed September 22, 2018.
37. The distinctions between firing, expelling, retiring, and sending someone to the reserves were not always clearly defined. Francisco Teixeira explains that his wife started to receive a widower's pension after he was fired, even though he was still alive. He could not explain how the armed forces could consider him legally dead, but Teixeira claims this happened to some officers. Teixeira, depoimento, 275.
38. Thomas Skidmore explains that even though Leonel Brizola called for an immediate resistance in the south, Goulart refused to join in. Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 4.
39. For a more personal perspective on João Goulart's decision to flee Brazil, see Ferreira, Jorge Luiz, João Goulart: uma biografia (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2011)Google Scholar.
40. Eugênia Zerbini, the daughter of General Euryale de Jesus Zerbini, also says that her father tried to warn João Goulart, specifically about General Kruel joining in on the coup. However, Goulart did not believe him. Kruel was the godfather to one of his sons, and the president believed their personal relationship was proof that Kruel would not betray him. Audiência Militares de Resistência à Ditadura: Eugênia Zerbini, April 9, 2014, CNV, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYPbAAwngIk&index=2&list=PL9n0M0Ixl2jcN4eQM9FzEB2potwxTdhqy, accessed December 11, 2019.
41. Wilson da Silva, O tenente vermelho, 76.
42. Teixeira, depoimento, 237.
43. Proença, O golpe militar e civil de 64, 64.
44. Ivan Cavalcanti Proença, interview with author, Rio de Janeiro, June 25, 2015.
45. The Getúlio Dornelles Vargas era (1930-45, 1951–54) inaugurated the idea of “nacional-estatismo,” and advocated state sponsorship for the construction of social citizenship. The “varguista tradition” considered state intervention in social and economic aspects of society fundamental. Individuals who came from this tradition, therefore, believed the state should mediate and improve the lives of workers in Brazil. For more, see Francisco Carlos Palomanes Martinho, “Vargas e o legado do trabalhismo no brasil: entre a tradição e a modernidade,” Portuguese Studies Review 12:2 (2004–5): 159–174.
46. Teixeira, depoimento, 275.
47. The southern state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS) had become a center of resistance in the 1930s when Getúlio Vargas, who was born in the city of São Borja, led the “revolutionary movement of 1930” in Brazil. When Vargas took presidential power, he put an end to the republican period known as the “política dos governadores,” in which oligarchies representing the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais alternated in power. As the first republican representative of Rio Grande do Sul, Vargas gained civilian and military support in the country's south. João Goulart, who was also from São Borja, had a close relationship with Vargas, even becoming his minister of labor in 1953. Goulart's close connection with Vargas and his southern origin led different groups in the south to support him, including a large part of the Army in Porto Alegre. Because of this support, Rio Grande do Sul became a center of resistance to the 1964 coup. See Skidmore, Thomas E., Politics in Brazil, 1930–1964: An Experiment in Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil.
48. Teixeira, depoimento, 284.
49. Audiência Militares de Resistência à Ditadura: Eugênia Zerbini. April 9, 2014, CNV, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYPbAAwngIk&index=2&list=PL9n0M0Ixl2jcN4eQM9FzEB2potwxTdhqy, accessed December 16, 2019.
50. Ivan Cavalcanti Proença, interview with author, Rio de Janeiro, June 25, 2015.
51. Those who decided to resist the dictatorship from within the barracks were doing so clandestinely.
52. Wilson da Silva, O tenente vermelho, 125.
53. Participants in this group also included Avelino Capitani, Amadeu Felipe da Luz Ferreira, Araken Vaz Galvão, Manoel Raimundo Soares Wilson da Silva, and sublieutenant Emígdio Mariano dos Santos. Wilson da Silva, O tenente vermelho, 140.
54. This group was initially named Movimento de Resistência Militar Nacionalista (MRMN) or Movimento Nacionalista Revolucionário (MNR).
55. Atividades Subversivas, October 2, 1964, AN, CISA, VAZ.47A.183.
56. Grupo de Guerrilheiros chefiados por Jefferson Cardin de Alencar Osorio, April 7, 1965, AN, CISA, VAZ.122.160.
57. See also Asilados Brasileiros no Urugaui [sic], June 24, 1966, AN, CISA, CIEX, VAZ.54.58; Atividades de Leonel Brizola, July 6, 1966, VAZ.54.59; Atividades de Guerrilhas, July 19, 1966, VAZ.55.278; José Carlos Santos, June 30, 1966, VAZ.55A.14; Atividades de Asilados no Uruguai, July 5, 1966, VAZ.55A.28; Atividades dos Asilados Daudt e Nicoll, October 17, 1966, IE.01.6, 35; Atividades de Moysés Kupperman. Ex-Sgt Amadeu, October 21, 1966, IE.01.6, 74; Atividades de Asilados Brasileiros na ROU, Wilson da Silva, November 3, 1966, IE.01.7, 5; Reunião do MRMN, Asilados na Rou, November 3, 1966, IE.01.7, 16; and Brasileiros que viajam para e de Havana, Asilados na ROU, November 21, 1966, IE.01.7, 74.
