Thread by @Americas_Crimes

This week in 1964, the US backed a military coup against the democratically elected president of Brazil João Goulart, kicking off 2 decades of brutal military dictatorships, which tortured 30,000 students, intellectuals, dissidents & killed hundreds more.

President João Goulart had begun enacting social reforms including: increasing labor protections, re-distributive land reform, universal suffrage, rent control, socializing the profits of large companies, nationalizing oil refineries and increasing funding for education.

Goulart refused to obey US demands to kick leftists in his cabinet, end his anti-American rhetoric and cut-off relations with Cuba and other communist countries.

As a result, the United States rolled out successive rounds of targeted actions against Goulart, including diplomatic and financial pressure, threats of abandonment, support for opposition politicians, direct cooperation with coup plotters.

Almost two years before the April 1, 1964, military takeover in Brazil, President Kennedy and his top aides began seriously discussing the option of overthrowing Joao Goulart's government, according to Presidential tape transcripts posted by the National Security Archive.

For years, the US Government publicly insisted it had no role in the coup; however, formerly secret document show US president Lyndon Johnson actively plotted the coup. He inherited the coup plans from the JFK administration. nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB1…

To assure the success of the coup, US ambassador Lincoln Gordon recommended "that measures be taken soonest to prepare for a clandestine delivery of arms of non-US origin, to be made available to coup leader Castello Branco's supporters in Sao Paulo. nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB…

To back the right-wing coup government, the US sent naval forces (including an aircraft carrier and naval destroyers), military planes, 110 tons of ammunition and other equipment including "CS agent"-for riot control.
nytimes.com/1976/12/30/arc…

The military coup, which began on March 31, 1964 succeeded and shortly after President João Goulart fled to Uruguay, and with him went the hopes of progressive reforms in Brazil for decades.

General Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco, who seized power in the coup, moved immediately to ban labor unions, rounded up and tortured "suspected communists", banned criticism of the government & he ended relations with communist countries.

Within two years, foreign companies gained control of about half of the Brazilian industry. By 1971, 70% of non-state owned major companies in Brazil were foreign-owned.

Under the military dictatorship, dissidents were tracked down, arrested, imprisoned, tortured & disappeared. According to the 2007 report from the Brazilian government, 475 people were disappeared and thirty thousand were tortured in hundreds of dungeons.

CIA agents actively trained hundreds of Brazilian military and police officers in torture techniques. There are multiple accounts alleging that torture techniques were even tested on street kids and homeless beggars from the streets of Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

The torture included: being stripped nude & forced to sit in either a refrigerated and darken cell for hours with loudspeakers blasting sirens. Prisoners were electrocuted, were forced to endure rounds of Russian roulette & had cockroaches forced into their mouths.

Under a 1979 amnesty law, no one has ever been tried for the human rights abuses committed during Brazil’s dictatorship. And of course, none of the American backers of the coup were ever held responsible.

On December 6, 1976 João Goulart died in Mercedes, Argentina. There is compelling evidence that Goulart was assassinated as part of Operation Condor--likely by poisoning--on order of the head of Brazil’s military government at the time. clarin.com/ediciones-ante…