58. In some secondary sources, namely José Caldas da Costa's, Caparaó: a primeira guerrilha contra a ditadura (São Paulo: Editora Boitempo, 2007) and interviews, this group is referred to as MNR (Movimento Nacionalista Revolucionário) or MORENA (Movimento Revolucionário Nacional). However, in all state records I reviewed this group is called MRMN, later becoming the Resistência Armada Nacionalista (RAN).
59. Asilados Brasileiros no Uruguai, June 21, 1966, AN, CISA, VAZ.54.57.
60. Asilados Brasileiros no Uruguai, July 5, 1966, AN, CISA, VAZ.55A.33.
61. Wilson da Silva, O tenente vermelho, 153.
62. Atividades subversivas no Brasil, February 14, 1967, AN, CISA, VAZ.14.18.
63. Resistência Armada Nacionalista (RAN), October 17, 1967, AN, CISA, VAZ.50.137; Asilados Brasileiros no Uruguai, May 1967, AN, CISA, VAZ.112A.49; Resistência Armada Nacionalista (RAN), DEOPS/APESP, 50-D-26-1236.
64. Teixeira, depoimento, 284.
65. In an interview years later, former sergeant Amadeu declared that Caparaó was the “depositário do movimento dos sargentos.” Convenção Nacional de Sargentos da Ativa e da Reserva, April 15, 1981, AN, CISA, VAZ.132A.115.
66. Avelino Bioen Capitani, depoimento, November 30, 1987, AN, CISA, VAZ.132A.114.
67. Boletim de Relações Públicas do Exército, August 1967, DEOPS/APESP, 30-Z-160-29.
68. In Portuguese, “se Cuba conseguiu, conseguiríamos também.” Avelino Bioen Capitani, A rebelião dos marinheiros (São Paulo: Editora Expressão Popular, 2005), 125.
69. Boletim de Relações Públicas do Exército, August 1967, DEOPS/APESP, 30-Z-160-28.
70. Boletim de Relações Públicas do Exército, August 1967, DEOPS/APESP, 30-Z-160-28.
71. Convenção nacional de sargentos da ativa e da reserva, April 15, 1981, AN, CISA, VAZ.132A.115.
72. Boletim de Relações Públicas do Exército, August 1967, DEOPS/APESP, 30-Z-160-25.
73. Guerrilhas de Caparaó, September 20, 1967, AN, CISA, VAZ.121A.133.
74. For more on how military regimes in Latin America used, or failed to use, legal systems to deal with political prisoners during the second half of the twentieth century, see Anthony Pereira, Political (In)Justice: Authoritarianism and the Rule of Law in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).
75. For a discussion about the differences between the military governments in Brazil, see Napolitano, Marcos, 1964: História do regime militar brasileiro (São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 2014), 119–146Google Scholar.
76. Tortura e morte do Sargento Manoel Raymundo Soares, October 9, 1967, DEOPS/APESP, 50-D-7- 205.
77. Capitani, A rebelião dos marinheiros, 172–174.
78. Excerpts of the interviews José Caldas da Costa conducted with Amadeu Felipe da Luz Ferreira, Araken Vaz Galvão, Jelcy Rodrigues Corrêa, and other members of the guerrilla movement can be found in Da Costa, Caparaó, 230–237.
79. For more on the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (IPES) and the Instituto Brasileiro de Ação Democrática (IBAD), see René Dreifuss, Armand, 1964, a conquista do estado: ação política, poder e golpe de classe, 5th ed. rev.(Petrópolis: Vozes, 1987)Google Scholar.
80. Ivan Cavalcanti Proença, interview with author, Rio de Janeiro, June 25, 2015.
81. For more on the campaign “The Oil is Ours” and the idea that oil extraction had to be under the control of the Brazilian state, see Maria Augusta Tibiriçá Miranda, O petróleo é nosso: a luta contra o “entreguismo,” pelo monopólio estatal (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1983).
82. Teixeira, depoimento, 8.
83. Ivan Cavalcanti Proença, interview with author, Rio de Janeiro, June 25, 2015.
84. Almoré Zock Cavalheiro, interview with author, Porto Alegre, July 6, 2015.
85. Ato Institucional no 5, December 13, 1968, Presidência da República, Casa Civil, Subchefia para Assuntos Jurídicos, http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/ait/ait-05-68.htm, accessed December 16, 2019.